I haven’t blogged much in the last months — I had too much on my plate and blogging is an easy thing to drop if there’s much more work than can be squeezed into 24 hours a day. A few times something came on my path that I felt I had to blog about, and now, in this academic-off-season with more time (or rather: fewer urgent deadlines) the challenge will be to remember all those things that I felt were worthwhile throwing into the Blogosphere.
Here’s one. A few weeks back I joined “the Friends of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy”:https://leibniz.stanford.edu/friends/ (SEP). For philosophers, but also for other academics or thinkers/writers/readers who sometimes want to check out a philosophical theory, term, subfield or canonical thinker, this is a true gift. I use it in my teaching and have so far only had positive remarks from students. The SEP contains high quality refereed entries, generally well-written and enlightening, and always freely available to anybody on Earth with access to the internet. Anybody supporting the Open Access movement, or anybody seriously concerned about educational equality of opportunity on a global level, should therefore support the SEP if they can (the membership fees are $5 for students and $10 or 25 for professionals – much less than the fees of most academic associations). So now there is an easy way to support the SEP, and you’ll get something in return for your membership – nicely formatted PDFs of the entries. I hope many thousands worldwide will join, and that the people working hard at creating and maintaining the SEP will take it as a big ‘thank you’ for their work.
{ 21 comments }
Ingrid Robeyns 07.12.09 at 7:57 pm
Perhaps I should have added: I have no stake in this (although I am scheduled to write an entry on ‘the capability approach’ by November, but that’s another story) — I do not know anybody personally who is playing a big role in the SEP. I just think this is a wonderful thing, and that we should support such wonderful initiatives if we can.
Paul 07.12.09 at 9:33 pm
As a philosopher I cannot join this organization…
eric 07.12.09 at 9:37 pm
why not?
Paul 07.12.09 at 9:53 pm
Doesn’t Stanford have a huge endowment or is it insolvent like the state of California ? Please enlighten me here…
ben 07.13.09 at 12:43 am
Stanford has a huge endowment.
The SEP does not.
RommelX 07.13.09 at 12:51 am
Have the hugely endowed Steinford foundation pay for the online philosophaster archive then. Or maybe DiDi Feinstein could kick down some shekels.
The “philosophy of accounting” entry a treat.
Robert Colin Enlish 07.13.09 at 1:59 am
I heartily second Ingrid’s comments! As a graduate student the SEP has proved to be an invaluable reference guide, and the entries are almost always rigorous and thoughtful. And, Paul, are philosophers obliged to scorn healthy endowments? Or do we just _tend_ to because they so rarely reach our perpetually shallow pockets…
Paul 07.13.09 at 2:22 am
Don’t they receive grants ?
Raven 07.13.09 at 4:52 am
Paul, they’re trying to stay a public service by building an endowment. It strikes me they have a reasonable case for it. For more information look here.
Kenny Easwaran 07.13.09 at 5:05 am
The SEP gets some grants, but unfortunately not enough to keep it running. They did a drive about a year or so ago to get funding from university libraries, and I believe they got some money from Stanford, but they are hoping to get enough money to set up an endowment that can keep it permanently funded with no reliance on money from elsewhere. This will also mean that they can devote all their staff time to maintaining the encyclopedia itself, rather than writing further grant applications.
Martha Bridegam 07.13.09 at 6:08 am
But isn’t this Somebody Else’s Problem?
Paul 07.13.09 at 3:55 pm
I am all for encyclopedias and people should be given the opportunity to support SEP. However, is it an elitist endeavor oriented towards academic philosophers or is it not ??
Ingrid Robeyns 07.13.09 at 4:53 pm
Paul: have you ever taken a look at the SEP? If yes, please tell me what is elitist about it. If not, you’d better take a look before you voice all these ‘critical’ questions. The reason why I support it is precisely the opposite from it being elitist – it is an open access source, whereby people who are priviliged in a certain way (they have had the chance to specialise on a topic) share their knowledge in an accessible manner with anybody who is interested can read it — where-ever they are situated, whatever degrees they have or have not, whether they are poor or not, whether they live in an affluent society or have affluent parents or not. They only three constraints are (1) you need to be able to read English, (2) you need access to the internet, (3) you need a minimal level of general education, since it is not written for ten year olds or people who are very poorly educated. Well, perhaps you think the latter qualifies to call something elitist, but then I’d say that you have an implausible expansive definition of ‘elitism’.
