User talk:Sam Clark/archive1

Social Justice article

Hi, please see me response to your changes on the Talk:Social justice page. Cheers JenLouise 22:53, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

replied on Talk:Social justice. --Sam Clark 11:53, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Regarding taking to RFD

You know, I'm not really sure. I don't imagine there would be a problem just removing all the text from AFD and listing at WP:RFD. However, the afd2 page would need to be deleted by a sysop. A {{db-author}} tag on that page, with an edit summary not too different from "Afd listing page created by me in error; redirect will now be listed at WP:RFD" should do the trick. Oh, and sorry for not responding for many hours, I was at work (that damn making a living malarkey sometimes gets in the way of editing Wikipedia).--Fuhghettaboutit 23:44, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for your help - and don't worry about taking a little while to get back. This 'working from home' malarky has the advantage that I can play with WP all the time. It also has the disadvantage that I can play with WP all the time and never get any work done... Cheers, --Sam Clark 11:17, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Leading paragraphs for articles

Hi SamClark, this is just a comment that was made to me, that I thought I would pass onto you, for you to think about and respond how you please. The leading paragrpahs in Global Justice, and your draft at User:Sam Clark/justice read like the introduction to an essay. Particularly the last sentences which say what the article will discuss. This is what I did when I created a few articles from scratch, mainly because the only type of writing I ever do is for essays. But a couple of people have commented that as an encyclopaedic article, the first section is more like a synopsis rather than an introduction, and would generally just sum up the points of the rest of the article.

For instance, instead of

It considers the various ways in which justice has been understood, distinguishes two broad kinds of justice, and then describes several theories of justice under each of those two headings.

It could say something like:

There are various ways to understand justice, but generally you ca distinguish between two kinds of justice: distributive justice and retributive justice. Distributive justice is concerned with the proper distribution of good things while Retributive justice is concerned with the proper response to wrongdoing.

And then it would just go straight into the article. If you look at most of the long-standing and comprehensive articles that seems to be the way they are written. Cheers. JenLouise 22:32, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Heh - good point. In my case, it's being in the habit of writing lecture-notes, but the same point applies. I'll change. Thanks, --Sam Clark 22:41, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Rewrite of Justice

I think it would be great to see the derivation of the word justice from the latin (not the french) etc and perhaps a section on history on how our understanding of the term has evolved (ie. what it meant in different times and different places). Justice is defintely a philosophical concept and so it is important to discuss the philosophical meanings and debates concerning justice, but it is also a political/judicial term as well as an everday term that people use and so it would be good to have all of this represented in the article eventually. I think stuff like this from the original article is very important:

In most cases what one regards as "just" (not necessarily meaning what is just) is determined by consulting established and agreeable principles, employing logic, or, natural law In specific systems justice is determined, by consulting a majority, or in social contexts where religion dominates, justice may be thought to require deference to religious texts or to spiritual guidance, under a monarchy or authoritarian state the ruler/s determined what was just and doled out justice. All of these determinants of justice have at times delivered particularlly dark periods of history where justice was seen to be absent. If a person lives under a specific set of laws in a country, concepts of "justice" are often simply deferential to the existing law —the issuing of punitive reprimands for violations may be referred to as "serving justice." In principle, this fits the general concept in that the individuals get what is supposedly due to them. Justice however, is a universal and absolute concept; laws, principles, religion, etc., are merely attempts to codify the concept -- occasionally with results that entirely contradict the true nature of justice.

Also this paragraph:

In some cases, justice is not equated with laws. For instance, laws that supported slavery are now known to be unjust, such as the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 in the United States. Also, many laws of illegitimate governments are considered unjust. Further, the social justice movement questions the morality of laws that protect property rights without adequate protection of the poor, especially those laws governing international trade.

