User talk:Lucidish/archive1

Welcome to the Wikipedia

Here are some links I find useful

• Wikipedia:Policy Library
• Wikipedia:Cite your sources
• Wikipedia:Verifiability
• Wikipedia:Wikiquette
• Wikipedia:Conflict resolution
• Wikipedia:Brilliant prose
• Wikipedia:Neutral point of view
• Wikipedia:Pages needing attention
• Wikipedia:Peer review
• Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense
• Wikipedia:Village pump
• Wikipedia:Boilerplate text

Feel free to ask me anything the links and talk pages don't answer. You can sign your name by typing 4 tildes, likes this: ~~~~.

Cheers, Sam [Spade] 04:43, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Kukkurakova

Re: buddhism=philosophy?

I notice you've been categorizing Buddhism under philosophy and Buddhists under philosophers. In some cases, this is questionable, in other cases, blatantly inappropriate; "List of Buddhists" covers anyone who happens to be (a) Notable enough to be included in wikipedia and (b) Buddhist. Phillip Glass and Manuel Noriega are not philosophers. Buddhism is a religion, not a philosophy, and while, like a religion, it has many philosophers associated with it, this could be said of Christianity or Judaism equally well. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 19:46, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. bell hooks? Really?

Not to make a habit out of this (grin), but are you sure bell hooks is a philosopher? I know theory and philosophy are often interchangeable, but... -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 21:15, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, it's certainly true that "philosopher" lacks a fixed meaning; if we used it in its original range of meaning, all scientists, for example, would be philosophers. But I think that in modern terms, and especially as regards moden philosophers, the term also connotes a certain degree of certain kinds of seriousness and thoroughness, particularly standards of riogorus argumentation. This isn't to say that sometimes philosophy can take new or unusual forms--I would never deny that Black Skin, White Masks is philosophy, for example, despite its nonstandard textual choices. But hooks's work has always seemed to me more in the spirit of reflection on personal experience (akin to the memoir as a genre) than the setting forth and defending of certain proposition regarding the essential character of things. But it's probably best to err on the side of exlusion than the other, so I shan't press the point. BTW, though, the Buddha is one of the most marginal cases of "Buddhist philosophers," as I see it, since we don't have any of his actual writings, and it's possible that much of his early teaching was purely soteriological and not really philosophical. We can say that many writings attributed to him are philosophy, to be sure, but we don't know who really wrote them. Similarly, with other thinkers like Lao tzu, though in that case the trouble is lesser because the only way to coherently define "Lao tzu" is as the author of a certain text. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 22:10, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Experience is of course vital to philosophy; virtaully all of my philosophical allegiance is to empiricists like James, and I agree with James that personal experience can be one of the corner stones of a philosopher's work, but there is a different between uncritical reflection one experience (autobiography, essentially) and the sort of rigorous examination of ones own and others' experience which is able to create public knowledge (philosophy), and it's never clear to me, on what basis we should trust hooks's interpretations of her own experience, how we should test her claims. This is why I am distrustful of classifying her work as philosophy.

BTW, my point regarding the Buddha had nothing to do with whether the Buddha himself wrote anything down; I used the word "writings" simply because it's a commonplace in our print-centric west. "Compositions" would have been equally true. We have no way of knowing, and no reason for thinking, that any of the writings which deal with the sayings of the Buddha are actually accurate representations of his teachings. The situation with Christ is comparable; we have several accounts of his teachings, none of which probably gets him verbatim, and none of which embodies his own textual vision. We can garner some account from them, and we can from the accounts of the Buddha too, but those are, I beleive, composed rather later after his death than the gospels were after Christ, and could easily have undergone much more redaction. In Aristotles case, we have lecture notes, which are much closer to an original composition than either. With Socrates, of course, we speak of the reconstruction of him that we try to put together from historical sources alongside the version of him that Plato crafted. And while certainly I find Buddhist teachings extremely philosophically rich, I have no way of knowing which ones belonged to the historical Buddha, and so I don't usually call them his teachings. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 00:35, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I haven't read that much of hooks's work, but I gotta say it doesn't look, feel, or quack like philosophy. I have no doubt of its importance, though. And while testing in the scientific sense is indeed rare in philosophy, most philosophers do you set forward there ideas in some framework, intended as rigorous, which allows for some form of verificiation. Thus, logic in its several forms throughout philosophy; thus, mystical attempts to penetrate into the underlying reality of existence and to codify mystic practices for others to use in replicating the experience, etc.

I have no problem discussing the importance of Socrates, Christ, or the Buddha for philosophy. Socrates was a philosopher (we're just not 100% sure what he said), the Buddha may have been a philosopher, and Christ is the basis of Christian theology. But it's important to be clear what we're talking about, particularly when we're defining categories, and saying what is what. Precision of thinking and speaking/writing is important in philosophy.

(BTW--Socrates wasn't just one of Plato's characters; we do have some independent material substantiating his thought, and scholars can differentiate some of Plato's more accurate versions of him. This isn't true of the Buddha, really, though it is clear that he existed, I think.)

Oh, and as far as the question of whether pragmatism blurs the fact-value distinction, it depends. Certainly Dewey does something of that nature when he attempts to construct his quasi-metaphysics, but I'm not sure he's wrong to do so; one can rephrase some of it as an articulation of an evolutionary principle--survival of those creatures who have accurate knowledge about what works and what doesn't work in their interactions with their environment. In other words, what are we afraid such a blurring might do? It could lead to us de-valuing tragic goods (i.e., things that are good in some sense that is totally contrary to what works in the world), which don't seem such an extraordinary loss at first glance, or to the valuation of things which are good for human communities but are in some other-worldly moral sense "bad". But I don't think I personally acknowledge other-worldly sources of moral value.

More to the point for you, though, is that Buddhism is essentially pragmatic. The basic Buddhist proposition is just a mode of practice which is offered to those who are suffering with the intent of enabling them to get out of suffering; metaphysical or cosmogonic questions that don't bear on the practical goal are dismissed for that reason; there is no interest in truth in itself accept insofar as that truth is soteriological, and it is typical of Buddhism to appeal to experiential arguments--"try it and see," or somewhat less nobly, "I have tried it and seen." -- when it is pressed to defend itself. Similarly, the two-truths doctrine which is most popular in Mahayana Buddhism but exists in Nikaya Buddhism as well has a decidedly pragmatic slant to it. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 01:32, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, you might want to get to know hooks's work a bit. She's not my favorite writer by any means, but she makes interesting and provocative claims. One of my professors puts it that she could have been a philosopher but did not, and that's too bad. You should also read some pragmatist writers, if you haven't. James's Pragmatism is very short and a solid introduction to the field, though it's also not stellar in itself. He was better at constructing essays than books or lecture series. Dewey's Experience and Nature is a monumental work, but a little opaque.

