So I worked busily, so that in the end I had 6 pages written in Latex in my hands when entering the interview room. Here we sat the next about 3 hours – ok, I was standing quite often at the blackboard. The result was that they already now told me, that I am accepted for the project (instead of friday).

8) This Dunja and I had to celebrate: I invited her to Chinese restaurant and she me to the cinema (The Parfume – was great 8))

After working the whole weekend on preperation, Monday and Tuesday on the task, I still had to prepare my two courses for Thursday and Friday. That’s what I began while travelling home. After two really busy days at University Passau finally the weekend was waiting for me: and on Saturday I really did nothing else than listening to music. I was so crazy exhausted that I couldn’t even look at a book. Today I still feel not that good, like getting ill.

I’m looking forward to x-mas, to hide in the kitchen of my heart, eating cookies with the most precious beings in my little world and forgetting about everything, letting loose, open the sails with the wind blowing a warm breeze, no coursebook, no navigation, just a sweet trust in the silence of the ocean…

The Inn has her magic moments. Completely took my breath away this lunch break.

Have a look at more pictures at:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/hermeschris/tags/passau/

They were only sextet yesterday, which is a pity (the big big BUT comes later on) as the brass section is simply so amazing for me. BUT they did the very best concert they ever did with me being in the audience. That means, it was the best concert I’ve ever participated (yes in good concerts one participates ) – the only band who could have possible done a equally good concert would have been the Make Up, but also only in the mood of their lifes. We all had so much fun and were dancing dancing dancing dancing and shouting and singing … wow, and WIFS were playing one extra song after the other.

Thanks to the society and thanks to Dunja and Sabrina for being such charming company and dancing partners!

Yeah, it was a crazy year so far, I finished my final thesis in computer science/math, I wrote my final thesis in philosophy, made my final exams in philosophy, began to work at the faculty at the same time.

The last weeks were full of preparation for my written (Pyrrhonean Skepticism) and my oral exams (Mill’s Utilitarism, Camus’ philosophy of the absurd, Hobbes’ Leviathan, Kuhn’s philosophy of science) – well and the same time to prepare my two courses. And now, YES, it’s finally done! Does that mean, that I’m no student anymore, but something boring like a “Magister Philosopher” or a “Diplom Computer Scientist” – hell no! I’m not the finished product of the factory university with the nice label sticked on in the end – I heard some people consider university to be such an institution. I always said, anybody who ever really began to study, will study all his life.

Beside is a picture of “Mr. Willi, the beetle” – the only person who was willing to stay up with me that long in the night in the radius of the next 11h by train. The other one – and much more important (sorry, Willi) was Dunja in Gent who gave me neverending support and energy (thanks to you guys at skype!). I love you

I gave a short overview in excerpts of the question “How does language hook up to the world” with the stations:

• sharing a form: Aristotle and Wittgenstein
• Dialectical inspired conceptions of the relationship “signifier – signified”: Derrida, Hegel and Adorno
• Reductionistic conceptions: Physicalism (Fodor), Language reduction (Rorty)
• Direct/Natural Realism (late Putnam)

After that I presented various approaches to the problem of proper names in a chronological manner:

• Conceptual clearification and psychological theory in Mill
• Descriptional Theories in first generation analytic philosophy:
• Frege and the problem of informal identity
• Russell and the problem of Null-Extension
• Language and it’s usage
• Donellan’s conceptions of different ways of referring (attributive vs. referential usage)
• Kripke’s revolution in “Name and Necessity”
• the causal theory of reference
• “Hesperus = Phosphorus” and necessary statements a posteriori
• “The meter-bar in Paris is one meter long” and contingent statements a priori
• Evans mind experiments (Napoleon, Ibn Khan) and critique on Kripke
• A confusing mind experiment with twins at the end, which shows the inadequacy of all modells above (at least seen as general theoretical claims about meaning of proper names)

My folies can be found here. We had also interesting discussions:

• Hegel’s conception of demonstratives like “this” as being radically singular as well as radically general was confronted with Russell’s conception of logical proper names
• On a request I illustrated some consequences of generalizing Kripke’s causal theory on scientific and natural kind terms (Putnam) and sketched with Putnam’s twin earth argument why meaning are not in the head
• We discussed what happens with the conceptions of proper names if we take into account the plurality of languages (and in how far Evans’ and Donnellan’s view have here also advantages compared to Kripke’s original conception)
• I talked a bit about my personal view on so called analytic and anglo-saxon philosophy and that the time to build bridges between continental or french and anglo-saxon philosophy is better then ever (especially considering the “”deconstructive”" development of thinkers like Putnam or Goodman and the tendency of a expiration of the classical dichotomies like fact/value, perception/cognition, analytic/synthetic, metaphysical realism/antirealism (at least with Putnam), mind/body, etc.)

The athmosphere was very warm and the Gerusija people are super-sympathic. So it was very pleasent and also an honor to have a speech for this great student organization.

Evans offers a hybrid approach, paying tribute to both, the causal theorists and the descriptionalists.

What impresses me most by the paper is the variety of examples, which serve as paradigmatic touchstones of any future (semi-)theory of proper names. The paper can be seen as a good example of what I like to call ‘experimantal philosophy’.

(I made some concept maps of Evans argumentation in german which are available here.)

At the moment there is a map offereing a rough historical overview of philosophers dealing with proper names. I will also put (once finished) the slides for my upcoming talk at this place, as well as diverse mind and concept maps concerning papers written in this area.

(published in Hilary Putnam / edited by Yemima Ben-Menahem, Cambridge University Press 2005)

Floyd’s paper begins with an overview of main characteristics of Putnam’s externalism which he offers in his “Meaning of ‘Meaning’”. She subsumes them under three major points:

1. Meaning “is object- or reality-involving”, in the sense that it is “significantly determined by reference rather then vice versa”.
2. “Concept possession, and much grasp of meaning is essentially social in character”.
3. She points out, that our “individuation of meanings, concepts, beliefs” are dependent on the language games in which they take place (she doesn’t use Wittgenstein’s term).

All the famous keywords like the inversion of Frege’s “intention implies extension”, indexicality, linguistic division of labour, the principle of charity and the causal theory of reference, “meanings are not in the head” can be subordinated under these points. The principles are realized by the way we apply Putnam’s meaning vector. I made an overview of her argumentation in a concept map.

Floyd’s new accentuation of Putnam’s critique of Frege is, that the primary issue was, beside attacking the descriptional/intensional theory of meaning and Frege’s Gedanken-platonism, also to demonstrate the inadequacy of Frege’s “universal conceptual scheme” (which he tried to realize as ‘Begriffsschrift’). She points out that this leads to ‘Proto-Kuhnian incommensurability problems’ between the ideal language and everyday language. As Frege considers a concept to be a function, ‘it must yield one and only one output for the inputs on which it is defined: the sharpness of a concept’s application [...] is intrinsic to it’s concepthood.’ This stands in contrast to everyday language where we do not have the sharpness demanded, even experts do not have a ‘full grasp of the sense of their concept words.’ Putnam contrasts this with a language-game dependent ‘polymorphousness of concept-individuation and contribution’.