I love books for many things, but I despise them for introducing a physical limit to the free circulation of knowledge (compared to the Internet). At least, that's what I had always thought. continent. is an online journal aiming at, among other things, breaking with the established paradigms of how academic work has to be published in order to be respected among relevant peers. I'm the engineer behind the current version of continent. , making it work and keeping it running (...) since began in 2010. We provide an online platform for knowledge to circulate, beyond the limitations of institutional attachment or distribution of physical volumes. And regardless of not having a physical publication ourselves, and being a trans-national endeavour with core members spread across three continents, we had the honour to join the Publish Or Be Damned fair and conference of Northern European independent book publishers at Index Art Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. The place was bursting with exceptional volumes made by some of the most interesting publishers in the European north. The encounter changed the way I think about such books: these editions are designed, engineered and crafted to a level of sophistication that they begin to hold more than just their informational value printed. They convey and communicate a form of tactile knowledge and pleasure, and this completely changed my perspective on the matter. Because continent. had not materialised yet and only appeared in the form of social events (such as those in Basel, Boston, New York, or Zürich), we could not offer any such tactile pleasures to those visiting our booth. Given this, my solution was to turn continent. 's participation into a spectacle of simulation. With so many important figures of the independent publishing world present, we staged a series of imaginary book-launch moments for the camera. Presenting a first quasi-materialisation of continent. in the form of a book, or rather, the hypothetical extrapolation of our red square shape from our logo into a red 30x30 cm slate. Thanks to all those that participated. Your presences allowed continent. to visualise what it would be like if we had a book, and had been published within the honorable circle of these fine publishers. Soon the day will come where this will become reality. Thanks to all who joined the fun and didn't mind me showing these to the rest of the world. I'll publish them here, for them not to perish, even if I shall be damned. Ida Marie Hede Bertelsen ( Pork Salad Press ) Abdul Dube ( sideprojects ) René Sørensen ( sideprojects ) Anders ( OEI Editör ) Brett Bloom ( Half Letter Press ) Anni Puolakkaby ( OK Do ) Kit Hammonds, Kate Phillimore, Louise O'Hare ( Publish and Be Damned ) Ingvar Högni ( Útúrdúr ) Fredrik Ehlin, Andjeas Ejksson, Oscar Mangione ( Geist Magazine ) Klara Källström, Thobias Fäldt ( B-B-B Books ) Laura Hatfield ( Witnas editors ) Chris Johnsen ( WITNAS editors ) Matthew Rana ( Witnas editors ) Ola Ståhl & Carl Lindh ( In Edit Mode Press ) Staffan Lundgren ( Axl Books ) Tuuka Kaila ( NAPA Books ) Vebjørn Guttormsgaard Møllberg + Ingrid Forlang ( Kuk et Parfyme ) Diana Baldon, Joanna Nowotny and Egle Kulbokaite ( Index Foundation ). (shrink)

_Editorial independence is crucial for the intellectual life of a scientific journal.A journal exists only as an idea created by authors and readers, with some editorial orchestration. Editorial independence can be compromised by pressure put on editors by their owners-whether commercial publishers or professional organizations. Both types of owners rely heavily on income from paid advertising in their print journals. Yet, the massive expansion of journal readership that has resulted due to the development of the Web has effected a marked (...) shift in the readership of the journal, both geographically and intellectually, producing a new community of users who see only electronic versions of the journal. Commercial pressures on owners to satisfy the interests of the (mainly national and professional) print readership conflict with the editorial independence needed to respond to the vast Web constituency. This is a major source for compromise of editorial independence. Reduction of commercial pressures by transferring editorial costs to authors and by other cost-reducing models are discussed in this article._. (shrink)

On an increasingly popular view of rationality, rationality is fundamentally about responding correctly to reasons and there is no independent rational requirement to avoid incoherence: having an incoherent combination of attitudes is irrational not because there is a fundamental requirement of rationality that prohibits it, but rather because you are guaranteed to fail to respond correctly to reasons in having it. This paper argues that any such attempt to explain the irrationality of incoherence in terms of responsiveness to reasons (...) fails. For there is something distinctively irrational about incoherence that is not explained in terms of the guaranteed failure to respond to reasons. Any adequate account of the nature of coherence requirements on belief and intention should take into account the distinctive kind of commitments involved in each type of attitude. (*published with open access). (shrink)

