philosopher1978

The schedule for the London Conference on Critical Thought is now available here.

Last week I went to the 6th International Conference in Critical Theory, based at The John Felice Rome Center of Loyola University Chicago in Rome.  I got some useful stuff out my my presentation, both in terms of some headspace to work on the essence of what I wanted to say in some of my PhD work and in that there were some useful comments to come out it too.  I’m newly confident that there’s a reasonable journal article in there somewhere.

It’s been a while since I spent a full three days listening to philosophy papers.  No doubt I’m a bit rusty in terms of my ability to listen, but I repeatedly found myself thinking that reading out from a prepared manuscript is rarely the most stimulating or pedagogically effective way to present material.

The idea that we should aspire to be innovative in how we present information is kind of a given in the environment I work in at present.  Experiments in form have value in themselves.  But philosophers tend to stick to a long-established way of doing things.  You write a paper in advance, print it out, and then read it out load for anywhere between 50% and 99% of the time available for the session with any leftover time devoted to discussion.

Not all philosophers do this, and for those that do the benefit is that you say exactly what you want to say, no matter how vexed or convoluted.  When you’re trying to explain something complicated, it’s easy to get it wrong especially when you’re presenting to a room full of people who are very keen to point out any mistakes.  For many presenters who are shy, a script to hide behind can be a comfort.

However, there are a few things that have come to irk me about this way of doing things.  Firstly, there aren’t many concessions being made to the audience when you are effectively asking them to digest something like a journal article or book chapter in one go, often without a paper copy of your own to follow.  It can be hard to keep a question in mind if you want to keep up with the presentation.  Perhaps this is exacerbated when you’re trying to listen in a language that is not your own; I was chairing at a conference recently and one audience member complained loudly to this effect.  A whole day of passively listening to people speak is fairly draining no matter how interesting the presentation, and it’s hard to think that people can sustain this for a number of days.

You have a great deal of collective intelligence in the room at seminars like these, but it’s hard to see how reading is a good use of that time.  At the conference in Rome there were academics and graduate students from around the world.  Lots of resources have gone into putting these people in the same room.  It’s a chance to have a really good discussion – or at least it would be if everyone had the materials in advance.

This got me thinking along the lines of the ‘flipped‘ classroom, where you do the information delivery (lecture, video, etc) outside of the class and keep the precious (expensive) contact time for discussion and activities.  Students can digest the material over time, through multiple viewings if need be.  If we were to do the same thing with conference sessions you could have all kinds of new formats, or work towards producing something tangible.  (It’s quite ironic that the complaint about technology creating barriers to human interaction is used to defend reading your paper at an audience.)  It also relies on people being organised enough to produce materials in advance but there’s no reason why it need be compulsory.

I’m coming out in favour of the flipped conference.  I understand that a similar call has been made by Alan Levine and Audrey Watters.   There are issues, though, especially to do with recording unfinished or progressing work.  I can’t see many people in the humanities going for that.

They’re a conservative (with a smal ‘c’) bunch, really, philosophers.  I imagine most of the humanities are the same, however:  they like the old ways of doing things and that’s partly how they ended up where they are.  It’s quite telling that when you are in an educational technology conference everybody is sitting on there devices, tweeting, checking things, looking things up and so on.  At a philosophy conference very few do this.  When I went on Twitter there was only one other person on there and we were both looking for some sort of hashtag or conversation to follow.  There’s a sense of defence of a sanctified space among these communities but I wonder how much of that is about the most effective use of that space.

My slides from today’s presentation…

I’ve just had notification that Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning: Open Educational Resources: Innovation, Research and Practice (for which I co-wrote a chapter has now been published… you can download directly from here.

I just saw this quote over at Radical Cartography and thought it was really interesting to think about in relation to data visualization, which is essentially also making spatial representations of information.

Information is already abstraction from experience because in regarding it as knowledge rather than immediate sensation.  So, creating representations of information is moving away from the referent and towards the ‘hyperreal’.  This is compounded when we visualize data in order to inform decision making as the ‘map that precedes the territory’.

At the same time, there is something organic and biopolitical about the growth, flourishing and decline of different representations of the world which inevitably reflect and express surrounding power structures.

There’s some quite interesting stuff over there, in fact.

