Online research in philosophy

• home page

• Faculty, Earlham College
• Research staff, Harvard University
• PhD, Northwestern University, 1978.

• None specified

• 17th/18th Century Philosophy
• 19th Century Philosophy
• Applied Ethics
• Epistemology
• Logic and Philosophy of Logic
• Metaphilosophy
• Normative Ethics
• Philosophy of Computing and Information
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Probability

I left my teaching position at Earlham in 2003 in order to work full-time on open access to research. But I still retain a research position at Earlham. I'm also the Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, a Faculty Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Senior Researcher at SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), and the Open Access Project Director at Public Knowledge. Until I can add my publications (or links to them) here at PhilPapers, see those at my personal web site <bit.ly/suber> or the Harvard repository <bit.ly/dash-suber>. PhilPapers is harvesting the latter for philosophy papers but so far (September 2011) missing most of mine. Follow me on Google+ <bit.ly/suber-gplus>.

36 items found. Sort by: publication yearfirst authorviewingsaddition date Peter Suber, Creating an Intellectual Commons Through Open Access. in Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom (eds.), Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice, MIT Press, 2006. No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Open Access in the United States. in Neil Jacobs (ed.), Open Access: Key strategic, technical and economic aspects, Chandos Publishing, 2006. No categories   My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Trends Favoring Open Access. Cyberinfrastructure Technology Watch (CTWatch), in a special issue on The Coming Revolution in Scholarly Communications & Cyberinfrastructure, Vol. 3, No. 3, Fall 2007. No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Unbinding Knowledge: A Proposal for Providing Open Access to Past Research Articles, Starting with the Most Important. in Giandomenico Sica (ed.), Open Access, Open Problems, Milan: Polimetrica, October 20, 2006, pp. 43-58. No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Self-Determination and Selfhood in Recent Legal Cases. The Self in Metaphysics Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber (2011). Suber: Leader of a Leaderless Revolution. Information Today, July/August 2011. Interview with Peter Suber by Richard Poynder, on open access to research. Computer Ethics, Misc in Applied Ethics Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber (2003). A Sceptical Theory of Morality and Law. International Studies in Philosophy 35 (4):134-135. Moral Skepticism in Meta-Ethics Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber (1998). The Case of the Speluncean Explorers: Nine New Opinions. Routledge. The Case of the Speluncean Explorers by Lon Fuller first appeared in the Harvard Law Review in 1949. It has since become the most famous fictitious legal case in the US and is used widely by law schools. The case revolves around an episode in the year 4,300. A band of explorers become trapped in a cave and are forced to cannibalize a member of their team. When they are rescued, five Supreme Court judges provide opinions on what should be (...) done with them. Peter Suber has added nine new opinions along feminist, communitarian, economic, constructionist, postmodern theories of law. The complete Fuller article is included in the beginning of the book. Why read this book? One reason is to get beyond sloganeering about "judicial activism" and "activist judges". The book is an enjoyable and even-handed way to understand what the debate is about. It doesn't tell you what to think, but illustrates the contending positions and lets you think for yourself. It will show you how judges with different moral and political beliefs interpret written law, how they use precedents, how they conceive the proper role of judges, how they conceive the relationship between law and morality, and how they defend their judicial practices against criticism. It anchors all of this in a Supreme Court hearing of a gripping, concrete case on which real people disagree. (Challenge: Take any view of how judges should interpret law, especially any view that makes it sound easy, and try it out on this case. How well can it respect the facts and law? How well can it answer the objections from judges who take other views? How well does it deliver justice?) The book uses no jargon and assumes no prior knowledge of law or legal philosophy. (shrink) Philosophy of Law $4.93 used   $26.09 new   $34.02 direct from Amazon   Amazon page Direct download (2 more)     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber (1994). Question-Begging Under a Non-Foundational Model of Argument. Argumentation 8 (3):241-250. I find (as others have found) that question-begging is formally valid but rationally unpersuasive. More precisely, it ought to be unpersuasive, although it can often persuade. Despite its formal validity, question-begging fails to establish its conclusion; in this sense it fails under a classical or foundationalist model of argument. But it does link its conclusion to its premises by means of acceptable