LogiLogi: A Webplatform for Philosophers

LogiLogi is a hypertext platform featuring a rating-system
that tries to combine the virtues of good conversations
and the written word. It is intended for all those ideas that
you’re unable to turn into a full sized journal paper, but that
you deem too interesting to leave to the winds. It’s central
values are openness and quality of content, and to combine
these values it models peer review and other valuable social
processes surrounding academic writing (in line with Bruno
Latour). Contrary to early websystems it does not make use
of forumthreads (avoiding their many problems), but of tags
and links that can also be added to articles by others than the
original author. Regardless of our project, the web is still a very
young medium, and bound to make a change for philosophy in
the long run.
Introduction
The growth of the web has been rather invisible for philosophy
so far, and while quite some philosophizing has been done
about what the web could mean for the human condition,
not much yet has been said about what it could mean for
philosophy itself (ifb; Nel93; Lev97, mainly). An exception is
some early enthusiasm for newsgroups and forums in the
nineties, but that quickly died out when it became apparent
that those were not suitable at all for in-depth philosophical
conversations. The web as a medium however is more than
these two examples of early web-systems, and in the meantime
it has further matured with what some call Web 2.0, or social
software (sites like MySpace, Del.icio.us and Wikipedia). Time
for a second look. . .
LogiLogi Manta (Log), the new version of LogiLogi, is
a webplatform that hopes to — be it informally and
experimentally—allow philosophers and people who are
interested in philosophy to use the possibilities that the
internet has in stock for them too. It was started with a
very small grant from the department of Philosophy of the
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. It is Free Software, has been
under development for almost 2 years, and will be online by
June 2008.
In the following paragraph we will explain what LogiLogi is,
and in section 3 LogiLogi and the web as a new medium are
embedded in the philosophical tradition. Optionally section 2
can be read only after you have become interested by reading
3.
A Webplatform for Philosophers
LogiLogi becomes an easy to use hypertext platform, also
featuring a rating- and review-system which is a bit comparable
to that found in journals. It tries to fi nd the middle-road
between the written word and a good conversation, and it’s
central values are openness and quality of content.
It makes commenting on texts, and more generally the linking
of texts very easy. Most notably it also allows other people
than the original author of an article to add outgoing links
behind words, but it does not allow them to change the text
itself, so the author’s intellectual responsibility is guarded. Also
important is that all conversations on the platform run via links
(comparable to footnotes), not via forum-threads, avoiding
their associated problems like fragmentation and shallowing
of the discussion.
To maximize the advantages of hypertext, texts are kept short
within LogiLogi, at maximum one to a few pages. They can be
informal and experimental and they can be improved later on,
in either of two ways: The text of the original document can be
changed (earlier versions are then archived). Or secondly, links
can be added inside the text, possibly only when some terms
or concepts appear to be ambiguous, when questions arise, or
when the text appears to arouse enough interest to make it
worth of further elaboration.
Links in LogiLogi can refer to documents, to versions, and
— by default — to tags (words that function as categories or
concepts). Articles can be tagged with one or more of these
tags. Multiple articles can have the same tag, and when a link is
made to a tag or to a collection of tags, multiple articles can be
in the set referred to. From this set the article with the highest
rating is shown to the user.
In essence one can rate the articles of others by giving
them a grade. The average of these grades forms the rating
of the article. But this average is a weighted average. Votingpowers
can vary. If an authors contributions are rated well,
he receives more voting-power. Authors can thus gain ’status’
and ’influence’ through their work. This makes LogiLogi a peerreviewed
meritocracy, quite comparable to what we, according
to Bruno Latours philosophy of science, encounter in the
various structures surrounding journals (Lat87). Most notably
this quality control by peer review, and it’s accompanying social
encouragement, was missing from earlier web-systems.
But the comparison goes further, and in a similar fashion to
how new peergroups can emerge around new journals, in
LogiLogi too new peergroups can be created by duplicating
the just described rating-system. Contributions can be rated
from the viewpoints of different peergroups, and therefore an
article can have multiple ratings, authors won’t have the same
voting-power within each peergroup, and visitors can pick
which peergroup to use as their fi lter. Thus except meritocratic,
LogiLogi is also open to a diversity of schools and paradigms in the sense of early Thomas Kuhn (Kuh96), especially as here
creating new peergroups—unlike for journals—does not bring
startup-costs.
Plato, Free Software and
Postmodernism
The web is a relatively new medium, and new media are
usually interpreted wrongly — in terms of old media. This
is has been called the horseless carriage syndrome (McL01);
according to which a car is a carriage without a horse, fi lm
records theater-plays, and—most recently—the web enables
the downloading of journals. Even Plato was not exempt of
this. In Phaedrus he stated that true philosophy is only possible
verbally, and that writing was just an aid to memory. Regardless
of this ironically enough his ’memory aid’ unleashed a long
philosophical tradition (dM05). New media take their time.
And we should not forget that the web is still very young
(1991). Also the web is especially relevant for philosophy in
that it combines conversation and writing; the two classical
media of philosophy.
And where previous mass-media like TV and radio were not
suitable for philosophy, this was because they were one to
many, and thus favored the factory model of culture (Ado91). The
web on the other hand is many to many, and thereby enables
something called peer to peer production (Ben06). An early
example of this is Free Software: without much coordination
tenthousands of volunteers have created software of the
highest quality, like Linux and Firefox. Eric Raymond (Ray99)
described this as a move from the cathedral- to the bazaarmodel
of software development. The cathedral-model has a
single architect who is responsible for the grand design, while
in the bazaar-model it evolves from collective contributions.
This bazaar-model is not unique for the web. It shares much
with the academic tradition. The move from the book to
the journal can be compared with a move in the direction
of a bazaar-model. Other similarities are decentralized
operation and peer-review. The only new thing of the Free
Software example was it’s use of the web which — through
it’s shorter turnaround times — is very suitable for peer to
peer production.
Another development that LogiLogi follows closely is one
within philosophy itself: Jean-Franois Lyotard in his La Condition
Postmoderne proclaimed the end of great stories (Lyo79).
Instead he saw a diversity of small stories, each competing
with others in their own domains. Also Derrida spoke of
the materiality of texts, where texts and intertextuality gave
meaning instead of ’pure’ ideas (Ber79; Nor87). The web in
this sense is a radicalisation of postmodernism, allowing for
even more and easier intertextuality.
And instead of trying to undo the proliferation of paradigms, as
some logic-advocates tried, and still try, we think the breakdown
of language—as in further segmentation—is here to stay, and
even a good thing, because it reduces complexity in the sense
of Niklas Luhmann (Blo97). Take human intelligence as fi xed
and you see that specialized (or ’curved’ as in curved space)
language allows for a more precise analysis. LogiLogi thus is
explicitly modeled to allow for fi ne-grained specialization, and
for a careful defi nition and discussion of terms in context.
Conclusion
To reiterate; LogiLogi will offer an easy to use hypertextenvironment,
and thanks to it’s rating system a combination of
quality and openness will be achieved: everyone can contribute,
and even start new peergroups, but within peergroups quality
is the determining factor. LogiLogi thus combines the informal,
incremental and interactive qualities of good conversations,
with conservation over time and space, as we traditionally know
from the written word. LogiLogi is still very experimental.
Nevertheless what we can be sure about is that the web, as
a medium that has proven to be very suitable for peer to peer
production and that promises increased inter-textuality and
differentiation of language, is bound to make a change for
philosophy in the long run; with or without LogiLogi.
References
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