The woman's angels would have no value according to any pragmatic theory of truth. They would have value for Jamesian empiricism up to precisely the point of being "real for her"--i.e., of the impossibility of anyone else being able to convince her that she does not see what she sees. But that's not a pragmatist point, only an empiricist one, and James makes the distinction. Pragmatism does not say what is good is true--only what is useful, i.e., what enables us to act in ways that accord with our environment so as to be successful. Virtually all of the noted pragmatists other than Rorty are either scientists or logicians, and they had no personal interest in subordinating truth to human whim. The test of a pragmatic truth isn't, "Does it have any good outcome?", but rather, to borrow a line that James borrowed from Vedanta, (I believe), "Is it good for life?" This has a sort of double meaning: on the one hand, does it contribute to the prolonged survival of the species and its general health and well-being, and on the other, is this benefit long-lasting. Pragmatism has no toleration for narrow or short-term goods, but seeks those that that have applicability to the widest population over the longest course of time. So, while disbelieving the old lady might not be fun for her, it might be important to the cultivation of the scientific temperament that's necessary for the development of medical science that prolongs life and makes even terminal illnesses less painful to undergo. What's more, even if weren't the ultimately nicer answer, it would always be the right one from a pragmatic standoint becuase that is what enables us to make accurate prediction, and accurate prediction is the ultimate standard of pragmatic truth. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 07:38, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Fool

Erm, doesn't the munging you just did to Lakatos contravene what it says under "punctuation" in Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style ? Toby Woodwark 23:02, 2004 Jun 17 (UTC)

See my talk page about ’ Toby Woodwark 00:43, 2004 Jun 23 (UTC)

Hydra

Saw your name on the edit log, thought I would say hello. You can probably figure out who I am from my user page but if you have difficulty let me know. I've stopped visiting "the regular haunt" for the most part. --Fastfission 00:28, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

At the moment I'm still hanging around Berkeley but I move out to start at the H-bomb in August/September. --Fastfission 00:33, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hey there Mr. Helpful

If you want to help me copyedit/wikify an article I am writing, you are more than welcome to! The article I am beginning at User:Fastfission/HST will be a replacement of history of science and technology which is, at the moment, some guy's attempt to justify Cold Fusion as being on par with Galileo, and a thousand useless tree and timelines. Sigh. --Fastfission 19:29, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Re: HST

Well, I realized that the guy just didn't know what I was talking about at all and that's when I realized it was better to just rewrite it rather than argue over it. Though, half of my frustration was with the guy insisting that work done on "birth order" in science was taken seriously and should be included in the article.

If you look at what links to the HST article you can see that it is primarily in reference to the formal study, not simply "the history" of it. It would be akin to having the "philosophy" article starting off as "philosophy is the critical study of fundamental questions..." and then having one section on Humian skepticism and how it makes one really wonder if we're inside the Matrix or not.

Even worse, it would be a like a "history of philosophy" article which said, "the history of philosophy is people asking stranger and stranger questions" rather than an actual accounting of philosophers and the evolution of their theories.

But even that misses the point though, that the "history" in history of science is not meant in this case, I don't think, to be literal... that is, I don't think the entry on "history of science" should try to include the entire history of science. Not only would such a thing be a rather large and futile endeavor better served by a distribution of labor around its subsidiary sub-disciplines, but that information is well within the scope of article under "science," which could have its own history sections which would further subdivide.

On this last point I'm willing to say that just having "history of.." in front of a disciplinary name does not necessarily mean one needs to focus on the evolution of historical scholarship about it. I can see why "History of physics" is about the changes in what is roughly labeled as "physics" and not about the historical subdiscipline of "history of physics." However I think that the "history of science" is a large enough discipline (with its own history and implications, esp. all of the "Science Wars" miscellany) to warrant its own disciplinary entry as the primary entry. But anyway that's just one opinion...

Also -- the historiography of science and technology (which is what a lot of my rewrite is about) is intimately linked to the history and the philosophy of science. I think to have an entry on "historiography of science and technology" would miss the point though. Our conceptions of the history of science are built by those who practice the history of science, and thus their methods of practicing it are thus relevant to the questions which the history of science plays into. Furthermore it would be akin to calling Kuhn a histographer of science rather than a historian of science -- while he is clearly both, the latter category is far more intuative.

STS is something else alltogether, btw.. it is more of a merging of anthropology, sociology, and history of science, closer to science studies than history of science. And personally I think Steve Fuller misses the point a good deal of the time though it depends on what he is writing about.

Anyway, thanks for the comments! My goal with HST is to contextualize the development of the field (by depicting its own history) and its various warring methodologies (externalism v. internalism, the Science Wars, etc.), and then link to a few of the Wikipedia timelines which will hopefully, along with the "science" entry, provide the histories of the various scientific disciplines without too much duplication of work. I think that having a "history of science" article that reads only marginally different than a "science" article is silly. Bah! :) --Fastfission 00:05, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

"Birth order" is some guys theory that being born first, second, third, etc. has some sort of vast psychological impact, and whoever wrote the book on it noted that a lot of prominent scientists were first-borns or later-borns or whatever the case may be. It has some logical and ahistorical problems with it, right off the bat (Are we suppose to think that Newton wouldn't have accomplished anything if he had an older/younger brother? Or that he accomplished what he did because he didn't? What's the sample size? How does inheritance play into the practical aspect of being first born in the 17th century?) but I haven't looked at it very closely -- it's really not on the agenda of any serious historians. I edited the draft a bit more and moved "General history of science" up onto it from the old page -- I think it will satisfy people looking for the gut contents of it. I don't think "challenge to orthodoxy" as it currently stands belongs anywhere near this page -- it's really covered more fully in articles like scientific skepticism, etc. If the guy thinks that Cold Fusion is really like Galileo, he should talk about it on the Cold Fusion page, or the Galileo page -- not the "history of science" page. Or maybe on a new "scientific controversy" page, linked to from these other pages. In my opinion, of course. --Fastfission 00:26, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I have really no opinion on "birth order" other than it not being something historians take seriously -- in my opinion it lies more in the domain of psychohistory which I think has a good deal of serious methodological problems. I also don't know why that particular aspect of human socialization would warrant more or overriding opinion over the multitude of others -- why say, for example, that Newton accomplished what he did (even in part) because he was born last, rather than saying it was being, say, he was a white male aristocrat in the 17th century with a fanatical desire to find harmony between the mechanical world and his God? Again, I haven't read the "birth order" texts but I can imagine a whole lot of things going on there (even with birth order -- again the economic questions) besides vulgar psychology. But maybe it's just because I'm a first-born that I think that. ;)

On the Popper tack, if you become exceptionally bored you should take a look at the entry on paradigm shift which I edited up quite a bit. I think you will agree with my formulation of it, or at least in the same spirit that Kuhn intended it, I think -- which is exactly what you have said: looking at the seriousness of the aether theory (or any other old theory), rather than ridiculing it, gives you a much better understanding of how science works, and looking at the reasons it fell out of favor gives you a much better understanding of the little human aspects of science. However this is not what Popper, the old logical positivist, thought, in my reading of him -- he abstracts the history to the level of philosophy, which, as a historian, I of course abhor. ;) --Fastfission 17:59, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hyacinth