Editorial independence is a bedrock principle of academic publishing. The growing domination of academic publishing by large, for-profit corporations threatens this independence. There is alarming evidence that large companies too often serve their own business interests and those of powerful clients rather than serving the scientific community and the general public. This evidence includes the publication of infelicitous commercial science and concealing scientific misconduct. We present two case studies in which the UK-based publisher Taylor & Francis interfered in (...) the editorial process by blocking publication of legitimate criticism that had been reviewed and approved for publication by its specialized editors. The integrity of science depends in part on the transparency and intellectual honesty of all stakeholders. The widely acknowledged inadequacies of English libel law are reviewed as context for some of Taylor & Francis’s fearful decisions. (shrink)

The Scottish independence referendum in 2014 saw the breakthrough of online political campaigning in the UK. Despite the outcome, research and media alike concluded that the main pro-independence campaign, Yes Scotland, outdid the main pro-union campaign, Better Together, in the online battle. This article addresses this discrepancy by exploring how YS and BT used social media affordances in order to legitimize their own and de-legitimize their opponents’ positions. The material consists of multimodal tweets published by YS and BT in the (...) run-up to the referendum. The article employs a model for multimodal legitimation that takes into consideration the construction of authority, moral evaluation and the construction and justifications of means and goals. The findings show that both campaigns made extensive use of de-legitimating strategies, although YS was more balanced. The article also shows that the campaigns’ communicative choices had implications for the construction and justification of goals and means, with YS running a more visionary campaign than BT. (shrink)

The violation of editorial independence by the CMA seriously damaged trust in CMAJ and raises questions whether the CMA can operate a truly independent journalOn February 20, 2006, John Hoey and Anne Marie Todkill, the two most senior editors of the Canadian Medical Association Journal were fired by the journal’s publisher, Graham Morris. At first, CMA spokespersons said that the firing had been planned for some time based on a desire to “refresh” the journal. Later they refused to offer (...) any explanation, and weeks later they declared that there had been “irreconcilable differences,” without specifying anything more. After the journal’s editorial board tried fruitlessly to convince the Canadian Medical Association to reinstate the dismissed editors, I resigned from the editorial board. I had been a member since 1999. My letter of resignation to the CMA’s president made these points:" “By interfering with the editorial autonomy of two outstanding editors and firing them without explanation, you have provoked a scandal that will be long remembered as a blot on Canadian Medicine. … Despite the acknowledged success of the CMAJ, you gave no cause for the editors’ dismissals. … You caused the editors to be fired without consultation with major members of the Journal Oversight Committee. … In your public comments, you were even disingenuous about whether the editors were fired. … In answering to the issue of the editors’ departure, you have hidden behind a veil of bureaucratic legalisms, and by arguing that the Editorial Board knows only “one side,” you have left the impression that the editors have done something nefarious. Thereby, you have besmirched the good names and reputations of the editors. … You have mounted a PR campaign to “spin” public opinion at the expense of honest, respectable and hard working … ". (shrink)

BackgroundTriggered by a series of controversies and diversifying expectations of editorial practices, several innovative peer review procedures and supporting technologies have been proposed. However, adoption of these new initiatives seems slow. This raises questions about the wider conditions for peer review change and about the considerations that inform decisions to innovate. We set out to study the structure of commercial publishers’ editorial process, to reveal how the benefits of peer review innovations are understood, and to describe the considerations that inform (...) the implementation of innovations.MethodsWe carried out field visits to the editorial office of two large academic publishers housing the editorial staff of several hundreds of journals, to study their editorial process, and interviewed editors not affiliated with large publishers. Field notes were transcribed and analysed using coding software.ResultsAt the publishers we analysed, the decision-making structure seems to show both clear patterns of hierarchy and layering of the different editorial practices. While information about new initiatives circulates widely, their implementation depends on assessment of stakeholder’s wishes, impact on reputation, efficiency and implementation costs, with final decisions left to managers at the top of the internal hierarchy. Main tensions arise between commercial and substantial arguments. The editorial process is closely connected to commercial practices of creating business value, and the very specific terms in which business value is understood, such as reputation considerations and the urge to increase efficiency. Journals independent of large commercial publishers tend to have less hierarchically structured processes, report more flexibility to implement innovations, and to a greater extent decouple commercial and editorial perspectives.ConclusionOur study demonstrates that peer review innovations are partly to be understood in light of commercial considerations related to reputation, efficiency and implementations costs. These arguments extend beyond previously studied topics in publishing economics, including publishers’ choice for business or publication models and reach into the very heart of the editorial and peer review process. (shrink)

