Sunday, 18 Mar 2007
Machery, Edouard amd Luc Faucher. “Social construction and the concept of race.” Philosophy of Science 72 (5): Dec 2005 Proceedings of the 2004 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Part I Contributed Papers, ed. by Miriam Solomon: 1208-1219.
[BTW, if anyone noticed the discrepancy in my comment that I received this issue on 16 Mar and the date of this issue, well, PSA has had some issues with their publication schedule "lately."]
This is an interesting article which tries to provide a framework that allows for the integration of the constructionist approach and cognitive/evolutionary in the domain of race. I believe it is probably a good step forward. Even more interesting, this paper is much more anthropological than philosophical, and especially good at pointing out where empirical research supports a hypothesis and where more empirical work is needed.
Thus, not everything in this journal is pure mental masturbation, which is probably one of the main reasons I still am a member of this organization. Plus, it’s cheap! $25/year for students. I’m sure I could get the contents online, but for that low price I get to indulge my highlighting and marginal writing proclivities.
Chang, Hasok. “A case for old-fashioned observability, and a reconstructed constructive empiricism.” Philosophy of Science 72 (5): Dec 2005 Proceedings of the 2004 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Part I Contributed Papers, ed. by Miriam Solomon: 876-887.
Quite an interesting article which takes on the current consensus “that observability is an attribute of objects rather than of qualities” (877). Very readable, and I find myself pretty much in agreement.
As another example of the wonderful snarkiness exhibited in philosophical writings, here is Chang commenting on the privileging of vision (“ocularism”) in observability:
Vollmer (2000, 361, 365) says that caffeine is an observable entity because we can discern its molecular structure through X-ray crystallography. I say caffeine is observable through the buzz I feel after I ingest it (and indirectly observable through the unimaginable number of people who stay awake at philosophy conferences) (879).
Svenonius, Elaine. (1988) “Design of controlled vocabularies in the context of emerging technologies.” Library Science with a Slant to Documentation and Information Studies 25 (4), December 1988: 215-227.
While somewhat dated, this is a short paper that would be good for many in our profession to read discussing the potential role for classification schemes and thesauri in online systems.
Sunday – Monday, 18 – 19 Mar
Tudhope, Douglas, Ceri Binding, Dorothee Blocks, and Daniel Cunliffe. (2006) “Query expansion via conceptual distance in thesaurus indexed collections.” Journal of Documentation 62 (4): 509-533. doi 10.1108/00220410610673873
Intriguing. I’m finding Douglas Tudhope one to watch or, at least, to read.
Monday, 19 Mar 2007
McCallum, Andrew. (2005) “Information extraction: Distilling structured data from unstructured text.” Social Computing 3 (9), Dec. 2005. Available online.
Pribbenow, Simone. (2002) “Merynomic relationships: From classical mereology to complex part-whole relations.” In Green, Bean and Myaeng, eds. The Semantics of relationships: An interdisciplinary perspective. Information Science and Knowledge Management series, v. 3. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002.
Yes, another Green item; for fun and enlightenment. This is the companion volume to Bean & Green 2001.
Wednesday, 21 Mar 2007
Intemann, Kristen. “Feminism, underdetermination, and values in science.” Philosophy of Science 72 (5): Dec 2005 Proceedings of the 2004 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Part I Contributed Papers, ed. by Miriam Solomon: 1001-1012.
An excellent article showing that, unlike argued by some, the Duhem-Quine thesis and underdetermination do not leave a logical gap between theory and observation that might be filled with feminist political or social values. She does, though, go on to show how it might be the case that feminist contextual values can play a legitimate role in science.
My claim is that whether contextual values could play a legitimate role in justifying or applying constitutive values will depend on the content of the goals of science, or on whether contextual values can promote the aims of sicence, and not as a consequence of underdetermination (1010)
Thursday, 22 Mar 2007
Bollen, Johan, Marko A. Rodriguez, and Herbert Van de Sompel. (2006) Journal status. [pdf at arxiv]
OK, it’s only taken me a year to get to this; found at Christina’s LIS Rant last March. Interesting article, maybe I ought to go read this discussion about it, which is what she was really referencing….
