1. Why add to the population of orphaned works?
2. Don’t presume that new work improves on old
3. Honor our ancestors by recycling their wisdom
4. The ideology of originality is arrogant and wasteful
5. Dregs are the sweetest drink
6. And leftovers were spared for a reason
7. Actors don’t get a fair shake the first time around, let’s give them another
8. The pleasure of recognition warms us on cold nights and cools us in hot summers
9. We approach the future by typically roundabout means
10. We hope the future is listening, and the past hopes we are too
11. What’s gone is irretrievable, but might also predict the future
12. Access to what’s already happened is cheaper than access to what’s happening now
13. Archives are justified by use
14. Make a quilt not an advertisement

I recommend you read the article, each of these points are explained in greater depth.

But there is also, I believe, a job for a public philosophy to perform: the job that Plato and Aristotle and Seneca tried to perform in their own day. The job, that is, of clarifying thinking on matters of public urgency through one’s own thought and writing. And this is a job that American professors of philosophy perform far too seldom nowadays, and have not performed well since the time of John Dewey and William James…. Nonetheless, part of the blame must also rest with academic philosophy itself, which too often speaks a jargon-laden language and doesn’t learn how to write in a way that would engage a non-specialist.

The first thing that can be said is that the choice between pursuing one’s own work and writing for the general public need not be seen so exclusively and so tragically. For in fact the general public is hungry for philosophical work addressing ethical and political issues — so long as this work is written by someone who sounds like a person. There is little excuse for the horrible quality of writing in philosophical journals. It is lazy and often, even in its air of precision, imprecise. It is perfectly possible to write something intelligible, and even moving, that a college-educated member of the general public can read with interest.

I wasn’t willing, or wasn’t able from the perspective of graduate schools I guess, to do philosophy in this way. And I wasn’t able to ignore works from history, politics, sociology etc which bring important answers to philosophical discussions. Becoming a librarian was not a step backwards from academics. For me it was a step into a world without distinctions between Humanities and Social Sciences, or between disciplines.

They say that one must first become a specialist before becoming a generalist, which is why all the most distinguished thinkers become distinguished in their own area before branching out. But I was not ready for that kind of obsession for 5 or more years to the detriment of all my other reading interests.

Much of this discussion has been called “Library 2.0,” and John Blyberg has given a sufficient summary of the supposed challenges and opportunities which confront the library. I say supposed, because it is quite unclear which of these issues are real, and which just speculation; congruently, this means it is increasingly difficult to make a distinction between which changes are necessary, which are superfluous, and which are in fact dangerous to what we–not just librarians but the totality of this democratic society, both past and present–believe the library to be.

Without making definite conclusions, some of these changes almost completely unproblematic, such as promoting access to the Internet, and the unprecedented opportunities it presents both consuming , interacting and creating the information and knowledge which makes us grander human beings. Others, without a firm grasp of our concept of the library, can be more questionable, such as the conversion of the library into a cultural center for “Millennials” (quoting John Blyberg) with video games and rock concerts.

To suggest a “fundamental change in [the] library’s mission” (again quoting) is needed right away fails to raise the question that possibly the aesthetic of the “Millennials” is not sustainable if our culture is to be informed and empowered enough to ask the tough question of those in power, both in government and elsewhere. Libraries since the rise of liberal democracy have always been an important support for the democratic ideal, and there are certain tools people need to successfully articulate their democratic freedom. Postmodern ideas of the library have severely criticized those tendencies of the modernist library to act as an agent of “civilization” for the unwashed masses. However, we have to stop and ask ourselves whether our actions are doing society a disservice. I myself right now do not have the answer.

I may have come to this discussion late (although I have studied closely Walt Crawford’s review article), however, I think that much discussion on the Internet lacks a sufficient look at where we have come from, and what it is that defines us. These are the dual problems of the history and philosophy of the library.

This insufficiency I think comes from the influence the “information studies” paradigm which I have discussed before, and favours a social scientific and technological conception over a humanistic one (from the academic perspective; the professional perspective is related but unique). Personally I do not know the answer to these two questions. Hopefully over the next year I can address them both, because I think they are too often forgotten or overlooked. Regardless of whether you feel the mandate of the library has changed, if we are to discover some kind of continuity in what we give the name “Library” it must continue to have a fundamental connection to a particular history and philosophical perspective.

As you may have noted, I am not a once a day poster. Over the next year I would like to address these questions more, through my reading and research, and perhaps present essays or the skeletons of essays on these topics. Hopefully you can remain as interested as I am as we delve through these issues, and hopefully we can use the light of the past to illuminate our examination of the future.

