GRE, conferences

I took the GRE this weekend. I'm not crazy about my scores, but I don't think I can do $140 better, so I'll live with them. I think they should be good enough to get me through the screening processes so that people will at least look at my writing sample and letters, especially if they look at them along with my GPA, which is good. I've sent off my writing sample to a couple more people for comments, and am starting to work on my personal statement so that I can have some professors look it over.

I'm going to trim down my writing sample a bit to send to some conferences. That should help pad my CV and get me some helpful comments on my paper. There is a conference at Louisville and one at UNC-Asheville that I'll submit to. Here's a link to a helpful site:

www.philosophyconferences.com

Phil. of Math II

Plans have changed concerning my philosophy of math paper. I find myself somewhat uninterested in the indispensability argument lately, so I'll write about something else. I am enjoying what I'm reading about epistemological arguments against mathematical platonism, so I think I'll write about that. The standard epistemological argument is something like this:

(1) If platonism is true, then numbers are abstract entities.
(2) If numbers are abstract entities, then we can't gain knowledge about them.
(3) So, if platonism is true, we can't gain knowledge about numbers.
This is a bad consequence, though it doesn't strictly mean that platonism is false. So, the argument can be carried on...
(4) We can gain knowledge about numbers.
(5) Therefore, platonism is not true.

There are good responses to this argument. Field, however, offers an argument which does not rely on any theory of knowledge or depend on any certain ways of gaining knowledge. I hope to sketch a platonist response to Field's argument.

I should get a draft to my professor sometime soon. It's hard to stay motivated for an independent study.

I'm still waiting to hear from the director for the summer seminar in Colorado about my final paper (and planned writing sample). As soon as I see his comments and take the GRE's this weekend, I can really start to get things together for my applications.

starting the application process

I've begun filling out some applications, polishing my writing sample, securing my letters, and working on a generic statement of purpose to tailor to each school. The worst is definitely the statement of purpose. I would rather write 3 more writing samples than write one statement of purpose. GRE's on September 15th...we'll see how that goes. I'll try and post some on here as things start moving along. I found one or two blogs like that online this summer and they were pretty helpful, so maybe someone will find this helpful.