-- JenLouise 22:38, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Again, good point. But in this case, the section from the original article is predicated on the completely NPOV claim that justice is 'a universal and absolute concept'. You're right that justice is a political and judicial as well as a philosophical concept, and I plan to say something about these things (in the currently underdeveloped 'institutions' section). I'm slightly allergic to broad historical accounts of the development of concepts - they almost always oversimplify what were actually complex debates into glib progressive narratives (Hobbes as 'completing the development of the social contract theory', where what he actually did was creatively deploy a bunch of metaphors and arguments - some of them original, some of them not - for a variety of parochial and philosophical purposes, and with particular opponents in mind, for instance). --Sam Clark 22:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Understand but surely for non-academic people who come to an encyclopeadia to get an understanding of something would benefit from an oversimplification than nothing at all. I just think that at the moment what is on your draft would be a great beginning for an article on Justice (philosophy) but not Justice. Perhaps the article needs to deal separately with the philosophical, judicial and everyday treatment of the term. Justice is a universal concept, although understanding of it is deifnitely not. (You're right about absolute, i hate the word I jsut didn't see it). Again I just beleive that the text above is important to the everyday person coming along, whereas what you ahve written, while interesting, would not help most people in coming to an understanding of it. Putting that sort of discussion under the heading of institutions would not work for me, because it is not acknowledging that for many people, that is what the word means. (Sorry for all the typos!) JenLouise 23:05, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right, the point about injustice, and about attacks on it, is more important than I'd recognised - I'll have a think about this and maybe modify the draft tomorrow (too tired now). Thanks again for your input. Cheers, --Sam Clark 23:10, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Iris Young and coincidence

Odd thing: I just saw your account name for the first time a day or so ago when your rewrite of Global justice was mentioned on someone's talk page. I watchlisted that, and hope to help out with it. But just now I went over to Iris Young's page because I heard the sad news about her death today, and was going to update it... and I saw you had done so. I met Young a few times, and quite liked her and her work. LotLE×talk 02:50, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

A nice coincidence, indeed. I confess that my only knowledge of Young's work is based on having had to give an introductory lecture on feminist political theory, on about 3 days notice, several years ago, so I probably missed the subtleties. I liked the essay 'Throwing Like a Girl', though. Please do have a go at the global justice article, if you get a chance - I'm at the stage of pointlessly moving commas now, and more outside eyes on it would be good. Cheers, --Sam Clark 09:51, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I'll try. Not for a few more days though, since I'm off to Wikimania for the weekend. But it looks like you've done some really nice work in the rewrite. LotLE×talk 14:58, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

hello hello

So there are philosophers on WP. I gave up some time ago under the impression there weren't. You wouldn't believe the trouble I had with the Philosophy article, trying to persuade people that it wasn't alchemy or mysticism or crystals or whatever. You are doing good work on the Putnam thing. Keep it up. By the way, who are these reviewer people? Some of the points are fair enough, but some of them ... Best Dbuckner 20:06, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

hello hello hello

I just got your note on my talk page, which I assume was not a response to my 'hello' above unless you are in a different time zone. Or are you? I assumed York University England. There are others, including Canada i suppose. anyway. Dbuckner 20:21, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Political philosophy

I thought the contributions to this field from India were not mentioned. So I put those lines in. If you find some thing worthwhile regarding the Indian political philosophies do add it. Especially, look in Gandhism and Integral humanism. --^Babub→Talk 10:06, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Guidelines

Hello. I've posted six guidelines on the Wikipedia talk:How to review a featured article candidate page. Grateful for comments (also for support!!)Dbuckner 15:23, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

FA writing

Sam, could you leave a comment here, if you have time? Tony1 wants to add a link to Wikipedia:What is a featured article? giving his own views about writing standards. The problem is that the link is to his user subpage, and so others can't edit it. I think the link should either not be on the page, or we should make clear that they are his own views only. If you could add your opinion, it would be helpful. Many thanks, SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:09, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

My note wasn't about WP:REVIEW, but about this thread. Bear in mind that if everyone who feels intimidated backs off, then nothing will change, and the more people join in, the less possibility there will be for intimidation. I see you have no e-mail in your preferences; in case you want to contact me, I'm slimvirgin at gmail dot com. Thanks for letting me know about the second Putnam vote. Cheers, SlimVirgin ^(talk) 09:36, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Glider Guns