rules of inference; in this sense it succeeds under a non-classical, non-foundationalist model of argument which is spelled out (...) in the essay. However, even for the latter model question-begging fails to link the conclusion to premises that the unconvinced would find more acceptable than the conclusion. The essay includes reflections on the conditions under which the circularity of mutually supporting claims can avoid question-begging and legitimately be persuasive. (shrink) No categories Direct download (3 more)     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber (1990). A Case Study in 'Ad Hominem' Arguments: Fichte's "Science of Knowledge". Philosophy and Rhetoric 23 (1):12 - 42. Fichte's narrative persona in the Science of Knowledge is obnoxious. I try to disentangle regrettable signs of immaturity and paranoia from justifiable ad hominem arguments. Many of Fichte's ad hominem attacks on metaphysical realists are justified by his metaphysics and epistemology. We cannot criticize an important class of these arguments unless we criticize his epistemology and metaphysics. They are not matters of "style" separable from "substance". I show this inseparability, and point out a few inconsistencies, but otherwise do not comment (...) on Fichte's "substance". (shrink) Johann Gottlieb Fichte in 19th Century Philosophy Direct download (2 more)     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber (1989). The Reflexivity of Change: The Case of Language Norms. Journal of Speculative Philosophy 3 (2):100 - 129. Introduction Language Norms "Norms" From "Facts" The Constitutive A Posteriori "Facts" From "Norms" Mutability of Norms Self-Stabilization Amendment Through Violation Preposterous Norms Reflexive and Irreflexive Hierarchies Noticed and Unnoticed Changes Grounds of Phonetic Change The Logic of Normative Change Bibliography Notes Second Thoughts.. No categories Direct download (2 more)     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber (1988). What is Software? Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2 (2):89-119. In defining the concept of software, I try at first to distinguish software from data, noise, and abstract patterns of information with no material embodiment. But serious objections prevent any of these distinctions from remaining stable. The strong thesis that software is pattern per se, or syntactical form, is initially refined to overcome obvious difficulties; but further arguments show that the refinements are trivial and that the strong thesis is defensible. Computation and Physical Systems, Misc in Philosophy of Computing and Information Software in Philosophy of Computing and Information Direct download (2 more)     My bibliography     Export citation   Steven J. Bartlett & Peter Suber (eds.) (1987). Self-Reference: Reflections on Reflexivity. Distributors for the United States and Canada, Kluwer Academic Publishers. Self-Knowledge, Misc in Philosophy of Mind $125.00 used   $318.97 new   $319.00 direct from Amazon   Amazon page   My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Amendment. If the fundamental law, or constitution, of a nation cannot be changed by legal means, then it cannot adapt to changing circumstances; as the disparity with circumstances widens, the risk of revolution increases. But if it can be changed too easily, then the fundamental principles and institutions it establishes are at risk of being swept away by a majority momentarily enraptured with a new idea. An amendment clause permits fundamental change, courting the latter risk, but it makes that change difficult, (...) courting the former. It aspires to capture the inconsistent virtues of stability and flexibility, protecting what the enacting generation thinks wise, but permitting future generations to think otherwise. (shrink) No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Analogy Exercises for Teaching Legal Reasoning. Legal reasoning is not the same as the reasoning in mathematics or the physical sciences. It is like them. Specifying the likeness in more detail, and deciding whether there is more likeness than unlikeness, are the kinds of tasks that legal reasoning is better adapted to do than mathematical or scientific reasoning. Legal Reasoning and Adjudication in Philosophy of Law Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Appendix 3 Nomic: A Game of Self-Amendment [Note 1]. If law-making is a game, then it is a game in which changing the rules is a move. Lawmaking is more than changing the rules of law-making, of course, and more than a game. But a real game may model the self-amending character of the legal system and leave the rest out. While self-amendment appears to be an esoteric feature of law, capturing it in a game creates a remarkably complete microcosm of a functional legal system. No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, A Year of Teaching with Dialog. Most philosophers use Philosopher's Index; many use it online. Few know that the online version is only one of roughly 400 databases available from Dialog Information Services. There are other databases useful for philosophers (notably Francis from Questel Inc.), but I've had a good reason recently to focus on those available from Dialog: I've had free connect-time for over a