The following appeared in Volume 98, Number 2 (Spring, 1999) of the APA Newsletters

In its simplest terms, Noesis is an Internet index and search engine of philosophical research written by scholars with credentials and available to the global community free-of-charge. But to call the project an "index" or "search engine" does it a bit of a disservice. The term "index," at least in the world of print, refers to a listing of resources. When a user can click on a reference in an index, however, and have a resource appear immediately at hand, then what was once an index becomes a library. In addition, Noesis is a search engine, but a limited area one, covering only selected items. This feature, in turn, allows it a dimension of quality control. By using procedures to screen items in the Noesis dataset, it is possible to "peer review" scholarly materials on the search-engine side of the equation and provide a measure of reliability or, at least, value for those who find resources via Noesis. Thus, Noesis is also an accrediting filter.

Taken together, these two aspects make Noesis an encyclopedic library of philosophy written and accredited by professional philosophers. If it is inappropriate to say that Noesis is this library—after all, the contents of the collection are not stored on our server and we cannot claim credit for them—minimally, it does seem reasonable to claim that Noesis fosters the emergence of such a library by supplying a center around which the work of others can be organized, accredited and disseminated in an academically meaningful manner. Noesis operates on the body of literature that is "out there" in cyberspace. Consequently, many journal editors and authors maintain the contents of the "library." Adding to the collection is as simple (and inexpensive) as uploading a resource to the Internet and letting us know where it is. In addition, because the "library" is spread all over the world, there is no space restriction for the total size of the collection. So, together with its content, Noesis is a self-accrediting, fully-searchable, encyclopedic library of philosophy that is infinitely revisable and expandable in all directions and available free-of-charge to millions of users world-wide.

Working to overcome the problem of quality control and organization on the Internet with respect to philosophy, Noesis takes advantage of the unique possibilities that come with this new medium. It puts the publishing of philosophy back into the hands of scholars, potentially reaches millions of users very inexpensively, and helps to overcome the growing rift between the "profession" of philosophy and the public that it seeks to serve.

Noesis currently indexes about 8,500 philosophical resources in six categories: essays, lectures, images, reviews, primary texts and research tools. It does not index other pages of links to resources, thus putting each resource only one click away from our index, a real convenience to users. Nor does it index the pages of professional associations, calls for papers, journals with no on-line content, on-line syllabi, etc. These items are well-covered by Hippias Limited Area Search of Philosophy on the Internet (hippias.evansville.edu) and do not require the same quality-regulating mechanisms as the categories mentioned above. Noesis users have the option of searching for resources in any combination of these categories or all of them. Thus, for instance, users may search for essays and reviews, while eliminating lectures, primary texts, and so on.

Each resource is screened before being added to the dataset to make sure that it falls within one of these categories and was written or edited by a professional or some other qualified person. For essays and lectures we are particularly careful to make sure that the authors carry a Ph.D. or equivalent degree in philosophy or a related discipline, except in a few cases where the excellent work of graduate students has been included. Regarding "primary texts" we tend to be a little more lax about who put the resource on-line. We would like to be more strict and will become so as primary editions edited by professionals start to emerge on the Internet.

Currently, Noesis indexes the work of 1,660 authors. In addition, to searching by the categories mentioned above, users can search only the works of a selected author, such as Daniel Dennett or Aristotle. Noesis also indexes the items from 28 collections. These are on-line journals, encyclopedia, etc., most of which have already been peer-reviewed. Users can search all and only these collections in a single pass or any one of them. Users may also formulate boolean search requests or search by phrases, though phrase searching is a bit slow at the moment. We are working to speed it up.

The fact that a search may be by category (essays, lectures, etc.) across the whole dataset or a subset using simple, boolean or phrase searching makes the Noesis search mechanisms extremely powerful. But this is just the start. The addition of a topic index, which will be discussed momentarily, will allow users to search for a word by topic, such as ancient Greek philosophy or philosophy of mind. This feature will be particularly useful because it limits the semantic range of a search request before a search is made. As the reader of this report will know, even a common word, such as "metaphysics," means one thing in ancient philosophy and quite another in the philosophy of mind.

Finally, on top of the mechanisms in place, Noesis tracks responses to a particular resource, indicating their presence by the hyperlinked work "responses" appearing in the relevant item’s description. Clicking on the word provides the user with a hyperlinked list of files that respond to the original. In this way, Noesis can better map the actual way that the profession moves, namely in the dialogical context of putting forth ideas and building off of them.

At the moment, Noesis provides a kind of quality-controlled access to philosophy on the Internet. It is a collection accredited on the basis of authors’ credentials, not on peer-review, except in the case of most of the collections mentioned above. The next phase of the Noesis experiment will bring a truer form of peer-review to the project while allowing professional users a number of additional features to carry Noesis well beyond anything that could ever be achieved in print.

We are currently in the process of developing a "professional users module" that will allow qualified academicians to configure personal subset databases to supplement their teaching and research needs. Each subset will be browsable and searchable, not only by the primary user who configures the subset, but also by her students and others as needed. A search box that points directly into a subset will be available for use on electronic course syllabi, for instance, and professional users will be able to hyperlink search requests in any of their documents directly into their subsets. For example, a teacher can hyperlink the word "Dennett" on her philosophy of mind syllabus directly into her subset so that when students click on the word, a search for Dennett is performed across only that subset. The effect of the professional users module will be that an organized and searchable, yet personal, library of resources can be readily created on demand.

