The massive and unstoppable emergence of electronic books in libraries has altered their organization. This disruptive technology has led to structural changes. Currently, an e-book exists only if its metadata exists. The objective of this article is to analyse the impact that the massive incorporation of electronic books in university library systems is having in the processes of assignment of subject headings and classification codes. We carried out a survey of more than six hundred libraries, which means almost all the (...) university libraries in Portugal, Spain, England, United States, Brazil, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Australia. From the results obtained, it is deduced that: 1) librarians expect e-books to be provided with descriptive metadata related to the subject headings and classification codes; 2) the bibliographic records provided by publishers/providers seem to be improvable; 3) the quality of the metadata provided by the providers does not seem to be taken into account when selecting publishers for the purchase; 4) the discovery tools are also clearly improvable; 5) it seems that there is no “frustration” or “stress” among librarians about the changes produced in relation to technical processes; and, 6) it does not seem that we are facing a paradigm shift motivated by these issues. (shrink)

Whatever the attractions of Tolkein's world, irrealists about fictions do not believe literally that Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit. Instead, irrealists believe that, according to The Lord of the Rings {Bilbo is a hobbit}. But when irrealists want to say something like “I am taller than Bilbo”, there is nowhere good for them to insert the operator “according to The Lord of the Rings”. This is an instance of the operator problem. In this paper, I outline and criticise Sainsbury's (2006) (...) spotty scope approach to the operator problem. Sainsbury treats the problem as syntactic, but the problem is ultimately metaphysical. (shrink)

It is helpful for any enterprise to stop occasionally and examine itself. Science has done this rather infrequently in its long and eventful history, and there has not been, in general, any continuity in these self-examinations. As a result the history of the philosophy of science has been a rather spotty affair. My belief is that the philosophy of science should also, at times, become self-critical. When a study is concerned primarily with methods of other disciplines it tends to underemphasize (...) the role played by the methods which it itself uses. What is the method of the philosophy of science, and is it justifiable? Can there be a satisfactory study of science and can this be scientific? (shrink)

Although this book contains a facsimile of the second London edition of Collins’ Inquiry, the main author is O’Higgins, for his Introduction and Notes seem more important than the 18th-century pamphlet. Collins was a country squire, friend of John Locke, an Anglican Deist, and a convinced determinist in his explanation of volition. His education was spotty: Eton, a year at Cambridge and unfinished studies in law. A general study of Collins’ life and writings was published by O’Higgins in 1970, yet (...) he does not seem aware of another modern printing of the Inquiry, edited by R. Wellek. The Introduction covers the background very thoroughly. It also sketches the situation in which the Inquiry was produced. The editor’s Notes are scholarly and helpful. Collins’ view was that no act of will is uncaused but the necessity to which man’s will is subject is not physical but moral. Much of Collins’ argument is well constructed but he does not seem fully to understand some of his adversaries, such as Bishop John Bramhall. On the whole this book is a useful introduction to a key controversy in British and continental thought of the 17th and 18th centuries.—V.J.B. (shrink)

What are the historical origins of the argumentum ad consequentiam, the argument from consequences, sometimes featured as an informal fallacy in logic textbooks? As shown in this paper, knowledge of the argument can be traced back to Aristotle. And this type of argument shows a spotty history of recognition in logic texts and manuals over the centuries. But how it got into the modern logic textbooks as a fallacy remains somewhat obscure. Its modern genesis is traced to the logic text (...) of James McCosh. (shrink)

Academics generate circles of thought. Their preferred modes of conceptualization—the intellectual constructions in circulation within academic discourse at a given moment—readily pass across disciplinary boundaries. During the past two centuries, philosophical critique and the criticism of art have a history of informing each other. Although the concepts of societal “modernism” and “modernist” art exhibit variation, both are hybrids of philosophical and aesthetic indeterminacies. Rather than fretting over interpretive instability, we are inured to conceptual change and indeterminacy in every domain. But (...) our world becomes circular—ironically, quite stable—when we direct logical reasoning to illuminate its aesthetic double or direct art to illuminate its philosophical double. Inattentive to anything outside the circle, we imagine our intellectual progress, for circularity is self-confirming. Our illusory progress accompanies a spotty record of predicting actual change. With respect to where our philosophical concepts of change have led us, chance is a better guide to our immediate intellectual and aesthetic preferences, even though it presumes no explanation of our comprehensive cultural formation. Although never right, chance has the advantage of never being wrong. (shrink)

Lennan, Richard When Pope Francis appeared on the papal balcony for the first time, I was sitting in a television studio in Boston, doing some commentary for a local cable-news network. As an 'expert analyst', I'm afraid that I was, to quote a memorable expression from Paul Keating, 'a bit of a fizzer'. Not only did I have no idea who Jorge Maria Bergolio was, I managed to confuse Buenos Aires, where Bergolio had been archbishop, with Rio de Janiero, where (...) he had not been archbishop, and also muddled Argentina, Bergolio's homeland, with Brazil, not Bergolio's homeland. While I do not expect to be invited back to comment on the next conclave, it is not my spotty performance or even the whiz-bang technology of a modern television studio that most stays with me from that afternoon in March 2013. Rather, what is most vivid in my memory is a comment from one of the news anchors, a comment he repeated a number of times, both on-air and off-camera: 'He's so old', he said of the new pope. 'Why would they choose someone so old?'. (shrink)