year. No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Civil Disobedience. Civil disobedience is a form of protest in which protestors deliberately violate a law. Classically, they violate the law they are protesting, such as segregation or draft laws, but sometimes they violate other laws which they find unobjectionable, such as trespass or traffic laws. Most activists who perform civil disobedience are scrupulously nonviolent, and willingly accept legal penalties. The purpose of civil disobedience can be to publicize an unjust law or a just cause; to appeal to the conscience of the (...) public; to force negotiation with recalcitrant officials; to "clog the machine" (in Thoreau's phrase) with political prisoners; to get into court where one can challenge the constitutionality of a law; to exculpate oneself, or to put an end to one's personal complicity in the injustice which flows from obedience to unjust law —or some combination of these. While civil disobedience in a broad sense is as old as the Hebrew midwives' defiance of Pharaoh, most of the moral and legal theory surrounding it, as well as most of the instances in the street, have been inspired by Thoreau, Gandhi, and King. In this article we will focus on the moral arguments for and against its use in a democracy. (shrink) No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Is Philosophy Dead? Some say that physics is nearing its end because it will soon answer all its questions; I am not that optimistic. Others claim that philosophy is already at an end because its questions will never be answered and, perhaps, should never have been asked; I am not that pessimistic. I bring the non-news that, as usual, neither our successes nor our failures are at an end. No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Infinite Reflections. Galileo's Paradox Contradictory or Counter-Intuitive? Imagination v. Conception Infinity as a Positive Idea Do We Experience Anything Infinite? The Sublimity of the Infinite Conclusion Bibliography Notes Appendix: A Crash Course in the Mathematics of Infinite Sets.. No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Logical Rudeness. Consider the following exchanges: 1. Gerda: So you believe that all belief is the product of custom and circumstance (or: childhood buffets, class struggle...). Isn't that position self-limiting? Mustn't you see yourself as reflecting only a single complex of circumstances? Grobian: Your objection is inapplicable, for it is merely the product of blind forces. Moreover, your childhood buffets were pernicious and regrettable, for they have set you against this truth. No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Legal Reasoning After Post-Modern Critiques of Reason [Note 1]. These critiques and the ways of thinking made possible in their wake tend to be called post-modern, a term which is vague and even a little irritating. It would be more precise and descriptive to speak instead of post- Enlightenment critiques of reason. Hume is arguably the first post-Enlightenment thinker, and after Hume these critiques of reason developed further in Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, and were then taken up by many lesser, 20th century thinkers. If the Enlightenment was the (...) age in which human reason in the form of argument and evidence superseded authority in the form of church and state, in the grounding of scientific, philosophical, moral, and political claims, then the critiques of reason I want to talk about are all post-Enlightenment. (shrink) Legal Reasoning and Adjudication in Philosophy of Law Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Open Access Overview. This is an introduction to open access (OA) for those who are new to the concept. I hope it's short enough to read, long enough to be useful, and organized to let you skip around and dive into detail only where you want detail. It doesn't cover every nuance or answer every objection. But for those who read it, it should cover enough territory to prevent the misunderstandings that delayed progress in our early days. No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Paternalism. "Paternalism" comes from the Latin pater, meaning to act like a father, or to treat another person like a child. ("Parentalism" is a gender-neutral anagram of "paternalism".) In modern philosophy and jurisprudence, it is to act for the good of another person without that person's consent, as parents do for children. It is controversial because its end is benevolent, and its means coercive. Paternalists advance people's interests (such as life, health, or safety) at the expense of their liberty. In this, (...) paternalists suppose that they can make wiser decisions than the people for whom they act. Sometimes this is based on presumptions about their own wisdom or the foolishness of other people, and can be dismissed as presumptuous. But sometimes it is not. It can be based on relatively good knowledge, as in the case of paternalism over young children or incompetent adults. Sometimes the role of paternalist is thrust upon the unwilling, as when we find ourselves the custodian and proxy for an unconscious or severely retarded relative. Paternalism is a temptation in every arena of life where people hold power over others: in