Talk:Michael Dummett

Including Gareth Evans

"The book was instrumental in the rediscovery of Frege's work, and influenced a whole generation of British philosophers, including Gareth Evans" - This is an odd sentence. For one thing, it seems reasonable to assume Evans was more influenced by studying under Dummett than by this particular book. Moreover, the singling out of Evans is itself jarring and redundant anyway as Evans is already listed as being influenced by Dummett (do we need a separate category for 'very influenced' into which we put Evans, Wright, Peacocke and all Dummett's other students?) I've removed the sentence, I hope uncontroversially. 128.232.243.176 (talk) 18:48, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Redundant category

Anon User:208.96.110.56 keeps adding Category:Christian philosophers to the article, although it is redundant since the page is in Category:Roman Catholic philosophers. Is there a case for this redundant inclusion that I don't see? If not, I'll keep reverting, and welcome any help when I run out of my daily 3Rs. — Charles Stewart (talk) 14:24, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Card Games and Tarot

I have reduced the level of detail in that section - better covered, I'd suggest, in a historical article on tarot - and used a reference (the article's first!) to correct any impression that occultism was an important concern in Dummett's work.KD Tries Again (talk) 18:15, 8 September 2009 (UTC)KD Tries Again

Assessment

I upgraded the "importance" to "high". The philosophy importance is obvious, imho. For the Oxford project, Dummett has served as Warden of a college, has long been an internationally top philosopher, was known as a public critic of Thatcher's university policies, agitated as a public intellectual on race and immigration, unconventional interests in Tarot, important work on voting theory (games), etc. Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 19:44, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

As a member of WP:OXFORD, I have re-rated importance as "mid"; the project does not tend to rate individual professors/heads of colleges as "high". Bencherlite^Talk 07:26, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your correction. Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 20:42, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Dummett on the Rushdie Affair

Theoterrorism versus Freedom of Speech—A Review, Quillette:

»To my mind, the philosopher and devout Roman Catholic Michael Dummett came out of the debate about religious sensitivities and free expression looking even worse. Dummett’s position was not only illiberal, it was nasty and vindictive and unbecoming of an eminent logician. On February 11, 1990, while Rushdie was still in hiding under police protection and in fear of his life, Dummett published a tirade against him in the Independent entitled “Open Letter to Rushdie,” in which he pointed to the “untold damage” caused by the Rushdie Affair, although not to Rushdie himself. Instead, Dummett accused the beleaguered author of causing the “intensified alienation of Muslims here and in other Western countries from the society around them” who experienced “a far more severe imprisonment” than Rushdie.

Rushdie, he went on, “can never again credibly assume the stance of denouncer of white prejudice … now you are one of us. You have become an honorary white: merely an honorary white intellectual, it is true, but an honorary white all the same.” He continued: “If you really did not grasp the offence you would give to believing Muslims, you were not qualified to write upon the subject you chose.” To this, Cliteur provides the simple rebuke that the history of philosophy is full of “offensive ideas,” and notes that Dummett later supported extending the blasphemy law to cover other religions, arguing that “if there had been such a law, the Rushdie Affair would not have occurred.”«

Taylor and Dummett on the Rushdie Affair, Journal of Religion and Society, Kripke Center, Creighton University, volume 18, 2016

»Paul Cliteur, University of Leiden, The Netherlands

The famous twentieth-century philosophers Charles Taylor and Michael Dummett have both commented on the Rushdie Affair. This article analyzes their criticism of the British author Salman Rushdie and tries to demonstrate the relevance of this criticism against the backdrop of the massacre in the editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris on January 7, 2015.Unfortunately,two great philosophers of our time do not give us guidance here. The world is confused, our political leaders are confused,and great political philosophers are confused. This is important,because if freedom of expression,thought,and religion are to survive in this world, it is necessary to defend these freedoms.« --tickle me 06:19, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

WP:R#PLA

Re this: WP:R#PLA: "after following a redirect, the reader's first question is likely to be: "Hang on ... I wanted to read about this. Why has the link taken me to that?" Make it clear to the reader that they have arrived in the right place. Normally, we try to make sure that all "inbound redirects" other than misspellings or other obvious close variants of the article title are mentioned in the first couple of paragraphs of the article or section to which the redirect goes. It will often be appropriate to bold the redirected term." Bold text is not always discouraged in the body of the article. In this case, Semantic realism (epistemology) and Semantic anti-realism (epistemology) redirect to a section of Michael Dummett. As per policy we must make it clear to the reader that they have arrived in the right place. --Omnipaedista (talk) 15:59, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Franzane Abella?

At https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Michael_Dummett&diff=prev&oldid=823639771&diffmode=source user Torwee added this, the content of which mostly survives on the page today (minus a 'dodgy' scribd.com link). These remarks were entirely unreferenced then and remain entirely unreferenced now. Almost immediately previous attempts to add content about claims by a "Franzane G. Abella" were made by a now-blocked user "Hubermas". I can find no evidence that this Abella is notable or that the remarks attributed to them have been published anywhere reliable (all references seem to stem from here). Delete?

"Franzane Abella commented that Dummett was really interested not in understanding problem via classical logic but via intutionistic logic, and Abella stated that "such mathematical entities are more likely to be an ontological myth for Dummett this is because truth cannot be unidentified via intuition, and of course it will fall on the notion of logical opaqueness which statements are not likely to be understood easily in the first place."[1] Franzane Abella further added that "Dummett has an astounding influence when he brought forward the deep-order justificationist semantics, this influenced the theory of meaning and the classification of understanding via practices, whether the statement can be refuted or not based on its meaning". Abella then summarized that Dummett refuted the theory brought forward by realism in terms of cognizance of meaning, that is for example the psychological change of our conceptions of meaning of any statements should be properly grasped because if not there exist an alteration and confusion of meaning, and of course the failure of grasping truth-values.[https://www.scribd.com..." --Jy Houston--

--08:00, 1 May 2021‎, unreferenced content removed [Revision as of 14:06, 2 February 2018 manually reverted] --Jy Houston--