Electronic publications are not accessible without technical aids and need constant, time consuming attention; a look back at the data media and data formats utilized in the past 25 years illustrates this. Recently, an increasing number of conferences and studies address the problem. Use of standard data formats, media and platform independence of data, as well as data centering instead of process centering are requirements for long-term availability. For the humanities, texts are not only the sources of information but also (...) objects of scholarly investigation. Therefore publication in a presentation format only is not sufficient. In addition to more sophisticated tools for analysis, search and navigation, a form of publication is required which does not focus on layout but gives easy access to the content and structure of the published document. Both for the creation and the scholarly evaluation of such documents, tools are required which offer additional functions compared to those provided by commercial publication and access tools. The necessary flexibility is guaranteed by the provision of basic functions of text data processing which do not anticipate or preclude any particular questions. This is illustrated by examples for the evaluation and preparation of digital texts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scientia propter quid nobis—The Epistemic Independence of Metaphysics and Theology in the Quaestio de cognitione Dei attributed to Duns Scotus by Wouter GorisClaus A. AndersenGORIS, Wouter. Scientia propter quid nobis—The Epistemic Independence of Metaphysics and Theology in the Quaestio de cognitione Dei attributed to Duns Scotus. Münster: Aschendorff, 2022. viii + 296 pp. Paper, € 49.00The central claim of Wouter Goris's new book is that the Quaestio de (...) cognitione Dei traditionally (both in one late medieval manuscript and in some modern scholarship) attributed to John Duns Scotus not only is inauthentic but in fact represents an early reaction against Scotus's teaching on the scientific nature of metaphysics. The Quaestio in particular explores Scotus's distinction between a science "in itself" and one "for us" and, going beyond Scotus's own doctrine, shows how this distinction is applicable to metaphysics.The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 offers a critical edition of the Quaestio de cognitione Dei, which has hitherto been available in a plain transcription published by C. R. S. Harris in 1927. Harris's text was based on a single manuscript from the fifteenth century (Oxford, Merton College, Ms. 90); Goris bases his edition on a manuscript from the early fourteenth century (Assisi, Biblioteca Comunale, Ms. 172), one that does not attribute the text to Scotus. Goris highlights that the text has significant parallels in the prologue of John of Reading's Scriptum on the first book of the Sentences; there is presently not sufficient evidence for claiming that Reading is the author of the De cognitione Dei, but it does seem clear that either Reading or some other Franciscan friar relying on Reading's Scriptum authored the text between 1316 and 1325. The Quaestio itself consists of two articles. Two appendices to the edition document longer passages from Reading's Scriptum.Part 2 investigates the use of the distinction between a science in itself and one for us in Duns Scotus and some of the early Scotists. Scotus's doctrine developed over time. At Oxford Scotus taught that theology in se is about the divine essence in its particularity; theology for us is about the most perfect concept of God attainable for human beings by natural means, that is, the concept "infinite being." It falls to metaphysics to prove that there is such a kind of being. At Paris Scotus rather taught that both theology in se and theology for us are about the divine essence in its [End Page 549] particularity. The implication is that a strictly demonstrative science about God is possible for human beings in this present life, a knowledge of God that is completely independent of metaphysics. Goris argues that this shift in the view of theology explains the absence of Scotus's famous "twin doctrines" of the univocal concept of being and of being as the first adequate object of the intellect from his theological epistemology of the Parisian period. Not too surprisingly, in the wake of Scotus we find several authors grappling with the relationship between theology and metaphysics. The positions investigated by Goris vary considerably. Richard of Conington distinguishes between human metaphysical knowledge of being and God's own metaphysical knowledge of being; the latter represents a more perfect knowledge of both God himself and creatures as included under the concept of being. Francis of Marchia employs a distinction between a general metaphysics (about being as being) and a special metaphysics (about divine being), but on the level of science for us the special part of metaphysics is subordinated to the general one. Nicolas Bonetus, by contrast, advocates a sharp distinction between metaphysical knowledge of being and natural theology; he structures his metaphysics as a purely ontological discipline and treats natural theology as a separate science; Goris sees this reorganization as Bonetus's most decisive contribution to the history of metaphysics.Part 3 analyzes the fundamental doctrines defended in the Quaestio de cognitione Dei and compares them with those of Scotus and John of Reading. The first article of the Quaestio introduces two important distinctions, the first of which is between metaphysics in itself and metaphysics for us; these two... (shrink)

