THE NORTH AMERICAN WITTGENSTEIN SOCIETY

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Society Business

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REPORT OF MEETING

We are pleased to announce that the first philosophical meeting of the North American Wittgenstein Society was held at the 2000 Pacific Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association.

In response to a call for papers last July, we received thirteen submissions. These were blind referreed by the panel agreed upon at last year’s organizational meeting: Charles Crittenden (CSU Northridge), Bill Hyde (Golden West College) and Elizabeth Wolgast (CSU Hayward). Stephen Simon and I, chosen at the same meeting to be continuing officials of the organization, made arrangements for commentators (done at very short notice with an APA deadline looming).

The program was the following:

Chair: Stephen Simon (CSU Fullerton)

Speaker: John Whittaker (Louisiana State University), ‘Beliefs, Practices and Grammatical Investigations’

Commentator: William Hyde (Golden West College)

Speaker: Michael Malone (Northern Arizona University),

‘The Mind Searle Rediscovered’

Commentator: Merrill Ring (CSU Fullerton)

Speaker: Jose Medina (Vanderbilt University),

‘The Role of the Community: Contextualism and Quietism in Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy’

Commentator: Beth Sawickey (C.W. Post College, Long Island University)

The session was well attended, about twenty people altogether. The papers were extensively discussed, so much so that the session ran until 10:30 at night, 1/2 hour beyond its scheduled end.

We also needed to conduct some business and as the alloted time was overly full, we held an early morning business meeting on Saturday. It was not (naturally) well attended. Nonetheless, enough members were there to take some actions.

We decided to hold the next meetings at the Pacific APA in the Spring of 2001 (those meetings will be held in downtown San Francisco.) Names for the screening committee for next year were considered and Stephen and I are to put together the committee as soon as possible. We had a most informative discussion of what paper formats shall be publishable on the society web page - we shall be sending out information on that quite soon. Lastly, it was decided that the Society would asked for $5 per year in dues in order to (a) render us a serious organization and (b) to support Society business.

Merrill Ring