Paul 07.13.09 at 5:03 pm
Yes I have looked at the site and I appreciate your comments about it. However, there is what actually is and what is purported to be. Why not some testemonials that cover the whole spectrum? We all know that an academic philosopher (generally) receives more respect than one say like Eric Hoffer. However I seem to recall that Aristotle and Seneca never went to an Ivy League school and they personified philosophy.
William U. 07.13.09 at 5:15 pm
No, thanks. The Soc14list Equality Party should hit up its cadres and sell newspapers like every other good sectarian organization.
Righteous Bubba 07.13.09 at 5:47 pm
Some philosopher should look into that one day.
bbuck 07.13.09 at 6:12 pm
Paul must be bored.
ben 07.13.09 at 6:12 pm
It’s amazing what some good old-fashioned empiricism can do, innit? from the projected table of contents:
# Aristotelianism
* commentators on Aristotle — see Aristotle, commentators on
* in the Renaissance (Heinrich Kuhn)
# Aristotle (Christopher Shields)
# Aristotle, commentators on (Andrea Falcon)
* Alexander of Aphrosias — see Alexander of Aphrodisias
* Ammonius — see Ammonius
* David — see David
* Elias — see Elias
* Olympiodorus — see Olympiodorus
* Philoponus — see Philoponus
* Simplicius — see Simplicius
* Themistius — see Themistius
# Aristotle, General Topics
* biology (James Lennox)
* categories (Paul Studtmann)
* ethics (Richard Kraut)
* logic (Robin Smith)
* metaphysics (S. Marc Cohen)
* poetics (Pierre Destrée)
* political theory (Fred Miller)
* psychology (Christopher Shields)
* rhetoric (Christof Rapp)
# Aristotle, Special Topics
* causality (Andrea Falcon)
* mathematics (Henry Mendell)
* natural philosophy (Istvan Bodnar)
* on non-contradiction (Paula Gottlieb)
* textual transmission of Aristotelian corpus
[…]
# Seneca (Katja Vogt)
Paul 07.13.09 at 9:08 pm
Bbuck repartee rarely bores me especially when it has a point.
Patrick S. O'Donnell 07.13.09 at 10:21 pm
I am not a professional philosophy professor (although I do teach part-time in a philosophy dept. at a community college) but I’ve found the SEP to be extremely useful both for me and for my students (I advise them about entries that are–by my non-professional lights–highly technical and perhaps above their heads, nonetheless, I suggest they read through them and speak to me about any questions they might have). I wholeheartedly agree with Ingrid about whether or not this is an elitist enterprise (my goodness, reading a book might be construed as an elitist enterprise by some folks). I find the SEP especially helpful for introducing me to many domains of intellectual endeavor that I’m fairly ignorant about, especially in light of the highly specialized nature of the field these days and consequent difficulty in keeping up in the barest or minimalist sense on areas outside of one’s formal training. What is more, I’ve found the editors and a surprising number of contributors open to my critical comments, suggestions, and the like, which is especially refreshing given my lack of formal credentials. I hectored the editors (just ask Ed Zalta) for quite a long time about including philosophical material from Islam, Chinese (especially Buddhist) and Indian (from the six philosophical darsanas) worldviews and indeed the SEP is now beginning to include entries from worldviews outside the traditional (well, at least until fairly recently) canon of what counts for “philosophy” (i.e., it is becoming less parochial and provincial and truly ‘global,’ philosophically speaking).
I’m grateful to Ingrid for informing me (and others) about the need for contributing to this wholly worthwhile and in many respects remarkable educational endeavor and I would hope we all would come to feel an obligation in the best sense to become a member (I will as soon as I receive my next paycheck). (I often copy and paste SEP entries onto Word docs. and print them up for my personal use and will be relieved to no longer have to do this owing to their availability in pdf. format)
Paul 07.14.09 at 12:56 am
I shall probably join the SEP too .
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