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

Originally published in 1976, this book was written specifically to guide students of political theory who want to understand Hegel's political ideas as they ...

The press environment created by abrupt transitions from government dominance to independence has created difficult ethical dilemmas for editors and publishers. Pursuit of earnings - without which a free marketplace of ideas is impossible - has forced leaders of media enterprises to make painful choices about employment, privacy, career training, distribution, pornography, and subsidy. Winnowing out the weak and inefficient is seen as both healthy and creative. Consensus on ethical guidelines will not come quickly. Political and economic changes occur more (...) rapidly than cultural ones. In all free countries, press management involves a delicate balancing of cultural and economic imperatives. In newly free countries achieving that balance is particularly difficult. (shrink)

In the recently published manuscript “The Argument against Need” (ca. 1963), Heidegger discusses the notion of being-in-itself (Ansichsein) with regard to entities that predate the existence of knowers. Section 1 introduces the problem of so-called “ancestral facts,” which Meillassoux and Boghossian have used to argue for a specific form of realism. Sections 2 identifies a specific understanding of time as the basis for their argument. Sections 3–4 show how Heidegger rejects this account of time. Section 5 describes the general form (...) of ontologies that deny entity independence (dependence ontology). Section 6 turns to Heidegger’s account of a resistance to ontological sense-making in what he calls “beingless” (seinlos) entities. Discussing work by Haugeland and Wrathall, I conclude in section 7 that Heidegger’s response to the “argument against need” is to reject the idea of unidirectional dependence in favor of a triadic interdependence between being, entities, and us. (shrink)

First published in 1975, Donald Akenson’s book was at the forefront of a radically new approach to the study of Irish educational history. Instead of investigating the evolution of the schools as an isolated process, he explores the complex interrelations of Irish education, institutions and society, treating the schools as cultural litmus paper. By presenting Ireland’s schools as a reflection of the society that produced them, Professor Akenson demonstrates that they are, in truth, "a mirror to the face of Kathleen (...) ni Houlihan". (shrink)

This book publishes, for the first time in decades, and in many cases, for the first time in a readily accessible edition, English language philosophical literature written in India during the period of British rule.

The Japanese disability movement in the 1970s posed an important question about our inner eugenic thought. Their arguments should be one of the focuses of attention for bioethics and philosophy of life in the 21st century. Their philosophy is comparable with DPI’s declaration, “The Right to Live and be Different,” published in 2000. They thought that technology of selective abortion was dangerous because it systematically deprives us of a sense of security (=the fundamental sense of security) that our existence is (...) being accepted unconditionally. They were considered to be seeking “life studies,” which has broader and deeper meanings than contemporary bioethics. (shrink)