If you remember from before I was discussing Philosophy as a discipline and its problems in classification theory. Here is the fruits of that discussion.

The paper in good even as an introduction to the theoretical foundations of Bliss’ classification, as well as a discussion of education warrant or consensus in general classification schemes.

Warning, this is long. Get the PDF to print if you wish.

Abstract

The following paper examines the problems of Philosophy as a discipline in general bibliographic classifications based on educational consensus. Through an examination of the first edition of Bliss’ Bibliographic Classification (BC1) and its basis in a theory of a pedagogical order, the following problems are addressed: philosophy and its relation to other disciplines, the distinction between literature and science in philosophy, and the distinction between primary and secondary works in philosophy. Concludes that Bliss’ extensive use of alternative locations, particularly in the main class of Philosophy, represents Bliss’ inability to successfully deal with these issues.

Introduction

The order of classes based on academic disciplines is understood to be the main organizing principle of general bibliographic classification systems (Beghtol, 1998). Furthermore, while other general classifications may not explicitly acknowledge their consideration of educational warrant or hold it as their main organizing principle, they do all take into consideration the needs of the academic library (Beghtol, 1986). However, how successful are they at mapping these academic disciplines? The discipline of Philosophy presents particular problems for library classification: while it can at once be seen as the theoretical foundation of knowledge in general, it also touches on all the other disciplines, questioning their theoretical assumptions (Bliss, 1939, p. 80; Langridge, 1976, p.61) . To illustrate these problems, this paper will present a detailed examination of Class A in the first edition of the Bibliographic Classification (BC1) and its theoretical foundations in the works of Henry Bliss. In doing so the following three problems will be addressed:

1. Philosophy and its relation to other disciplines: while Philosophy may have its own theoretical problems, much of what is discussed in Philosophy departments touches on the subjects of other disciplines. Should these be discussions correlated with the main class of Philosophy or distributed amongst these individual subjects?
2. Philosophy as literature, Philosophy as science: Philosophy is both the the investigation of reality as well as the study of and dialogue with past philosophical writing. This presents a choice between organizing philosophical works by the topic under investigation or by author/historical period.
3. Primary works, secondary works: Opposed to other disciplines such as history or art, criticism in Philosophy is at the same time both derivative and original. To critique the work of another philosopher is to do philosophy. By what criteria do we judge a philosophical writer worthy of his or her own place in the schedules or decide to correlate these critical works with their corresponding authors/topics?

While many of these difficulties have been raised, by both Bliss himself (1929, p. 299) and by more recent authors (Langridge, 1976), the problem of these choices has largely been left to the discretion of the classifier through alternative locations, thereby increasing the possibilities for disorder. No sufficient solutions have been suggested, and we will conclude that there are no satisfactory conclusions when working with a single notation system. Later improvements will do much to reign in the level of variability introduced by BC1 through the use of alternative locations, but none of these issues can be completely dismissed.

The Organization of Knowledge and Educational Warrant

For Bliss the order of the academic disciplines is the ultimate culmination of the historical development of knowledge as well as the ultimate expression of the logical order inherent in nature, and classifications consistent with this order will have a higher educational value (Bliss, 1929, p. 115). Part IV of his Organization of Knowledge and the System of the Sciences documents that progressive development, from the first divisions of philosophy into Physics, Ethics and Logic, through the medieval Trivium and Quadrivium and the Enlightenment Encyclopdie, to our contemporary order as exemplified in Bliss’ own system. For Bliss this developmental order, exhibited by gradual developments from more general subjects to the more specific, follows the logical order of the sciences which are themselves gradated by speciality. This order in turn follows the evolutionary order in nature, which exists for the positivist and realist Bliss in a sublime regularity and symmetry (1929, p. 185).

Scientists and philosophers recognize and intuit this inherent order, and over time this order as exhibited by the disciplines becomes more stable to the point of approaching permanence (Bliss, 1929, p.221). As this order approaches stability, new sciences develop only as reorganizations of minor distinctions, while the main structures of that order—the central concepts and problems—remain constant (Bliss, 1929, p. 209). Bliss seems ambivalent to whether this pedagogic order is the same as the logical and developmental orders, at once arguing this is a “false simplification,” while later arguing that the pedagogical order closely parallels all other orders (1929, pp. 226–7). The pedagogical order, and the educational system supported by it, exists as an expression of the social mind and therefore must contain within it not only our present ideas but also the past history of those ideas in all their organizational forms (Bliss, 1929, p. 227). As these ideas become more stable, the order and consensus of science and education becomes “more dominant and more permanent” (Bliss, 1939, p.37).

