Critique My Thinking

On Apple's March 7th, 2012 Announcement

2012-02-29T13:21:00.000-05:00

[Credit: Apple]

This image accompanied an invitation to the press for a meeting on March 7th. On the image was a small teaser which read, “We have something you really have to see. And touch.” As always there have been a slew of rumors about products that will be released in the Spring. At last, we will finally know what rumors were reliable. It is an iPad? ...an iPod touch? ...or what about that iPhone 5 that was rumored to launch a half dozen times in the past two years? Oh, and where in the world did the home button go?

Whatever it is, you can find out around 10:00am (PT) on Wednesday, March 7th, 2012 when Apple's leadership will make the announcement at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Pascal Boyer on the Downsides of Evolution

2012-02-29T05:00:00.000-05:00

"Compared to many generations of hunting game and gathering food, recent advantages such as agriculture, industry, and life in large groups or states or cities are only a few seconds in evolutionary time. This matters because we bear the traces of this evolutionary past in many features of our behavior and most importantly in the ways our minds are organized. To take a simple and familiar example, most humans have a sweet tooth because sources of sugar and vitamins were few and far between in our ancestral environments. A taste for such rich sources of nutrients developed simply because whatever genes caused that propensity were very likely to spread. Bearers of such genes would tend to have more offspring than non-bearers and some of their offspring would carry these genes too."

Pascal Boyer
Religion Explained (2001)
Chapter 3

Today these genes might face decreased chances of reproduction...

"Election Year Economics", Non-Sequitur

2012-02-28T13:42:00.002-05:00

Pascal Boyer on Religious Concepts

2012-02-27T05:00:00.000-05:00

"It is unfortunate, and almost inevitable, that when we talk about religion we quite literally do not know what we are talking about. We may think we know our own thoughts (...), but a good part of religious concepts is hidden from conscious inspection: for instance the expectation that ghosts see what is in front of them, that they remember what happened after it happened, that they believe what they remember and what they perceived (not the other way around) and so on. This is so because a good part of what makes all concepts remains beyond conscious access.

Another misconception is that we can explain people's having particular thoughts if we can understand their reasons for holding them (...). But the mind is a complex set of biological machines that produce all sorts of thoughts. For many thoughts there is no reason, as it were, except that they are the inevitable result of the way the machines work. Do we have a good reason for having a precise memory of people's faces and forgetting their names? No, but that is the way human memory works. The same applies to religious concepts, whose persistence and effects are explained byt the way various mental systems work."

Pascal Boyer
Religion Explained (2001)
Chapter 3: The Kind of Mind it Takes

A Philosopher's Diary: On Reflection

2012-02-25T09:03:00.000-05:00

"The modern thinker loves to pay lip service to facts, to submit himself to the results of various popular research programmes, to use the word 'science' as a kind of career-building incantation. Yet, there is one set of facts that is forever beyond his purview: facts about himself. When was the last time you picked up a book of philosophy and found the author giving an honest, formative account of their beliefs and values, a description of how they have been produced and where they fit into the world, socially, historically and otherwise?"

"Reflection on where our convictions come from can be unsettling to those very convictions. An honest confrontation with the ways in which our purportedly objective convictions can be seen as mere chapters in an autobiography; that's not a popular or desirable confrontation for most of us. Yet, this aversion betrays us: we are not really interested in all of the facts. Only the comforting ones."

Nick Smyth
Just The Facts, Ma'am
Feb.24.2012

Alistair Norcross: CU Boulder Philosopher...and Runner!

2012-02-24T11:13:00.001-05:00

[HT: Leiter Reports]

Philosophers Brains' Part II: Dopamine & Belief

2012-02-24T04:00:00.000-05:00

(Update 02/24/12: changes made per Chases's corrections)

Awhile back I posted about philosophers' brains and the neuropeptide oxytocin. The moral of that story was that increased levels of oxytocin correlate with increased levels of trust, which could correlate with certain philosophical beliefs (e.g. Hobbes state of nature vs. Rousseau's state of nature). In this post, I would like to touch on dopamine and its potential correlations with philosophical belief.

To get started, lets take a look at a study done by Peter Krummenacher, Christine Mohr, Helene Haker, and Peter Brugger in 2009. The study was designed to discover some of the normal differences in belief between skeptics and believers as well as how those differences change as result of releasing dopamine into their nervous system. To pull this off, they gathered 40 right-handed males, split them into three groups (based on self-reporting): control group, paranormal believers, and skeptics. Then, they proceeded to test their proclivities to report false positives.