Freedom of speech has been essential in building democracy in Lithuania after regaining its independence. Exercise of the constitutional freedom of expression within the societies following constitutional values is the major factor shaping the political will of citizens. Wide-ranging, all round public discussion about all public interest issues is possible only when it is subject to due freedom of information. In indirect democracy, strong disseminator of information acting between citizens and the Parliament able to create the field for discussion and (...) mutual impact is a necessity. Significance, quality, all-roundedness of discussion on all public interest issues is the major factor determining correct choices of citizens and politicians. Restriction of freedom of expression and information or prohibition of free search, receipt and dissemination thereof shall be considered as subjugation of a human being as a free and autonomous creature. Freedom of speech is a highly important feature in building democracy. The media in Lithuania during two decades of democracy building has actively made the use of freedom of self-expression. The courts have solved a lot of case-laws, where freedom of speech, honour, dignity and private life were at stake. The Parliament, the Constitutional Court, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasburg, the Government, the Inspector of Journalist Ethics and the Commission on Journalists and Publishers Ethics, the courts of Lithuania – all institutions took part in the process of defining freedom of speech and its limits in Lithuania during two decades of its independence. The purpose of this publication is to identify if the case-law of Lithuania’s courts in balancing the contradictions between the freedom of self-expression and personal dignity, honour and private life is in line with the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, jurisprudence of the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg. Defining if the case-law of Lithuania’s courts are in line with the jurisprudence of the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg, the research is concentrated on legal tests applied in the case-law of freedom of speech – distinguishing between public and private figures, estimating disseminated information as facts or value-judgments, freedom of speech decriminalization problems, compensation in respect of pecuniary damage. (shrink)

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors is a working group of editors of selected medical journals that meets annually. Founded in Vancouver, Canada, in 1978, it currently consists of 11 member journals and a representative of the US National Library of Medicine. The major purpose of the Committee is to address and provide guidance for the conduct and publishing of biomedical research and the ethical tenets underpinning these activities. This advice is detailed in the Committee's Uniform Requirements for (...) Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication . Recently, the ICMJE has adopted an interventionist role to ensure transparency of conflict of interest revelations in the conduct and publication of industry supported research. It also pursues a policy for the lodgement with trial registries of specified details of Phase III clinical trials. Failure to comply would jeopardise publication of trial outcomes in ICMJE member journals. This policy has resulted in the coming on stream of trial registries, international agreement on trial minimal datasets and compliance with trial registration requirements. (shrink)

This article is part of a For-Discussion-Section of Methods of Information in Medicine about the paper "Biomedical Informatics: We Are What We Publish", written by Peter L. Elkin, Steven H. Brown, and Graham Wright. It is introduced by an editorial. This article contains the combined commentaries invited to independently comment on the Elkin et al. paper. In subsequent issues the discussion can continue through letters to the editor.

With a category system drawn from the ethical elements listed in the American Society of Newspaper Editors' (ASNE) Canons of Journalism, this analysis examines Editor & Publisher's discussion and debate of the problems of journalism on its editorial page in the more than 20 years leading up to ASNE's adoption in 1923 of the first nationwide code of ethics for the newspaper industry. This study confirmed the presumption that the code was a culmination of an ongoing and historical conversation about (...) the normative standards of journalism in the newspaper industry's primary trade journal. It showed that Editor & Publisher raised every one of the ethical issues and problems of journalism outlined in the Canons, to include responsibility of the press, truthfulness and accuracy, partisanship, independence, freedom of the press, propaganda, and sensationalism. (shrink)

Perhaps the best way to understand this book is to see it as the first installment on a larger project. Woell’s ultimate goal is to write a pragmatic philosophy of religion, but this work is not it. This preliminary project attempts to clear the way for the larger project by reclaiming pragmatism in such a way that it can provide an adequate framework for doing the philosophy of religion. In other words, this is a book about pragmatism that serves as (...) a “prolegomena to a pragmatic philosophy of religion”. In this sense, the title is somewhat misleading. Nevertheless, it is meticulously argued and stands independently as an important contribution to our understanding of pragmatism. Why a.. (shrink)

This opinion article addresses pressing issues in academic publishing, advocating for an independent intermediary institution to safeguard authors’ interests and ensure transparency in the peer-review process. It highlights growing inequality between authors and editors or reviewers and proposes solutions to promote respectful cooperation and enhance transparency and accountability. Urging collaborative efforts within the academic community, the article emphasizes the need to address these issues to uphold the integrity of academic publishing.