The library itself should mimic this pedagogical order: it exists in miniature as the citadel in the city that is the university (Bliss, 1929, p. 115). Beyond just a philosophical principle, the correlation between the successive orders of nature, knowledge, education and the ideal organization of the library is a principle of efficiency. That is, because books are collocated based on the inherent orders of knowledge and the sciences, when a user goes to retrieve material they necessarily will be choosing from a systematically arranged group of subjects. And as any foray into the world of knowledge naturally falls into previously delineated and unchanging categories, a researcher is less likely to travel between shelves and floors where they may become “impatient” (Bliss, 1939, p. 31). The efficiency of collocation is understood to be the key principle of library classification; Bliss’ originality concerns the relation of that collocation to the educational consensus.

The example Bliss gives is of Education (Bliss, 1939, pp. 33-4), which is main class J. It can be assumed that a user looking for works concerning Education would be more interested in works on Anthropology (H), Psychology (I) and Sociology (a subclass of K) then Astronomy (D) or Jurisprudence (S). No system can be exact, and every system distributes some concepts as it collects others. However, Bliss argues that a system constructed on lines based in the educational consensus and the pedagogical order will provide the maximum efficiency possible, as these relations cohere to the natural system in nature. It is true, as Rafferty (2001) notes, that a classificationist’s motivations of pragmatism often hide an ideological and philosophical bias. However, for Bliss there is no distinction between the philosophical and pragmatic: a library classification following “true” philosophical principles is inherently efficient for the reasons explored above.

Criticisms

This theory of educational consensus does present some problems, primarily the fact that Bliss’ main classes based on academic disciplines are mutually exclusive and relatively unchanging. This is partially a fault of his progressive view of science and research: Bliss saw such contemporary developments such as Psychology and Sociology as only further specializations of the Philosophies of Mind and Human Nature respectively, and did not acknowledge their own unique methods and discourses which had developed. Not simply a differentiation of subject matter, it is this change of discursive method which supports the actual distinctions between the academic disciplines. Pierce (1991) outlines how new disciplines are formed through the development of conceptual and methodological boundaries to the exclusion of outsiders, both amateurs and those from other disciplines. Scholars who treat similar subjects from different fields are excluded not on the basis of knowledge of those subjects, but on differences of academic culture. However, Pierce is right to consider the fact that when information professionals suggest sources, they should do so on the basis of the seeker’s home discipline, because sources from related disciplines may be methodologically deficient for those users even if topically relevant.

A related problem is the concept of interdisciplinarity, which Beghtol (1998) argues makes this structural principle of universal bibliographic classification systems inadequate. She argues that such systems will need to adapt in a hospitable way as interdisciplinarity becomes a major source of new research and knowledge creation. The solution to this problem in BC1 is to make extensive use of alternative locations. This is clearly not sufficient for the current proliferation of interdisciplinary approaches and disciplines, and Bliss’ use of alternative location was particularly unworkable even in his contemporary period.

BC1 and the Problems of Philosophy

The introduction to BC1 argues that the system outlined is consistent with the systems of education as expressed in their “institutions, curricula, and programs” (Bliss, 1940, p. 21). A system organized on those principles should, in Bliss’ conception, provide maximum efficiency in retrieving documents. However, examining the first class of the system, Philosophy and General Science, we can find two particular problems. First, the class has almost no resemblance to Philosophy as it is discussed in the curricula and programs of the university. Second, the class presents almost no rational order to the alternative locations available for the organization of philosophical works.

As a preliminary, if we are to except a direct correlation between main classes and subject-disciplines, we would have to argue that the inclusion of General Science in this class is a result of a limit of notation (a fault Bliss often charges to Dewey, for instance (Bliss, 1939, pp. 201 ff)). Bliss argues for their close correlation, which may or may not be valid, although it may be desirable to keep Logic with Philosophy and form a separate class with the remainder of Mathematics and General Science. For our purposes we are interested in Philosophy as a subject-discipline specifically and its classification and not the distinction between Philosophy and General Science.

Limited to what is properly understood as the discipline of Philosophy, BC1 presents us with no less than four and as many as five ways of organizing the subject: (a) historically by periods and schools in AA–AD, (b) history and criticism (what I will call here secondary works) in AA–AD and original works by philosophers (primary works) alphabetically in A5, (c) like (b) but with the more topical works arranged by subject in AF and AH, (d) like (c) but with works treating philosophical movements or views at AG, or (e) original works alphabetically in A5, with biographical works in A4 and historical surveys in A3 as in AA–AD “but less elaborately.” (Bliss, 1940, p. 166). Furthermore, the schedules include alternative locations for Psychology at AI and Religion and Ethics at AJ, while outlining notation for “Relation of Philosophy to x” for a number of topics under AF, not to be confused with “philosophical treatments of x” which are distributed throughout the schedules, although difference between the two is not entirely clear.