I have a copy of the following book available for anyone who would like to review it for JiME.  Just let me know if you are interested…

Jenkins, H., Kelley, W., Clinton, K., McWilliams, J., Pitts-Wiley, R. and Reilly, E. (eds.) (2013). Reading in a Participatory Culture: Remixing Moby Dick in the English Classroom.  Teachers College Press: New York.

You can find out a bit more about the volume here or at Amazon.

Just a few photos from our (me and @beckpitt) recent trip to S. Korea…

I’ve been meaning to spend a bit of time trying to better understand the open education movement of the 1970s and how it relates to contemporary developments in academia.  A useful summary of some key texts is over at infed.org but I’ve copied the bibliographic details here just in case it goes down or I can’t find it again.  I’m particularly interested in getting my hands on the Nyberg (for obvious reasons).

Easthope, G. (1975) Community, Hierarchy and Open Education, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Nyberg, D. (ed.) (1975) The Philosophy of Open Education, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Puckrose, H. (1975) Open School, Open Society, London: Evans.

Sharp, J. (1973) Open School. The experience of 1964-70 at Wyndham School, Egremont, Cumberland, London: Dent.

I’ve just filed my copy for a review of Martin Weller‘s book, The Digital Scholar: How Technology is Changing Academic Practice (which, incidentally you can buy online but if I was you I would just grab the free version online because there’s less chance of that getting wet and ultimately crispy like my copy did).  Hopefully it will be forthcoming in JiME fairly soon.

It’s a bit of a strange experience to review someone’s work when you work for them – normally this happens behind a veneer of relative anonymity – but I hope I’ve managed to find the golden mean between obsequiousness and being critical just for the sake of it…

Anyway, the point of this post is to capture something that I was thinking about a long time ago and in the course of writing the review I was reminded of it.  It goes back to the following passage near the start of Martin’s book:

A simple definition of digital scholarship should probably be resisted, and below it is suggested that it is best interpreted as a shorthand term. As Wittgenstein argued with the definition of ‘game’ such tight definitions can end up excluding elements that should definitely be included or including ones that seem incongruous. A digital scholar need not be a recognised academic, and equally does not include anyone who posts something online. For now, a definition of someone who employs digital, networked and open approaches to demonstrate specialism in a field is probably sufficient to progress.

Weller, M. (2011:4)

A couple of years ago I was a researcher on the Digital Scholarship project and read Martin’s book in manuscript form.  I recall thinking at the time that the whole idea of digital scholarship was a bit sketchy.  After all, who isn’t ‘digital’ these days?  The whole thing seemed to me to need much more precise definition (which Martin always resisted for reasons I’ve never been entirely clear on but seem to have to do with something traumatic in his past around learning objects).  For what it’s worth, I think I understand his perspective a bit better now.

Anyway, re-reading this section got me thinking again and I had another look at the Wittgenstein.  The discussion of ‘games’ comes from the later part of Wittgenstein’s work; Wittgenstein is unusual among philosophers in that he produced two distinct and original philosophies during his life, both of which are primarily concerned with our relation to language.

The so-called ‘early’ Wittgenstein – he of the forbidding Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus -argued that most philosophical confusion results from failing to respect the sense-making limits of language.  Only certain kinds of propositional utterances – descriptions of states of affairs (facts) or relations of ideas (definitions) – make any sense and the rest is just confusion.  I’m oversimplifying.  But the general idea is expressed in the seven ‘basic’ propositions of the Tractatus.

1. The world is everything that is the case.
2. What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.
3. The logical picture of the facts is the thought.
4. The thought is the significant proposition.
5. Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth function of itself.)
6. The general form of truth-function is [p, ξ, N(ξ)]. This is the general form of proposition.
7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

There are of course problems with this, but the idea that philosophy is an activity which is fundamentally therapeutic (or even quietist) is one that has stuck around.  But in his later (posthumously published) work, Wittgenstein attempts to make sense of linguistic meaning moved away from logic in the direction of ordinary language.  I won’t go into the reasons for his development in this direction here, but trying to find absolute definitions is replaced by looking at how language is used in practical social contexts (like working on a building site, acting in a play, cracking a joke or playing a game) since “the speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life” (Wittgenstein, 1953:§23).  Wittgenstein termed the relationship between utterances and contexts ‘language games‘ to reflect the idea that the ‘rules’ language follows are less like axioms of logic and are mostly to do with making sense in a particular situation.