Please provide a short description of your edits in the Edit summary. Thanks. Hyacinth 05:29, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Good stuff

Just a quick note to say great work on the social psychology article. It's looking really good now and your recent edits have really made a difference. Nice one ! - Vaughan 08:10, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

hey there

Was wondering if you knew enough about Hubert Dreyfus to put a few notes about his work into his sad little stubby article? --Fastfission 15:37, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Re: demarcation, false science, and you

Most of the time it is easier for historians to just say that "science is what scientists do" and avoid the question alltogether. But generally historians of science don't actually get involved in making strong statements about demarcation, so I won't either. It comes down to how you define "a science," in the end, of course, but you know that's the easy way to avoid saying anything controversial. I don't have a problem studying, say, alchemy and not going out of my way to say "it's not a science!" or "it's really a science!" (actually the only time you really see that in this field is in the works on eugenics, but that's because most of the historians doing it are still in the "shock" phase of things and still feel like eugenics is worth disproving for the umpteenth million time. I don't do that when I deal with it but I think, honestly, that having a Jewish last name makes it so I don't have to constantly be defending off attacks that I give legitimacy to it or something like that). --Fastfission 23:42, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Again, I still think it depends on how you define "science" and I don't know of any self-evidence way to do that. A scientist most likely would define "a science" as something which is part of "science" as a loosely grouped sets of methodologies and protocols. A historian might define it as practices done by people of a certain social class in certain types of institutions. And a philosopher might be more loosey goosey and define it as anything which is a system or an investigation. Only some of those exclude or include what is labeled as psuedoscience. Personally I'm inclined to say that a science is any sort of systematic investigation or set of practices, but that would include cooking as well and would exclude accidental discoveries from the realm of science. Which might be correct, but it makes me waver. But again, I do history, so I'm happy with not worrying about the abstract questions very much and focusing only on how things work out in practice. :-) --Fastfission 19:25, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Michael Polanyi is a scientist who does exactly this - defining science - brilliantly. Jeffrey Newman 08:06, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, the problem with defining a cat as "an animal" is that it is sub-descriptive -- it's the wrong category of description (i.e. "thing" > "animal" > "mammal" > "feline" > "cat" > "(species)" > "(variant)"). Being that "cat" itself is a category (including such members as "calico" and "siamese"), when defining a "cat" we would, I think, say that it is a "feline" which is known for being furry, small, etc. Which would mean that we are referencing the category of which the term itself is a member, and then trying to describe what sets it apart from the other members of that category. (of course, I realize how futile it is to try and do categorization rigorously, but if we're trying to come up with definitions in the first place I think we can not worry too much about rigor for a minute) But I don't know if this situation is analogous to "science," which of course could be seen as a member of the category "knowledge seeking methods" but then again might itself just mean "knowledge seeking methods" depending on who you ask. Calling psuedo-science a subset of science would probably offend scientsts, because if you are defining science by its methodological aspects (induction, deduction, experiment, observation, hypothesis, etc.) then usually psuedo-science means "something which purports to be science but does not actually follow the methodology" -- and thus is not "science." But if you're talking about "science" in a more general sense (such as, "this is more of an art than a science") then I think it could work, but I think a lot of people will not grasp the nuance and they will not want to grasp the nuance. I think a lot of people, perhaps rightly, are as proprietary about the term "science" as is Disney with Mickey Mouse, even if they realize what you are trying to do. But again I'm not really weighing in on either side of things too much myself, but then again I don't have much invested in it either way most of the time.

As for school, it doesn't start for two weeks and I think I almost know what classes I'm going to take. In any event I don't really know anybody here yet so it's somewhat lonely. :-( --Fastfission 19:50, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide
• Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Right-wing politics

Could I ask you to have a look at the recent exchanges at Talk:Right-wing politics? If you want to stay out of the fray and just comment to me on my user talk page, that's OK, though I would very much welcome your active participation. My feeling is that Sam Spade and Silverback are both engaging in Humpty Dumptyism. It's really hard to debate with people who won't agree to use words in their consensus meanings. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:24, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

Hey there

What's new? --Fastfission 03:36, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Journalism, eh? What for? What are your plans? Where to? If you are already a subversive element then you must be doing something correct. --Fastfission 03:54, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Oh, it's okay here. Summers is an idiot on a number of levels (there's a nice joke going around that he only opens his mouth when it needs another foot inserted into it) but he's hardly unique at that (he's an economist, what does anybody expect?). He's smart with his money but that's about it. I don't consider too brilliant a leader anyone who constantly finds themselves irritating the faculty, though. Pinker has been his nice little lapdog as of late in a really shameless and scientifically unsound way (his little Just-So stories of evolutionary biology are cute enough for US News and World Report but don't cut it when he gives them to his scientific peers). The man is humorously ignorant of history as well (he gave a talk awhile back about how 19th century science was "bad science" and that 20th century science had nothing to do with it, and then a minute later praised how much the work of Francis Galton helped our current understanding of things!), but I don't expect much out of the psychologists. Fortunately all of this is relatively insulated away from day to day activities -- the place is nothing if not decentralized. It hardly matters what the president does so long as it doesn't affect our funding. It gives us something to joke and be indignant about, though, so I guess that could be seen as a boon.

I think journalism could be fun but I would be wary that there is probably a reason that intelligent sorts of people seem to get screened out or dumbed down. That being said, I don't know all that much about the profession. --Fastfission 01:06, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wondering if you could do me a favor: could you send me ([email protected]) the e-mail address of the SA Forums user "ManoliIsFat"? I don't have an account there anymore but I wanted to send him something. --Fastfission 06:14, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Pinker's approach to things is very narrow-minded. He reads life through a strict heredity-and-biology-is-everything worldview, and enjoys taking opinions which will get him a lot of attention. I've seen him speak a few times and I've never been impressed by either his interpretative ability or his capability to realize the limitations of his own approaches or to avoid turning everything into a just so story. I'd say that I thought he gave evolutionary psychology a bad name if I didn't already think it had a pretty bad name (too speculative, takes too much from too little, and more often than not serves to just reflect the political/social opinions of those people doing the work). There has been some recent hubbub on the evolutionary purpose of the female orgasm which has been fairly humorous -- five experts, none with any evidence whatsoever, just reasoning what they think is a probably explanation, going on almost nothing in terms of evidence. Darwin himself did at least as good in the 1870s. But that's just my take on it. --Fastfission 05:02, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'll take a look at that particular debate when I get the chance. Pinker's strategy falls into the same pattern though: posit two strawmen, make himself out as a centrist, then make lots of statements which lean towards a strong nature interpretation, wink and tell a joke, repeat. --Fastfission 18:56, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Meaning

That joke had been there a surprisingly long time - I'm glad someone else has read the article.