This disorganization is partially due to the difficulties present in classifying philosophical works. The solution, in the case of Bliss, is to allow for many alternative locations in order to give the classifier the maximum amount of flexibility. A quick examination of Class A can see that such numbers of alternative locations are far from sufficient solutions to the problems inherent in organizing Philosophy.

Philosophy and its relation to other disciplines

Amongst this mass of alternative locations, there are only three subjects which are proper to Philosophy: Epistemology, Ontology and Cosmology, all three being subsumed under the general heading Metaphysics (1929, p. 255). However, when looking at a list of common undergraduate courses (see Appendix) we notice that many particular subjects are missing, such as Aesthetics, Ethics, Philosophy of Law, Philosophy of History and other “Philosophies of”. We would expect to see these collocated with other philosophical topics in a classification system based on educational consensus. While Bliss does argue that it is difficult to make a distinction between a branch of philosophy and any one of the special sciences (1929, p. 256), he ultimately suggests that these individual philosophical topics are more efficiently classed with their related subject-disciplines, for instance Ethics, which he sees as closely related with Religion (1929, p. 289).

It is curious why, after arguing for the principle of educational consensus, Bliss chooses to places these philosophical discussions under each discipline in opposition to the main class of Philosophy. And while he does make provisions for Religion, Ethics and Psychology through alternative locations, it is curious why he does not do so for topics with equally valid connections to Philosophy, such as Aesthetics, which, it could be argued, has more in common with theories of Epistemology than discussions of specific works of art.

Such a division would necessitate that multiple works by extremely prolific and systematic philosophers would be distributed not simply throughout a single class but throughout the entire library, giving an extreme situation where a student looking for works of a particular philosopher would be literally forced to walk from A to Z to retrieve them. Ultimately, we must conclude that both of these organizations would present efficiencies in some cases and deficiencies in others, a conclusion which throws into question Bliss’ confidence in the pedagogical order as a necessary guarantor of efficiency. However, if we are to consider the position of the discipline of Philosophy and its subordinate subjects, clearly the collocation of those subjects with a multitude of disciplines cannot be efficient for those beginning in Philosophy and making their way to disparate shelves.

Philosophy as literature, Philosophy as science

Distinguishing the methodologies of the humanities from those of the other sciences, Langridge (1976) argues that the method in the humanities is “scholarship,” or the study of works and writings against the study of nature (p. 30). Also, in opposition to science, the humanities tend to work cumulatively, giving ancient writings equal weight beside the most recent works. Philosophy too, classed as a humanity, also works in this way. Not only does it consider those texts from the beginnings of its tradition alongside more modern works, but a major method in philosophy is the detailed exposition of other philosophers and their works. However, at the same time, philosophy tends to be “scientific,” if we take this to mean it engages in investigations of reality and strives towards truth progressively, often with little regard to the investigations of others. The opposite conception of philosophy often denies the very possibility of truth. This view of philosophy sees the historical development of philosophy as a dialogue of thinkers speaking throughout history. This dialogue reflects the problems inherent in classifying fictional literature more so than those of scientific topics.

In this first conception we could make the argument that philosophical works would be better classed historically and by author. The second conception of philosophy would see philosophical works classed with the topics they investigate. It is important to note that departments of philosophy are organized along both principles, offering both historical and topical classes (see Appendix). It is clear that Bliss understands philosophy in the second conception, as a system of generalized thought, grounded on knowledge, criticizing intuitive beliefs (1939, p. 80) and striving for truth. At the same time, there are points where he seems to suggest that philosophy is no more than “rational literature” (1929, p. 299; 1939, p. 80). As noted, BC1 allows for both ways of ordering. Ultimately, this problem of classification is related to the educational consensus in Philosophy itself, which clearly divides itself between the literary and scientific methods, and often searches for and denies the possibility of truth in the same department.

Primary works, secondary works

A further distinction between the humanities and sciences made by Langridge (1976) is the humanities’ concern with “specimens,” that is, particular instantiation of human creativity in concrete form—novels, plays, paintings etc. (p. 33). In opposition to this is criticism, the discussion of those works. This distinction is problematic in Philosophy, however, where all but the most general and elementary critical works are in some way a “specimen,” a further example of philosophical discourse, and often original in their own right even when discussing other writers. At the same time, there are clearly works whose specific purpose is solely the derivative discussion of another philosophical work. Those of the first variety would require their own location, either by author or by topic, with those works which are clearly secondary collocated with them. On what basis are we to make distinctions between the two?

