The Portal is the brainchild of Kenneth F.T. Cust, Ph.D., an associate professor of philosophy in the department of English and Philosophy at Central Missouri State University. I asked Cust to describe the mission of the site. He told me, "The mission of the Philosophy Portal is to be the most comprehensive philosophical resource on the Internet. Our goal is to add several databases of philosophy and philosophy related materials a month."
Visitors to the Philosophy Portal site will already find numerous databases containing, in several instances, entries numbering in the multiple thousands, among them those dealing with metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and applied ethics. Others, such as those covering individual philosophers, are in their early stages of development. There is a database of philosophical journals with more than 500 current entries, and a listing of online encyclopedias which compiles more than 13,000 entries. Visitors will even find a compilation called "Philosophical Oddities" which lists Web sites that are "philosophically interesting or odd in a philosophical way or that represent some empirical instantiation of some philosophical problem." The currently highlighted "oddity," the Mojave Desert phone booth, poses the question, "If a phone rings in the middle of the desert and no one is there to answer it, does it make a noise? Or, how close to nowhere can you get and still make a phone call?"
Additional databases are currently under development. Cust told me, "The reason that [the site] is so extensive is that we have pioneered an easy way to build databases of annotated Web links. We can build such a database on virtually any subject in less than 24 hours." Accordingly, the Portal "will expedite the creation of new databases upon the request of at least 25 people." Visitors would be advised to make their needs known to Cust and to check periodically to keep abreast of new additions.
Cust explained that he is actively seeking educational, corporate, and individual sponsors for all of the databases, and that he hopes to find an institutional or corporate sponsor who will contribute resources to help maintain the burgeoning site. Are there currently any organizations affiliated with the project? No, says, Cust: "At the present time there are no organizational affiliations, although I am involved in discussions with my university regarding the possibility of hosting these resources on a permanent basis and providing resources to maintain the databases."
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