If we want to resist giving final definitions of (especially new) concepts we shouldn’t talk so much about ‘games’ but instead in terms of family resemblance between uses of language.  Games are just the example Wittgenstein uses to illustrate the point about family resemblances since there are lots of things we call ‘games’ but there are often lots of difference between them (competitiveness, equipment, purpose, etc.).  The thing that binds them all together is our use of the same word to describe them:  “what is common to all these activities and what makes them into language or parts of language” (Wittgenstein, 1953:§65).

The implications of this are more significant for philosophy than they might as first appear.

But to my mind the idea is not that we should give up on the idea of tight or final definitions.  Rather, we just need to be aware of the fact that ‘defining’ is also a language game and one that is often of great use (such as in taxonomy).

When it comes to a neologism like ‘digital scholarship’ we aren’t necessarily looking at a referent which already exists in common usage. Wittgenstein’s point about language use must be taken in conjunction with the idea of the impossibility of private language.  Language doesn’t enable forms of life, but forms of life enable language.  It isn’t through the definition of ‘game’ that Wittgenstein shows this, but through the idea of a ‘family resemblance‘ between different practical uses of the same word.

It’s understandable that we should strive not to get bogged down in trying to define things but we should also recognise that in itself this can be an incredibly valuable activity, particularly when sketching out new developments in existing fields, or indeed when identifying new domains of study.

And that’s the point I struggled to make even this concisely two years ago.  But that’s philosophy for ya.  Or maybe just me.

Weller, M. (2011).  The Digital Scholar: How Technology is Changing Academic Practice. Bloomsbury Academic.

Wittgenstein, L. (1922). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. C.K. Ogden (trans.), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. G.E.M. Anscombe and R. Rhees (eds.), G.E.M. Anscombe (trans.), Oxford: Blackwell.

An interesting post by Young Hahn on map hacking has given me some food for thought with respect to the redesign of the OER Evidence Hub.  This article led me to another, Take Control of Your Maps by Paul Smith.

If I was a better programmer I could probably put some of the ideas to work right away, but as I am not I’ll have to be content with trying to draw some general principles out instead:

• The core web map UI paradigm is a continuous, pannable, zoomable surface
• Open mapping tools are better because they allow for more creative use of data through hacks
• Maps can be more than just complements to narrative:  they can provide narrative structure too
• Pins highlight locations but also anonymise them:   use illustrations instead like in the Sherlock Holmes demo
• Google Maps is good at what it does, but restrictive in some design respects and any manipulation is likely to play havoc with the APIs
• “Users interact with your mapping application primarily through a JavaScript or Flash library that listens to user events, requests tiles from the map server, assembles tiles in the viewport, and draws additional elements on the map, such as popups, markers, and vector shapes.”
• If you can style the geospatial elements then the user experience can be customised to a much greater degree
• KML is a newer alternative to XML
• Most mapping services make use of some Javascript

It’s worth considering making use of the tools provided by OGR to translate and filter data.  And here are some mapping libraries to check out:

• MapBox
• Leaflet
• D3.js.

The Scientific Annotated Review Database (or SARD), one of the major research outputs from the MOTILL Project, is now available at www.motill.eu.

The SARD collects more than fifty expert reviews of scientific literature relating to the areas of mobile and lifelong learning. It also contains commentary on a number of policy documents in these areas. Each review includes recommendations for policymakers who wish to promote or support this kind of lifelong learning.

The SARD is free to access and we hope that you will find it to be a useful resource.

JISC inspires UK colleges and universities in the innovative use of digital technologies, helping to maintain the UK’s position as a global leader in education. The New JISC strategy for 2010 is focused on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of universities and colleges, and places technology-enhanced learning at the core of the learning culture of the future.

A significantly enhanced culture of technology-enhanced learning is expected to be one of the main outcomes of this strategy. Students now expect a fully functioning technology-enhanced learning environment with content and resources available online 24 hours a day. A growing community of part-time and overseas students, lifelong learners and professionals, is enabled by flexible learning, meaning that its development will help to drive growth in the sector. A rich technology-enhanced learning culture will therefore also make UK colleges and universities more attractive in the domestic and global markets.