Bliss is next to silent on this problem, although he does make a comment in the Introduction to BC1 suggesting that philosophy and writings about philosophy sometimes merge into one another, although the majority of the time things are “clear enough” (1940, p. 75). Langridge (1976) as well draws attention to this problem, concluding that only those who have made an “original contribution” need be classified by name, the others subsumed under the appropriate topic/author (p. 65). This is clearly a problem, as it places too much judgement in the hands of the classifier, an argument Langridge anticipates. He argues that this difficulty only arises for contemporary writers, the reputation of older writers having been already established (p. 65).

The solution to this difficulty is not so clear, as there are often times were we would want an original commentary collocated both with its author and with the subject of its attention. A classic example is Averroes’ commentaries on Aristotle, many of which exhibit originality in their own right. A more modern example is that of Heidegger’s (1994) lectures on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Read on their own these works exhibit their own originality; read with their “primary” works these commentaries can be understood on a different and equally important level. Neither can be said to be more important than the other. Clearly, if possible, we would want to class them in both locations at once. This is only a possibility in the classified catalogue, where we can assign multiple notations and subject headings, but is not possible on the physical shelf.

Discussion

These three problems—the problem of other disciplines, the distinction between literature and science, and the distinction between primary and secondary works—are inherent to Philosophy as a form of literature. As we have seen, the solution BC1 presents for this problem is to allocate alternative locations wherever possible to allow for flexibility in cataloguing. Each library would be forced to set its own policies in deciding which of the five schemes of classifying philosophy would be chosen, but would then not be able to share its records with any other library who had chosen either of the others or some amalgamation of them. Without the aid of computers this lack of standardization prevented BC1 from gaining a wide acceptance. Furthermore, while we have used Bliss’ classification as a backdrop to illustrate these problems, they are not unique to BC1 (Langridge, 1976, p.62).

The question could be raised, particularly when looking at the first problem, whether Philosophy is not some kind of interdisciplinary subject. We would hesitate to give it that designation, as Philosophy is better understood logically and historically as the rational foundations of the various disciplines. “Philosophy of Law” is not really any form combination or interaction between two subject domains (Beghtol, 1998), nor can it adequately be described as the treatment of law from a philosophical perspective. The philosophy of a discipline ideally provides the most general theoretical foundations of any subject: not just how one should design, evaluate and institute law, but what “law” means in the first place, what its essence is. We hesitate to add another prefix, and an overused one at that, to the field, but if we had to name it we would call Philosophy a meta-discipline, which deals with the highest levels of abstraction in each discipline.

Regardless of the nature of Philosophy’s relation with the other disciplines, proponents of faceted systems will argue that any such relations can be expressed (Beghtol, 1998). As a sequel to BC1, the second edition of Class A/AL (Mills & Broughton, 1991) does make some improvements over the original through the use of facets, but does not completely counteract all the problems presented in classifying Philosophy. In consideration of the first problem, BC2 does make some improvements in classing Philosophies of Language, Mind and Ethics with Philosophy, although the editors have made the decision to continue to keep Aesthetics group with the Arts.

The second and third problems of Philosophy are addressed by the use of facets in BC2. In reference to the second, the facet order of BC2 gives preference to branches of Philosophy and then to historical schools in the citation order, which would bring together all works concerning Epistemology first, then order them by historical treatment. Thirdly, the Viewpoint facet allows for the discussion of one philosopher by, or from the viewpoint of, a second philosopher. While these are improvements over the complications of alternative locations in BC1, they still do not completely solve the problems outlined. For instance, while it is an improvement to be able to group together works related to Averroes’ treatment of Aristotle, this still does not satisfy the desire to see all the works of Averroes, including the commentaries, grouped together as original works. Furthermore those who see all of the works of a single author or historical period as a unity would be disappointed by the facet order of BC2.

Conclusions

This paper has discussed the problems for library classifications in classifying Philosophy as a discipline. First outlining its foundations in educational warrant, Bliss’ Bibliographic Classification was examined to illustrate the following problems: the relationship between Philosophy and other disciplines, the competing conceptions of Philosophy as literature and science, and the relation between primary and secondary works in Philosophy. While the later BC2 has addressed some of these problems, particularly because of its strengths as a faceted system, many of these same issues continue to present problems for library classification.

