The developers of the module that I use to run Sympoze have just released a massive update. I installed it this morning, and after a brief scare things seem to be running smoothly. I’m still sifting through all of the updates to see what new goodies have been added, but here are two of the noteworthy improvements.
Automatic Redirect to Already Submitted Stories!
This one is the biggie. In the past, when users submitted links that other users had already submitted - they would get an error message. Now they will be redirected to the page for that story so they can vote on it. Awesome!
Now when you want to use your Sympoze Bookmarklet - you don’t have to worry about whether the story has been submitted or not. If it hasn’t been submitted, you’ll be the one to submit it. If it has been submitted, you’ll automatically be taken to the page to vote on it. This makes submission and voting way easier and more efficient.
URL Improvement
The old version of the software would block submission of certain URLs. This was especially problematic for philosophers since the kind of URLs being blocked were common among the philosophy journals. It was very difficult to submit links to philosophy journal articles in many cases. This seems to have been fixed.
Filed under: Uncategorized by Andrew Cullison
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I’m teaching special topics course in epistemology this year. We’re going through Michael Bergmann’s new book Justification Without Awareness. I thought it would be fun to post quick summaries of the chapters here, and critically discuss them along the way. Here’s a quick summary of chapter one.
Chapter One
In this chapter, Bergmann develops and defends a dilemma against internalism. Similar in spirit to Sellar’s dilemma against foundationalism.
He defines internalism as any view about epistemic justification that incorporates the following awareness requirement.
The Awareness Requirement
S’s belief is justified only if (i) there is something, X, that contributes to the justification of B and (ii) S is aware (or potentially aware) of X. (Bergmann, 2006:11)
We get a discussion of BonJour’s reliable clairvoyant. Bergmann considers this to be the main motivation for externalism, and this fact will be important for the dilemma he raises. I won’t go into the details of the reliable clairvoyant case here. For those of you unfamiliar with this case - here’s a nice summary.
Bergmann argues that the moral of the story to draw from BonJour’s cases is that a person can’t be justified in believing a proposition, when the circumstances are such that from that persons perspective, their belief isn’t any different from a stray hunch or arbitrary assumption. Bergmann extracts what he calls The Subject’s Perspective Objection (SPO)
The Subject’s Perspective Objection (SPO)
If the subject holding the belief isn’t aware of what the belief has going for it, then she isn’t aware of how its status is any different from a stray hunch or an arbitrary conviction. From that we may conclude that from her perspective it is an accident that her belief is true. And that implies that it isn’t justified.(Bergmann, 2006, 12)
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Filed under: epistemology, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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is here
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Sometimes searching through library websites is a laborious chore. When you first encounter a new library site, it’s sometimes unclear where to go to get what you need. Any one search can take you through a bunch of Herculean tasks. A lot of those tasks dangle a “Full Text of Article” carrot in front of you. You follow that carrot through 5 new windows and 3 new databases only to find that the library doesn’t really have the full text of what you’re looking for.
Google Scholar with their Library Integration has become my new best friend. Here’s how it works. If you’re on your university site and your library participates, then you don’t have to do anything. If you’re off-campus, you set your scholar preferences by going here.
Now, whenever you search for an article in Google Scholar, if any of the results are journal articles that your library gives full-text access to, Google puts a “Full Text @ YOUR LIBRARY NAME” right next to the title of the search result.Click on that link and you’re taken to the library page that actually links to the article. At least, that’s been my experience with my library.
I’m working on a paper on Simples and I wanted to get all of the classic papers into my Zotero bibliography. I searched “simples Markosian”. Here’s a visual of the results.
Notice the link next to the title of each result. When I click on one of those, I’m taken directly to the page at my home library and it gives me the article. Sweet! No more Herculean tasks. Once in a blue moon, I’ve clicked on the link only to find that our library had some weird restriction on the access - but at least I didn’t have to go through all of the Herculean tasks and pop-ups to get to the disappointment.
Filed under: research tools, the academy by Andrew Cullison
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Here’s a write-up on a new Ebook reader that Plastic Logic just unveiled. It uses the same electronic ink technology that Kindle uses, but has a screen that is about the size of a normal piece of paper. It’s thin, flexible, and durable. Evidently, it can take a beating.
If they make this so that it’s easy to read a wide range of formats, then this could be the Kindle-killer.
If the price is right, I may have to get one. Imagine having something in your book bag that contained electronic copies of everything you could ever want to read in philosophy, but weighed no more than a legal pad. Imagine that, because of the electronic ink technology, it felt like you were reading a real piece of paper…
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We’re going to start going through Michael Bergmann’s book Justification Without Awareness in my special topics seminar. I had a lot of fun with our Knowledge of God reading group over at Prosblogion, and I thought it would be good to do something similar for each chapter in Bergmann’s book. So starting next week I’ll post about each chapter as we go through it in my seminar.
Preview
Bergmann’s book is divided into two parts. In the first part, he develops and defends a dilemma against internalism about epistemic justification. In the second part of the book he develops and defends an interesting version of proper functionalism. That’s all for now. Detailed discussion of chapter 1 is coming soon.
Bergmann, M. (2006). Justification without Awareness: A Defense of Epistemic Externalism. Oxford University Press.
Filed under: epistemology, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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Nick Treanor was here last week for our Young Philosophers Lecture Series. I’ll be posting those talks over at Young Philosophers sometime within the next week.
In his introductory level talk, he presented a view about emotions, according to which emotions could be rational or irrational. That talk was the inspiration for this argument.
Warm-Up
Treanor’s talk led me to think that if this view about emotions is correct, we could get an interesting argument for against moral skepticism. Here are some claims that Treanor defended in his talk.
Some Emotions Are Rational
It seems obvious that some emotions are rational to have and other emotions are irrational to have. For example, it is rational to get angry when someone steals money from you. It is not rational to get angry simply because there are an odd number of pebbles in the fish bowl.
Emotions Are Not Feelings
Emotions are not simply feelings. When you are angry you might have a certain feeling, but the anger is something distinct from the feeling. Nick Treanor gives several reasons in his talk.
Here’s one I came up with. Sometimes people think you do something bad and get angry only to discover that you didn’t actually do it, or they become convinced that the thing you did is not bad - either way they might truthfully say that they are not angry with you anymore, but the feeling the comes with anger might remain.
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Filed under: ethics, metaethics, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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(Clip from The Onion)
KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held “theory of gravity” is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.
…read the rest at The Onion
Filed under: fun, philosophy of religion by Andrew Cullison
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[Update: Bad news philosophers. I contacted the company to see what philosophy offerings they might have in 2009 and found out they have none. It turns out they're only a four person operation and are focusing on just Business and Economics right now.]
Awesome. I’ve ranted a lot about open source software and open access publishing. Here’s something cool and very related.
There’s a new start-up by two former textbook publishing execs. What’s their business model? Give the textbooks away.
I’ve had serious concerns about the textbook industry, and I won’t go into them here. I just wanted to let everyone know about what seems to me to be a push in the right direction.
Filed under: open access, open source by Andrew Cullison
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This is a heads up for readers who haven’t heard about academia.edu. Academia.edu is a social network site for all academics. This looks like it’s going to be pretty cool. Check it out.
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