Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Bernard Williams

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[edit] Bernard Williams

(Self-nomination) This is about Sir Bernard Williams, the British moral philosopher, who died last year. Slim 22:35, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

• It doesn't bode well that I had to go in and add his full name and date of birth; that should be taken care of long before a featured nomination. Also, shrink the picture. But this isn't an objection. Everyking 00:04, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sorry about that Everyking. We were actually editing at the same time. I had the dates lower down in the article, but I've gone back and have re-written the intro and also added a few more details. Slim 00:52, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

• Object: the lead section is inadequate, giving no idea of the content of his philosophy (we don't need a deep explanation, but some pigeon-holes would be nice). Some of the writing is overly Mills and Boon (He was a lean, attractive, energetic man, his deep sun tan shown off to its best advantage by the baggy white suits he often wore). Mark¹ 02:06, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, Mark. I'll rewrite the lead. As for the Mills and Boon bits, they are all absolutely true. :-) Slim 04:03, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

Mark, I have rewritten the lead, added a bit more detail, and a few more links. That sentence (lean and attractive) is still there though, because I have grown somewhat attached to it.  :-) Slim 05:50, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

• Support. Comments – This is well-written and referenced. I like the large photo. But it needs some tuning.
  1. The caption doesn't work for me: "He was a lean, attractive, energetic man, his deep sun tan shown off to its best advantage by the baggy white suits he often wore." It echoes the main text. Readers can judge for themselves whether he was lean and attractive. The reference to white suits jars with the photo of a dark suit.
  2. This sentence doesn't work for me: " He abhorred scientific and evolutionary reductionism, once calling reductionists 'the ones I really do dislike,' because, he said, they are morally unimaginative." "Dislike" is so much milder than "abhor."
  3. Need to say which war in "missing war service by only a couple of years".
  4. This statement appears to need more support: "There is no doubting the enormous influence of his approach." A quote from someone else should do the job.
  5. "He died on June 10, 2003 while …" needs a comma after "2003".
  6. This needs to be fixed: "{South America|South American]]"
  7. I don't know what this means: "congratulatory first".
  8. It should be put in the "Philosophers" category. Maurreen 07:43, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've added the cat, and fixed some spelling+grammar. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|^(talk)]] 09:56, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

I tried to strike out all my comments, but I'm doing something wrong. Maurreen 08:21, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• Object. Contains POV language. Don't know enough to fix it. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|^(talk)]] 09:56, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)
  • Support Properly fixed and well-referenced. [[User:MacGyverMagic|Mgm|^(talk)]] 21:57, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)
• Object. Agree with MGM on the POV language. Take the first sentence for example, " arguably the most erudite of his age." or the caption under the first image "He was a lean, attractive, energetic man, his deep sun tan shown off to its best advantage by the baggy white suits he often wore." Also, we have no references (only external links). None of the images has source information, and the Williams and Nietzsche pictures are probably copyrighted (because of the addition to the Nietzsche picture). Support. Jeronimo 12:26, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

---

To address the objections:

(1) I re-wrote the lead again, getting rid of "arguably the most erudite of his age" and used "arguably the most influential of his age," which I believe no moral philosopher would argue with. It's hard to find a quote for this, because it's taken as read by people who've written about him. (It's like trying to find a quote saying Einstein was clever.) Some philosophers would say he was THE most influential; others would say he was ONE of the most influential. No one would say he was not one of the most influential.

Found a quote from The Times to use instead.

(2) Maurreen, I think I dealt with all your points. Used "rejected" instead of "abhorred." It was the Second World War. Explained congratulatory first. Fixed the typos. Someone else added the categories and missing comma in the date. Got rid of deep sun tan and baggy white suits, and that he was attractive. Got rid of "enormous influence of his approach," as I couldn't find a specific quote for it. Added a quote about his being a feminist.

(3) Mark and Jeronimo, I think this version is less Mills and Boon-eque.

(4) Jeronimo, I don't know what you mean by references. I've supplied a fairly comprehensive bibliography. Do you mean actual footnotes throughout the text? Footnote are not normally used in philosophy entries in encyclopedias so far as I know. It would take me weeks to footnote everything in this article. I have a copy of the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy here (calls itself a dictionary, but is what we normally think of an encyclopedia), and there are no footnotes in entries, though they do supply a bibliography. Where I quote someone, however, I do supply a reference.