To get clear on what is meant by a false positive, let me give you an example. A subject would be presented with some sort of image or set of images. They would then be asked if they noticed any sort of pattern. When a subject reported that there was a pattern where no pattern existed, their report was deemed a "false positive" or a "false alarm." When a subject reported that there wasn't a pattern where one actually existed, their report was called a "false negative" or a "miss."

Turns out that believers favored false alarms over misses, whereas skeptics displayed the opposite preference. That seems to match what should be expected. More interesting, however, is that dopamine (or in this study, a substitute: levodopa), made skeptics report less misses and believers less false positives. In other words, the difference in judgment(s) between skeptics and believers decreased as a result of dopamine.

Fascinating, but what could this have to do with philosophers? Well, two things:

First, that self-identifying believers prefer reporting false positives and self-identifying skeptics prefer false negatives indicates a potentially significant divide in foundational concepts in philosophy. For instance, this divide might be similar to the divide between materialists and non-materialists. Imagine that whatever encourages believer-ism is associated with the thing which encourages substance dualism or epiphenomenalism. Or, likewise, imagine that whatever encourages materialism is associated with the thing which encourages false negatives. The connection between these beliefs and the thing doing the "encouraging" is unclear but if the examples given were true, then we would have some downright interesting biological counterparts to philosophical belief.

Second, that dopamine can decrease the preference differences between skeptics and believers (or in our proposed analogy, materialists and substance dualists), then we would have a non-negligible correlation between the nervous system and philosophical belief. This implies that at least some of the diversity of belief (and table-pounding) in philosophy could be at least partially due to diversity in the nervous systems of philosophers. That would imply that some disagreements could lack philosophical or empirical grounds—namely, those more influenced by the nervous system—than others. This also means that the next time a skeptic/believer debate gets out of hand, some levodopa nasal spray might calm people down.

All jokes aside, that dopamine has measurable affects on the differences between peoples' philosophy-relevant judgments is no small matter. It could very well be the case that a good deal of the variety of belief in philosophy is represented, at least in part, by the variety of philosophers' nervous systems. And if that is the case, then there might be biological evidence to underrate the value of certain disagreements (e.g. so-called philosophical stalemates). All this to say that there could come a day when our ability to assess the diversity of philosophical beliefs is no longer restricted to semantics, logic, and rhetoric. We could also assess the biological functions at play.

I will be presenting this hypothesis along with its implications at the "Toward a Science of Consciousness" conference in Tuscon in April.

Krummenacher, Peter; Christine Mohr; Helene Haker; and Peter Brugger (2009). Dopamine, Paranormal Belief, and the Detection of Meaningful Stimuli in Journal of Cognitive Science 22, No. 8: 1670-1681.

Pascal Boyer on New Age Mysticism

2012-02-22T04:00:00.000-05:00

Deepak Chopra via Wikipedia via Flickr via Mitchell Aidelbaum

"One of the few religions obviously designed to provide a comforting worldview is New Age mysticism. It says that people, all people, have enormous 'power,' that all sorts of intellectual and physical feats are within their reach. It claims that we are all connected to mysterious but basically benevolent forces in the universe. Good health can be secured by inner spiritual strength. Human nature is fundamentally good. Most of us lived very interesting lives before this one. Note that these reassuring, ego-boosting notions appeared and spread in one of the most secure and affluent societies in history. People who hold these beliefs are not faced with war, famine, infant mortality, incurable endemic diseases and arbitrary oppression to the same extent as Middle Age Europeans or present-day Third World peasants."

Pascal Boyer
Religion Explained (2001)
Chapter 1

Philosopher's Carnival: Call For Posts

2012-02-21T05:00:00.000-05:00

The February Philosopher's Carnival is up at Ichthus77. The host did a fine job of rounding up some good stuff and of keeping things simple—although that last entry from Nick...wow, rather sophomoric if you ask me....

Next month's carnival will be held here, so the call for March's Philosopher's Carnival is official. I am open to posts from any area, but will be particularly interested in posts concerning philosophy of mind, neuroscience, and consciousness. Submit your posts by filling out the form here (n.b. you do not need to be the author of a post to submit a post).

If you are interested in hosting a Philosopher's Carnival, see the hosting guidelines here.

Thanks to authors and hosts and thanks especially to Richard Chappell for making the PC happen.

