1. Main claims
  2. 1: Textbook prices are an injustice
  3. 2: Philosophy teachers have a professional duty to create free online textbooks
  4. 3: This duty is best fulfilled using the "Open Office Model"
    1. Open Office attempts to displace a MS product by exactly replicating its functioning for a casual, unsophisticated user
      1. Replicate public domain aspects of the content
      2. Put the content in a familiar form
        1. Dead tree
        2. ISBN, available in bookstore without complicated printing arrangements
        3. Promoted like a traditional book
    2. Linux attempts to displace a MS product by packing in features only appealing to sophistiicated users.
    3. Most existing free textbooks follow the linux model
  5. Brainstorm
  6. Existing Resources
    1. Books
      1. Critical Thinking
        1. Cathal Woods: Introduction to Reasoning
        2. Peter Bradley: Inquiry
      2. Baby Symbolic Logic
        1. P.D. Magnus: For All X
          1. J. Robert Loftis & P.D. Magnus *For All X: Lorain County Remix*
        2. David Veleman: Blogic
        3. Antony Eagle: Elements of Deductive Logic
        4. Paul Teller: A Modern formal formal logic primer
      3. Philip Pecorino: eight texts on various topics, include basic topics like Introduction to Philosophy and Ethics and more specialized topics like Death & Dying.
    2. Modules
    3. Databases
      1. General purpose
        1. Curwiki
        2. Merlot
        3. Community College Open Textbook Collaborative
        4. Connexions
      2. Philosophy
  7. Targets
    1. Standard Critical Thinking Text, Like Hurley
    2. Standard Bioethics Text, like Munson
    3. Standard Baby Formal Logic Text, Like Hurley
  8. Needed Resources
  9. Promotion
  10. The argument from perverse incentives.
  11. Perverse Incentives are a powerful force driving prices up
  12. Other factions, although they may be contributing, are not decisive
  13. Analogy to health care
  14. Access to education is one of the most important justice issues in a modern industrialized society
  15. Access to education is extremely unequal in modern industrial societies.
  16. Education is a leading factor in the well being of a population
  17. Education is extremely complicated and expensive to deliver
  18. High demand alone cannot be a factor, something must be keeping people from stepping in to meet that demand at lower prices
  19. Production costs are not high
  20. Expensive intro textbooks are not bankrolling books with a more narrow audience
  21. Objections and Replies
  22. The deus ex internet objection
    1. Objection: The textbook is going to die on its own anyway, because everyone will read everything on-line
    2. Reply: The textbook companies want to use the intenet to kill the used textbook market, and move to selling temporary access to their sites
    3. Reply: My students overwhelmingly favor physical books
  23. The Supererogatory Objection
    1. Objection: Creating free textbooks is praiseworthy by not required
    2. Reply: Professionals have a duty, not just to follow typical business practices, but to ensure that those practices allow the profession to contribute to society
  24. Funding
  25. Perverse incentives are kind of market failure that creates injustice
  26. The If Not Us, Who? Argument
    1. When the market fails, interested parties have a moral obligation to fight against the direction the market pushes them in.
    2. Government action is slow, clumsy, and won't produce philosophically sophisticated products.
    3. Nonprofits are focussed on K-12, won't necessarily get philosophy right.
    4. Start Ups Are interested in maintaining and profiting from current incentive structure
  27. The Hypocrisy Argument
    1. While philosophy professors have built whole industries out of analyzing the responsibilities of doctors and businessmen, we have thought very little about our own responsibilities. “That is not to say,” as Michael Scriven points out, “that the professoriate did not make pronouncements about job-related ethical issues; it was very big on telling other people how they should behave, for example, in telling administrators to respect the academic freedom of faculty, and in telling students to avoid cheating and plagiarism” (1982, 308).
  28. The Alternate Model Objection
    1. Objection: Why not use some alternative to free online texbooks (textbook rentals, website membership, simply choosing cheaper textbooks).
    2. Reply: The alternate models assume the market with its incentive structure and seek to find a way to continue to profit at a more reasonable level. The more sustainable goal is to take philosophy textbooks out of the market economy altogether.
  29. The promoting philosophy and learning argument
    1. "Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche, And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche"