Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy/Archive 6

message: Hi all. I have a suggestion for the citation style for Wikiproject Philosophy.  How about we use the Cite.php and all, except take up the suggestion that we "Consider maintaining a separate bibliography/references section, then just the page number and book name can be given in each note, following Wikipedia:Citing sources."  This is from Wikipedia:Footnotes#Style_recommendations.  That way we stick with the general Wikipedia guideline of using Cite.php and a notes section for citations, but we also keep a references section that is common to the citation style in academic philosophy.  Also, that way editors who are used to the standard philosophy style of citing can simply take their in-text citations and make them notes.  Furthermore, it is nice for readers to have a listing of all the references, especially if they are looking for further reading.
Here's even a proposed wording for the Wikiproject Philosophy citation guidelines:
Each philosophy article should contain two sections at the bottom of the article concerning citations and references. The first section should have the heading "Notes" and the second section should have the heading "References and further reading". 
The Notes section should contain the following code:
:
Each reference within the text, then, is made with the reference tag () and should defer to the sources in the "References and further readings" section.  See Methodic doubt as an example.
The References and further reading section should resemble the standard references section that is typical of academic philosophy books and articles, which is a sort of cross between the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Chicago (or Turabian) citation styles.  Again, see Methodic doubt as an example.
Okay, that's it.  Just an idea that I think would work well. - Jaymay 20:58, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thread 1 

message: I've unilaterally chosen  Cite.php systemas the standard for philosophy articles. It is cited as the preferred method in Wikipedia:Citing sources; but if there are strong objections, let's talk about it here.... Banno 06:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Will it improve the quality of the writing?  Dbuckner 10:10, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Judging by truth, I'd say not. Banno 03:57, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Gentlemen, I love you both like brothers. Nevertheless, your complaints are worse than useless without specific critiques. Lucidish 18:09, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thread 3 

message: I can talk about this here, but it has been banned over on the FAC review page and on other pages to refer to the "anomolous" Putnam FAC. Very conventient, eh?? Anyway, here's another idea that just struck me as (possibly) useful for the philosophy project. How about a  manual of style for philosophy articles or adding a section to current MOS devoted to philosophy? As an example, there  is a section devoted speficifically to medicine. Some of the compliants about "prose" that came up in the Putnam debacle were about such nonsensical matters as "italics are not used in text", "first-person locutions are non-Encyclopedic",
"questions are non-encyclopedic and generate doubt in the reader", etc., etc.. We all know these thing ara acceptable practice in Philosophy writing. So why did I have only Dbuckner and Sam Clarke to back me up on this. We should be able to point to a page that says "how to copyedit and reveiw philosophy articles." It would be a long project, but it might head off a great deal of BS. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 11:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Another idea

message: ::: This seems like a tongue-in-cheek problem on the surface, but in reality it reveals a foundational problem with the philosophy Wikiproject itself. We have the intuition that there are no "solved problems" in philosophy, because everyone seems to disagree about everything. IE: I personally think the Gettier cases can be easily explained, but others would disagree with my treatment; the old saw "If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?" can be answered by classical empiricism, but people can always fall back into skepticism; etc. The widespread disagreement of persons on interesting and important issues is itself at odds with the Wikipedian policy to seek to cover the consensus opinion of scholars in a field.
::: For philosophy taken on the whole, there are no consensuses, because even the definition of philosophy is open to dispute even in mainstream resources; and even if the definition were secure, the grounds for evaluation of particular works would need widespread agreement, which there aren't. It is only in subfields and traditions that consensus opinions may be teased out: i.e., in logic, and the history of philosophy. But even within these fields, and especially in philosophy at large, there are only vague trends of semi-popular opinion, which are difficult (though not impossible) to gauge. 
::: All this leads one to wonder whether or not Wikipedia can succeed at all, so long as it sticks to the "consensus" criterion. We may have to have different aims. The question is what the standard ought to be. Lucidish 22:33, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Philosophy itself the root of wiki problems 

message: I've suggested that Definition of philosophy be merged with Metaphilosophy. I welcome the project's thoughts on this. Lucidish 17:02, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Collecting opinions for merger proposal 

message: Further up, Lucidish says that because philosophers argue, there will never be any consensus about the philosophy page.  Nonsense.  Anyone with a bit of training in the subject will agree about many things with others who have even the slightest amount of training.  They will disagree about the difficult and subtle things, but Wikipedia isn't about that.  They will agree, for instance, that philosophy is not alchemy or astrology.   I've discussed this problem with other professional philosophers here - Mel Ititis e.g. who left this project in disgust some time ago.  Everyone is agreed that the problem is the presence of some very vocal and persistent but sadly misinformed and untrained nutters who imagine that anyone can write philosophy.  Mel Ititis' view is that philosophy is inherently unsuited to this medium, and says we should leave it at that.  I agree, in that I haven't written or edited anything here for months, and will not until the policy is changed. Dbuckner 12:07, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's not at all what I meant. The 'consensus' refers to 'consensus by academics in a field', not 'consensus among Wikipedians'. Given this, it becomes immediately obvious that I am in agreement with the conclusion that the Wiki system is unsuited for philosophy. However, I attribute this to two sources of incompetence, the resulting systemic bias, and most importantly, the fact that philosophy has few to no consensuses. Lucidish 15:57, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

