User talk:KSchutte

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I think it sucks when people block dynamic IP addresses. KSchutte 28 June 2005 17:27 (UTC)

If there are any really good Philosophy talk pages of which I'm not aware, please let me know. KSchutte 5 July 2005 06:09 (UTC)

Contents 1 NBA Rosters 2 Wikiproject Aesthetics 3 Requesting comments on template alteration 4 Science pearls 5 Jimbo Wales to Attend San Diego Meetup on October 18 2005 6 Thanks for the note 7 History of Science 8 Philosophy of neuroscience 9 Requested template 10 Pages up for deletion 11 Philosophy 12 Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Philosophy of mind 13 Thanks for Žižek comment 14 Santa Barbara Meetup 15 Sandbox 16 Thanks 17 Substance nihilism 18 Prometheanism 19 re New Criteria 20 Template:Academic

[edit] NBA Rosters

Sorry if it sounded like I wasn't happy with the template, but some creative feedback never hurts. Anyway, I love the way they just brighten up the largley boring team pages, and hopefully every team will have them soon enough. Harro5 06:26, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

No worries. I appreciate constructive criticism. KSchutte 15:18, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiproject Aesthetics

No problem. Even having a second name on the project is double previous progress! --Slac 21:57, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Requesting comments on template alteration

Hello. I see you are using one or more of the User instruments templates in your Babel box. Inspired by some recent developments, I want to rework all the templates in there (including ones used on user pages), to make them more like the regular Babel templates. However, I thought I should hear from the people this would affect before actually doing it. Please weigh in at User:Ddawson/User instruments. Ddawson 11:30, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Science pearls

Hello,

Since you contributed in the past to the publications’ lists, I thought that you might be interested in this new project. I’ll be glad if you will continue contributing. Thanks,APH 11:27, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Jimbo Wales to Attend San Diego Meetup on October 18 2005

Hello, Jimbo Wales will be in San Diego to attend OOPSLA and has agreed to come by and visit with the San Diego wikipedians. If you are interested, you will find more info on my talk page. Johntex\^talk 00:54, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for the note

No caffeine. Just the blues (nasty breakup). I'll get over it. Go for it! 22:56, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] History of Science

Please consider joining the proposed History of Science Wikiproject--ragesoss 02:07, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Philosophy of neuroscience

Dear Kevin,

I'm an undergraduate student of philosophy (with a growing interest in philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences) and after reading your userpage I felt compelled to ask you for a little help, if you don't mind. Would you point out to me the best online references on the philosophy of neuroscience that you have met so far? Thank you in advance! Porcher 02:12, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested template

The template you requested has been created as {{Academia}}. --CBDunkerson 14:13, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much! KSchutte 15:21, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pages up for deletion

There are two pages up for deletion: Revolution within the form and [[Cretan/Spartan connection. I ask for a vote to Transwiki. Thanks. WHEELER 00:04, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I know nothing about these things, so I will abstain. KSchutte 01:33, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Philosophy

The main problem that I can see with the philosophy article is that it is an article on the history of philosophy!! The section on branches of philosophy should be vastly expanded, there should be a discussion of the relationship of philosophy with modern science and perhaps religion, so as to illustrate the connections and contrasts. But this would mean that the whole article has to be rewritten. I think there was consensus against this or something.--Lacatosias 09:38, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, for some reason they think chipping away at what is there is going to be better than any rewrite from scratch, and they seem to be against a total rewrite in principle. As near as I can tell, you are one of only a very few involved in this debate (other than myself) who has any idea how to show what philosophy is. As is the state of nature, I suppose, the loudest and most chatty have absolutely no idea what they're doing. Here is my rewrite in progress, and if you'd be willing to support it when I'm finished with it, that wold be appreciated. KSchutte 16:14, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll take a look at it as soon as I get the chance. Kripkenstein and I managed to work out a similar problem on the dualism (philosophy of mind) page. It was complete chaos with POV warnings and proposals for merger. We wrote up a version from scratch and just posted it in place of the other. It's far from perfect, but it hasn't been touched in about two weeks (now that's pretty stable!!). It seems to be the only way to do it: write a solid version and impose it.--Lacatosias 17:10, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm still working on it, and probably won't be done for another couple of weeks, so no rush. KSchutte 17:24, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I can definitely support the framework and much of the substance of what you are proposing. It would represent a huge step in the right direction. So far as I can tell, it avoids the major defect of the current version: it is not a f+++ing history of philosophy article and it doesn't get bogged down in terminological nonsense. I have some reservations about the intro, but fundamentally I see where you're trying to go with this, that is provide the reader with some idea of what philosophy does and how it works. It's an interesting and original approach, based on methods mostly. My major concern though is that you have a history section at the end which seems to leave open the possibility of more historical-inflationism by suggesting that each period of history will be defined by its methods, goals, and so on. This could end up being huge and worse than the present version. I would strongly urge that history needs to be dealt with very summarily and then linked to the main article.

