Update 11/11

Hello again from Dunedin! First of all, thanks again for visiting the blog hopefully that last philosophy post didn't turn too many people off. Second of all, happy birthday to my wonderful Mom, Terri Darcy. I hope that this blog post can serve as a birthday treat. It has been a while since we've posted pictures of our adventures over here, the main reason being we haven't had too many adventures as of late. We are saving our money for a big trip this summer (February to be precise). We've rented a camper van and are going to spend ten or so days trekking around the North Island. It's gonna be pretty fantastic, so we are pretty excited. Despite a recent lack of travel though, things are still pretty exciting here in our neck of the woods.

The biggest event in the past month or so was Oktoberfest. A number of our roommates are either German or Austrian, and one is actually from Bavaria, so celebrating Oktoberfest was a must. It was a blast and Jess and I learned quite a bit about the holiday. For instance, one tradition is to wear giant heart shaped gingerbread cookies around your neck (you give them out in the same way you would a Valentine) which was quite festive and also delicious. We had a lot of really good food, the highlight being homemade pretzels. We also did some dancing, this song was a particular favorite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-_xXfjB3AM. It was stuck in both Jess and my heads for days afterwards. Here are some pictures!

Jess and Lisa making pretzels

Oktoberfest!

My department mate Paul and I enjoying some Burgers

Not sure what's over there...

Jess and our Bavarian roomie Sandra

Just me and our landlord Dale

Enjoying our first Oktoberfest

There was dancing...

...and eating

Jess and the roommates

All and all Oktoberfest was lots of fun, the only downside was the nasty weather. Dunedin is not exactly known for its wonderful weather. That being said, we have gotten quite a few nice days since we've arrived. When it is nice a good way to spend the day is down at the Uni by the Leith River.

The park area by the river

The Clocktower Building

Enjoying the sun by the Leith River

We also keep busy with visits to the Dunedin farmer's market, which runs year round. The other week we found some rhubarb that we'll be using for pie (once the strawberry prices go down) and some really delicious pizza dough.  

Farmers Market goods

There has also been a fair amount of baking going on around here. For instance we made and decorated (and by we made and decorated I mean Jess made and I helped decorate) some cookies for Halloween. They were a big hit in my department and at Jess' office. 

Pacman like cookies

Sandra with some cookies

That's about all that is new here. Our level of travel will be picking up shortly. This summer we'll be traveling to different points on the South Island almost every weekend, and in the even shorter term I'll be heading to Wellington in a few weeks. A paper of mine has been accepted, so I'll be speaking at a conference which I'm very excited about. Hopefully, then, we'll be blogging again soon!

Philosopost #2: Time and Modality

It's been a while since we last blogged, almost a month..., the main reason being we haven't really been too exciting as of late. The weather in our neck of the woods hasn't been the greatest the past few weekends, so we've spent most of our time hanging around the city. We'll get back to the excitement soon I promise. But until then, I thought I would post a bit about my project. Be warned, what follows is gonna be straight philosophy.

One of the things that has struck me in the course of my research is the analogy between time and modality. So much so that examining this analogy has become the focus of my project, and I've dropped the Strawson style conceptual analysis completely in favor of some straight up ontological, cost-benefit metaphysics. The use of analogies is not uncommon in the philosophy of time. Eternalists (those who hold that the past, present, and future, are ontologically on par) for example have always urged that there is a close analogy between time and space. According to this analogy the present, or the now, is simply an indexical term, equivalent to the use of 'here' in space. So to say that I am present, is simply to indexically pick out my location in time; in the same way that 'here' simply indexically picks out our location in space. This 'spatializing' of time is an effort to deflate the specialness of the present. The presentist, one who holds that only the present exists, obviously doesn't accept this spatialization, and wants to keep the present ontologically privileged. As it turns out, they have a powerful analogy of their own.

Modality concerns possibility and necessity. In philosophy we use the idea of quantifying over a possible world to explain the distinctions between possibility and necessity. So, if I were to say, It is possible that Bayern Munich could have won the 2012 Champions League what I mean is, there is a possible world in which Bayern Munich did win the 2012 Champions League. Quantifying over possible worlds basically allows modal logic to work in a sensible way, as well as giving us a useful shorthand for expressing possibility, counterfactuals, etc. The analogy between time and modality goes back to at least to the logician and presentist Arthur Prior. Prior was the first to note the striking similarities between tense and modal logic. That was about as far as he took the analogy, mainly because he thought all problems regarding time were simply problems of tense logic but also because actualism had yet to be fully developed. Actualism is a popular view in modality which holds that only our actual world exists, while usually other possible worlds are some sort of abstract object (propositions or states of affairs most likely). This idea clearly fits perfectly with presentism. The presentist holds that only the present time exists, while all other times are unreal. Analogously, the actualist holds that only the actual world exists, while all other worlds are unreal. They even have the same problems, the presentist must account for how we ground truths about the past and future, whereas the actualist must account for how we can ground truths about possible objects and individuals.