Philosophy Security Advisory Level

2012-02-20T14:42:00.000-05:00

How refreshing it is to know that I am not the only one who feels this way about Leiter Reports. Maybe someday there will be more than one major site reporting on philosophy.

Anyone up for the task? Anyone?

What if I told you that you could make a large sum of money from philosophy ads?

Pascal Boyer on The Mind-Body Problem

2012-02-20T08:27:00.000-05:00

(image compliments of TEDx Sydney)

"Many phenomena are both familiar to all of us from the youngest age and difficult to understand using everyday concepts, yet nobody tries to find an explanation for them. For instance, we all know our body movements are not caused by external forces that push or pull us by by our thoughts. That is, if I extend my arm and open my hand to shake hands with you, it's precisely because I want to do that. Also, we assume that thoughts have no weight or size or other such material qualities (the idea of an apple is not the size of an apple, the idea of water does not flow, the idea of a rock is no more solid than the idea of butter). If I have the intention to lift my arm, to take a classic example, this intention itself has no weight or solidity. Yet it manages to move parts of my body...How can this occur? How could things without substance affect things in the material world? Or, to put it in less metaphysical terms, how on earth do these mental words and images pull my muscles? This is a difficult problem for philosophers and cognitive scienctists...but surprisingly enough, it is a problem for nobody else in the entire world. Wherever you go, you will find that people are satisified with the idea that thoughts and desires have effects on bodies and that's that."

Pascal Boyer
Religion Explained
Chapter 1

...right. No one thinks twice about this kind of stuff.

Apple Announces New Operating System: Mountain Lion

2012-02-17T19:35:00.000-05:00

Less than a year from the release of Lion (10.7), Apple announces Mountain Lion (10.8). It will not be available for download until the summer, so you will have to wait patiently for the following benefits:

One-time iCloud log-in!
AirPlay mirroring via Apple TV! (whatever is on your Mac's screen is on your TV...wirelessly!)
iOS Apps for OSX (including iCloud sync between OSX and iOS devices)

iMessage (free text messaging between Apple devices)
Reminders (sync reminders between all of your Apple devices)
Notes (sync iOS notes—and add pictures! with your Mac)
Notification Center (one-stop spot for events, messages, etc.)
The Share button (instant Twitter, Vimeo, and Flickr posting)
Game Center (iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch games for Mac!)

Gatekeeper (a system preference tab where users can customize broad download settings)

If you are an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch user, you will notice that many of Mountain Lion's features are standard features on your mobile device. This means that Mountain Lion is yet another step towards a unified experience between Apple's mobile devices and their desktop devices.

Since Apple TV will offer AirPlay mirroring, I will definitely be getting Apple TV. After all, I will no longer be limited to watching movies via Netflix and iTunes. I can mirror AcademicEarth and Hulu (and all other forms of media that are accessible from my Mac)...wirelessly!

The price has not been announced yet, but the past two operating systems sold for a mere $29.99. For more info, watch Apple's video.

Pascal Boyer on Religious Explanations

2012-02-17T04:00:00.000-05:00

"Explaining something does not consist in producing one thought after another in a free wheeling sort of way. The point of an explanation is to provide a context that makes a phenomenon less surprising than before and more in agreement with the general order of things. Religious explanations often seem to work the other way around, producing more complication instead of less. As anthropologist Dan Sperber points out, religion creates 'relevant mysteries' rather than simple accounts of events."

Pascal Boyer
Religion Explained (2001)
Chapter 1

Philosopher's Carnival: March Edition

2012-02-16T06:00:00.000-05:00

Photoshopped from Wikipedia's public domain version by Nick

CMT will be hosting the March edition of Philosopher's Carnival. Submissions for the March carnival will be accepted after the February 20th edition is posted over at Ichthus77. Posts from all areas of philosophy will be considered, but I would love to have a handfull of posts concerning philosophy of mind, personhood, and consciousness. If you are not comfortable posting, but you stumble upon something noteworthy, please pass a link my way in a comment or email.

All the best,
Nick

Pascal Boyer on the Transmission of Ideas

2012-02-15T05:00:00.000-05:00

"Not all possible concepts are equally good. The ones we acquire easily are the ones we find widespread the world over; indeed, that is why we find them widespread the world over."

Pascal Boyer
Religion Explained (2001)
Chapter 1: What is the Origin?