As professional users configure Noesis for their personal use, a robot will monitor the total activity of all the professional users, quantifying value indicators for each resource according to a variety of variables and assigning each to a particular topic area. These value indicators will then be compared to a value factor determined by the editorial board. If the value indicator for a resource meets or exceeds the value factor for a particular topic area, then that resource will pass to the public as peer-reviewed in the topic area in question. As the reader will see in a moment, this does not amount to a simple one-vote-per-user procedure. Indeed, it may take some experimentation to determine how value indicators should be calculated. Furthermore, since the value factors are also variable, it will take some adjustment to determine just how high or low a value factor needs to be to ensure the desired level of rigor in the peer-review process. Additionally, value factors may need to be adjusted over time as the activity of the professional users increases or decreases. The primary duty of the editorial board will be to monitor the quality of resources in each topic area and adjust value factors as needed. While it would be premature at this point to present an exposition of the peer-review algorithm or discuss the mathematics in any conclusive fashion, an explanation of the process involved in using the professional users module will serve to illustrate some of the results that the software will provide.

When a professional user signs up to create his private Noesis library, he will be asked to fill out a user profile, including the following pieces of information among others: his name, institutional affiliation, highest degree earned, the year it was earned and the institution from which it was earned, his primary research area, two secondary research areas and an E-mail address. The degree information will be used to verify credentials. The research area information will be used to determine the vetting power that the user has in a particular area. The E-mail address will be used for a bulletin board system, to be discussed momentarily, and so that we may contact the user in the event of a problem.

Upon entering the professional users module, the user will be prompted for a name and a password. At this point he will be admitted into a version of Noesis that works the same way as the public site with a few exceptions. Each resource, whether in the browsable index or a search return set will begin with a checkbox. Users may then check that box or several of them on the same page and include these selected items in their private libraries by designating a particular topic area to which they wish to assign that resource. When users are working in their primary research areas, they will have more vetting power than when working in their secondary research areas. When working in their secondary areas, they will have more than when working in an area that is not one of their research areas. In this way, Noesis gives experts more say in their respective areas.

Another difference between accessing the site through the professional users module or through the public site concerns what happens when the professional user goes to the topic index. Where, in the public version of the site, only items in the topic index that pass for peer-reviewed are visible, in the professional users module, all the items in an area are visible, together with the value indicators for each resource in question. This feature allows the user to see what other professionals are including in their library. At this point, the user has the option of adding that resource to his own library, leaving it alone or voting against it. While voting against the resource does not determine what goes into a private library, it does lower the value indicator for that resource, making it more difficult for it to pass as peer-reviewed.

The net result of adding a new resource to a private library then is that it "nominates" that resource for review as a candidate to be passed to the public as peer-reviewed. The bottom line is that, as professional users configure Noesis for their personal needs, a peer-reviewed topic index naturally emerges.

No doubt, the kind of peer-review that Noesis will provide differs from conventional review practices. The act of adding a resource to a private library means that the scholar in question thinks that that resource is valuable for some reason. Inclusion may not be meant to carry the same weight that it would in conventional review. Thus, Noesis supplements the traditional system; it does not replace it. Even so, it is being designed to accommodate it as well. I will say more about this in a moment. On the other hand, where conventional review may submit a resource to only two or three people for review, Noesis will permit any professional to review a resource, according more or less vetting power based on the research background of the professional in question, and this fact may mean that ground breaking and legitimate work that cannot get published in the conventional system will find a path to dissemination. At very least, Noesis will provide, for good or ill, a better picture of what is actually going on in the profession, and its peer-reviewed sections a better indication of what the profession thinks valuable.

Ultimately, Noesis will provide the public with three different indices, each using a different type of review. The author index will be the most inclusive, being subject only to the credential review that is currently in place. This index will provide a place where qualified professionals can disseminate their work no matter how far off the beaten path it may be. The collections index will list items reviewed according to the traditional practice, and the topic index will use the dynamic review of our professional users.

Finally, to overcome the difficulties that abound in extended scholarly discussion over conventional listservs, Noesis will include a comprehensive bulletin board system to which any professional user may post and anyone may read. Non-professional readers may post to the system only by contacting a professional user who, in turn, will act as a referee. The system will be completely asynchronous, unlike a listserv, and threaded so that individual thought bites are not severed from the conversations in which they are embedded.

The Internet does not merely allow scholars to disseminate texts in an electronic rather than a print format, it has the potential to transform the practice and value of education in the modern world. I believe that it can do this for the better, provided that it is used to open up a profession, make it available to the public without compromising its integrity, and set it free from commercial interests. Indeed, it is difficult to sell to a public what they think they do not want in the first place, and the widespread availability of a (monetarily and ideologically) free body of knowledge for the global community must be a step in the right direction. Noesis has been designed with this consideration in mind and to demonstrate in the concrete that the Internet need not be consigned to the sea of confusion that characterized its early days and that it can be put to sound academic use by philosophers motivated out of a love for their discipline and a belief in its power to improve humanity. However, I concede that many good arguments to the contrary must be addressed, and I have not touched on them here. In fact, I am among those who fear that the Internet may become merely another technology to extend the voice of those who already speak through the media, carrying a harmful message to even more distant shores. It will become so, if we let it, and this is why it is imperative that scholars use the same technology, if we can, as an antidote. History has provided us this singular and unique opportunity; it has given us a voice, or at least, an access, and, at the same time, the economic means. Noesis is available to millions of users world-wide and through it the work of legitimate on-line philosophers wherever they may be. On a piece of equipment that costs less than $10,000, we can organize and accredit the writings of thousands of philosophers for the entire world. These truly are amazing times.