There are no ultimate solutions to these problems, at least when limited to shelf ordering and singular notations. The conclusion drawn by Bliss is to leave the decisions open to each individual library through the extensive use of alternative locations, not only in Class A but throughout the entire schedules, for “special subjects everywhere” (1940, p. 23). Under the rubric of allowing for multiple viewpoints and purposes, Bliss has abrogated his responsibility for coming to a clear decision about these three problems of Philosophy. There is no clear suggestion on how the class should be ordered, and it is questionable how efficient a class with five different ways of ordering can truly be. Clearly, however, such a large number of alternative locations throughout the system make a strong case against any single order of knowledge as an objective standard for basing such a system.

References

Beghtol, C.  (1986).  Semantic validity: Concepts of warrant in bibliographic classification systems.  Library resources & technical services, 30(2), 109–125.

Beghtol, C.  (1998).  Knowledge domains: Multidisciplinarity and bibliographic classification systems.  Knowledge Organization, 25(1/2), 1–12.

Bliss, H. E.  (1929).  The organization of knowledge and the system of the sciences.  New York: Henry Holt and Company.

Bliss, H. E.  (1939).  The organization of knowledge in libraries and the subject-approach to books.  New York: The H. W. Wilson Company.

Bliss, H. E.  (1940).  A bibliographic classification (Vol. 1).  New York: The H. W. Wilson Company.

Heidegger, M.  (1994).  Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (P. Emad & K. Maly, Trans.).  Indiana: University Press.

Langridge, D. W.  (1976).  Classification and indexing in the humanities.  London: Buttersworths.

Mills, J., & Broughton, V. (Eds.).  (1991).  Bliss bibliographic classification: Class A/AL Philosophy and Logic (2nd ed.).  London: Bowker-Saur.

Pierce, S. J.  (1991).  Subject areas, disciplines, and the concept of authority.  LISR, 13, 21–35.

Rafferty, P.  (2001).  The representation of knowledge in library classification schemes.  Knowledge Organization, 28(4), 180–191.

University of Toronto.  (2006).  2006-2007 Faculty of Arts and Sciences calendar: Philosophy courses.    Retrieved March 1, 2007 from Faculty of Arts and Science Website: http://www.artsandscience.utoronto.ca/ofr/calendar/crs_phl.htm.

Appendix

Intermediate Undergraduate Philosophy Classes at the University of Toronto 2006/2007

Early Greek Philosophy Ancient Philosophy After Aristotle Bases of Cognition Plato Aristotle Augustine Aquinas Topics in Medieval Philosophy The Rationalists The Empiricists Kant 19th-Century German Philosophy Hegel Marx and Marxism Philosophy and Psychoanalytic Theory Phenomenology Heidegger Contemporary Continental Philosophy The Analytic Tradition Wittgenstein Metaphysics Epistemology Issues in Philosophy of Religion Islamic Philosophy Topics in Chinese Philosophy Jewish Philosophy Issues in Philosophy of Mind Freedom and Human Action Minds and Machines Women in Western Political Thought Metalogic Intermediate Logic Philosophy of Mathematics Modal Logic Set Theory Revolution in Science Philosophy of Language Philosophy of Natural Science Philosophy of Physics Philosophy of Biology Philosophy of History Political Philosophy Issues in Philosophy of Law Issues in Environmental Ethics Ethics War and Morality Global Bioethics Ethics and Medical Research Ethics: Death and Dying Ethics and Mental Health Ethics, Genetics and Reproduction Issues in Aesthetics Literature and Philosophy Markets and Morals

If we are building a library or bibliographic classification, then Philosophy presents a problem, particularly if we are building our classification on the lines of consensus with science and education, that is, matching our main classes to the university disciplines.

1. What is the relationship between Philosophy and the other disciplines? How is X related to the Philosophy of X? Should Aesthetics, the philosophy of the beautiful, be classed with Art? Bliss does does so, feeling this collocation is efficient. Yet, given the rule of consensus, is it more worth wild to keep these discussions with philosophy?

2. What is the nature of philosophical writing? At one hand, it aims at Truth and is written as non-fiction. Yet, at the same time, a great bulk of what philosophy does is comment on and dialogue with other philosophers; in this way it resembles literature. Should we therefore class philosophy by topic? Or should we arrange it alphabetically by author? Or, to see the dialogue, arrange it by broad historical periods?