Conscious Personhood: Is the US a Candidate?

2012-02-13T05:00:00.000-05:00

Eric Schwitzgebel has become well-known for challenging traditional models of consciousness. In his posts “Why Dennett Should Think That the United States Is Conscious" and "Why Dretske Should Think That the United States is Conscious" he argues...well, he argues exactly what you’d expect him to argue based on those titles.

The idea of group consciousness has attracted a good deal of attention lately. This is unsurprising considering how important groups are to Western society—and to highly social mammals at large. Institutions. Corporations. Non-profits. Religions. There is a good deal at stake concerning these groups, so it is only right to get clear about the metaphysics of it all.

The point of this post is to briefly outline a part of group consciousness theory. Schwitzgebel mentions that the US demonstrates the reflexive patterns and loops that are usually associated with conscious states. However, what hosts those patterns and loops in the US are things like the internet, television, radio, telephone, buildings, highways, airlines, etc. Ultimately these things are composed of wires, motherboards, fiberoptic cables, radio waves, plastic, sound waves, asphault, rebar, refined oil, etc. That these things could host consciousness seems a bit bizarre, right?

Well, maybe. In Schwitzgebel's defense, an increasingly popular claim in neuroscience and philosophy is that the human brain hosts consciousness. And the human brain is nothing more than moist organic tissue, chemicals, and electricity (or something like it). If these things can host consciousness, then why couldn't the internet? The answer is not entirely clear, although some people have an intuition that man-made stuff just doesn't have what it takes to host consciousness. The idea is that only (divinely) created or (naturally) evolved stuff can achieve consciousness. Alas, this intuition is very difficult to back up.

Before we continue, we should get a better idea of what people mean by "group consciousness." It is usually described as the sum consciousness of a group of persons. It might also be described as the overall character or personality of a group. Another description might include talk of a group's shared desires and beliefs. However, the intermediary stuff is rarely included in these descriptions. So when Schwitzgebel says that the United States is conscious, he should be clear about whether or not he means merely [a mass of people who identify themselves as part of "The United States"]. If he includes the aforementioned intermediaries among the things that host group consciousness, then he would need to point to salient evidence of inanimate objects hosting consciousness.

Because if the network of stuff between conscious persons does host consciousness, then the panpsychists might be on to something. Also, it would imply the possibility of mereological composition of consciousness-hosting parts—that is, the ability to consider any set of objects and conscious persons a conscious entity. For example, [Your next-door neighbors] + [television] + [The People's republic of China] = [a single conscious entity]. This too seems bizarre.

And if the intermediaries fail to be feasible hosts of consciousness, then all we have are sophisticated and patterned interactions between conscious members of a group. That might instantiate something like 'culture', but it is a far cry from group consciousness.

The third option is the metaphorical interpretation of group consciousness. This strategy allows someone to remain agnostic about whether or not persons and their intermediaries can actually instantiate a singular consciousness. Rather, the claim would go something like this: “groups of conscious persons and their intermediaries form networks and behaviors that resemble the networks and behaviors of conscious individuals.” This seems to be the safest and least counterintuitive way to say that groups are conscious, however it does not make as strong a claim as the previous two options. It does not say that groups are actually conscious one way or the other. Further, it does not imply that groups have similar rights and responsibilities as conscious individuals. So, it is safer than our previous two options, but it is also less significant and less interesting.

The primary trouble with the topic of consciousness is that we are not exactly sure what consciousness is, or how it happens (or why...presuming that is a meaningful query). And because we know so little, the space allowed for theories is quite vast. Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained helps define consciousness and does well to reduce the space allotted to theories, but a great deal of space remains—by no fault of Dennetts. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that our understanding of neurophysiology and its relation to consciousness is amniotic and undeveloped. We are only recently grasping the basics of how the brain works. This makes for a rather incomplete body of research, and occasionally results in the disappointing discovery that a well-established "fact" about the brain is wrong. It is no wonder, then, how so many theories of consciousness are in circulation. That "The United States is Conscious" is just one of the many theories.

Patricia Churchland and Trust and Society

2012-02-10T06:00:00.000-05:00

"Many daily interactions, from depositing money in a bank to ordering a book online to letting a doctor set a broken bone, rest on trust. How can trust extend in these ways? The first-pass answer is that we have grown up in a culture of long-established regulating institutions, and our trust in these institutions rests on background knowledge concerning that they can be counted upon to do.[1] More simply, we have beliefs and expectations that exist because of our culture, and these involve beliefs about the trustworthiness of particular institutions and the people within them. The motherboard of trust is still the family, with trusting extensions reaching a little or a lot to other kin and friends. Yet a kind of real trust, guarded and watchful in varying degrees, does come to be extended beyond those who are familiar."