But my overall impression is positive. Good work!!--Lacatosias 09:46, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

BTW, I've gotten extremely tired (yes, already!!) of the nonsense on the talk page. From now on, I will discuss this case individually with yourself or others who seem to be quite serious about improving the article or I will just edit the article directly as I think appropriate. --Lacatosias 09:46, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the positive feedback. I'm in agreement with you that the people who give regular feedback over there are missing the point, and I've lost patience with trying to enlighten anyone. (An occassional person chimes in with the right idea, but most people with the right idea don't have the patience to tolerate the subsequent abuse.) I think this whole article turns on the Basic methods section, and once I feel comfortable with that, I think the rest of the article can be tinkered and toyed with at our discretion (the other areas aren't so important.

Let me do a little work on the history seection right now to let you know what I had in mind to put there. I think once you see where I'm aiming, you won't mind so much. KSchutte 16:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Of the people chiming in over there, I suggest we invite WhiteC, Shaggorama, and Simonides to come help out. They seem to recognize good changes and good ideas and would be helpful. (Rodasmith maybe, too, but I'm not as familiar with him.)

I also suggest that once we finish, we should get feedback from Mel Etitis and Dbuckner. These two seem to know quite a bit about philosophy, but they seem to resist certain changes to articles that are helpful and productive. I think they could recognize a good article if they saw it, but might not be so much help producing it.

The rest of the people over there are just "kids" or n00bs to philosophy, and ought not be listened to very much. KSchutte 17:00, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Part of the reason I am confused about the situation with this article right now, in fact, is that there now seem to be two fora for discussion (the talk page and Shaggorama's subpage), or three if you want to count this discussion. If you can get at least some of these other people involved, I can get an idea of what direction this article is really going in and might be able to help out. Let's get agreement on this pageor on Shaggorama's for a general outline at the very least. I don't know any of these people at all well (I've only been woking on the 'pedia for about two months and have been splitting my time between a whole bunch of areas). But I share your general view about who should be consulted, who are the "kids" playing around, etc..

--Lacatosias 12:15, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi everybody! I'm a pessimist about big articles such as philosophy (or meaning; just check the last changes since two weeks ago). They are overedited, overdiscussed and get too "democratic". But I guess I would vote for Kevin's new article. Velho 02:20, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Good point, Velho. I used to think that way, but I'm not so sure any more. I've actually made only two significant edits to that article: I deleted all the lists and nonsense from the bottom (no complaints or opposition arose) and just this morning I deleted the

definition section and rewrote the lead to include a as general and widely accepted a definition of philosophy as possible (I'm waiting to see the reaction to this last move). If it goes through, there may be hope still for such a broad article to be salvaged. In any case, I have publicly stated my own preference for K's version. It may be necessary, however, to introduce any radical changes one step at a time. When you get to that stage, let me know and we'll explain and defend every significant change on the talk page.--Lacatosias 10:18, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh, we're a good ways away from making that decision. I've still got plenty of work left to do before we even try to move it over there. KSchutte 07:14, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Philosophy of mind

Any comments by someone as knowledgable as yourself would certainly be appreciated. --Lacatosias 19:31, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for Žižek comment

Y'know... Slavoj Whoever :-). Contemporary continental philosophy really ain't so bad. But apart from trying to lure you to "the dark side" of the philosophy discipline (or maybe away from the dark side, YMMV), I appreciate your comment on the philosophy project that is exactly to my way of thinking. I wanted to give you a bit of context that you may have missed though.

