Welcome!

Thanks for visiting The Garden of Forking Paths ! It's still under construction, but feel free to look around and leave comments. Soon we will have papers online and more links, so remember to check back occasionally to see what's new ! If you have any questions or comments, contact the coordinators.

Blogging norms

Here's another posting in Brian Weatherson's blog on "Blogging Etiquette", which addresses interesting issues on discussing people's ideas in public fora like blogs. It's worth looking into...

Free Humor...

Well, yes, this blog has its bit of humor. I wanted to point that there is a posting in Brian Weatherson's blog that records philosophical break-up lines. I posted the following there, so I guess I can safely reproduce it here:

The Compatibilist I (Frankfurt-type version): Honey, you have to understand this: I freely decided to break up with you, but I couldn’t have done otherwise.

The Compatibilist II (Fischer version): I am moderately receptive but weakly reactive to your love.

And here's John Fischer's contribution, that you can read in the same blog:

The Semicompatibilist: We weren’t completely compatible, and I only sort-of loved you anyway. But don’t worry: nothing we really care about will be lost…

Collective Decision-Making and Its Discontents

Here's an overview and bibliography on the discursive dilemma, prepared by Christian List. The dicursive dilemma, List explains, "concerns the aggregation of several individuals' judgments on multiple propositions into corresponding collective judgments on these propositions", where this aggregation of judgments yields paradoxical results. Aggregation problems of this kind occur in collective decision-making bodies like committees, legislatures, judiciaries and expert panels.