Patricia Churchland
Braintrust (2011)
Chapter 8

[1] Henrich et al., "Markets, Religion, and Community Size, and the Evolution of Fairness and Punishment."

Metaphysical Mayhem!

2012-02-09T08:00:00.000-05:00

"Phoenix Nebula" compliments of artofgregmartin.com

Hide your ersatz children and find shelter in another possible world because Metaphysical Mayhem is back! Sorry I couldn't help it. A name like that just begs for a joke or two.

Anyway, the seminar gives roughly 10 grad students a full ride (room and board) for a few days of being schooled on matters metaphysical by John Hawthorne, Katherine Hawley, Ted Sider, Jonathan Schaffer, and Dean Zimmerman. Interested? The deadline for applications is February 24, and participants will be chosen by March 9. For more details, see here.

Patricia Churchland on Ideological Fervor

2012-02-08T06:00:00.000-05:00

"As a child, I found the prototype of perversity to be the rule that you must do what God demands. Particularly worrisome was its application in the Bible story of Abraham and Isaac, a story served up by in Sunday school to my six-year-old ears. Abraham thinks he hears God command him to take his beloved son Isaac into the hills and slay him with a knife an burn him as a sacrifice. Heeding the call, he takes Isaac into the hills. In the nick of time, an angel luckily announces that God wants him to spare his life after all. To the child's mind, it seemed obvious that the God in question was terrifying and untrustworthy, and that Abraham was a deranged nitwit. I was relieved that my father showed no sign of communicating with God or angels and was otherwise disinclined to theological enthusiasms. Later, I found other grim lessons in idealogical fervor that disregarded human well-being while proclaiming otherwise. Such were the horrors visited upon Chinese scientists and intellectuals, not to mention many others, during the Cultural Revolution in China launched by Mao Zedong in 1966."

Patricia Churchland
Braintrust (2011)
Chapter 7

Apple's Updated iBook License Agreement

2012-02-07T18:29:00.002-05:00

Apple has made a change to their iBook Author license agreement. As I mentioned in another post last week, Apple's original statement said that iBooks distributed for a fee could only be distributed through Apple's iBook store. Now, Apple is permitting books distributed for a fee to be distributed by any other means so long as the document is not distributed as an .ibook file. Changes to Apple's exact wording are below in bold:

(i) if the work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute it by any means;
(ii) if the work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service) and includes files in the .ibooks format generated using iBooks Author, the work may only be distributed through Apple, and such distribution will be subject to a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary); provided, however, that this restriction will not apply to the content of the work when distributed in a form that does not include files in the .ibooks format generated using iBooks Author. You retain all your rights in the content of your works, and you may distribute such content by any means when it does not include files in the .ibooks format generated by iBooks Author.

Basically, this means that authors can now sell their book on the iBook store and still sell it in other forms (i.e. PDF). Previously, only free iBooks were elligible for redistribution in other forms. Now free iBooks and non-free iBooks are eligible for such distribution. The change allows authors to have more freedom in the distribution of their work. It also makes ePublishing through Apple to be a bit more lucrative for the author (since authors can now have revenue from multiple venues of distribution).

I have a feeling many of the critics of the original license will be happy to hear the news. I also have a feeling that, with less incentive for authors to make their iBook free, there will be less free iBooks. While I would normally not care, I think it is a shame that educational books will be less likely to be free.

Patricia Churchland on Peter Singer's Consequentialism

2012-02-06T08:00:00.000-05:00

"Many maximizing consequentialists, such as philosopher Peter Singer,[1] argue that maximizing happiness of all requires that we do much more than consider the consequences of a plan for the happiness of those near and dear. According to him, in calculating consequences, everyone—everyone—with an interest in the consequences should be treated equally. Awkwardly, this implies that I must not put the well-being of my children ahead of that of unknown strangers living on the other side of the planet. Singer does realize that parents and children have a special relationship, but he sees that as consistent with his view, since, he argues, better consequences ensure if parents take care of their children before taking care of others. Even so, according to Singer's principles, it seems that I am obliged not to send my child to a private college if I could send him and two Thai children to a state college, and I am obliged not to get orthodontic treatment for my child if I could get basic dental care for five Haitian children. Even if I give to charity, Singer would urge that I could, surely, always give more by doing without those luxuries of life such as a new computer or a vacation. And so forth."