3. What is the nature of secondary writing in Philosophy? In most disciplines, literary criticism for instance, we separate the act of creating literature and writing about literature. However, in almost all cases, writing about philosophers is itself doing philosophy. Except if we were writing the most general survey, adding one’s own commentary and interpretation is itself philosophizing. Are we to keep all secondary commentaries along with their primary texts? What about Averroes’ commentary on Aristotle, worth reading in its own write, or Heidegger’s commentaries on Hegel and Schelling? When does a commentator not deserve their own attention? What about if we are writing about multiple philosophers, even in the same micro-document (an essay in a book of essays)?

I just picked up the latest issue of KO here, and there is a really good article for people interested in the internal classification of websites.

One point which seems so obvious to me now is the idea of faceted categorizations of blog posts, or faceted folksonomies. Looking at the Italian cite Biblioatipici they use a set of seven fundamental categories, in between the number set out by Ranganathan and the Classification Research Group (CRG): Entities, Products, Instruments, Agents, Space and Time. Subclasses are entered freely under these.

So, here I am overjoyed, a way to cut a balance between pre- and post-cordinated order, right. Seems I am not the first one to make that connection.

I guess del.icio.us has that ability, but I never really made the connection between theory and practice, or the slightly different jargons on the web and in the literature.

A good article, discusses DCC and JITA as well.

It is not good to talk about Zen because Zen is nothingness … If you talk about it you are always lying, and if you don’t talk about it no one knows it is there.

-Robert Pirsig, his “final interview,” in the Observer.

Today I was walking to school and was thinking about what has been the unifying thing in all the various things I have been interested in. And how did I end up in libraries and studying “information”, a place I never really planned to be, and I didn’t know it was my place until I was already here.

I realized that the thing I enjoy about the library is that it exists as a cultural memory. And while that is a grand thing in and of itself, it is much more interesting if we look at it at a slightly deeper level. We can push the metaphor a little bit more, get some more out of it . If the library is a memory, it functions like memory in its faults and in its benefits. It distorts, chooses to forget, blocks out, makes biased decisions. Things are shelved and often used, things are shelved and not found. And all these forgetting and blockages are powered by the history of the culture itself, its wars and its ideas, which leave its mark on memory.

Then I continued walking and I realized that, actually, culture in many ways doesn’t need the library; in others it does. The culture’s memory is being written quite fine without formal channels. The light polls and telephone posts are covered with advertisements, art, religion, personal politics and public opinion.

Of course, some of those things won’t survive. And the argument is that the library (the Archive in general) should step in to help. And this is how the memory faults, because nothing is saved perfectly. It is cleaned up, selected, categorized and in that distorted because things are in reality very messy.

More to come.

The concept has been around for a while, but there was only one online news reader which did it, well, until now, and that was Google Reader. Sure, it was slow in the beginning, but I loved the fact that it was so simple: titles on the left, content on the right. Now what do I find when I load Reader at like 8 pm tonight? Clutter, extra clicking, dreaded folders, and no more River of News. Sure, the developers like to assure us:

Well, things might look different, but we made sure the new interface enabled the reading style of current Reader users. For example, clicking “All items” and choosing “List view” should make the experience feel quite familiar.

But, really, that setting just doesn’t cut it. In the first place, it doesn’t use all of the screen space. The titles are displayed on the right, and clicking on them opens them up, pushing all the other titles down. But that leaves 1/2 of my screen wasted with Folders which I made over a year ago and don’t use, and a link to the “Home” section of the reader which is utterly useless. Ok, not all of us have a huge LCD, an I have a 12″ laptop which only does 1024×768, and I need all the space I can get.

Luckily the haven’t taken away the old interface, and I hope they never do because I have tried other readers and I just can’t do it. Although, the more I look at the content of my feeds, the more I think that maybe this is a good thing.

The goal of OneWebDay is to make the Web, and our individual connection to it, visible — so that we don’t take it for granted. We make progress when we make things visible.

What does that mean, really. For sure, I am just as excited as the next person about the social benefits the Internet can bring if used and protected, but have you see this website, and check out this button, isn’t just a bit too much:

Q: What exactly are the Web values we’re celebrating? A: That, too, is up to you. How has the Web changed your life? Increased your connectedness? More collaboration? More creativity? More openness to ideas? Q: What’s the political agenda behind OneWebDay? A: Just this: We want to raise global awareness of how important the Web is to our lives and how positive its values are.

The entire site and the project wiki is as empty as this. It all seems a bit masturbatory to me: all the illusion of something worthwhile, but really in the end narcissistic self-love.

Want to understand Aquinas? Other Scholastics? Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Fiche, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Derrida? Nothing until you have read Aristotle. I had signed up for the Aristotle class, hoping that we would slough through the book–but no, we read, again, the Nicomachean Ethics. Which is not to say that it isn’t a good book, but I had studied it three times earlier.

