The SCP "Mystery Meeting" (hereafter MM I) was one of the better conferences I've been to. Highlights included everything from arguing vociferously with Alvin Plantinga about univocity and analogy in deduction to drinking rum with a pirate-costumed Michael Rea at Tim and Faith Pawl's house. I met several new grad students, heard some great papers--the most interesting of which was Shieva Kleinschmidt's one on composition and the Trinity, and had a lot of great food.
The theme was mystery and we were treated to the views of Oxford's Richard Cross, Alvin Plantinga, Merold Westphal of Fordham, and William Wainwright. It was a pretty diverse group and one lesson was that even analytic philosophers and continental philosophers can get along if they listen to one another and try to translate what they are saying. In form there are tremendous differences, in content there is--in some arenas--significant overlap.
For example Merold Westphal raised a lot of hackles by speaking repeatedly of "relative truth". When I pressed him to explain what that meant in a way an analytic philosopher would understand--and be able to distinguish from the sophomoric relativist--he said that his notion of relative truth was that of truths whose full content overflowed natural language so that the words did not adequately express the fullness of the reality. Now I'd never use the term "relative" to describe such a phenomenon and I don't think it a particularly apt term upon reflection. However, what's important is that at least I have some notion of what he's saying and needn't interpret him as a sophomoric relativist.
I'm sure there will be some bloggage which flows out of reviewing my notes over the next few weeks as it was a time of considerable reflection for me. The only thing missing from the conference, just as in last October's ACPA, was Peter van Inwagen.
Finally, I'd like to give a shout out to all those who showed me hospitality and great conversation: Josh, Luke, Justin, Tim, Faith, Mike, Gloria-not-Emily, Shieva, Alex^e, Alex^m, and all my dinner companions from OBU, Davidson, UMSL, and U Dallas.
It's nice that van Inwagen considers it a higher priority to speak at the retirement event for his former department chair of 15 years, someone who is mentioned with high praise in the acknowledgements of pretty much all the books by van Inwagen, Alston, and Bennett during that period.
Unfortunately, my wife had something scheduled before I knew the date of this event (and I couldn't find a babysitter), so I had to watch the kids all day and evening while Bennett and van Inwagen were less than a mile away!
I'm interested in reading your upcoming "bloggage which flows out of reviewing" your notes. I'm also interested in hearing about other things of interest that happened at the conference.
I wasn't in attendance, but let me second Trent's commnets about Shieva Kleinschmidt's Many-One Identity and the Trinity. I read the piece a couple of months ago after she posted it to her blog. Interested parties might leave her a comment.
The correct spelling of Shieva's name is Shieva Kleinschmidt. I try not to be too pedantic with spelling, but I think it's pretty unfortunate when you get someone's name wrong. When three errors appear on the same page, it's hard for me to resist pointing it out.
Thanks for the correction Jeremy. I've taken the liberty of correcting the errors.