"Singer's maximizing consequentialism is much more demanding, and much more meddlesome, than the morally moderate, such as I, find reasonable. The urgings of the ardent utilitarians sometimes alarm me the way intrusive do-gooders can be alarming, not least because of infringements on liberty and the conflict with paradigmatically good sense. Admittedly, however, it is not always clear to me what exactly Singer, or maximizing consequentialism in general, does require. [2] What is clear is that the idea of equal consideration for all goes very deep in many versions of consequentialism."

Patricia Churchland
Braintrust (2011)
Chapter 7

[1] Peter Singer. Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for the Treatment of our Animals (New York: Random House, 1975) and Practical Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

[2] See Peter Singer under Fire: The Moral Iconoclast Faces His Critics, ed. Jeffrey Schaler (Chicago: Open Court, 2009), esp pp. 421-24. See also Thomas Nagel, "What Peter Singer Wants of You" New York Review of Books, March 25, 2010.

On Taxation and Wage Entitlement

2012-02-03T05:00:00.000-05:00

So I recently got knee deep in a conversation about taxation and entitlement with a friend over at After The Period. The conversation started when I made the claim that CEOs are not actually entitled to millions of dollars in annual salary and that taxation is a reasonable way to redistribute excess wealth to those who might actually "need" it. Jesse is definitely giving me a run for my money. The post and conversation that got things started is here. Thanks to Jesse for hosting!

Philosopher's Carnival: January 2012

2012-02-01T10:00:00.000-05:00

Jared at Philosophy & Polity is hosting January's Philosopher's Carnival. It can be found here.

Patricia Churchland on the Golden Rule

2012-01-30T10:45:00.001-05:00

La Justice, Bernard d'Agesci: scales in one hand and in the other hand a book with "Dieu, la Loi, et le Roi" on one page and the Golden rule on the other page.

"...when we extol the Golden Rule we assume that both sides are decent, not twisted; that both sides have much the same set of moral values; that others feel about things as we do. This assumption, note, is not morally neutral, but contains moral content—content independent of the Golden Rule itself. Moreover, it is a sad fact that of life that this assumption of universal decency does not always hold, or at least not always look the same, even among those who advertise themselves as morally upstanding. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of idealogical extremists and religious cultists and sadomasochists and sociopaths, and they can apply the Golden Rule as rigorously as anyone else."

Patricia Churchland
Braintrust (2011)
Chapter 7

Apple's New iTunes U and iBook Author

2012-01-27T08:30:00.000-05:00

Apple recently announced two exciting additions to their educational footprint. The first is iBook Author and the second is a newly updated iTunes U. The latter offers universities the ability to compile an entire course's material into one digital entity (the image looks a lot like a self-bound book in iTunes). The benefit of this is that learners can now access syllabi, presentations, lecture videos, and miscellaneous course materials from one place. It used to be that each of these things was in a separate area in iTunes (some on the iTunes store, some in podcast form), or worse: it was not available at all (e.g. presentaion slides). The new iTunes U is an obvious improvement!

The former announcement, however, has been received with mix reviews. As usual, Apple announced the product with pomp and circumstance, making claims like "[we are] reinventing the textbook" (Philip Schiller). Tech junkies and education pundits are not exactly unanimous in their agreement with Apple. Jeffrey R. Young says—in his article on the Chronicle of Higher Education's website "Apple's New E-Textbook Platform Enters an Already Crowded Field"—that iBook Author will likely suffer in a market already saturated by similar programs. He adds that iBook authors, since their publications will be available exclusively to iPads, will not reach as broad an audience as other authors using other publishing software. Two other things that might limit an author's audience are these two facts: (a) the iPad is not the most competitively priced tablet and (b) Apple uses a closed operating system.

While all of Young's claims are based on facts, his conclusions, I think, contain errors. First, it is not clear that what Apple has released is comparable, for better and for worse, to existing etextbook publishers. For example, it is much easier to use than other ePublishing software (it is strikingly similar to Apple's word processing app known as "Pages"). Second, the software is as easy to download as an iTunes song. Other differences include that authors need to be using an Apple computer to create their textbooks (though they can import Microsoft Word content) and readers will need to use an iPad. These last two facts are indeed limiting. However, much of Apple's technology and software involves exclusivity in some form or another and yet Apple portable computers make up the majority of college students' computers, iPods make up the majority of peoples' MP3 players, and iPads are the most popular tablet computer on the market. So, judging by Apple's track record, iBook Author's limitations will not necessarily cripple the success of the program.