You've done an excellent job on Philosophy of language, by the way. Good work. Banno July 4, 2005 08:33 (UTC)

Philosophically illiterate vs dumbing down

I've just added this note below yours on the Philosophy Project page. In case you don't see it there, I'm adding it here. I would like to see an 'introduction' to philosophy section somewhere. If I read the discussion accurately, it doesn't yet really exist (but the discussion is a bit meandering and long...)

The best written argument as to why philosophy is difficult that I have read is in Hegel's Preface to his Phenomenology of Spirit. Perhaps one sentence is worth quoting here - in the hope that there is a place for it somewhere else? 'In the case of all other sciences, arts, skills and crafts, everyone is convinced that a complex and laborious programme of learning and practice is necessary for competence. Yet when it comes to philosophy, there seems to be a currently prevailing prejudice to the effect that, although not everyone who has eyes and fingers, and is given leather and last, is at once in a position to make shoes, everyone nevertheless immediately understands how to philosophize, and how to evaluate philosophy, since he possesses the criterion for doing so in his natural reason - as if he did not likewise possess the measure for a shoe in his own foot.' (Preface, para 67.) I was 'trained' in analytic philosophy; coming across 'continental' philosophy late in life has been a 'revelation! Do I put this on Lucidish page or leave it just here? I am still 'new'; I will, in fact, do both...(if I am technically sufficiently competent and can manage it quickly! Jeffrey Newman 07:09, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Hegel should have expressed himself in a clear and concise manner, if he had something to say and desired to be understood. Instead, he very inconsiderately chose to write in an obscure style.Lestrade 17:24, 21 March 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

I've added a bit more to the 'string' under the 'Philosophically illiterate' heading[[1]]. Perhaps you might like to have a look.

I am not especially interested in the topic of epistemology and not enthusiastic about the article here but I am deeply interested in issues about truth, fact, opinion and their relative importance e.g in regard to the conflict between scientific thinking and other ways of knowing - so the Sokal stuff is important to me and worth analysing. I think their 'bit of fun' shows a deep lack of understanding of what philosophy is and how it works and the importance of metaphor in human thinking. Nor do I think they show much understanding of science, what it is, how it works! I'm thinking here particularly of the work of Michael Polanyi. Again, the Wikipedia article gives a good outline of his life but you would not get much idea of his work or thinking from it. Heidegger was notoriously anti-historicist when teaching Aristotle: 'He lived, he worked, he died,' and was not interested in anything else about him except his writings. Wikipedia goes the other way. Mentioning H. reminds me that I've also worked quite a bit on Hannah Arendt for whom questions of truth, fact, opinion were, not surpringly, of critical interest in the in the political/philosophical realm. Why do you ask? Jeffrey Newman 05:40, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

If I understand your comment on my page correctly, I agree with you: philosophy and epistemology are of use in the world 'as it is' Wittgenstein. My sweeping reference to lack of understanding between philosophy and science refers to both Sokal and Wikipedia - cf. articles e.g. on pseudo-science and protoscience and the extreme beliefs in scientific purity that I come across in some of the Wikipedian articles. Jeffrey Newman 18:05, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Banned?

What'd you get banned for? Now I'm curious.... What have you been up to in general? --Fastfission 14:09, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I think getting away from there was a good thing anyway. I don't consider the discussions to be very worthwhile, with the exception of a few thoughtful users drowning in a sea of "teh funney". Wikipedia can be a fun place to kill a lot of time but I've found that because the work one produces is somewhat individual (that is, you are writing up "your" articles), yet the project on the whole is collective, it can make for a lot of irritation (such as when someone seriously monkeys with "your" article). So I've learned to just not look at articles like that for a few weeks, come back to it later and try to patch things up again. It doesn't matter much in the long run and it's all mostly anonymous anyway.

I took a class on copyright law last semester and I've been trying to reform Wikipedia's fair use policy. Other than that I've been awash in an intensive language class I've been taking over the summer. Я говорю, но я не понимаю. I also wrote a research paper on the history of random number generation which was somewhat interesting. Such is life. I haven't seen the Bryson book but if I stumble across it I will take a gander. --Fastfission 23:30, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Liberalism

Would you consider changing your vote to speedy keep so we can get this over with? -- Jmabel | Talk 08:12, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Liberalism

Lucidish, so sorry that you did not like the article on Asner. Too bad. It's legitimate and in keeping with Wikipedia's rules. Delete it again and you will be reported. We have a thing in America called "Freedom of Speech".

Einstein

I'm of course fine if people want to have nuanced and well-informed lines about priority disputes in articles. But this guy is just pushing nonsense. The Bjerknes stuff is an orgy of quotation out of context, lack of understanding, and in the end still has no real substance. And of course to get out of the inevitable fact that historians and scientists do not agree with him, he postulates both a massive conspiracy and massive incompetence. Neither seem particularly true in my experience. In any event, I of course love a good discussion of a real priority dispute -- they are fascinating both historically and epistemologically -- but some anonymous user adding pithy and unnuanced little phrases to articles, with the sole intention of pushing a crank theory as mainstream, is far from that. Just my two cents. I agree that banning for half a month was unnecessarily long, but I am not inclined to be very tolerant when it comes to the actual article content, and I do not want to invite these fellows to try and "prove" to me one position or another on the talk page; it is a waste of time, in the end, for all involved. --Fastfission 17:44, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

From what I can tell, there is a small minority of physicists/mathematicians who like to play around with the priority game a bit. Their standing is not insignificant (they are not cranks for the most part, though a few are in my opinion borderline), but they are definitely a minority opinion. Most historians of physics place the priority in the "traditional" places, though the vast majority do so without making strong arguments about it, because they don't find this kind of priority dispute very insightful or very provoking (as my advisor, a prominent Einstein scholar, once put it: "Our discipline not a post-hoc prize committee… who gives a shit?"), and because priority disputes of this time almost always revolve around whose interpretations of the historical object in question you go with (in this case, what exactly constitutes the unique factors of "general relativity" which separate its interpretations of, say, Lorentz transformations from, say, Lorentz's?, etc.).