This study is concerned with the use of epistemic legitimising strategies in online newspaper articles dealing with the Scottish referendum. In this sense, we seek to explore cases of epistemic stance that indicate epistemological positioning and persuade readers of the veracity of propositions. Our study covers Scottish journal articles published online within 5 days prior to results day. In this article, we are interested in the way the Scottish newspapers deal with the topic of the independence referendum and the degree (...) of commitment in journalists’ choice of linguistic strategies. We analysed the newspaper articles manually but corpus tools were also used in order to verify initial findings and for statistical purposes. The results of the use of epistemic stance devices in the different categories were contrasted and our conclusions showed the preferred legitimising strategies used by journalists in the Scottish newspapers. (shrink)

Mary Midgley's Science and Poetry tackles so many topics of importance that one wants it to be very good. Yet Midgley, a moral philosopher, makes one idea the measure of all things, so that the book is just good enough. Her topic is not really “science and poetry” but the failure of neurobiological reductionism to understand the human mind. That poets understand the mind better than scientists is the subtext of this collection of essays, but the poetic theories Midgley quotes (...) are too general to make much headway against science's prejudices about the arts' naive handling of the serious matters of consciousness, the operation of the brain, and connections between mind and body. Midgley needs to dig deeper into poetry and to provide better analyses of works like Wordsworth's “Tintern Abbey” and Shelley's A Defence of Poetry. She also needs to update her poetic references to include contemporaries such as A. R. Ammons, Patti Ann Rodgers, and Alison Deming, who make the science‐based topics that preoccupy Midgley the overt focus of their work. The valuable first section of the book presents capsule histories of science and its march toward dualism, from the Greeks to the Enlightenment, interspersed with poets' contrary views. Midgley succinctly traces the evolution of the theories of the mind/body split that such a campaign produced. She drops the “science and poetry” focus in the second section for her major concern—showing that contemporary scientists themselves, in pursuing scientific understanding, employ choice, intention, and cognition, the very factors denied by strict scientific materialist explanations of how the mind works. This is the neatest feature of the book—its witty turning of scientific discourse about the purely mechanistic operations of the mind back on the scientists themselves, who violate their own theories in stating them. Her favorite scientists to tweak in this way are the sociobiologist E. O. Wilson and the geneticist Richard Dawkins. When she needs to, Midgley lets a philosopher of language like John Searle handle others, such as Daniel Dennett and his claim that cultural ideas are simply genetically produced “memes.” Midgley's summary, however, does not do justice to the complexity of the debate about the nature of language as a window to the operation of the mind. Midgley's strength is in testing fundamental theoretical assumptions by applying common‐sense reasoning to them. For example, Descartes's mind/body dualism fails on the face of it because he uses socially constructed language, a product of mind, as he asserts the complete independence and autonomy of individual minds. Midgley's deft use of simple but revealing thought‐problems also helps make her case, and she is particularly good at alerting us to ordinary words that need clarification, such as “cause.” She's like a poet when she sensitizes us to the power of simple words in shaping scientific discourse. In the miscellaneous last section of the book Midgley provides examples of the contemporary dangers of the reductivist way of thinking, but the first two parts could have used livelier, more pointed dramatizations of the consequences of splitting the world into subjects and objects. Universal human rights and the right of all creatures to live in cooperation are what Midgley believes science ultimately sacrifices in its vision of competitive, reductive materialism. Scientists and social scientists such as Freud and Marx who use that “vision” have led us down disastrous paths. That science should learn to see the world as a cooperating, interacting, and living whole is her wish—and the subject of many of her other books. Science and Poetry would be more effective if condensed into a single, focused essay that concentrated on convincing Midgley's presumed audience—scientists who may have found themselves at the dead end of materialism as their own disciplines discover their limits and branch out into territory more familiar to poets. The book should interest students of literature who want an introduction to the many topics it treats, but they will find little to convince them that poets do indeed have important ideas about the human mind. (shrink)