Support for technology-enhanced learning will include guidance on ways to provide new and innovative services, advice on designing a curriculum, a series of national programmes, and development of technical standards to support sharing between systems and institutions. Use of mobile technology, including smart phones, and online networks that support learning, are part of this new landscape.

Read the full executive summary.

A recent article in the Times Higher Education Supplement outlines the ways in which mobile technologies are beginning to become much more widely used in the classroom. The piece challenges widely held view about the role of mobile technology in the classroom situation and notes that many schools have overturned bans on the use of mobile phones in schools in recognition of their untapped potential to support learning. Projects at Sheffield College approach this from a contractual point of view, asking students to sign up to codes of behaviour for proper use at the start of each year.

Suggestions for manging the use of classroom mobile technology:

* Identify and support champions – volunteer teachers who are prepared to take some risks.
* Initiate discussions about using mobile phones for learning (perhaps using pupil voice work) and survey ownership, device capability and the ways mobile phones are already being used in the school.
* Involve those who have responsibility for curriculum, student management and technical support to plan how they will be used.
* Provide hands-on, small-scale opportunities for teachers to try out appropriate uses for mobile phones.
* Encourage teachers to design activities that make the learning purpose clear and to anticipate management issues at the classroom level (such as rules and etiquette).
* Inform parents of the learning purposes for mobile phones and involve them in establishing appropriate ownership, management and ethical arrangements.
* Anticipate and address technical issues ranging from battery-charging to network access, security and data protection.
* Develop new school policies that shift the focus of attention away from the device to the uses, security and behavioural issues that are the real concern.

Carly Shuler draws on interviews with mobile learning experts as well as current research and industry trends to illustrate how mobile devices might be more broadly used for learning. Examining over 25 handheld learning products and research projects in the U.S. and abroad, the report highlights early evidence of how these devices can help revolutionize teaching and learning. Pockets of Potential also outlines mobile market trends and innovations, as well as key opportunities, such as mobile’s ability to reach underserved populations and provide personalized learning experiences.

The report highlights five opportunities to seize mobile learning’s unique attributes to improve education:

1. Encourage “anywhere, anytime” learning
Mobile devices allow students to gather, access, and process information outside the classroom. They can encourage learning in a real-world context, and help bridge school, afterschool, and home environments.

2. Reach underserved children
Because of their relatively low cost and accessibility in low-income communities, handheld devices
can help advance digital equity, reaching and inspiring populations “at the edges” — children from economically disadvantaged communities and those from developing countries.

3. Improve 21st-century social interactions
Mobile technologies have the power to promote and foster collaboration and communication, which are deemed essential for 21st-century success.

4. Fit with learning environments
Mobile devices can help overcome many of the challenges associated with larger technologies, as they fit more naturally within various learning environments.

5. Enable a personalized learning experience
Not all children are alike; instruction should be adaptable to individual and diverse learners. There are significant opportunities for genuinely supporting differentiated, autonomous, and individualized learning through mobile devices.

Read the full report here or download the executive summary.

The MOTILL Project will be disseminated at the MoLeNET conference on 1st December 2009. http://www.molenet.org.uk/

The conference aims to…

• disseminate nationally the good practice, lessons learned, tips, tools and advice arising from MoLeNET to-date
• share research, and evidence of impact, from mobile learning projects including the MoLeNET programme
• demonstrate technologies, systems, learning materials and techniques
• provide an opportunity for networking and knowledge sharing
• encourage debate and inform strategic thinking about the future of technology enhanced teaching and learning

As well as following the MOTILL project on this blog or through the main portal, you can now also keep up to date through a number of Web 2.0 applications.  Here are some of the ways you can stay in touch.

You can also find more information on the project at the dedicated Open University pages.

An interesting article from boston.com describes the kind of generational shift that is taking place with respect to the uptake of new technologies.   The iPhone in particular in singled out for being intuitively accessible to infants, lacking a keyboard or mouse and being operated with a touch screen.

These “mobile kids” are the purest breed yet of natives to the wireless world where the rest of us are refugees. Their fluency with technology and expectations of instant access to everything will eclipse even those of their older siblings and cousins, the “digital kids” weaned on desktop computers wired to the Web.

But in addition to being irresistable to young children, mobile technology can actually promote their development. The article draws on Piaget’s model of cognitive development to show how mobile technology has advanced to the point where it can bring real pedagogical benefits.