Personally the way I would approach it is probably like this:

1. Create a page about scientific priority which discusses the difficulty in really weighing out complicated priority disputes, those in which the identity object of the dispute is itself disputed. Some good examples of this include the Einstein-Poincaré dispute, the various people who are trotted out to supposedly be predecessors of Darwin, the question about what Freud took from Fliess, and maybe one more dear to my own heart, the Teller-Ulam design priority dispute (the article on Edward Teller describes this pretty well in my opinion). Also maybe some discussion of retrospective priority assignment in a few rare cases (i.e. Mendel), but mention that this sort of thing is almost always done in the case of a re-discovery of a forgotten/lost theory and the assignment is almost always only taken seriously when it has been done by the re-discoverer. Talk about some of historical/philosophical issues (I can e-mail you a good article on the subject if you are interested on a personal level). Talk about how often these sorts of things are used by detractors of a given person or theory (i.e. Einstein, Darwin, Freud) to devalue both the theory and the creator of the theory. Talk about how most historians don't usually deal with these sorts of things (there is a good quote on the Darwin page about this, also I believe that Darrigol article had a quote to this effect). Maybe include a "list of well-known scientific priority disputes" or something like that.
2. Assign credit to Einstein in all of the places where it is usually assigned. Make a note that a small minority of mainstream historians or physicists sometimes assign the priority or at least a strong influence to Poincaré, Lorentz, whomever. Mention that the majority of historians of physics don't do this and that they don't usually worry too much about this sort of priority dispute; link to the new article.
3. Party.

I think what is important here is to properly balance the majority/minority question, and I think if we had a half-way decent article about priority disputes and how they are regarded it would stem off some of this sort of problem in the future. I think it is hard for people not acquainted with these fields to understand why these sorts of factual nitpickings are not a big concern for historians. Of the non-crank people who engage in such work, they are almost always scientists, who believe that the history of science is simply a lining up of priority statements, even though science is not generally thought to work in that way (i.e. Mendel had priority but if Mendel had never existed it would not have changed the history of genetics one bit since he was completely uninfluential to future thought, hence the whole "rediscovery").

Boy, that's a lot of text! If you think this is a good approach I'll try to help out where I can, especially on the priority article which is a subject I find interesting on the whole and have a lot of good references for. Eager for your opinion on all of this. I know that I bitch and moan whenever some crank comes along and stirs things up though I do recognize the positive value of such a thing; it forces one to be a bit more rigorous and sometimes to generate a lot of content which otherwise would have been neglected. --Fastfission 19:35, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

• I don't care who gets credit for what as long as 1. we are really reflecting the consensus of the relevant expert communities and 2. we indicate this and 3. we cite this. I'm happy to try and survey some of the well-respected secondary literature on Einstein/Poincare/etc. and see what they say on the subject. I trust nothing that our IP addressed friend posts -- he is obviously a POV pusher of the worst sort, selectively quotes and misinterprets (think here of the Kip Thorne bit, where he happily ignores the fact that Thorne actually says he gives Einstein priority in the next sentence, and then actively insists that we should also ignore that sentence), and champions cranks and minority views while denegrating majority views. I don't think we should be trying to deal with this at all on a level of primary sources; distinguishing between certain high level relativity concepts is something left to experts to squabble about. The worst case scenario here is we post something that is only accepted by a few fringe guys, don't indicate it, and then become a real laughingstock of the historical/scientific community. In my opinion that is far worse off than if the mainstream version turns out to be biased in one way or another. --Fastfission 18:25, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Lucidish, I saw your comments on Fastfission's page... but I didn't see your comments on Poincare's Talk page. There I insisted on simply stating the facts about what Poincare achieved (without drifting off)and facts about opinions about his achievements (standard policy, right?); regretfully anon is unable (or unwilling) to understand that. But slowly (eventhough I've been a bit absent lately) we're getting grip on it, as about everyone else who passes by disagrees with his soapbox comments. Anyway, everything is so impressively well sourced, that the facts speak for themselves, and there is no need for opinions. Thus Whittaker's opinion has little other relevance than to point out to the uninformed that there is some disagreement on that issue. Whittaker didn't have more sources than we have; in fact, and like with archeology, we probably have access to more sources than he had. :-) If you want to chat about that issue, just send me an email. Cheers, Harald88 20:54, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Lucidish, Glad you like my take on Whittaker. Maybe it should be moved to a place on the Einstein talk page closer to all the other back-and-forth on e = mc^2. When I finish a complete translational of Poincare (1900), a slow process for me! I will think about publishing a commentary on that paper. I recall seeing somewhere that Whittaker's book was considered fairly controversial in the 1950s (as one would expect). I also saw somewhere that Max Born, before Whittker published, tired to convince Whittaker to give Einstein more credit. E4mmacro 20:56, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

• One source I came across for completely other reasons is Kragh's Quantum Generations, a wonderful history of 20th century physics, extremely scholarly, very clear, very sharp, written by a historian for historians. It is very highly respected and often used in current pedagogy on history of physics (it was assigned to me to read for this reason). It had a very good and very balanced discussion of all of the priority dispute bits, and where all the individual players fit in (Lorentz, Poincaré, Hilbert). If you are interested, I could send you the relevant sections, if you thought you'd have time to look at them. I haven't gone over the whole thing with a fine toothed comb but I'm willing to say it's probably the most "up to date" version of the "current historical consensus" on any of these questions. Just an offer, if you are interested. --Fastfission 01:26, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

• Send me an e-mail at: [email protected] and I'll reply with the PDF. I don't know about the Folsing book, but could probably take a look at it, there seem to be a few copies of it available to me. --Fastfission 03:16, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Unity Project

Are you involved with the Unity Project in London? Barry Wells 20:28, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Who's "Paris"? Paris Hilton? Just kidding. I don't know who "Paris" is. Barry Wells 02:49, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Tell Steve that I voted for him. In the future, I may support the Greens. The NDP and the Greens should consider merging at some point in time. Jim Wilson, the leader of the Green Party of Canada is scoring some serious points with his succinct and clear speeches across Canada. I do believe that it is the political part of the future. Thanks for the kind words about my activism. Barry Wells 03:09, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Category:Contemporary philosophers

Please vote here. — goethean ॐ 22:39, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

logic

In logic, I've really only studied the classic stuff -- I'd like to keep up with new developments, especially forcing theory, but my main area is knot theory, which is also booming. So much to learn, so little time. Rick Norwood 13:33, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Question

Do you have stairs in your house? Scott Ritchie 01:43, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikimedia Canada

Hi there! I'd like to invite you to explore Wikimedia Canada, and create a list of people interested in forming a local chapter for our nation. A local chapter will help promote and improve the organization, within our great nation. We'd also like to encourage everyone to suggest projects for our national chapter to participate in. Hope to see you there!--DarkEvil 17:11, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Very important answer

Nope. Why? --Fastfission 04:55, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Comment added to your user page

Misplaced comment moved here. --cesarb 09:34, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Dear Lucidish, As now, "Meaning looks a bit chaotical without a clear definition and classification.