Hmm, lets look at the record, medicine left philosophy around 200, Occult philosophy became Occultism in the 17th century. Education has left and come back a few times. Natural philosophy to science 17th, economic philosophy to economics, political philosophy to political science. Psychology, sociology, and anthropology were all branches of philosophy before trying to form the "social sciences." Now even logic is in the process of jumping ship. As Zhuangzi says, the useful tree gets chopped down and used for timber, only the tree that is so gnarled as to be completely useless is left alone unmolested ... (and that was before the invention of cardboard!) hee hee, enjoy, good luck on your interviews. Bmorton3 15:17, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

message

Thanks. Unfortunately I'm away on business & will have no access to the net (or at least not WP!!). Back in September. You can take it I support!! Dbuckner 19:42, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Hey Sam

Just dropped in to say hello and ask if you had taken a look at that free will FAR article. Now that's a perfect example of the kind of thing that frightens off professional philosophers (or even most knowledgable student and amateurs) from Wikipedia. It is a FEATURED ARTICLE. Can you wonder why I was upset (though admittedly I got carried away to the limits of near-hospitalization there) about the failure of Jerry Fodor and then the extraordiay difficulty with Putnam?? I honestly thought there was a cabal running a conspiracy speficially against me at one point!!

At any rate, I wanted to help out with your article a bit, but I got sidetracked with this Free Will catastrophe. (I think I won't offend anyone by using that word here!!). I've touched it up a little, but you can still easily discern that the main problem there is "I have to get Dostoyeski'w view in here", "I have to get the Calvinist reformationst Seventh Advent of the New Latter Day view in here"....otherwise it's POV!! Alos, the lack of citations and the admixtire of the styles of about 200 different editors. Well, keep up the good work on the GJ article and the others, and thanks for the help and support with Putnam.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:51, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Bune Article

Hello Sam Apologies, I am not used to wikipedia and was not sure how to post a comment to explain. The reason: though it is a poor article it does at the very least explain that Bune is a figure in demonology, taken from the Ars Goetica, gives a pop culture reference etc. Someone looking up the name (as I was) would be at least mildly enlightened by reading this, and furthermore referred backwards to the Ars Goetica article which gives a good understanding of the topic.

To be honest the sources on the matter are so confused and contradictory it would be extremely difficult to write a concise article that provided any useful information. For example, I suspect the 'griffin head' thing came straight out of one of the major sources.

More importantly this article is part of a series of 72 detailing the "daemons" found in grimoires such as the The Lesser Key of Solomon and the Ars Goetica. Some of these other articles contain vast amounts of information and most of them are better than this one. As a series it needs a lot of work to bring it up to standard, but given the obscurity and difficulty of the topic I feel some tolerance is in order, and overall the series is of some merit.

By all means highlight the article for cleanup but it does not deserve to be deleted.

Rorty

Hi. I suppose that I ought to provide a reference really. Basically, Rorty argument against a fixed human nature is, more or less, identical to Marx's, and I just thought that this was worth noting. Rorty is aware of his historicism, usually citing Hegel as an influence. I understand why you removed the comment. I may venture to supply a Rorty reference at some point. Epa101 21:12, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Peer Review

Thanks for the help! I'm relatively new to Wikipedia, I fear, and there are a some things that I have yet to learn. But, well, kind of adopted that article because noone else seemed to want it. Adam Cuerden 16:53, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Talk:Political philosophy

Hi, Sam Clark. I'll look over my changes (and the article section itself). I'm commenting here on your page because I want to thank and congratualte you on the kindness, consideration and general civility of your comments on my page. To say the least I haven't always gotten that from other editors as feedback for my changes on political articles. So thanks for being so nice, ungrumpy, and uncontrolling Whiskey Rebellion 16:39, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Back from Italy

There seems to have been a lot going on while I was away! I tried to follow the thread but gave up. Do drop by when you have time. I thought your comments about philosophy style were good. Dbuckner 06:49, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Jandek/Connors

Hello. Loren (Mazzacane) Connors has performed live with Jandek twice - once in Manhatten on September 6th and then again in Glasgow on October 16th, both 2005. No recordings have yet been released but the Glasgow show is in circulation. Hope this helps. Ac@osr 08:49, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Had enough

As you see Sam, I finally had enough. I've been here three years. You are clearly one of the good guys. Not that there are any bad guys. But so many confused and muddled guys, I just gave up. Best. Dean Dbuckner 07:43, 5 September 2006 (UTC)