Stevan: Thanks for the response, as it gives me an opportunity to insert an explanation of something which could help us avoid fruitless argument about motives and keep the focus here on issues. But first let me raise a question for purposes of clarification.
You refer to the Proposal as the "Caltech Proposal", and that is of course correct as regards the affiliation of its authors. However, I understand the Proposal to be representing more than the thinking at Caltech, if not officially at least implicitly, since it seems clearly to be the present result of a cooperative attempt of administrators of the major research universities in this country, beginning several years ago, to come to grips with the challenge of networked communication. This much seems implicit in the references given in the text of the Proposal itself: http://library.caltech.edu/publications/ScholarsForum/proceedings.htm http://www.econ.rochester.edu/Faculty/PhelpsPapers/Phelps_paper.html Indeed, if I am not mistaken, it is actually a sort of filled-in version of the idea that Phelps of Rochester floated a couple of years ago (see second reference above), which has usually been recognized as reflecting the thinking of the research university provosts in general and not identified simply as an idea being kicked around at Caltech. Moreover, the proposal is put forth by people seemingly in position to speak confidently of the possibility of forming a Consortium empowered to regulate scholarly and scientific communication on this grand scale, and that sort of thing is not within the scope of Caltech's powers. Since the proposal is grand, and unprecedented in this country, it is certainly questionable prima facie. Hence if it is to be taken seriously as a draft of a proposal, it must be on the assumption that the upper administration of the research universities in general is somehow represented in or by the document. Otherwise it is just too wild to be taken seriously AS A DRAFT OF A PROPOSAL. Your own response to it suggests that you regard it as a proposal undergoing revision rather than as a mere idea that might be explored for feasibility. Could you provide some clarification about who its proponents actually are and to whom it is to be proposed? Second, you should understand that my concern in my analysis was not with people at Caltech or anywhere else, as regards their personal motives, but with what is implicit in the document being analyzed. When I suggest that there is something amiss in the document because of inconsistencies of implicit intent, I am talking about what is implicit in the document, not what is happening in the minds of people at Caltech or anywhere else. I don't know anybody at Caltech and have no basis for any such opinion even if it were relevant, which it is not. And when I suggest, as I do suggest in that message, that the plan put forth is one that obviously reflects much work and therefore much commitment, and that it envisages a system of control that might have uses for the administrator far beyond what we are directly concerned with here, I am still talking about what one can infer from that document as something put forth for consideration. To conclude from this, as I do, that its proponents are likely not to be dissuaded easily because they may well see in the Consortium the solution to other administrative problems as well is just a common sense inference that I would expect anyone to see as reasonable even if mistaken. If one cannot analyze proposals for practical action for what is implicit in them in this way, one is poorly positioned to make intelligent decisions about whether to support them or not. Thus your characterization of what I said as suggesting a "veiled attempt to find new chains for the refereed journal literature" is mistaken, and does not seem plausible to me in any case. I am not talking about anybody's veiled attempts at anything but about what is implicit in a document. I wouldn't bother to insist on this if it weren't that in a previous conversation elsewhere on a closely related theme another party to our conversation used this sort of thing as the occasion for some rhetoric that was perilously close to character defamation, and I don't want this sort of rhetoric to be triggered inadvertently here. It is completely off the point and dangerous as well. My criticisms are not concerned with individual motives, about which I know nothing whatever. Best regards, Joseph Ransdell -- Joseph Ransdell <[email protected]> or <[email protected]> Dept of Philosophy Texas Tech Univ. Lubbock TX 79409 (806) 742-3158 office 797-2592 home 742-0730 fax ARISBE:Peirce Telecommunity http://www.door.net/arisbe http://www.door.net/arisbe/homepage/ransdell.htm