“The future that we envisioned for so long is finally starting to happen,” says Warren Buckleitner, educational psychologist. “I’d love to bring Piaget back from the grave and give him an iPhone.”

Read the full article here.

Castle College in Nottingham are the beneficiaries of a sunstantial grant awarded by MoLeNET, the mobile learning network.

STUDENTS in Nottingham will benefit from £100,000 of new equipment – including Nintendo Wii consoles and iPods.

Castle College is hoping the gadgets will encourage 300 children from disadvantaged backgrounds to learn to use modern technology.

It will use £40,000 to increase its wireless internet capacity, so students can access the internet all over its campuses.

Up to £60,000 will be used to buy Nintendo Wiis, iPod Touch MP3 players and the new Nintendo DSi, which is a portable games console with a handheld camera.

Lyn Lall, Castle College’s development manager for new technologies, said: “Innovative methods and materials will make the learning experience more personalised and fun, which will result in increased engagement, retention and achievement levels of students.

The devices will be used as to support the development of literacy, numeracy and IT in vulnerable young people who are not in education, employment or training.  Read on here.

Here’s an interesting article about the development of contact lens technology towards a personal ‘heads up’ display which will display contextual information, translate in real time, relay information from the internet, and so on. Another interesting application of this kind of technology is biomonitoring. Just as a… blood test reveals all kinds of information about a person’s health, so the surface of the eye’s chemical composition can tell us about nutrition levels, blood glucose and other biomarkers. This information could be transmitted wirelessly and monitored in real time. So this kind of technology could be used to help individuals learn to live with a range of medical conditions.

From The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, a special issue on Song, Songs and Singing.

Edited by Jeanette Bicknell and John Andrew Fisher

From the introduction:

The topic of song, songs, and singing extends across a vast number of art forms and genres back into prehistory. It stands astride the high-low art continuum, ranging from classical music to popular and folk music. Unlike other art forms that include both high and low genres (such as movies and novels), song and songs have always had multiple functions other than being objects of aesthetic appreciation. The uses of vocal music range from the sacred (sung as hymns as well as heard as masses, anthems, and so on), to communal (campfire songs and soccer fans’ chants), to ceremonial (Jerusalem sung at public events, Barber’s Agnus Dei performed at memorials), to music for entertainment and for dancing; unlike other art forms, songs and singing play a role in everyday life.

As a study of human action, ethics is particularly attuned to changes in the world around us. Our lives are profoundly shaped by new technology, globalization, climate change, and changing social roles – raising ethical questions about the choices we make in response to these far-reaching developments.

In order to celebrate the publication of The International Encyclopedia of Ethics,  we have curated a virtual collection of over 50 journal articles and book chapters on global ethics with a special focus on Chinese researchers and academics.

Click here to read the introduction in English or translated into Chinese, then read the articles for free!

Embodiment has been a central theme in feminist philosophy from its early days. The essays selected here illuminate how the topic of embodiment in general has been broached over the years by Hypatia authors, how it has developed, and what topics have received the most focus. Hypatia has been the site of some of the most innovative feminist theorizing on this subject, from the groundbreaking early work of Luce Irigaray and Ann Ferguson to the innovative developments of Kelly Oliver, Lois McNay, Margaret Whitford, and Alison Stone, just to name a few.

There are many ways to define what embodiment has meant in feminist philosophy, and this collection showcases the expanse of issues that the concept of embodiment has engendered. In general, embodiment has signaled the idea that there is a constitutive relationship of the lived body to thought, to knowledge, and to ethics, taking leave of the modern idea that bodies can be left behind as the mind does its work. Such dualism was rarely allowed women, after all. But, beyond thinking our way past dualism, feminist philosophers have also sought new ways to conceptualize the materiality of bodies, the discursive nature of embodied experience, and the contested figure of the maternal body. Within feminist theory itself there has occurred a lively debate over dualism, naturalism, essentialism, and gender normativity in relationship to embodiment.

Read Linda Martin Alcoff’s complete Introduction here.

Read the Embodiment Virtual Issue here.

Editor in Chief: Hugh LaFollette
(Read an interview with Hugh)

We are delighted to announce the publication of The International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Unmatched in scholarship and scope, The International Encyclopedia of Ethics is the definitive single-source reference work on Ethics for students, scholars and professionals, publishing online and in print February 2013. Work on the Encyclopedia has been shepherded by an Editor-in-Chief and two Associate Editors. Its content was shaped by the distinguished members of the Editorial Board, and all entries have been blind reviewed by an independent Review Board.