childrearing, education, therapy, and medicine. But it is perhaps nowhere as divisive as in criminal law. Whenever the state acts to protect people from themselves, it seeks their good; but by doing so through criminal law, it does so coercively, often against their will. (shrink) No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Population Changes and Constitutional Amendments: Federalism Versus Democracy. The Problem Background Some Political History, Pre-1790 Federalist and Republican Principles Some Demographic History, 1790-1980 To What Extent Have the Possible Dangers Become Actual? The Discriminatory Impact and Prospects for Future Amendments Remedies Conclusion Appendix Table 1. The Possibility of Federalist Minority Amendment: Decade by Decade Table 2. The Possibility of Federalist Minority Amendment: Amendment by Amendment Table 3. Discriminatory Impact of Population Changes Table 4. Relative Strength of Voice of Citizens of the Various States Notes Second Thoughts.. Democracy in Social and Political Philosophy Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Review of George Dyson, Darwin Among The Machines. [REVIEW] Dyson's book is an argument disguised as an intellectual history. The argument is that all intelligence is collective, in the way that human intelligence emerges from the collection of unintelligent neurons, and that a global collective intelligence is now emerging from the growing interconnections among human beings and their machines. The history traces the rise of computation and thinking about machine intelligence from Hobbes to the present. The history is fascinating and detailed. The thesis about collective intelligence is fascinating but (...) lacking the detail which would make it more than merely suggestive. (shrink) No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Review of Jeff Mason, Philosophical Rhetoric. [REVIEW] Can we interpret human reason simultaneously as a product of neurochemistry and natural selection and as a transcendental standard? Jeff Mason asks the analogous question of philosophical writing. Can we interpret philosophical discourse as "rhetorical," embodied in language, and designed to persuade historical audiences, and at the same time preserve its traditional intention to disclose truths that transcend language, history, and audiences? Mason argues that these polar attitudes toward philosophical writing are untenable precisely when they exclude each other. This is (...) a significant project with important literary and metaphilosophical consequences. (shrink) No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Six Exploding Knots. I call these six hitches "exploding" knots because they untie easily and completely with one tug of the ripcord. Unlike slipped knots that untie with a ripcord, these knots leave absolutely no tangle. Yet they give up nothing in strength or ease of tying. To learn to tie them, jump to the illustrations and skip the commentary. In each illustration, the line labelled "R" is the ripcord ("running part"). The line labelled "S" is to be attached to the load ("standing (...) part"). Tighten the knot with the "S" line. To decide which of these knots is best for which application, see the table at the end, which presupposes some of the text you might have skipped. After learning to tie the knots from the illustrations, read the text if only for safety issues. These knots are "probably original" in Clifford Ashley's sense of this phrase. (shrink) No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Self-Reference in Law. We know from more than two millenia of experience that self-referential statements, such as the liar's ("This very statement is false"), can be debated by philosophers and logicians for millenia without producing consensus on their solutions. We should not be surprised, then, if self-referential laws produce paradoxes which puzzle lawyers. What is surprising, though, is that some of these paradoxes bother only the logicians and philosophers who study law from outside, and do not bother lawyers at all. This fact should (...) interest philosophers of law even more than the paradoxes themselves. (shrink) No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Saving Machines From Themselves: The Ethics of Deep Self-Modification. We human beings do have the power to modify our deep structure, through drugs and surgery. But we cannot yet use this power with enough precision to make deep changes to our neural structure without high risk of death or disability. There are two reasons why we find ourselves in this position. First, our instruments of self-modification are crude. Second, we have very limited knowledge about where and how to apply our instruments to get specific desirable effects. For the same (...) reason, we don't even have good knowledge about what effects are physically possible. (shrink) Disability in Applied Ethics Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, The Database Paradox: Unlimited Information and the False Blessing of 'Objectivity'. For a conference at my college I was asked to think about how my teaching —not my research— would be affected by rapid, cheap, and simple access by computer to all the published literature of the human race. Forget what impediments stand in the way of