References added

(5) Jeronimo, the Williams photograph has been released for public use; and the copyright on the Kant and Nietzsche photographs has expired. Because you mentioned being concerned about the writing on the Nietzsche photo, I used instead the photo of him from his own Wikipedia entry, which has no writing on it.

Copyright information added to image pages

(6) Also, some of you didn't like the large photograph of Williams. Someone else reduced it, so it's now quite a bit smaller.

(7) Mgm, you said it contains POV language but you don't know enough to fix it. I've taken out some of the POV language. If you still have concerns, do you have specific objections that I can address?

Thank you, everyone, for the input, which is much appreciated. Slim 19:30, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

---

To address the most recent objections:

• Object (again, same general idea as before). Some of the writing is still too gushing, particularly the paragraph that starts When he left for America; assuming there's a source for this material, quoting the source would be fine. Also, I don't know what His time as a fighter pilot did not harm his image with members of the opposite sex means: is the suggestion that he pulled Shirley Williams because he was in the RAF? Mark¹ 08:28, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Mark, yes, I was saying that his time as a fighter pilot served him well with women, as American philosopher Martha Nussbaum and several others have noted, but I've deleted it, rather than sourcing it, as it's probably unencyclopedic. The thing about Williams is that, perhaps unusually for an academic, he was extremely attractive to many women: physically, intellectually and politically. It's something that is noted by almost all women who have written about him. When women found out he had also been a fighter pilot, it was like the icing on the cake. I've also deleted that he was charismatic and energetic; that he spent a lot of his time at garden parties looking just over people's shoulders to see if there was anyone more stimulating around; and that his evening lectures often found him surrounded by undergraduates sitting at his feet. I believe/hope that gets rid of all the unencylopedic observations. Slim 02:23, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

Mark, on second thoughts, I've deleted the whole "When he left for America" paragraph.

• done Object. 1) Please format the external links used as references according to the guidelines at Wikipedia:Cite sources. You created the references section, is it fair to say you have consulted all of those for material in the article? Also, I've never seen inline citations use the title of the work, only the primary author's last name. Is using the work standard? Is the bibliography section simply a list of his works? It might help to make it clearer to state that explicitly. It appears you have done great work referencing the article, thank you, keep doing that. 2) The lead section is too long. It should be 4 paragraphs max, and no one or two sentence paragraphs. - Taxman 20:54, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

• Taxman, yes I did consult everything in the "references" section for material in the article. I will make the citations consistent so that only the name of the work is cited if it's by Williams; otherwise I will list only author's name. The reason I did it that way is that I haven't worked out how to provide footnotes (as links) in Wikipedia articles. The thing about Wikipedia: Cite sources is that it suggests following the American Psychological Association style. I don't know why that style would be chosen over any other academic one. Yes, the bibliography is a list of his works: I have made that clearer by calling it "List of works by Bernard Williams". I have also reduced the lead section to four paragraphs, by merging the short ones. Slim 02:38, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

• The only thing I referred you to Wikipedia: Cite sources for is for the external links. Those currently have no proper formatting except a description of the link. Also, still many one and two sentence paragraphs throughout and one in the intro. I'm not sure why that is so prevalent in Wikipedia, but in any graded paper, it would be considered a serious deficit, so it certainly doesn't qualify as great writing. - Taxman 15:47, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

• Where the inline refs are to works by Williams himself, it is indeed standard to cite only the titles inline. Where they're to other writers, it should be the author's last name. (In other words, common sense is the overriding principle.) These inline refs are overloaded, they have too much info. They should always be as simple as is consistent with being unambiguous. Therefore, please trim off the publication info, which is conveniently available in the references + bibliography sections at the foot of the page. Format refs like this: (Moral Luck) for a work by Williams, (Foot) for a work by Philippa Foot (assuming there is only one). Put in page numbers if desired, also on a common sense principle (=are they useful?).--[[User:Bishonen|Bishonen (talk)]] 15:17, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• I have cited the work by title and date when it is Williams, and by author's surname and date when it is someone else; and I got rid of the extra publication info. Slim 03:26, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

