User:Stringman5

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[edit] About me

I'm an honours student in Philosophy at the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand.

I'm new to this Wikipedia thing, please be gentle.

[edit] My philosophy

I'm working on it. The fact that it took the ironically named I. Kant about 10 years of work to construct his philosophy makes me feel a whole load better about myself.

Despite my marked lack of knowledge about the vast majority of philosophy, I do have a few opinions about a few things. For instance, I identify myself with:

Non-cognitivism - I don't believe that there is objective moral truth.
Nominalism - I believe that there are no individual objects or types of things. Everything is just swirls and partterns in an enormous whirling universe (well ok, maybe there is just one thing - the universe/everything). I believe that this explains why we have philosophical problems with defining where some things begin and end - for example, death.
Atheism - I believe that there is no God. I do not purport to know this with certainty, but I haven't seen any evidence for His or Her existence (or for the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster either, for that matter).
Nihilism - I believe that there is no objective meaning to life.
Utilitarianism - With no objective meaning and no moral truth, we should devote ourselves to maximising utility. (Furthermore, I believe that it is states of affairs that hold moral worth, not actions - i.e. I am a consequentialist).
Cosmopolitanism - I don't feel that national or state boundaries carry any ethical weight. i.e. we don't have a duty to look after our own countrymen before we look after foreigners.
Falsificationism - I like many of Karl Popper's ideas about the philosophy of science.
Bioethics - I am in favour of the legalisation of abortion, stem-cell research, euthanasia and genetic engineering (although with some reservations about the latter). I am also very much in favour of the legalisation of cannabis for medicinal and recreational use.

WikiProject Philosophy task list

Xenophanes: expansion
For Self-Examination: expansion
Zeno of Elea: expansion
Johann Gottlieb Fichte: a little more info needed, barely more than a stub
The Sickness Unto Death: Kierkegaard's great work on despair, stub-like.
Desert: At least narrow it down to being in philosophy, ethics, or morality. An actual article at any of these three would be nice, too.
Fatalism: Stub-like. Needs to be cleaned up and expanded
Aristotelianism: Needs to be expanded
Sign / Symbol: Introductions contain too much technical jargon
Catholic Probabilism: Pretty nearly straight from the old Catholic Encyclopedia
Counterfactuals: Needs fuller and more accurate summary of main theories, as well as indication of philosophical importance in other topics, notably causation and inference.
Human agency: Expand, correct, and reference. Any support for altering the name?
African philosophy: needs a lot of work!

I am finding early modern philosophical discussions about the form of the universe, how humans perceive things, appearances, sensation, concepts, knowledge, form & matter, intuition & understanding, space & time, etc. (so basically most of epistemology and metaphysics!) to be completely uninteresting. Taking this into account, you might say that my decision to take a course on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was probably the worst mistake I have made so far this year.

[edit] Wikipedia Projects

[edit] To Do:

As of writing this (03:09, 20 March 2007 (UTC)), I just got started on Wikipedia a few days ago. However, I am getting the feel of various articles, and am keen to get to work on some projects:

Shortening the main Philosophy article.
Seriously overhauling and adding to History of Philosophy. It is my belief that much of the history-oriented material needs to be moved from Philosophy to History of Philosophy. History of Western Philosophy also merits a look-over.
I want to find a stub and get started on it. However, first I need to find one that I know anything about, and that I have reference material on-hand for.
- I'm thinking about having a go at Act utilitarianism or Rule utilitarianism, or maybe Preference utilitarianism. For that matter, there isn't a page on Two Level Utilitarianism, and I think there ought to be. I might get started on that, actually. 05:26, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
The page on early modern philosophy is very much a stub. Might have a crack at that too. 08:17, 22 March 2007 (UTC)