PHI 3606 Continental Philosophy

To access the SPU database PhilPapers, go here.

For additional databases that index Philosophy, see the box below.

This note tells you how to find 5 possible sources for your article-report. (Finding five possible sources counts for 5 of the 15 points possible for your report. No points for late submissions.)

1. Go to the SPU Homepage. Click on Library, then Articles, then Philosophy, then PhilPapers (direct link).

2. Next, click on advanced search. In the box labelled with all of the words, type one or more key words or phrases indicative of your topic of interest, for example evil “free will” (note the quotation marks around the phrase).

• The box labelled with all of the words constructs an AND search equivalent to the following search in the box labelled matching this extended query and the main (or simple) search box as well:  evil & “free will” (both evil AND “free will”).
• Whereas The box labelled with at least one of the words constructs an OR search equivalent to the following search in the box labelled matching this extended query and the main (or simple) search box as well:  evil | “free will” (either evil OR “free will”).
• If you would like to specify that your terms must appear in the title of the article (rather than or as well as elsewhere), then add the @title operator, as follows:  @title evil @title “free will”.
• Here are some more examples of terms you might plug into a search, depending on your topic:  hell, hiddenness, “fine-tuning”, foreknowledge, “open theism”, and/or soul.
• For more on how to search PhilPapers effectively, see the PhilPapers page on syntax or Search help.

3. It may be helpful to limit your search to a particular journal. The following journals are especially useful for this course: Faith and Philosophy, Heythrop Journal, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, Philosophia Christi, Religious Studies, Theology and science, and Zygon.  To limit your search to one or more of these, place the journal title (in quotation marks if a phrase) in the box labelled Return articles published in as follows:  “Faith and Philosophy”.  Or, alternatively, “Faith and Philosophy” | Zygon (source “Faith and Philosophy” OR source Zygon).

• The same thing could be accomplished by using the @source operator in one of the other boxes:  @source “Faith and Philosophy”.  Or, alternatively, @source “Faith and Philosophy” | @source Zygon (source “Faith and Philosophy” OR source Zygon).
• If you don't limit your search to one or more journals in particular, then you must be able to tell the difference between 1) an essay in a book or 2) a book on the one hand (which book you must locate in the Library's discovery system rather than the database PhilPapers), and 3) an article in a journal on the other.  For some of the differences between those three types of records, see (in that order) the illustration below (you may have to zoom in on it to make out the details):

 4. Click on Submit (or, beside the main (or simple) search box, Search).  Be sure you’ve found an article or an essay in a book, not an entire book or mere book review (for starters, evil & “free will” –review (evil AND “free will” BUT NOT review)).

 5. If

• SPU full-text is available online, you should see the link .  Click on that and you should be taken to the full-text directly.  If
• SPU full-text is not available online, then click on the title of the article to access the abstract and bibliographical info, and follow steps 3-7 here, or the tab Find the Full Text, or ask the Philosophy (or some other) librarian for help.

You need to turn in author, title (of article), name of journal, date of publication (e.g. July 1998), and the abstract for the article (a short paragraph that summarizes the article). The easiest way to get this info is just to copy and paste from PhilPapers.

For a long list of "databases" that index Philosophy, go here.