• Yes, fine. I've mentioned a couple of formatting details on your Talk page.--[[User:Bishonen|Bishonen (talk)]] 18:28, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• Support. Mark¹ 06:31, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

*There's a POV issue in the final paragraph, with the claim that nobody else discussed self-interest in moral philosophy honestly since Aristotle, which needs to be either reworded (a lot) or sourced in a neutral way, not given as opinion. Wikipedia is a tertiary source. I'll support this excellent article as soon as that's taken care of.--[[User:Bishonen|Bishonen (talk)]] 18:28, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• • I've changed that to a role neglected by Western philosophy since Aristotle. Mark¹ 03:50, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • Thanks, Mark, but I have doubts, I think the problem may be bigger. Surely the role of self-interest does come prominently into moral philosophy in the Western tradition ever since Aristotle? It seems to me that the burden of Slim's discussion in the article has been that it's new, or unusual, that Williams gives self-interest a positive role. (In moral action, not just the kind of societal automatic positive role that self-interest has in Mandeville, or else it wouldn't be very new.) I assumed that the phrase "not honestly explored since Aristotle" referred back to this negative/positive distinction, and also took sides, claiming that Williams is honest about self-interest while his predecessors weren't. It's only the POV taking sides that I want out of there, not the distinction itself. Only the bath water, not the baby. Taking it out orphans the reference to Christianity, too. Unless I've misunderstood, always a possibility. Perhaps Slim could weigh in?--[[User:Bishonen|Bishonen (talk)]] 15:04, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
• Support. Heroic work by SlimVirgin to address all outstanding objections. Jayjg 18:42, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Bishonen, you're right that I was trying to convey that few philosophers before Williams had explored the positive aspect of self-interest in moral action. Perhaps I should re-write it to say "positive role of . . " and then say "thoroughly explored" instead of honestly. Slim 23:00, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

I've changed it to: "By illuminating the positive and, Williams argued, vital role of self-interest in moral action, a role largely neglected by Western philosophy since Aristotle . . . " Does that do it? Bishonen, I like your latest merging of paragraphs, except the one where he's quoted on the brain drain, which I'd like have as a stand-alone.

Thank you to everyone for all the effort you're putting into this article. You've definitely improved it. Slim 23:07, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)

Taxman, I've formatted the links the way I understood the Wikipedia page to recommend. Thanks for sending that to me. Let me know if I've done them correctly. I included the date I retrieved the webpage only on two occasions: one for what appears to be a personal webpage, as it may not be stable; and secondly, for an undated Williams article on the Royal Institute of Philosophy's site. Otherwise, they are stable websites (newspapers and magazines) and the articles are dated, so I didn't bother there with the dates I retrieved them. Bishonen and Mark, I've deleted the "vital" role of self-interest in the last paragraph, as it was too wordy, so it now reads: "By illuminating the positive role of self-interest in moral action, a role largely neglected by Western philosophy since Aristotle . . . " Bishonen, I split the first paragraph into two again, as I felt it looked and read better as two. Let me know if these changes are okay. Slim 08:13, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

Well, that still amounts to claiming that self-interest does play a positive role in moral action, and BW illuminates it while the other guys neglect it. How would you feel about something like "By giving self-interest a vital positive role in moral action, a role largely denied by Western philosophy since" etc? There has to be more elegant phrasing out there, but you probably see what I mean.--[[User:Bishonen|Bishånen (tåk)]] 16:08, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I wonder whether that's getting too bogged down. You could also argue that "by giving self-interest a positive role . . ." is POV, and really it should be "in attempting to give . . " I'll have another look at it, but I'm inclined to leave it as it is. Also, no moral philosopher (that I can think of) would argue that self-interest doesn't play a positive role to some degree. Williams illuminated that role, expanded on it, didn't shirk from its consequences etc. That is the difference between him and other moral philosophers. Slim 16:29, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

Bishonen, I couldn't think of how to re-word it accurately without opening a can of worms, so I added "what he saw as the positive role of". The sentence now reads: "By illuminating what he saw as the positive role of self-interest in moral action, a role largely neglected by Western philosophy since Aristotle, at least in part because of the influence of Christianity, there is no doubt that Bernard Williams became one of the leading English-language philosophers of his time." What do you think? Slim 18:50, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