In general, I believe as you do that an academic biography, especially of a contemporary figure, should present the basic facts of where the thinker went to school, where s/he teaches, what books s/he has written, and from there some general description of what her/his contributions to philosophy are (or to another discipline, the same general idea applies). Criticisms, if they occur at all, should be limited to a few sentences, maybe a paragraph at most. It's not so much different even for a historical figure; I don't want the David Hume article filled with everything everyone disagreed with Hume about either. But obviously some particularly notable historical figures: Hegel, Marx, Aristotle, etc. have launched whole "schools", within which many disagreements exist, and those can be discussed in an encyclopedic fashion.

As the Žižek article existed at the time I wrote my initial call for outside comments to the philosophy wiki project, there were six or seven paragraphs of "Critique". All the critics presented are perfectly respectable members of the philosophy profession (though none particularly notable on their own merits, most don't have WP articles), but a WP bio isn't the place to reproduce everything that goes on in contemporary philosophy journals. In the meanwhile, however, I refactored the long criticism section into a separate article, and left just a concise paragraph introducing the idea that such criticism exists. Doing that seemed less likely to provoke the worst edit warring, and the criticism isn't inherently unencyclopedic, it just isn't notable in the context of an article on Slavoj Žižek himself (per the desiderata mentioned above). I'm not sure it succeeded given the flamefest by the anti-Žižek folks, but I suppose it might have been still worse.

So while I don't think Critiques of Slavoj Žižek needs to exist as an article, it doesn't seem to me unencyclopedic for it to exist, as such (given, of course, that the material in it meets WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:RS, and so on, which it pretty much seems to). There are lots of articles that I do not think need to exist: articles on some character in a video game, for example. But not great harm is done by a slightly superfluous article, as long as it is written in an objective fashion.

All the best, Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 02:53, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Santa Barbara Meetup

Hello Kevin. Since you're a participant in WikiProject Santa Barbara County, I thought you might be interested in the Santa Barbara Wikipedia Meetup on Saturday 8 April. Please see that page for details. I hope to meet you there! Angela. 10:17, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sandbox

Category:Unsolved problems in philosophy

[edit] Thanks

Thanks for joining me in the Philosophy of Langage project. I just realized I had forgotten to put the page on my watchlist, so I just assumed it had been completely ignored. But I see you have taken the time to post some articles that need attention and topics that haven't been addressed. Thanks. This gives me some idea of the particular areas that I can focus on instead of fumbling around randomly looking for dead links and so on.--Lacatosias 07:41, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Substance nihilism

I'm curious, when you say 'substance nihilism', do you mean mereological nihilism? Or is it completely unrelated?--Laplace's Demon 00:49, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Prometheanism

I've put this article up for deletion. As someone who has worked with this article before, you may wish to weigh in.--Rosicrucian 14:42, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] re New Criteria

I wanted to leave a note and apologise for trumpeting your mention of bias in the criteria for the list of major philosophers. It is tough to reconcile different ways of seeing things even when people are being honest. And there are one or two individuals that put their personal agenda ahead of honesty. So when I saw an honest evaluation of the proposed methodology I quickly picked it up the bias part and started using it like a club. What I should have done was just say, "Thanks" and then, "let's see if we can find ways to offset those biases." Much earlier, you poked good-natured fun at yourself for being the kind of person that would entire all those numbers of columns in a spreadsheet. I got a big grin over that - cuz it sounded so much like me. I appreciate the work you've done and I'll focus more on making an objective criteria work. SteveWolfer 18:08, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Academic

What was the purpose you contemplate for Template:Academic? I have proposed using in the manner described at Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Pseudoscience/Proposed_decision#Designation_of_subjects_requiring_academic_expertise. Fred Bauder 21:48, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I see by looking at the history that it was intended to designate academic influence, but that you seem to have abandoned it. Please contact me if I have preempted something. Besides, I have to line up support for what I am doing, and may fail to do so. Fred Bauder 21:52, 31 October 2006 (UTC)