_The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) is a working group of editors of selected medical journals that meets annually. Founded in Vancouver, Canada, in 1978, it currently consists of 11 member journals and a representative of the US National Library of Medicine. The major purpose of the Committee is to address and provide guidance for the conduct and publishing of biomedical research and the ethical tenets underpinning these activities. This advice is detailed in the Committee's _ Uniform (...) Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication (URM)._ Recently, the ICMJE has adopted an interventionist role to ensure transparency of conflict of interest revelations in the conduct and publication of industry supported research. It also pursues a policy for the lodgement with trial registries of specified details of Phase III clinical trials. Failure to comply would jeopardise publication of trial outcomes in ICMJE member journals. This policy has resulted in the coming on stream of trial registries, international agreement on trial minimal datasets and compliance with trial registration requirements._. (shrink)

wo independent publishing projects have thoroughly changed the state of Wittgenstein scholarship in recent years. Michael Nedo's 'Wiener Ausgabe'1 offers a traditional critical edition of Wittgenstein's philosophical writings ranging from 1929 up to and including the 'Big Typescript' (1933). Considering the eclectic and - at times - arbitrary editorial policy underlying previous publications from the Nachlass2 Nedo's project offers unprecedented philosophical rigor as well as textual criticism in volumes designed for comfortable reading. A second, more ambitious, attempt at (...) a critical edition is the Bergen electronic edition.3 It is planned to include 4 CD-ROMs, covering the entire range of the philosopher's unpublished writing. Two disks are currently available, comprising all of Wittgenstein's manuscripts from 1929-1939, as well as type-scripts, beginning with 'Notes on Logic' (1913) and leading up to Typescript 226, composed in 1939. Wittgenstein's writings from the Thirties are, therefore, available in independent, reliable printed and electronic editions respectively. Readers can, for the first time, observe the philosopher at work, transferring paragraphs from pocket notebooks to handwritten 'volumes'; picking acceptable remarks to be included in type-scripts that are, at a later stage, cut up into slips of paper which are again annotated, rearranged and put together in further volumes and type-scripts. But this is only half the excitement. The 'Wiener Ausgabe' and the 'Bergen Edition' stake their success on different media, inevitably provoking a comparison between the well known features of printed scholarly editions and the not so familiar realm of digitized texts. (shrink)

This is the third edition of a book originally published in the 1970s; it provides a systematic and nicely organized presentation of the elegant method of using Boolean-valued models to prove independence results. Four things are new in the third edition: background material on Heyting algebras, a chapter on ‘Boolean-valued analysis’, one on using Heyting algebras to understand intuitionistic set theory, and an appendix explaining how Boolean and Heyting algebras look from the perspective of category theory. The book presents results (...) from a number of set theorists and includes an insightful and informative foreword by Dana Scott. Bell's presentation is lively and pleasant to read, and the material is given in a nicely cohesive way.One obvious reason to be interested in independence proofs is that they concern the important question, what is the set-theoretic hierarchy like? The proofs in Bell's book cover some of the most basic and fundamental independence results, such as those concerning the size of the continuum, the independence of the Axiom of Choice from ZF, cardinal collapsing, Souslin's hypothesis, and Martin's Axiom.Since Gödel's incompleteness theorem, it has been known that for any serious candidate list of set-theoretic axioms, there will be statements neither provable nor disprovable from those axioms. What is really interesting, however, and what the independence proofs discussed here show, is how many of the most natural questions about sets are not decided by the standard axioms of ZFC, and how …. (shrink)

The scientific phenornenology of Bachelard is constituted as an original reflection about the production of the scientific work, in their subjective (the scientist’s Psychology/Psychoanalysis) and objective (the phenomenon while measure) slopes. Inspired for a softer or a soft-headed phenomenology, the French author wanted to reformulate. some concepts and manners of seeing of the German classic phenomenology. Critical of the husserlian phenomenology of the concept of Meinung, Bachelard enrolled his epistemological labor inside of the history of the applied phenomenology to the (...) sciences. In spite. of, he defends the lost «husserlian purity», independently of the denial of the idealism of the absolute conscience. The main theory is the one of the “Applied Rationalism” to the science and the consequent passing of thc psychologism but, and at the same time, of the mathesis universalis. The “discursive idealism of Bachelard didn’t ignore the specific disparity of the several scientific practices, on the contrary, he examined them the light of what called «phenomenontechnique». (shrink)

This helpful book is your personal toolkit for critical thinking. Author Tom Chatfield will show you how to sharpen your critical thinking by developing and practicing this specific set of skills, so you can: Spot an argument and understand why reasoning matters; Discover errors and evaluate evidence; Understand and account for bias; Become a savvy user of technology; and Develop clear, confident critical writing"--Publisher's website.