Azamat Abdoullaev, 24 February

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Azamat Abdoullaev (talk • contribs) 08:59, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Your message

To be honest I stopped really bothering a while ago. There are a couple of editors whose presence means that the article is never going to be in good condition, and I decided that my time was better spent elsewhere. Good luck with it. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:46, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

vir parum jurisconsultus et minime philosophus

I'm not an expert, but 'parum' is an adverb i think. Thus "He is not enough of a lawyer and least of all a philosopher". Probably. Dean Dbuckner 14:12, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Better: "He is not much of a lawyer, and [he is] least of all a philosopher" Dbuckner 14:43, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Confused

Hello, Lucidish. You said you are confused regarding statements I have made on the Talk:Philosophy page:

Confused. You first said, "The opening sentence of this article describes the word philosophy instead of the topic of philosophy. I suggest that until the opening sentence describes philosophy, this article is not encyclopedic in tone or style". Presumably, something to be scrapped. Then KS said, "I suspect Rod would be perfectly content with an extremely brief one-liner definition," which is out of line with your comments, because you had said the opposite. Then, while claiming to agree with his interpretation, you go on to dispute it, by suggesting that "My drive is simply to alter the style of the intro so that it describes the article's topic instead of a word" (assuming, of course, that there is a difference between a topic and definition that is salient for the purposes of the article). What is it, exactly, that you're saying? You can't have both at once. Lucidish 02:24, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I do not know the referrent of "both" in your assertion, "You can't have both at once". I think "both" probably refers to two of the following:

• [We should] alter the style of the intro so that it describes the article's topic instead of a word.
• [The article would include] an extremely brief one-liner definition [of the word philosophy].
• [We should] alter the style of the intro so that it describes [philosophy] instead of a word.

Did your "you can't have both at once" comment refer to two of the above? If so, which two. If not, to what two alleged desires did it refer? The Rod (☎ Smith) 21:15, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

1 and 3 are synonymous in this context, so #1 and #2 are what are contradictory. In #1 you seem to be indicating a universal negative, then in #2 you indicate a particular positive. If that's a fair reading, then it's self-falsifying.

If you were, on the other hand, merely making general or offhand remarks about the way that the intro tends to be going, then that warrants no discussion at all, and you're free to make edits as you like; though I'd reiterate that the "definition" section in its present form does cover facts about usage, and not semantic meaning (i.e., that regarding the relationship between science and philosophy), and so is a very happy candidate for potential material to the intro. Lucidish 00:14, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Forgive me for being dense, but I do not follow. If I understand your use of "universal negative" and "particular positive", you are alleging a contradiction between two of my statements, specifically, the ones that follow:

• "[The article would include] an extremely brief one-liner definition [of the word philosophy]."
• "[We should] alter the style of [article introductions in general] so that [they describe] the [articles' topics] instead of [the words in their titles]."

I see no contradiction between those two statements, and certainly no blanket incompatibility between universal negatives and particular positives. In this case, I believe it is consistent and desirable for the introduction of this article to describe the philosophy instead of the word philosophy and for a subsequent section of the article to include a brief definition of the word philosophy. Please explain how you interpret those statements to be mutually contradictory. The Rod (☎ Smith) 00:47, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

"1. [We should] alter the style of the intro so that it describes the article's topic instead of a word.

2. [The article would include] an extremely brief one-liner definition [of the word philosophy]."

It seems to me that the full logical structure of #1 is something like, "The style of the intro can be either about the topic, or a word; it is currently about a word; we should alter the intro so that it describes the topic."

The word "instead", which is recovered in part as an "either-or", is mutually exclusive, meaning you can't have one without the other. As evidence to show that this is a decent logical translation of the use of the word "instead", let's take another instance. Say I'm at a diner, and I can have either a sandwich or a sausage. I make up my mind and say, "I'd like a sandwich instead of a sausage, please." We can expect me to be very surprised if the waiter were to bring me both. I explicitly wanted one, and not the other.

That being said. For the sake of economy, for the purposes of this conversation, we can reduce the important information in #1 down to: "The introduction should not describe the word "philosophy"." I read this as a universal claim, as in: "For all of the introduction, it should not describe the word "philosophy"." A universal claim is just one which has the word "all" describing its subject (in this case, "the introduction"). And it's a negative universal, because you're denying something about that universal, as indicated by the word "not". I admit, the phrase "the introduction" is equivocal in terms of quantity, and so it's very hard to say that it logically defaults as meaning either "all of the introduction" or "some of the introduction". But by convention or habit, people pragmatically treat it as defaulting as an "all" statement.

For #2, I called it a "particular" because it discusses only a single thing, namely, "a brief one-liner sentence". And it's positive, because it doesn't have any negative word in it, like "not".

If these were accurate readings, then they are contradictory. It would be like saying, "All dogs are fat", and then saying, "But I own a slim dog".Lucidish

It sounds like a bit of a stretch, but perhaps you believed the above interpretation and were not just trying to debate for debate's sake. I agreed not to object to a brief definition of the word, but maintained my conviction that the focus of introduction be the topic instead of the word. Your reply apparently tried to discredit that recommendation by contrasting its maximally exclusive interpretation with my acceptance of a brief definition somewhere in the article. I appreciate debate, but would prefer to work collaboratively toward improving the article. The Rod (☎ Smith) 02:27, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, that was my interpretation, and how I arrived at it. It's on the basis of the words, and the conventions that govern them. I'm happy to collaborate, too -- and I would actually be being a very poor collaborator if I failed to, in the first instance, try to understand what you meant according to your own words (and the conventions that govern them). I'm all for charity, but had seen no evidence in any of your comments that you were taking anything but an absolutist position on this matter. Lucidish 02:52, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Since my recommendations (the article introduction should focus on the topic instead of the word; and I would not object to a brief definition) were literally self-consistent, you could have chosen to interpret them so. Anyway, I'm glad you are happy to collaborate.

Do you oppose or support applying the 'refers to' recommendation of Wikipedia's Guide to writing better articles to the Philosophy article? A good place to voice your objection or support is after my appeal to that standard on Talk:Philosophy. The Rod (☎ Smith) 16:53, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Made a comment per your request, though it hardly seems worth comment.

In the spirit of reading you on your own terms, I could only have chosen to interpret one way or the other after you approved of KS's interpretation, and not before it (for the reasons I indicated above). Of course, after you approved of it, I expressed confusion. The principle of charity would have applied in a case where there was not any other significant pragmatic weight, and there had been reason to see a genuine equivocation at play. Lucidish 17:18, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I assume your "KS's interpretation" above refers to the following post:

This is not true. I suspect Rod would be perfectly content with an extremely brief one-liner definition. The problem Rod is identifying is in the first couple sentences, the entire second paragraph, and the entire first section of the article. This is way too much space spent on the word "philosophy"[....] KSchutte 15:54, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

To my knowledge, my recommendation is simple, consistent, sane, honest, and in the best interest of Wikipedia. The above interpretation by KS appears to me to be accurate.