Young also critiqued Apple's closed platform philosophy. His claim is that because Apple's operating systems are not as easily customized, the iPad will be less useful to schools. I fail to see how the iPad would be less useful to school for this reason. Few K-12 IT departments have the means to regularly reconfigure the operating systems their computers, let alone tablets. So not only do I doubt there is a huge need for such configuring, I doubt the resources exist to make it happen anyway. Moreover, Apple's closed platform offers at least one benefit to schools. It hinders unwanted hacking by students, who as everyone probably knows, are far more tech savvy than their pedagogues. Also Apple's mobile devices limit explicit content quite well. So, if a school has any interest in limiting access to questionable material, then the iPad is a much better choice than, say, an Android tablet.

Another claim of Young's is that iBook Author is not actually more cost effective than textbooks. He supports his claim by pointing out that the first textbook costs $499 (the minimum cost of a new iPad 2) + $14.99 (the maximum cost of Apple's new textbooks). It is simple to see how his example, though true, is downright myopic. Anyone with the ability to do basic arithmetic can understand how using an iPad for one textbook is not cost effective when compared to one printed textbook. When considering a few years of textbooks, however, the economic tables turn.

Consider the cost of a high schooler's textbooks. I had no less than 6 textbooks each year as a high schooler. If I averaged the cost of those books at $50—a charitable assumption no doubt—then four years of books amounts to $1200. If, however, those textbooks were iPad textbooks, then the total would be $859 [$499 + $360], at most. Add the fact that an iPad can do much more than a pile of books and the cost comparison becomes a no brainer. Students get much more out of an iPad than they get out of printed textbooks, and they pay less in the long run.

Another worry about iBook Author is that authors must use their own content or content in the public domain. The reason is that big publishers own the rights to a great deal of printed content. Since many authors are not affiliated with big publishers, there is a worry that authors will not have enough content. I beg to differ. I had no less than 5 textbooks—costing about $100 each—that were chock full of public domain literature and editor's prefaces. Also, as a graduate student, I frequently look for public domain material to read. However, what I find is often formatted poorly for reading—usually it is HTML text from a university's online archives. With iPad textbooks, the most I could be charged for a readable and digital version of the classics I seek would be $14.99. As someone who already has an iPad, I find that pleasing. And when I consider that iBooks is constantly adding well-formatted public domain texts to their store (for free), it seems obvious how students could be saving money by using iPads—again, in the long run.

One should notice, also, that whatever limitation is imposed on iBook Authors (or any independent authors) via copyright legislation is not Apple's fault. Many educators expend their own efforts working on papers in an attempt to have their own work published. After writing, peer-reviewing, and waiting, only a select few papers make it to print. And who owns them? Not the writers or peer-reviewers, but the journal that publishes them. Oh, and the journals sell their stuff for a profit. That journals somehow make claim to an educators unpaid services is beyond me, and that it hinders endeavors like iBook Author is no fault of Apple.

To be fair, however, Apple will own the material that authors publish using iBook Author. In fact, they will own the entire creative process. This is part of the reason Apple can guarantee a maximum price of $14.99 for a textbook: authors receive a share of each purchased textbook—again, that's better than what can be said of printed journal publications—but they are not paid anything for the work itself. The big hang-up for some critics is that authors are not free to republish their book (or parts of their book) in other formats without Apple's permission. Some think this discourages authors' participation. To be clear, it discourages the authors who are out to make money, but authors that are out to offer rich digital textbook experiences to students at a low cost have no reason to hesitate. With iBook Author, they can easily put their media into a textbook and get it in the hands of students. And should an author decide later that he is out to make money, then he can simply buy Apple stock.

So Apple's iBook Author is not without its limitations. Then again, Apple's limitations have not prevented its products from being praised as the premier tech devices so far. Apple's iBook Author could very well be the next staple etextbook publishing software and iPads could be the next staple classroom technology. Alas, only time will tell.

To learn more about Apple's new programs visit their new webpages here.

Are you an educator, a student, or a publisher? Feel free to share your perspective below by clicking "comments."