This essay presents analogies between the development of historical writing and of physical science during the early modern period. Its necessarily spotty coverage runs from the mid sixteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth. The analogies include arising from practical concerns; preferring material documents and experimental inquiries over texts; making use of mathematical auxiliary sciences; distinguishing between primary and secondary elements; establishing new fundamental principles; undermining the traditional world system; and devising methods to control rapidly multiplying knowledge. A history (...) of learning that meets today's standards of historical scholarship should identify and exploit such parallels, not only because of scholarly interest and responsibility, but also because an understanding of the historical importance of linkages between distant branches of learning may help redress the increasing imbalance in resources among the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities in our higher schools and universities. (shrink)

Michael W. Fox, the respected Vice President of the Humane Society of the United States, here looks at the biogenetic controversy and draws some troubling conclusions. Biogenetic research is capable of producing new life forms whose effects may alter the intricate balance of Nature in ways no one can foretell. "Superpigs" that grow larger than any pig before, cows that breed on an accelerated cycle, "new" vegetables, tomatoes that won't freeze - such new life forms can now be patented, making (...) them potential sources of enormous profits for biotech companies. And the record of government, academia, and industry is spotty at best at protecting the earth - yet these same forces are in control of the biogenetic future. Superpigs and Wondercorn is at once an eye-opening survey of a dramatic, sometimes frightening new technology and an impassioned plea to use these new tools in the long-term interests of the global ecosystem. (shrink)

Ethical attitudes and behaviour are complex. This complexity extends to the influencers operating at different levels both outside and within the organisation, and in different combinations for different individuals. There is hence a growing need to understand the proximal and distal influencers of ethical attitudes, and how these operate in concert at the individual, organisational, and societal levels. Few studies have attempted to combine these main research streams and systematically examine their combined impact. The minority of studies that have taken (...) a combined approach have often done so using conventional statistical and analytical techniques which imply linearity between variables—a situation that rarely exists in business settings and is likely to lead to simplistic or even erroneous conclusions. Applying a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis approach, this paper reports on the mutual and simultaneous influence of individual demographic factors, as well as proximal and distal factors stemming from within and outside the work environment to understand individuals’ ethical views within the workplace. The multiple configurations that emerged reveal the complex nature of influencers of ethical attitudes, and reinforce the view that “one size does not fit all”. We discuss these implications together with managerial recommendations and future research directions. (shrink)

Some years ago a Belfast funeral undertaker was on holiday in County Down. One sunny evening he climbed to the highest point in the Ards Peninsula. The visibility was good and the view magnificent. On one side lay Strangford Lough with Slieve Croob and the Mourne Mountains in the background. On the other was the Irish Sea with the Isle of Man, the Cumberland Hills and the southern Scottish uplands in the distance.

В издании подробно исследуется философское наследие четырех учителей дигамбарской ветви джайнизма.

L’Homme presents what has been termed Descartes’ “physiological psychology”. It envisions and seeks to explain how the brain and nerves might yield situationally appropriate behavior through mechanical means. On occasion in the past 150 years, this aim has been recognized, described, and praised. Still, acknowledgement of this aspect of Descartes’ writing has been spotty in histories of neuroscience and histories of psychology. In recent years, there has been something of a resurgence. This chapter argues that, in seeking to explain psychological (...) functions such as sense perception, attention, memory, and emotional response, Descartes ascribed a range of active functions to the brain acting on its own (independently of mind). (shrink)

Presentation of the thesis that Kumāril Bhaṭṭa and Dharmakīrti, 7th cent., Sanskrit philosophers, were Assamese by birth, contrary to the traditional belief that they are from South India.

In most elementary schools in the United States, students get their first systematic introduction to history as a discipline and to chronological treatment of U.S. history as subject matter in fifth-grade U.S. history courses. To develop information about the knowledge and misconceptions concerning U.S. history that fifth-grade teachers can expect to see in their incoming students, we interviewed students who were nearing completion of the fourth grade about U.S. history topics that they would be taught in the fifth grade. The (...) students' responses revealed that they possessedgenerally accurate knowledge about conditions of everyday life inthe “old days,” but only spotty knowledge about historyand the work of historians and about the founding and developmentof the United States as a nation. They had picked up bits andpieces of information in holiday or state history units in earlier grades or through reading, television, or other out-of-school experiences, but these were not yet subsumed within a systematic network of knowledge. Furthermore, accurate information items often were connected in the students' minds with various types of inaccurate beliefs (naive misconceptions, associative errors, conflations, and imaginative elaborations). The students' answers to 23 questions are described and illustrated through excerpts fromtheir interview responses, and these findings are then discussed with emphasis on the need to establish a context for learning U.S. history and to develop certain key ideas so as to promote understanding and clear up misconceptions. (shrink)

L’Homme presents what has been termed Descartes’ “physiological psychology.” It envisions and seeks to explain how the brain and nerves might yield situationally appropriate behavior through mechanical means. On occasion in the past 150 years, this aim has been recognized, described, and praised. Still, acknowledgement of this aspect of Descartes’ writing has been spotty in histories of neuroscience and histories of psychology. In recent years, there has been something of a resurgence. This chapter argues that Descartes ascribed a range of (...) active functions to the brain acting on its own in seeking to explain psychological functions such as sense perception, attention, memory, and emotional response. (shrink)