• It's fine, NPOV-wise, so I consider my objection fixed. Seems to me Christianity comes as a bit of a surprise (and weighs down the sentence) here at the conclusion, not having gotten a look in before, but I'm not objecting on the basis of a detail like that. Great article, support.--[[User:Bishonen|Bishonen (talk)]] 21:14, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thank you, Bishonen. I agree with you about the Christianity part weighing down the sentence. I may get rid of it. Slim 21:24, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

I did get rid of it, Bishonen. Slim 04:16, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Copying the following from users' talk pages:

A comment also: the sentence "The utilitarian philosopher's main rival is the 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant." is not entirely clear and seems a pretty heavy POV unless cited to a specific source. Also, is that meant to be in the caption or as a part of the next paragraph in that section? Currently it is neither. - Taxman 03:54, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Hi again Taxman. The sentence "The utilitarian philosopher's main rival is the 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant" is the introductory sentence (a one-sentence paragraph) of the Kant section. I don't believe it's POV. There are basically two views regarding how to judge the moral value of an act: (1) utilitarian, which means consequentialist i.e. you judge the value of an act according to its consequences and (2) deontological, which means you judge the value of an act in some way intrinsically. See Deontology. A deontologist would say (broadly speaking) that, if an act X is good, then it continues to be good even if it produces dreadful consequences. The most important and influential deontologist is Kant. I'm fairly certain no moral philosopher would dispute that. Slim 04:16, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

It is a POV because it is an opinion. It does not matter that almost no moral philosopher would dispute it, that is beside the point. It is not a fact, partly just because 'main rival' is an ambiguous term. But you could easily make it NPOV in this case, by citing the comment to a source or a source that backs up your claim that "no moral philosopher would dispute" it. For ex, saying MSU is the main rival of UofM is an opinion, but mentioning Lloyd Carr, coach of UofM said the same thing is a fact, if he did say it. Please review the NPOV policy and think about what is opinion and what is fact. Just because many or even every person asked believes one thing is so, does not make it so. - Taxman 04:21, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Taxman, you are driving a hard bargain.  :-) Saying Kant is the utilitarian's main rival is like saying Oxford is Cambridge's main rival. It's a true proposition. I will try to find a quote. Regarding your fact/opinion distinction, in some cases, everyone's saying X does make X true e.g. the example above: if everyone believes Oxford is Cambridge's main rival, then it is true that Oxford is Cambridge's main rival, because their status and relationship is based upon the beliefs of others regarding that status and relationship. Similarly, if all moral philosophers believe Kant is the main rival to utilitarianism, then he is, as a matter of definition. But I take your point nonetheless.

Yes, your other changes were fine, thank you. Slim 04:35, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

I found a quote in the Boston Review obit from Martha Nussbaum, who is a philosopher. She calls Kantianism and utilitarianism "those two dominant theories."

So that sentence now reads: "The main rival of utiilitarianism is the 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Williams' work throughout the 1970s and 1980s (Morality: An Introduction to Ethics in 1972; Problems of the Self in 1973; Utilitarianism: For and Against with J.J.C. Smart, also in 1973; Moral Luck in 1981; Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy in 1985) outlined the basis of his attacks on the twin pillars of utilitarianism and Kantianism. "As a group these works denounced the trivial and evasive way," wrote Martha Nussbaum, "in which moral philosophy was being practiced in England under the aegis of those two dominant theories." [1] Slim 05:11, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Taxman, I don't agree with your recent changes, and I'm beginning to lose track of what it is you want. (1) The list of 70s and 80s books was part of the text, not an inline reference, so it's not appropriate to create a footnote, (2) It was discussed above that I'd be using inline references rather than footnotes, so it seems odd now to create just the one solitary footnote, (3) It's not appropriate to say "Nussbaum, 2003" about a newspaper article, because that implies it's an academic book or paper. Why not just leave the reference so the reader can click on it? (4) Why have the Williams texts as a footnote but not the Nussbaum text? You are introducing inconsistencies, in my view. (5) Please don't lengthen any of the paragraphs any further. We obviously disagree about whether short or long paragraphs are better, but I feel Bishonen has edited it well, and I re-split only two of the paragraphs in the interests of clarity, emphasis and convention. Slim 15:43, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)