This is a review essay about David Corfield and Jon Williamson's anthology Foundations of Bayesianism. Taken together, the fifteen essays assembled in the book assess the state of the art in Bayesianism. Such an assessment is timely, because decision theory and formal epistemology have become disciplines that are no longer taught on a routine basis in good philosophy departments. Thus we need to ask: Quo vadis, Bayesianism? The subjects of the articles include Bayesian group decision theory, approaches to the concept (...) of probability, Bayesian approaches in the philosophy of mathematics, reflections on the relationship between causation and probability, the Independence axiom, and a range of criticisms of Bayesianism, among other subjects. While critical of some of the arguments presented in the articles, this review recommends Corfield and Williamson's volume to anyone who is trying to stay abreast of Bayesian research. (shrink)

Literary Nonfiction. Philosophy. Winner of the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Award. Translated from the German by Michael Eskin. In this penetrating, thought-provoking, and deeply personal philosophical meditation on the death of the beloved other and the turmoil into which it throws those who were close to him, philosopher Kathrin Stengel opens hitherto unseen vistas onto one of the most painful human experiences. The author's ruthless clarity of observation, coupled with razor-sharp philosophical intuition and unflinching honesty of judgment, allows her (...) to pinpoint the personal and social complexities of life after death in a way that cannot but make us doubt some of our common practices in dealing with death and survival. Kathrin Stengel, Ph.D., is a philosopher residing in New York City with her husband and their three sons. Also available from SPD is the German language edition of this text, NOVEMBER-ROSE: EINE REDE UEBER DEN TOD. (shrink)

Taking his cue from Emerson and the eighteenth-century naturalist Gilbert White, Richard Quinney examines the beauty of the world and ponders our place in it in Field Notes. As much as we might look to the heavens, this earth is the only world in which we move and have our being, where we may see into the nature of all things. For many naturalists, writers, and poets, the boundaries between the animate and inanimate, the living and the dead, are ambiguous (...) and arbitrary. In the moments when we grasp the essence and wonder of nature, we know that all things are in its domain, that we too are nature. Yet nature is not necessarily benevolent to our human interests. We are subject to the same forces that work in all of nature. Nature is the source of life as well as its destruction as new life is being created. With pen and camera in hand, between town and country, notes are made and a life is lived. One world at a time, here on earth. Finalist, MIPA Midwest Book Awards, Midwest Independent Publishers Association Second Place Hardcover Fiction Book, 2008 New York Book Show, Bookbinders' Guild of New York. (shrink)

In 1934 Jaśkowski and Gentzen independently published their groundbreaking works on Natural Deduction. The aim of this paper is to provide some criteria for division of the diversity of existing systems on some natural subcategories and to show that despite the differences all these systems are descendants of original systems of Jaśkowski and Gentzen. Three criteria are discussed:The kind of items which are building-blocks of the proof.The format of proof.The kind of rules.The first leads to the division of ND into (...) two main classes: F-systems working on formulas and S-systems working on sequents. The second distinguishes between T-systems with tree-proofs and L-systems with linear proofs. Finally, the third leads to several minor divisions in the main categories. (shrink)

Theorizing the outcomes of future cities operated under the various business and technologies of different global corporations, How to Run a City Like Amazon and Other Fables offers not only an entertaining collection of ideas, but also a view to how else we might communicate research ideas and theory. Implicitly, the collection puts strain on the relevance of the academic publishing model for real-world research dissemination and public engagement. Being freely available online in PDF format on the independent (...) publisher Meatspace Press's website, and featuring a variously successful mix of fact and fiction, How to Run a City Like Amazon challenges notions of genre and form, as well as the hierarchies of high... (shrink)