text: There is one point within that paragraph which comes near to my meaning, and that had to do with the "alchemy" point. But that's not a matter of appeal to consensus opinion in anything except a trivial and obvious sense. Instead, it is precisely in reference to the disagreeable subtleties you mentioned which I am accusing you of having displayed professional incompetence. Your case is a perfect example of the danger of professional incompetents impeding the quality of the encyclopedia. Lucidish 17:01, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  On consensus 

message: The online philosophy conference will take place in May
This may be of interest to the WikiProject. --Ancheta Wis 11:29, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Neat, thanks. Lucidish 15:37, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Online philosophy conference 

message: I have sent an email to Ned Block asking him if he would be interested in contributing to the improvement of the philosophy articles on the Wikipedia. He has not responded to my importunings. I wonder why?--Lacatosias 13:37, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ned Block 

message: I've announced bounties on three philosophy related articles: Nyaya, Anekantavada and Panini. Please help support wikipedia by improving these articles to featured status. deeptrivia (talk) 05:35, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bounties 

message: at List of publications in philosophy, there is an ongoing editwar of inclusion/exclusion of one of rand's texts that clearly doesn't fit on the list, please comment or expand the list with enough other popular texts so the rand text would be appropriate.--Buridan 12:16, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm one of the offenders in the editwar (Mr. Buridan being the other).  I had done some editing on the article on Rand's book on epistemology.  As part of the editing I put it in the category for epistemology publications.  She is certainly not one of the favorite philosophers and always seems to generate a lot fireworks.  But it seemed to be valid to make that link.  She is a philosopher (however unliked in many academic circles) and it is a work on epistemology.  It seems to me to be a serious addition to the on-going discussion of Universals.  I'm very new to Wikipedia and must say that I'm at the same time excited by how much has been accomplished and dismayed at the ease with which someone can harm a sense of community or act out of POV while pretending to be neutral.  I would enjoy looking for mechanisms for better handling of POV so as to decrease the levels of contention and the destruction it causes.  If anyone is interested please let me know. SteveWolfer 19:00, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  publications in philosophy 

message: Has anyone considered creating audio "this is how its pronounced" files for some of the more difficult to pronounce philosophers?  It was suggested on Talk:Søren Kierkegaard, and it occured to me that there are quite a few philosophers whose names people (myself included) have no idea how to pronounce, and for many, if not most, users, IPA pronunciations don't help.  The ones I can think of off the top of my head:
*Kierkegaard
*Nietzsche
*Sartre
*Baudrillard
*Derrida
*Foucault
*Barthes
*Kuhn
Feel free to add to the list if anyone thinks of any more.  But more to the point, I'm wondering if this sort of thing is doable on Wikipedia, and if anyone is willing to create the audio files.  -Smahoney 01:33, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Audio files 

message: Hello! We at the Work via WikiProjects team previously contacted you to identify the quality articles in your WikiProject, and now we need a few more favors. We would like you to identify the "key articles" from your project that should be included in a small CD release due to their importance, regardless of quality. We will use that information to assess which articles should be nominated for Version 0.5 and later versions.  Hopefully it will help you identify which articles are the most important for the project to work on. As well, please keep updating your Philosophy/Religion WikiProject article table for articles of high quality. If you are interested in developing a worklist such as this one for your WikiProject, or having a bot generate a worklist automatically for you, please contact us.  Please feel free to post your suggestions right here.  Thanks! Walkerma 05:49, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Personally, I think the project to produce a CD is a waste of time. It seems to me to function from the assumption that there is such a  thing as a finished Wiki article. But there may be some merit in developing a list of quality articles or some such as part of the philosophy project. Banno 23:05, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, we plan to regularly release updates, I agree that articles are never finished.  The German DVD version was the top-selling DVD on Amazon when it came out, so there is clearly interest, and English language CDs are already in use in a lot of African schools.  For many WikiProjects, though, worklists and the bot are just a convenient way to organise articles,  please let us know if we can help.  Thanks, Walkerma 05:22, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Key articles for Wikipedia 1.0 

message: Hilary Putnam has commented on his bio/article which I wrote (about 70%) of a few months ago. "It is better than the Stanford Encylopedia article"..."flabbergasted"... "Obviously, this was written by experts", see Talk:Hilary Putnam. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 13:03, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Congratulations, and great work. Lucidish 00:06, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: I don't mean to boast, but

message: Hello philosophers. I've put a suggested renovation of the (currently highly POV) article Justice on Talk:Justice. Comments actively desired. Cheers, --Sam Clark 11:42, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed renovation of [[Justice]]

message: Given Lacotosias's comments above, I wonder if I'm talking into a vacuum here, but I've requested peer review on the new version of Global justice I've been working on. Philosophers' comments welcome. On the JF article: can I just note that I think it's impressive stuff, and I regret that I didn't go and say so in support of its FA status. Actually, I was restrained by thinking that philosophy of mind is far outside my expertise. I'll jump in if there's a next time. Cheers, --Sam Clark 10:09, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sam, with all due respect and without (hopefully) seeming to be begging for special attention here, all you have to do, if you really think the article is impressive, is write support and state that you think the article is good. The people who are objecting certainly do not know a damned thing about philosophy of mind. Thanks.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:52, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

text: No problem. Oh, a couple of simple tips that might save you a lot of wasted time. You don't have to write out, e.g.  Realism about... . It works fine wothout the underscores. Also the first letter capitalization is optional. It works the same as "Realism" or "realism", but the rest has to be exact. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 12:45, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Peer review of [[Global justice]]