Anyway, you say, "The principle of charity would have applied in a case where there was not any other significant pragmatic weight, and there had been reason to see a genuine equivocation at play." That sentence suggests that my approval of KS's interpretation was somehow deceitful. Such suggestions make collaboration difficult because they put the target (me, in this case) in an unnecessarily defensive position. The Rod (☎ Smith) 19:32, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Blackburn quote

I take it to you're referring to the citation from the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy? Otherwise, I have no idea what you're talking about. I didn't see anything atrributed to Simon Blackburn in the sections that I fiddled with (i.e. definitions and so on). In any case, no offense was intended. I was trying to cut back a little on the size of the lead section; it is now six paras and much too wordy. According to WP:LEAD, it should be no more than four even in extreme cases. But there was nothing particular about the cut. I just couldn't think of ways to cut back the verbiage without eliminating or merging some of the various definitions.--Lacatosias 08:23, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for Reference

Thanks for your reference to Gracian's Oraculo Manual. I have tried to read it several times but am put off by its cynical concern with public success, in which I have no interest. Yet, I am planning to try to read it again. If you are interested in Kant's first Critique, be sure to look at the Wiki article Schopenhauer's criticism of the Kantian philosophy. Your user page asserts that you support the legalization of cannabis. Please note that this drug provides temporary elation but tragic long-term damage to the nervous system.Lestrade 17:13, 21 March 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

Lucidish, please see my user talk page for reply regarding long-term effects of cannabis.Lestrade 02:59, 22 March 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

Tesla

I don't know much about Tesla, I must admit. The feasibility of his plans is an area which seems filled with lots of cranks, who regard him as some sort of smothered god-engineer, and I don't have the technical proficiency to make any sense of it myself. My understanding is that the transmission of electricity through the air makes perfect sense, but to transmit enough that would 1. do actual work for you (i.e. not just as a radio signal) and 2. would be efficient at all (most would be just sent off into space and wasted), seems rather fishy to me. But again, this is just an offhand assessment and not meant to be terribly informed. --Fastfission 17:41, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Pieing

I am the original author of the Pieing article. I would appreciate it if you would show some respect for the original goal of the article -- to explain pieing as a means of social protest. All contributors to the article prior to you made their contributions with the understanding that pieing is a means of social protest. You have come along now and tried to change the whole focus of the article to slapstick. Please respect me, the original author, and all the contributors who came before you, and cease trying to turn this article into something it isn't. Griot 16:22, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Enola Gay in Pop Culture

Lucidish, thanks for your suggestions. Those are really good. I hope we can get some more feedback and impliment them. I know a few people are getting utterly annoyed at some of the stuff that is being put in there. As you know, Cub wants to nuke (pun intended) the entire section. My thought is someone will just come along and put it back in anyway. It's better to have it there with specific guidelines then have to struggle with people readding the entire section. And it does have some relevant qualities. Davidpdx 00:58, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Poincare

Lucidish. Try my web-site E4mmacro 04:50, 10 April 2006 (UTC) for the source and some partial (machine) translations, nowhere near fully polished.

Poincare is saying energy has inertia, or acts as though it has mass, when emitted from matter (since the matter recolis, just as if it had emitted a stream of mass like a rocket engine). He says this mass of the radiation is NOT indestructible, meaning it is created from nowhere when the radiation is emitted. Since, for him, real mass cannot be created like that, he calls this the "fictitious" mass of the radiation. He did not assume (or certainly didn't show) that the emitting body had lost inertia or mass when it emiited the radiation. Thus for him, after the emission of the radiation, the body had the same mass but less internal energy than before the emission. To me this clearly shows Poincare had missed the insight that Einstein had. If Whittaker had mentioned all the above I think he would not have been able to imply that Poincare's e = mc^2 was the same as Einstein's.

The idea that mass was in fact energy in some other form had been floating around. For example, I think it was Helmholtz who thought electrons where a "knot" in the elastic medium of the ether, where there would be a concentration of elastic strain energy. One could imagine the "knowt" being released and the stored strain radiating away (elastic waves in the ether) leaving behind no knot (no electron, and no mass) E4mmacro 02:51, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You. THANK YOU

You, Lucidish ROCK! The edits you did to Neoplatonicism and Gnosticism are FANTASTIC. Thank you for your help! LoveMonkey 13:31, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

hi there

after reading goodness and value theory and seeing your contribs, i thought i'd ask you to see what you thought of the article Kohlberg's stages of moral development. it's hard finding peer review for this stuff, and i think it's just up your alley. :) JoeSmack ^Talk 21:50, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

you know, one of my profs, Ralph Quinn was a grad student under Kohlberg. funny how that works ;). thanks for your eyes, much appreciated. JoeSmack ^Talk 22:51, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you thank you thank you for your peer review. Two things however:

"Kohlberg then went on to see the final stage as the manifestation of personal integrity in reasonable discourse."

Doesn't this phrase make it kind of seem like stage 6 is a petty squable? Or at most a function of rhetoric? And is Jurgen Habermas's influence proven? (i haven't heard of him, although his article is interesting, and he isn't mentioned in the stacks of Kohlberg books i have)

"The end-goal by which the stages are set up is the Kantian notion of respect for persons."

I'm not familar with this Kantian notion, and it isn't mentioned in Immanuel's article either (Kant books aren't exactly the definition of accessible ;). Can you flesh that out in the text a bit more? JoeSmack ^Talk 03:20, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I have and just re-read the monograph dealing with Habermas, who he is in fact a fan of. I also read the second on the attenuation of stage 6. I think the overarching message was empirical proof was hard to come by for stage 6, and the entire interview process for teasing out a stage was under attack in general in the first place. At best Kohlberg settled on stage 6 being something that could be proven as the as 'the manifestation of personal integrity in reasonable discourse' - although i don't think that is the way it should be phrased. Maybe it's just because i'm dabbling in philosphy, which is extremely hard for me (as an ESTJ) to do. This still doesn't mean that stage 6 doesn't exisist (wikipedia is itself a stage 6 institution, can anyone say consensus? ;), just that, well, empiricism doesn't have its back like it does the later stages.

Found the passage: Kohlbergians consider discursive will-formation to be a similiar or equivalent to stage 6 (look at just-communities as an example). stage 6 reasonining procedure logically requires dialogue in actual, real-life moral conflicts. it is an intellectual and prescriptive role-taking exercise - this does not mean that its domain is only in the discoursive realm however, it is simply the means in which moral development is assertained. thus using an 'manifestation of personal integrity in reasonable discourse' one can find 'expressions of absolute moral principles'. JoeSmack ^Talk 03:25, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

As for the Kantian notion of respect for all persons, that does make sense. Kohlberg, arguably a neo-kantian, would say that respect for all persons (which i've always called the 'don't be a dick' notion rather crudely ;) is embodied in stage 6, the ultimate end-goal of his developmental model of morality. Stage 6 is Kantian and Rawlsian and is described as such in previous sections, so I'm going to delete that part in the theortical assumptions section as it is redundant.