How did a student get through a degree in philosophy without reading one of the two foundational texts in Western philosophy (the other being Plato’s Republic)? Easy: because it is hard, and the university doesn’t challenge students any more, but wants to give them the best possible change of graduating with a B average. It is a disgrace, and it has nothing to do with media and the twilight of the book, but of the way students are coddled.

So I am already through books Alpha, Beta and Gamma. And despite all its talk about the centrality of reason and the possibility of finding the good and the true, it is an excellent book. Aristotle anticipates skeptical critique, even those of the post-moderns. It all comes down to one position: either you believe A does not equal not-A, that a proposition is either true or false, or you believe nothing, and you can therefore advocate nothing.

I am writing a lot in the book, partially from discovering H. J. Jackson’s book Marginalia. A friend of mine took a class with Jackson on Coleridge, and I had read the volume of Coleridge’s Marginalia which was edited by Jackson. I would like to use her book as a source for my studies into reading and writing, why the two are closely interconnected, and why creation–writing–necessarily flows reading. The two are not disconnected, which calls all our ideas of copyright and derivative works into question.

From the beginning of writing, and from the beginning of a child’s development, books are written in. It is not a one way glass between the writer and the reader, but it is essentially interactive. The reader is working as she reads. It will be particularly interesting to see how this continues through to the digital medium (Wark’s Gamer Theory might show us something about that).

I am writing on a wonderful blog posting client called Ecto, which can add links to Amazon, make categories and tags etc. I only wish Blogger was more feature filled.

No point waiting for the MacBooks in the 12″ size, I could never afford them anyway. Besides, I’ve become attached to this one already. I found it interesting just the other day how much of a personal relationship we forge with our computers. My desktop, a slightly aged Windows 2000 machine, is starting to run a little slow. It can’t open many programs at once, even after putting more ram in it.

However, I know its speed, the way it moves. I know exactly how long things will take to open, and I know all its little quirks. My hands have fit its keyboard, so learning the size of a new computer poses some problems. Already after a week with even the bottom of the line OS X machine, I already have a hard time going back to my old computer–I mostly VNC over to it and use the desktop for Bittorrent downloads and song storage. And, in some way, I miss it. I guess I miss my first computer too, an old Commodore 64. It is interesting how these things become not just metaphorical by literal extensions of us.

To be honest, I find he talked a lot and didn’t say much. The topic of his speech was that we, as Canadians, shouldn’t think we are without blood on our hands, and then he went on to list about 40 minutes worth of contemporary examples of oppression, both internally and externally, domestic and abroad, that “Canada” (I didn’t understand if he was talking about Canada the society or Canada the government, or both) is actively involved in. And, that was basically the end, with no theory, no philosophy, no plan of action, except the standard Michael Moore type complaining, without any form of positive plans.

Which is not to say I didn’t agree with him. I don’t know if such simplistic labels as “Socialist” or “Anarchist”–or even “theist” or “atheist”–should be used by intelligent people, who are always free for forge their own path. Yet, however much this man is famous in activist circles, I thought he didn’t tell me anything I (or most of the group that was assembled) already knew. Governments are bad?? What a shock. The history lesson I could have got from reading Indymedia, Noam Chomsky and Wikipedia.

However, what I did find shocking was his so-called opposition to violence, which was only an opposition to the violence of the oppressor, not the oppressed. At an even whose fliers demanded an end uniquivicol to violence at the university (not just one type of violence), I found that calling US and Canadian oppressors “murderers” and those who retaliate with violence, such as the leaders of the Haitian revolution, “unequivocal”.(Jaggi called Toussaint L’Ouverture a hero).

I got up and tried to point out the slight hypocrisy in that statement. I made the point that some theorists would argue that violence, in all its forms, is the problem, and not who wields it. Despite what the Wikipedia article says about him, he is not a pacifist, and he admitted that he supported the use of violence when it is necessary in conflict against oppression.

I hope that one day we can reach a point where only thinkers and humanitarians can be thought of as heroes. It takes more bravery to be Gandhi or Dr. King that a violent military commander, regardless of what side he shed blood for–blood is blood. Later I discussed a wonderful Derrida essay with a member of the audience, “The Force of Law”, which, in short, says that all critique, all revolution, begins with a kind of Divine violence that does away with law, but that same movement of violence eventually sets up and enforces new law, defeating its original purpose.

The end of violence, Derrida writes, exists in this messianic time (not a specific messianism) that is always in the future, but it never arrives. The ideal is always betrayed.

I guess I didn’t agree with his ideas of the role of violence.