This ground-breaking 9-volume reference work, presented in A-Z format:

• Comprises over 700 entries, ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 words in length, written by an international cast of subject experts
• Is arranged across 9 fully cross-referenced volumes including a comprehensive index
• Provides clear definitions and explanations of all areas of ethics including the topics, movements, arguments, and key figures in Normative Ethics, Metaethics, and Practical Ethics
• Covers the major philosophical, legal and religious traditions
• Offers an unprecedented level of authority, accuracy and balance with all entries being blind peer-reviewed

Wiley Spotlight Apps are essential for all researchers, faculty, students and professionals. Philosophy Spotlight gives you:

• Up-to-the-minute abstracts from leading journals in the field
• Cutting-edge Special and Virtual Issues, with free content
• Latest Video Abstracts, Expert Publishing Workshops, and Informative Podcasts
• Updates and news on key conferences
• And more!

Whether you want to keep track of broad trends across philosophy  or focus on a subfield, the Spotlight App is an indispensable tool for your research and teaching.

For this special issue of Thought we invite papers that make a contribution to either the metaphysics of time or of modality, or that illuminate the connections between them.

Metaphysicians of modality argue over whether ontology extends beyond the actual just as metaphysicians of time argue over whether ontology extends beyond the present; and we might also ask whether it is a stable position to hold that reality includes the non-present but not the non-actual. There are modal analogues of McTaggart’s infamous argument for the unreality of time, and we can ask whether the modal and temporal arguments stand or fall together. We might wonder whether trans-world identity should be treated differently from identity across time, and whether if existence is contingent it must also be temporary, etc.

Papers should correspond to the standard Thought guidelines and be no longer than 4500 words, including footnotes. Papers are to be submitted before 31st May 2013. When submitting please ensure you select article type as “The Metaphysics of Time and Modality Special Issue” to ensure your paper is reviewed via the special issue route.

Please see Author Guidelines for details on how to submit.

This video abstract accompanies the Philosophy Compass article The Epistemology of Religious Diversity in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion by Amir Dastmalchian.

Our showcase of the ‘Philosophers on Film’ series continues today with this interview with Prof Michael Lynch, interviewed at the Pluralism Workshop. The goal of the series is to help foster among the public a clearer idea of what pursuing philosophy involves today and what its contemporary practitioners are like.

Click here to see the complete ‘Philosophers on Film’ series

About the NIP: The Northern Institute of Philosophy (NIP) is dedicated to excellence in research in the core areas of analytic philosophy. Directed by Professor Crispin Wright, the Institute is home to teams of senior researchers, postdoctoral fellows and PhD students, working at the leading edge of contemporary philosophy to produce research of the highest standard. The Institute holds principles of collaboration in research to be paramount, both within and across Institute projects.

Our showcase of the ‘Philosophers on Film’ series continues today with this interview with Prof Crispin Wright. The goal of the series is to help foster among the public a clearer idea of what pursuing philosophy involves today and what its contemporary practitioners are like.

Click here to see the complete ‘Philosophers on Film’ series

About the NIP: The Northern Institute of Philosophy (NIP) is dedicated to excellence in research in the core areas of analytic philosophy. Directed by Professor Crispin Wright, the Institute is home to teams of senior researchers, postdoctoral fellows and PhD students, working at the leading edge of contemporary philosophy to produce research of the highest standard. The Institute holds principles of collaboration in research to be paramount, both within and across Institute projects.

Read the second issue of Thought: A Journal of Philosophy for free!

Thought, edited by Crispin Wright, John Divers and Carrie Jenkins and published on behalf of the Northern Institute of Philosophy, is dedicated to the publication of short (less than 4,500 words), original, philosophical papers in the areas of epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of logic, philosophy of math, and philosophy of mind.

The editors of Thought hope to expose the readers of Thought to the most central and significant issues and positions in contemporary philosophy that fall under its remit. To that end, all readers are encouraged to continue the discussion in the new Thought Blog, which provides a forum for readers of and contributors to the journal to discuss the latest papers.

Read Thought‘s second issue here, and then register for the Thought Blog to share your thoughts!