Thursday – Saturday, 22 – 24 Mar 2007
Veltman, Kim H. (2004) “Towards a semantic web for culture.” Journal of Digital Information 4 (4) [abstract]
Found 10 March 2007 while doing a Google search on Carol A. Bean. Excellent article that points up many of the issues in knowledge organization not addressed by the Semantic Web vision, much less most of our current KO structures.
Traces the meaning of meaning, the definition of definition, classes of relationships, etc. over the last 2500 years and shows why the Semantic Web, AI, E-R diagram types, etc. have a very impoverished understanding of what it is that they are attempting to do.
Recommended for anyone interested in meaning, relationships, culture, the Semantic Web, databases, and/or KO.
Friday, 23 Mar 2007
Crawford, Walt. (2007) Cites & Insights 7 (4), April 2007 [pdf]
Saturday, 24 Mar 2007
Cordero, Alberto. “Contemporary nativism, scientific texture, and the moral limits of free inquiry.” Philosophy of Science 72 (5): Dec 2005 Proceedings of the 2004 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Part I Contributed Papers, ed. by Miriam Solomon: 1220-1231.
Wow! A philosophy article that everyone I know ought to be able to read and understand. It’s a pretty good article addressing an argument by Philip Kitcher that research into Darwinist psychology may very well have adverse effects on peoples already disadvantaged and, thus, that such research should be (somewhat) proscribed. Cordero puts forth a pretty good defense, but I think he clearly misunderstands typical human behavior (in our current social climate) to misuse scientific understanding—through laziness, willfulness, or any other factor—along with having too much faith in the “scientific method.” Worth the read, though.
Beghtol, Clare. (2001) “Relationships in classificatory structure and meaning.” In Bean & Green, Relationships in the Organization of Knowledge. 99-113.
Re-read this while working on my book review. Originally read 1 Feb 2007. Begthol’s premise is:
that changing knowledge structures and the increased globalization of information exchange require rethinking all aspects of bibliographic classification systems, including the kinds of relationships we habitually include in the systems (99).
While it rarely seems as radical as that statement sounds, she does a good job pointing out many of the limitations of relationship structures within our classification systems, and the kinds of new structures (very generally) that we need. This article fits quite well with the Veltman article (see above).
Paglia, Camille. Break, blow, burn. 2005. Read:
George Herbert, “Church-monuments”
George Herbert , “The Quip”
3 responses so far ↓
1 Christina Pikas // Mar 25, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Interesting that you like the Tudhope et al article. I thought it had a lot of promise from the title, but there were some big problems — like how the people evaluating the system were the same as those who built it, how they had an expert there and instead of trying to gain all the knowledge from them they could, they just sort of said they were wrong, the whole idea of co-operative evaluation (they told the tester what to do, answered questions, and corrected them — not a test of the system!)… probably more, but it’s been a couple of weeks.
2 Mark // Mar 25, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Christina, you are absolutely correct! I also should have paid better attention to the limitations of the user evaluation.
In my “defense,” I meant intriguing only about the idea as possibility. Instead of as in most algorithmic efforts I can actually understand this one. It also has a fair amount of useful sources in the reference list.
But, you are correct, ideas–and particularly implemented ideas–must be properly evaluated.
Another factor in my defense is that I am mostly just recording these here as a reminder for myself and as possibilities for others. I will rarely go into much depth on any of them. I guess I felt my use of “intriguing” kind of covered my bases.
I am sort of worried about the ones I have labeled “excellent” now, because Christina is correct in that I should be, in a sense, more objective in my reporting. But there’s a trade-off in comprehensiveness and expressivity of my efforts to say something or nothing at all.
So maybe I should say that if I say something like “intriguing” or “interesting” that I found the piece so for some reason, hopefully expressed even, but that I am not necessarily evaluating the piece as a whole.
If I use “excellent” or something similar–a more qualitative judgement–I will try to do a better job of objectively reporting on the piece as a whole and perhaps better situating it within the literature.
Christina, thanks for pointing out the limitations of this article, and for keeping me honest and on my toes.
P.S. I’m looking forward to tracking down the pieces you mentioned recently on the NGC4LIB list.
3 Some things read this week, 29 April - 5 May 2007 // May 6, 2007 at 10:13 am
[...] H. “Towards a Semantic Web for Culture.” Journal of Digital Information 4 (4) abstract Read a few weeks ago. The twentieth century brought new studies of Aristotle’s basic categories, namely, his [...]