Presentism went through a bit of a dark period following the death of Arthur Prior in the early 70's, as it disappears almost entirely from the literature. In the 90's though it made a massive resurgence, as thinkers such as Bigelow, Zimmerman, and Markosian for example, began to actively and creatively defend the view. Throughout the literature the analogy between actualism and presentism is noted, but it isn't until Markosian (2004) that the analogy takes its current form. Markosian argues that in the same way the eternalist holds that time is fundamentally like space, the presentist needs to hold that time is fundamentally like modality. This has led to some fascinating developments in the defense of presentism, namely the development, independently by Bourne (2006) and Crisp (2007), in recent years of an Ersatzer Presentism which is a Plantinga style theory of times as abstract objects. This ersatzer project is really cool, and takes the modal analogy to the max. Another interesting consequence of this analogy is more dialectical. The eternalist spatializng of time simply eliminates presentism from the equation, and so if the analogy holds then eternalism's main rival is out of contention. This is not quite the case in regards to the modal analogy. Holding that time is fundamentally like modality is a good move for the presentist, but it doesn't prima facie eliminate eternalism. Instead it forces the eternalist to adopt a very unpalatable position in the metaphysics of modality...genuine modal realism, the view that all possible worlds exist in the same way that our own does. This view is extremely unpopular, mainly because of its obvious incredibleness, and I doubt many eternalists will endorse it (in fact I think only one eternalist has ever also been a modal realist: David Lewis...the developer of modal realism). This also puts an onus on the eternalist to either defend modal realism, not likely, or show that time is not analogous to modality, a difficult job which still needs doing. So, the modal analogy has been a promising turn for the presentist. On one hand it gives the view its best chance yet of being successful, particularly in regards to the Ersatzer versions of presentism. On the other hand it puts the views main opponent into a very uncomfortable situation. Two very useful weapons.

The main thrust of my project at this point is examining how well this analogy holds up, particularly how well it maintains our common sense views regarding time. Comments and questions encouraged, hopefully I'll have more philosophy soon.

All Blacks and More!

Well it has been an interesting, and busy, few weeks since we last wrote! The fun started two weeks ago, with All Blacks weekend. We spent the night before the game at a birthday party for one of the other students, Charlie, in my department. It was a fun night, with a wonderful dinner out at an Indian restaurant near our flat and a visit to some pubs on the Octagon. I also learned, while eating Chicken tikka masala, that I am allergic to cashews! It isn't a serious allergy but still, good to know.

All Blacks day was exciting from the start, the city felt full and had a serious buzz about it. We spent most of the day before the game relaxing and hanging around the house. Due to a weird online ticketing issue we actually had three tickets to the game, so our roommate Michi was joining us. It also turned out at the last minute that one of our friends Elli had been given two tickets for free, so she invited our roommate Sandra and they joined us on the walk to the game.

Excited for the All Blacks

The walk to the stadium was pretty incredible. Dunedin is a fairly sizable city of about 120,000 people, and the rugby stadium is not massive (about 35,000 or so in seating). The streets however were absolutely packed with people, and a number of streets around the stadium were closed off and filled with rugby fans. Jess also found a ticket on the sidewalk, which two of our roommates eventually sold for $120, splitting the profits with Jess. The game itself was pretty fantastic. It wasn't the most exciting game of rugby, a lot of tough tackling and poor kicking, but the atmosphere was amazing. It was very different from an American sporting event, in that there were no vendors or piped in music. Just a lot of people who wanted to watch rugby.  The All Blacks won as well, which was good. The city was even crazier after the game. Half of the Octagon, the central downtown area, was blocked off from traffic to allow the bars to more than double their outdoor seating. We didn't stay out too late, just a few drinks at the downtown barbershop our roommate Vea owns, but still really enjoyed the atmosphere.