this hypothetical future and imagine that your campus has the means for you and your students to locate, search, sort, copy, and store anything in digital form that has ever been in print. How (...) would you answer? (shrink) No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, The Paradox of Self-Amendment in American Constitutional Law. Logical paradoxes in the strict sense produce statements like those of the Liar ("This very statement is false") that are false if true, and true if false. They resist rational solution or at least divide logicians for centuries of apparently irreconcilable wrangling. What happens when similar paradoxes arise in law? Constitutional Law in Philosophy of Law Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Unsimplifying Political Correctness: When the Right and Left Are Right and Wrong. A set of routine academic controversies has recently been fanned into a cause célèbre. I call the controversies 'routine' because they concern the design of curricula and syllabi, the regulation of campus life, and the recruitment of faculty and students. These are important but ordinary affairs for a college or university. They call for choices that arise from fundamental convictions on the purpose of education, the nature of knowledge, the firmness of standards, the value of community, and the mission of (...) the institution. So dealing with these routine affairs is routinely attended with controversy. What is new is that the public is watching closely as academics thrash through these controversies nowadays. At least some journalists and politicians are watching closely and talking loudly about what they see. These conflicts would be what they ought to be, occasions for self-examination and growth, if they were not absolutized by observers who have raised the stakes by raising their voices and simplifying the issues. (shrink) No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Years Later, The Questions Remain. Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) has been called the greatest logician since Aristotle. He was unquestionably the greatest logician of the 20th century, which has been the greatest century for logic since Aristotle's. Despite this stature, his name is little known outside professional circles of logic and mathematics, and astonishingly little is known about his life. His low profile cannot be due to the fact that his major achievements are complex and demanding, unintelligible to the uninitiated, for that is also true of (...) his best friend, Albert Einstein. Nor can it be that Gödel was more conventional than Einstein. He did comb his hair and wear socks, but Gödel's reclusive and reserved personality, thin owlish appearance, forbidding glances, hypochondria, and paranoia are at least as easy to romanticize as Einstein's eccentricities. Part of the cause of his narrower fame must lie in the fact that Einstein's theories were acclaimed as triumphs, while the initial judgment on Gödel's theorems was that they constituted a first-rate calamity for logic and mathematics. (shrink) No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Is Your College Ready to Tackle More Than Sweatshops? If your college discovered that its sweatshirts were made in sweatshops by workers paid below the minimum wage, it would probably yank the contract immediately and find a new vendor. But what if your heating-oil supplier pollutes? What if your temp agency discriminates against Mexican-American employees? Applied Ethics, Misc in Applied Ethics Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation   Peter Suber, Open Access, Impact, and Demand: Why Some Authors Self-Archive Their Articles. Before Jonathan Wren's study came out BMJ, April 12, 2005 ) we knew that open-access (OA) copies of scientific journal articles published in non-OA journals were a fairly small subset of the overall journal literature. Wren studied just which subset it was, and found that papers from high-impact journals were more likely to have free online copies at other locations around the web than papers from low-impact journals. No categories Direct download     My bibliography     Export citation

Is this list right? BibTeX / EndNote / RIS / etc Export this page: Choose a format.. Formatted textPlain textBibTeXZoteroEndNoteReference Manager Limit to items. Viewing options show categories categorization shortcuts hide abstracts open articles in new windows Open Category Editor Off-campus access Using PhilPapers from home? Click here to configure this browser for off-campus access. Monitor this page Be alerted of all new items appearing on this page. Choose how you want to monitor it: Email   RSS feed About PhilPapers General Editors: David Bourget (London) David Chalmers (ANU, NYU) Area Editors: Anthony Beavers David Bourget Berit Brogaard Margaret Cameron David Chalmers Gabriele Contessa Rafael De Clercq Catarina Dutilh Novaes Pablo Gilabert Hans Halvorson Jonathan Ichikawa Jonathan Kvanvig Øystein Linnebo JeeLoo Liu Paul Livingston Brandon Look Michiru Nagatsu Susana Nuccetelli Gualtiero Piccinini Darrell Rowbottom Constantine Sandis Jonathan Schaffer Thomas Senor Robin Smith Robert Sparrow Daniel Star Jussi Suikkanen Lynne Tirrell John Simpson Wilkins Other editors Contact us Learn more about PhilPapers