I've always looked at these ideas from a psychological standpoint even as its roots are clearly in philsophy. Even at seeing what little i have below the surface there is, i'm winded! Tough stuff! To bed with me too. JoeSmack ^Talk 05:35, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

wow, that is some awesome stuff you put in there. it really adds to the breadth of the article, and suites it quite well. JoeSmack ^Talk 05:02, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

you're right about how it is missing connections between his stages and community. he has done a huge body of work on moral education and just communities. he also has a lot to say about a soft stage 7, something the article talks of very little, only about a sentence. my knowledge is centered around the stages and their psychological aspects, most of which is layed out. know anything about kohlberg's other stuff, or know someone who would? like i said, the more eyes the better, we just need em focused on Kohlberg. JoeSmack ^Talk 05:12, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Problem of Universals

Thought I'd drop by to confess that most of the article of problem of universals is in the form it is in due to my efforts. I believe it was a couple of years ago that I essentially deleted a truly awful mess of an article and re-wrote from scratch, taking a historical approach as you can see. I'm admittedly an amateur at this but am confident I improved on what was there before my efforts. If you or someone else wishes to scrub fresh and try again ... I'm hardly in a position to complain and look forward to learning something. --Christofurio 14:07, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

new graphic in kohlberg's stages

hey there! i noticed the new graphic in Kohlberg's stages of moral development, and i wanted to ask if 'rational egoism' couldn't be changed to 'instrumental egoism'. Stage twos, often little children, probably are not thinking of reason in their view of other people. JoeSmack ^Talk 15:53, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

i'm also not too clear on the stage 6 view of persons; i'm willing to bet that other stages see human falability and frailty impacted by communication; mutual respect is also a stage 5 principle as reciprocity runs deep with such. JoeSmack ^Talk 15:57, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

well in stage 5, mutual respect is often a contract itself (you respect me, and i'll respect you, deal?). as for stage 6, 'communicative ethics' is probably a term that would need to be explained a little more laymen for the person who is trying to get a quick jist - like from the graphic. Taken from Moral Stages and Moralization, i'd say that the view of persons in stage 6 is that 'people are ends in themselves' or 'people are ends in themselves and must be treated as such'. As for the perspective, it could be 'that of any rational individual recognizing the nature of morality'. Again, taken [sic].

and, thanks for making the graphic. i was always trying to think of a nice little image to go with the article, and yours is excellent. :) JoeSmack ^Talk 06:10, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

The Great Failure of Wikipedia

I thought this[2] might interest you. Banno 01:30, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Sociology Portal

Proposed Sociology Portal

Portal:Sociology has been proposed from Wikipedia:WikiProject_Community and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Sociology. - CQ 13:22, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Dubious Utility

I am curious as to what part of that paragraph you find dubious. It is, admittedly, not as well-written as might be desirable, but Mill does make a quite clear hierarchy of values, which is something that not all modern utilitarians do. ^iggy_talk 02:52, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I was responding to: "Mill differs from many current utilitarians in that he considered cultural and spiritual happiness to be of greater value than mere physical pleasure." It is not at all true that modern utilitarians are a sort of people who are vulgar hedonists. They may be frustratingly opaque about their values (due to modern trends), but any talk about their theoretical dispositions to hold culture/mind at equal or lesser worth than physical pleasure is at best unproven. Lucidish 03:02, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

That's a good point. The language of the sentence does tend to imply that modern utilitarians are "vulgar hedonists", whereas most of them seem to be anything but. ^iggy_talk 03:06, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Captain Famous

Not too famous yet, don't worry, but a little busy. I've taken a quick look at it but never took the time to write down real comments, which I consider the only real way to read a paper, but I'll try and do that fairly soon. --Fastfission 04:05, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

• Just out of curiousity, have you read The Double Helix? I whisked through it yesterday and found it fairly entertaining (if not a little disturbing at times -- Watson seems totally unashamed of being a complete sexist and clearly still had some deep-rooted insecurity about women when he wrote it). I bring it up only because I think it might appeal to you in terms of thinking about the murkiness of scientific priority (even though there is no priority dispute about it). --Fastfission 01:25, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

• You should pick it up sometime. It is a very, very short book (the text itself is only about 130 pages, very breezy except for the molecular specifics which crop up occasionally). I read a copy of the Norton Critical Edition which has a bunch of reviews and "other views" tacked on to the back which were interesting as well. --Fastfission 01:47, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Empirigaffe

Lucidish, I forgot to contact you directly to tell you that you appear to me to have been quite correct about the issue of Locke and tabula rasa. As far as I was able to find, acknowledging I'm not an expert here, Locke used it in reference to a debate with Leibniz. I never was able to find whether Locke or Leibniz used it first, though it's currently my personal speculation that Locke was only responding. So, based on my research after you pointed that out, you were eminently correct that he did not use the term in his Essay ((though it was a pain in the neck to research, and I'm not even sure I got down to the rock-bottom of it). in any event it seems fairly plain that Locke was attempting to use his own term for the general concept that's come down to us as tabula rasa. Good regards!. ... Kenosis 05:29, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Singular they

De gustibus non disputandum est ;) Have you ever read the Xe (pronoun) article? In any case, the singular they doesn't bother me in speech or informal writing, only in formal or professional writing. Unfortunately, the alternatives, "one", "he/she", "he" for one paragraph, "she" for the next, are a bit clunky.

Sadly, one of my true pet peeves has no user box: the use of "that" instead of "who" to refer to a person, as in "he's the snobby amateur linguist that said the singular they is bad". When someone uses that, they make me think of fingernails on a blackboard! Take care, •Jim62sch• 09:40, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I like the artwork on your user page.
Anyway, I suppose I'm more inclined toward a classical stylistics approach, primarily, I should imagine, due to my reading preferences, yet I'm not dogmatic about it. For example, while I generally tend to avoid end-of-sentence prepositions, there are times when doing so creates a horribly awkward sentence. As Churchill noted when some wag noted his use of end-of-sentence prepositions, "this is something up with which I shall not put." •Jim62sch• 21:22, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Sociology Project News

Sociology Project • News • August 2006
The Sociology WikiProject has been re-activated and new developments are afoot! We are putting in place some tools for classifying, categorizing and assessing sociology-related content on Wikipedia. Please have a look at the Tools section on the project page. Also, the Sociology article has been identified by the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team as a Core Topic, one of the 150 most important articles for any encyclopedia to have. This article has been listed as a good article for meeting the criteria for this category of articles. We're going to be working to improve the article to Featured article status. Please place Wikipedia:WikiProject Sociology on your watchlist and Get involved!
You have recieved this newsletter because you are listed as a participant at WikiProject Sociology. • CQ 04:41, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the note

Moral support is appreciated. I try not to let it get to me: it's just the way Wiki is :-) It certainly did become much too personal for some of them. Sandy 15:06, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Email

I just saw your note on the Talk:Philosophy Project page. Don't forget I'm in a different time-zone (6 to 9 hours difference depending in which part of Noth American you inhabit). At any rate, thanks for finding that article. My email is: <expat6719 at yahoo dot it> without the brackets and with the obvious subsitutions to avoid robots. thanks again. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:25, 20 September 2006 (UTC)