At the All Blacks match

Walking through downtown

The stadium after Aaron Smith's try

After the game

The day after the game we didn't rest on our laurels, and went on a hike for most of the afternoon. We hiked up Flagstaff Peak on the Pineapple Track, which was a short 5 minute drive from our flat. While it was quite hilly it offered some nice views of the city.

Dunedin

The next week brought even more excitement as Jess got a job! She is working as an administrative assistant at Nidd Property Management. So far she is really enjoying it, as her office mates are very welcoming and it is a bit less stressful than working on a medical unit. It is part-time to start, but there is plenty of work which means plenty of opportunities for hours. After Jess accepted her job offer we also got a New Zealand bank account, so we can truly call ourselves locals now!

The excitement kept coming, as we were invited over the weekend to visit Cromwell, a small town on the wet coast of the South Island. Lucy, one of the other students in my department, has a family cabin in Cromwell and invited us to join her and her boyfriend Freddy on a visit. We were there from Friday to Sunday, and had a great time with some wonderful weather. We spent all of Saturday on a hike, called the Devil's Creek Track. In total the track was 14 km, so it was quite exhausting. The scenery was incredible, and reminiscent of Rohan from Lord of the Rings.

Start of the track

Sheep!

Simba!

Stopping for lunch

End of the track

Rohan! 

After our hike we got some of New Zealand's famous frozen berry ice cream, which was delicious. The next day we visited the world's first permanent bungee jumping site, Kawarau Bridge, and Arrowtown, a small town outside of Queenstown. It was a small village, which was fun to explore. We also bought some pretty great creme brûlée flavored fudge.

Birthday!

The rest of our week was pretty uneventful, until Wednesday which was of course Jess' birthday! As you can see from the picture we had plenty of snacks. After the customary department pub meeting we had a number of friends over for drinks, which was a lot of fun. Over all I think it was a good birthday. The rest of the week, and this weekend, has been very quiet. As soon as more excitement comes, however, we will blog about it first thing!

Doubtful Sound

Jess and I spent this past weekend on the west coast of the South Island visiting Doubtful Sound. We had bought tickets, along with most of our roommates, for an overnight cruise through the fjord. (Our roommate Sandra had discovered a local discount for the trip which is why we were all going). It was an incredible trip. We left early Saturday morning for the town of Manapouri, our entry point to the Fjordland, driven by our Austrian roommate Michi.

On the road to Manapouri

Jess and a Kea

The drive was about 3 1/2 hours long, but it didn't feel it thanks to the beautiful scenery. Lambing was also in progress this past weekend, so we spent much of the drive looking for adorable lambs. Arriving in Manpouri was only the first step in our journey to Doubtful Sound though, as getting to the isolated fjord is a bit complicated. Manapouri is a small town in the southwest of New Zealand, and it sits on the edge of Lake Manapouri. After checking in at the tour office we took a boat across the lake, which took about an hour. We landed at a dock right next to the Manapouri Power Station, which is an underground hydro electric station that provides something like 14% of New Zealand's power. While waiting for our bus we also ran into a Kea, which is the world's only alpine parrot and has a reputation for mischief. Next up was a 30 minute bus ride to Deep Cove, our final point of departure. Our group, there were fourteen of us in total, made up about half the passengers on the boat. From the beginning the trip began to exceed our expectations. The boat was beautiful with plenty of space. Not only that but Jess and I got a four person cabin to ourselves. The biggest surprise was the food. We were greeted with huge banana chocolate chip muffins, and as much coffee or tea we wanted. After an hour or so of being on board we were served a delicious soup course. This was followed a few hours later by a full course buffet meal which was unbelievably delicious. They had everything from lamb, grilled salmon, and mussels to a wonderful pavlova for dessert. We also had a delicious buffet breakfast. Needless to say, we ate really well. The real highlight though was the scenery.

Doubtful Sound is an incredible place, and its scope and majesty are impossible to really capture in a picture. We gave it our best shot though! It rained nearly our entire time in the fjord, which made the trip a bit cold and wet. The rain wasn't all bad though, as it meant that the cliffs were covered in hundreds of stunning temporary waterfalls.

Waterfalls!

Benefits of a rainy day

We're on a boat!

Some nice scenery

The feeling of being in the fjord was pretty incredible, what was even better though was seeing the fjord from a kayak. After our soup course we went out on kayaks for about 45 minutes. Being right on the water surrounded by mountains was a pretty incredible feeling.

View from a kayak

Kayakers!

