EpistemeLinks.com Update Newsletter, v.5, #3, 9/26/2001
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It has been over four months since the last EpistemeLinks.com newsletter. I
hope you are doing well. And if you are a student or a faculty member, I hope
that your fall semester has started out well. I fully intend to return to more
regular email newsletters as I used to: every 4-8 weeks. The summer was a very
busy time for me, so not as many new features were added to ELC -- hence the
delay in this newsletter.
As always, the latest links added to the ELC database can be found at the
What's New? page:
Newsletter Headlines
** New "Broken Links" Updating System **
** Discussion Forum Improved **
** Encyclopedia Britannica Changes Access **
** 14 More Philosophers Indexed **
** New Entries at the SEP **
** Recent and Upcoming Events in Philosophy (Oct/Nov) **
Details for each item follow below.
** New "Broken Links" Updating System **
I have developed a new, semi-automated system for rooting out the broken
links in the ELC database. Although it still takes a great deal of time, the
process has been cut by about 75% or more, making it far more efficient to
update links and remove broken ones. I began my sweep of the database with the
Classroom, Organization, and Univ. Departments sections. I am now working on the
primary sites section, and will continue next to journals, e-texts, and the
other sections of the database. This still proceeds slowly, but the result is a
far more valuable end-user experience as the percentage of outdated links is
decreased dramatically. Please know that I still very much appreciate the many
emails I receive from site visitors who inform me of broken or updated
links!
** Discussion Forum Improved **
The Discussion Forum has been improved to allow visitors to see all threads
immediately upon entering the forum, with the most recent messages listed first.
You are then given the option of filtering the results to see only those
messages from a particular category -- either a philosopher or topic subject
area. When posting new messages, you choose a topic or philosopher category for
your message to be categorized under.
** Encyclopedia Britannica Changes Access **
FYI -- Until recently, all articles of the Encyclopedia Britannica were
provided at
www.britannica.com, free of charge. They recently changed
this policy, however, and now charge a subscription rate for access to the
complete articles. They now only provide a brief introduction to each article
for free (and the articles index entry). In case you are curious, the current
cost is $7.95 per month or $50 per year for access. In the past, I have been
adding links to as many of the philosophy-related articles as I've had time to.
I will continue to do so, as time permits, though the value of these links to EB
is lessened by this new subscription plan, so it will be less of a
priority.
** 14 More Philosophers Indexed **
The Philosophers section now indexes an additional 14 philosophers for the
first time, bringing the current total to 424! The newcomers are contemporaries
John McTaggart, Charles Hartshorne, Edmund Gettier, Nelson Goodman, and a group
of additional medieval philosophers.
** New Entries at the SEP **
I like to draw attention to the latest entries at the Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, because it provides such well-written articles. Since mid-May the
SEP has added numerous articles, listed below. I've categorized them to make it
easier to read. These articles are all linked from their What's New page at
http://plato.stanford.edu/new.html. (Authors are given in
parentheses)
Eastern Philosophy:
Comparative Philosophy: Chinese and Western (David Wong)
Epistemology:
Bayesian Epistemology (William Talbott)
Common Knowledge (Peter Vanderschraaf)
Epistemological Problems of Perception (Laurence BonJour)
Naturalized Epistemology (Richard Feldman)
Truthlikeness (Graham Oddie)
Ethics:
Computer Ethics: Basic Concepts and Historical Overview (Terrell
Bynum)
Moral Particularism (Jonathan Dancy)
Logic and Philosophy of Logic:
Automated Reasoning (Frederic Portoraro)
Conditionals (Dorothy Edgington)
Diagrams (Sun-Joo Shin and Oliver Lemon)
Logic and Games (Wilfrid Hodges)
Medieval Philosophy:
Gersonides (Tamar Rudavsky)
Godfrey of Fontaines (John Wippel)
Insolubles (Paul Vincent Spade)
John Duns Scotus (Thomas Williams)
John Wyclif (Alessandro Conti)
Marsilius of Inghen (Maarten Hoenen)
Medieval Theories of Causation (Graham White)
Medieval Theories of Relations (Jeffrey Brower)
Paul of Venice (Alessandro Conti)
Richard Kilvington (Elzbieta Jung-Palczewska)
Robert Alyngton (Alessandro Conti)
Robert Holkot (Hester Gelber)
William Penbygull (Alessandro Conti)
Metaphysics:
Abstract Objects (Gideon Rosen)
Backward Causation (Jan Faye)
Being and Becoming in Modern Physics (Steven Savitt)
Causation and Manipulability (James Woodward)
Medieval Theories of Causation (Graham White)
Medieval Theories of Relations (Jeffrey Brower)
Panpsychism (William Seager)
Modern Philosophy:
Antoine Le Grand (Patricia Easton)
Baruch Spinoza (Steven Nadler)
Descartes' Ontological Argument (Lawrence Nolan)
John Locke (William Uzgalis)
Scottish Philosophy in the 18th Century (Alexander Broadie)
19th Century Philosophy:
Charles Sanders Peirce (Robert Burch)
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (Dan Breazeale)
Philosophy of Language:
Indexicals (David Braun)
Philosophy of Law:
Interpretation and Coherence in Legal Reasoning (Julie Dickson)
The Nature of Law (Andrei Marmor)
Philosophy of Mind:
Automated Reasoning (Frederic Portoraro)
Panpsychism (William Seager)
Philosophy of Religion:
Descartes' Ontological Argument (Lawrence Nolan)
Divine Providence (Hugh J. McCann)
Philosophy of Science:
Backward Causation (Jan Faye)
Being and Becoming in Modern Physics (Steven Savitt)
Causation and Manipulability (James Woodward)
Quantum Entanglement and Information (Jeffrey Bub)
The Equivalence of Mass and Energy (Francisco Flores)
20th Century Philosophy:
Charles Hartshorne (Dan Dombrowski)
** Recent and Upcoming Events in Philosophy (Oct./Nov.) **
Rudolf Carnap - From Jena to L.A. The Roots of Analytical Philosophy
9/26/2001 - 9/29/2001
Philosophy and Cognitive Science
9/28/2001 - 9/30/2001
Coherentism in Epistemology
9/28/2001 - 9/29/2001
Augustine's Confessions
10/4/2001 - 10/6/2001
53rd Annual Northwest Conference on Philosophy
10/12/2001 - 10/13/2001
38th Western Canadian Philosophical Association Conference
10/12/2001 - 10/14/2001
Eighteenth-Century Speculations
11/1/2001 - 11/4/2001
The Canadian Jacques Maritain Association
11/2/2001 - 11/3/2001
The Fifth Annual Graduate Student Philosophy Conference
11/3/2001 - 11/3/2001
The Annual University of Oxford Graduate Philosophy Conference
11/10/2001- 11/11/2001
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Best,
Tom Stone, EpistemeLinks.com