Enjoying some time on the water

After kayaking the crew gave us the option to take a dip in the water, which was near freezing (around 7 degrees Celsius). A few of us took them up on it; it was quite the shock to the system.

It was cold

The swimmers

The rest of our night was spent eating, relaxing, and playing charades. Unfortunately our trip had to end the next morning, but Doubtful Sound had one more surprise for us...snow!

The bus ride back was slow going

Snow on the road

Our first trip out of Dunedin was a rousing success. We saw beautiful scenery, bonded with some of our roommates, and even ate really well. We have plenty more pictures from our trip, which hopefully will make into onto Facebook sooner rather than later. Next weekend should be equally exciting, we are going to see the All Blacks!

New Zealand Update 09/04

Quite a bit has happened since our last post, and we feel like we've learned a lot about New Zealand already. One interesting fact that we've learned is that people walk around the city barefoot...all the time. They walk the city sidewalks and streets, into shops, and into restaurants and bars without any shoes. It isn't an overwhelming number, but it is very noticeable. What is even stranger is that being in a university town some parts of the city are quite littered with glass and other remnants of college life, but it doesn't seem to matter as people walk barefoot regardless. It is just one of those peculiar features of New Zealand I guess.

Last Monday, the 27th, we began our first full week in Dunedin with an invite to a dinner party hosted by one of my fellow grad students, Lucy. We had a vegetarian lasagna, a bit of wine, and a great time getting to know Lucy, her German boyfriend Freddy (we have met a lot of Germans here in New Zealand), and Paul, another grad student who recently began at Otago. I also had a meeting Monday afternoon with the two advisors for my project, Heather and Zach. Both of them are excited for me to get started, and seem like they are going to be really easy to work with.

Jess and I with the harbor in the background, it was windy

Tuesday brought more adventure as we were unexpectedly invited to visit the Otago Peninsula with Lucy and Freddy. The Otago Peninsula is a long, hilly stretch of land which separates the Otago Harbor, and much of Dunedin, from the Pacific Ocean. We started by visiting an overlook of the area, which gave us a beautiful view of Dunedin, the harbor, and the Pacific.

The city of Dunedin

The monument at the overlook

Next we headed to Sandfly Beach, which is a beautiful stretch of rugged coastline named not for flies but because the wind becomes so strong at times that the sand flies. The beach was beautiful, and was populated by sea lions and penguins.

Apparently there was lambing in progress

Sandfly Beach

It was a treacherous walk down to the beach

It was amazing to get within a few feet of sea lions, who seemed so intent on napping that I doubt anything could have disturbed them. We were also lucky enough to see a number of penguins (Dayle our landlord has been to the beach numerous times and never seen one). We watched them as the floated just off shore waiting till the coast was clear to make a run for the dunes beyond the beach; as soon as we left the beach we saw two penguins in the distance hustle to their nests.

I like walks on the beach

Jess was having fun

Right next to a sea lion

I'm napping!

Wednesday we visited our first edition of the weekly Philosophy Department pub meeting. As it turns out this isn't really a meeting at all, it is just an excuse for everyone in the department to go to the pub after work. Attendance is strongly encouraged. It was a lot of fun though, and we got to know a number of professors and students. The rest of the week was spent exploring more of the city and heading back and forth to the University. As it turns out I could only complete my registration once I had arrived, and then it took much longer than I thought for me to finally receive my student ID and network information. So Jess and I went back and forth from our house to Uni a number of times during the week to check if my registration was complete. Jess also had a job interview on Thursday, at Nidd Reality; it went well and she was called back for a second interview on Monday but we are still waiting for a final answer (fingers crossed). On Saturday we visited the Dunedin Farmers Market again for some groceries. They have some really great deals on fruit/veggies and fresh baked goods. In the evening we helped our German roommates bake a cake for Dayle, whose birthday was Sunday.

Wine, snacks, and fun on a Saturday night

Another thing that we've learned about New Zealand is that going out for drinks is quite expensive, luckily we know how to have fun without necessarily going to the bar.

My office space

Sunday was a very relaxing day, spent celebrating Dayle's birthday with cake and drinks and getting ready for my first day at the office. Monday and Tuesday were my first two days of work, and I've done my best to hit the ground running. It is crazy that after all the waiting, I've finally begun working on my project!

I'll be spending the rest of the week working, while Jess will be on the job hunt. Come Saturday though we are off for the west coast of the south island for a boat trip on the Doubtful Sound with our roommates. There will be a post and pictures to follow!