Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Robert Kirk

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 16:29, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Robert Kirk

Robert Kirk (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Fails WP:PROFTEST - NYC JD (interrogatories) 12:14, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Why? Please specify why it fails this test. Robinson weijman 12:35, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep, I think he does pass it, particularly #5, where he basically coined a lot of the terms used in the field today. Article is otherwise well sourced and written. No problems with it here. Lankiveil 13:08, 15 March 2007 (UTC).

Keep. Of course he passes WP:PROFTEST. He only needs to pass one of the criteria listed. He will almost certainly satisfy 1 and 2, but this may be subjective. However, there is no doubt that he satisfies others.

6. The person has received a notable award or honor". He is an emeritus professor.

3. The person has published a significant and well-known academic work. Consider this information from Nottingham University website [1]:

Publications include: Journal articles:

• Barry Stroud on Subjectivism and Physicalism in Philosophical Books (2006)
• Nonreductive Physicalism and Strict Implication in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 79 (4), December 2001, pp. 545-553.
• Why There Couldn't Be Zombies, in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society supp. vol. 73, 1999, pp. 1-16.
• Consciousness, Information, and External Relations, in Communication and Cognition 30, 1998, pp. 249-271.
• How Physicalists Can Avoid Reductionism', in Synthese , 1996.
• Strict Implication, Supervenience and Physicalism, in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 1996.
• Why Ultra-externalism goes too far, in Analysis 56, 1996, pp. 73-9.
• Physicalism Lives, in Ratio 9, 1996, pp. 85-9.
• La Coscienza Animale, in Iride 17, 1996, 62-81.

Books:

• Relativism and Reality, Routledge, 1999.

Book chapters:

• Quine's Thesis of the Indeterminacy of Translation, in The Cambridge Companion to Quine, ed. by Roger Gibson (2006)
• Radical Interpretation, in The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, ed. Robert A. Wilson and Frank C. Keil, Cambridge, Mass.; London, England: the MIT Press, 1999, pp. 696-697.
• Wie ist Bewusstsein Moeglich? , in Bewusstsein: Beitraege aus der Gegenwartsphilosophie , ed. Thomas Metzinger, Schoeningh. Also appeared as How is Consciousness Possible? in Conscious Experience (same editor and publisher).
• Four entries in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy , ed. T. Honderich, 1995.
• Entries: Block; Mechanism, Posit, Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

Reviews and Other Writing

• Review of The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed. Edward Craig), in Mind 11, April 2002, pp. 386-88.
• Review of The Philosophy of Psychology (eds. G. Botterill and P. Carruthers), in British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (1), March 2001, pp. 159-162.
• Review of Mind Out of Matter by G. Mulhauser, Philosophical Books 41, 2000, pp. 194-6.
• Review of The Paradox of Self-Consciousness by J. L. Bermudez, Philosophical Quarterly 50, 2000, pp. 277-280.
• Review of Wittgenstein and Quine, ed. Robert L. Arrington and Hans-Johann Glock, Philosophical Quarterly 49, 1999, pp. 277-79.
• Review of Blackwell's Companion to the Philosophy of Language, ed. Bob Hale and Crispin Wright, Philosophical Quarterly 49, 1999, pp. 405-409.
• Review of Philosophy of Language by A. Miller, Philosophical Books 40, 1999, pp. 205-207.
• Review of The Last Word by T. Nagel, History and Philosophy of Logic 18, 1998
• Review of From Stimulus to Science by W. V. Quine; and On Quine: New Essays, eds. P. Leonardi and M. Santambrogio, Philosophical Quarterly 47, 1997, pp. 519-23.
• Review of Physicalism: the Philosophical Foundations by J. Poland, in Philosophical Review 105, 1996, pp. 92-94.
• Review of Problems in Philosophy: the Limits of Inquiry , C. McGinn, in Philosophical Quarterly 46, 1996, pp. 117-19.
• Review of Making it Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment by R. Brandom, in Philosophical Quarterly 46, 1996, pp. 238-241.
• Review of The Conscious Mind: in search of a fundamental theory by D. J. Chalmers, in Journal of Consciousness Studies 3, 1996, pp. 522-523.

Case closed I think. Emeraude 13:14, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

'Commment I don't know about his publications, but emeritus is neither a notable award or honor. You should probably strike that pending some real achievement. FrozenPurpleCube 14:22, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment Actually at many universities there are two status, emiritus or retired, the first is an honor with benefits, the latter is not. I know of many professors that never had the benefits of emeritus status, and a few that do. --Buridan 16:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, that may be so, but it doesn't change the fact that simply being emeritus is not especially notable. I don't even know that the university he teaches at makes this minimal distinction. FrozenPurpleCube 17:21, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Certainly even if it represents a special status it is not proof of notability; there must be thousands of emeritus professors in the UK alone at this moment. -- Dhartung | Talk 10:31, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletions. -- Pete.Hurd 14:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Delete, fails WP:ATT. Well, yes, there are a lot of publication credits there, but do we have any sense that his collective body of work is deemed significant in the field, as WP:PROFTEST requires? With a directed Google search to weed out similarly named professors of economics and art, there are only 624 hits, and even there a lot of them are for other people; I don't get a sense here that he's all that much of a pioneer as all of that. My mind could change with some genuine attribution. RGTraynor 17:13, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment: Further ... he doesn't seem to be significant enough to be listed either in the Nottingham University article under important academics or in the much larger List of University of Nottingham people. As far as his own reputation goes, his rather startling NU bio claims that his 1974 work on zombies was in error. RGTraynor 17:52, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep—known for his work on zombies on zombies, and other work on physicalism. Changing one's mind is a privilege of the notable and non-notable alike. Spacepotato 22:26, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

• Except that it's tough to claim (in the lack of any evidence, come to that) that the man's work on "zombies" makes him notable at the same time he admits he screwed it up to the point that he wrote a book refuting his own prior work. RGTraynor 13:37, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. Sorry, but you have no secondary sources in the article that back up your claims that he meets WP:PROFTEST. The first criterion is that they are a significant expert. Where is that backed up? In the article you prove that he published and was reviewed by other academics in academic journals. So has every other full professor in the world. The second criterion is that they are regarded as important - I don't see that backed up in any source in the article. So on down the list. You need independent, secondary sources stating how and why he is notable.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Mus Musculus (talk • contribs) 23:08, 15 March 2007
• Weak delete per RGTraynor. I see some work in a philosophical niche; I don't see significance. Accomplishment != notability. -- Dhartung | Talk 10:31, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment For the benfit of contributors from the US who may not be aware, in the UK the title 'professor' is far more important than an American professor which seems to be synonymous with any university teacher (we would call that a lecturer). A UK professor is usually equivalent to head of a university department (see Professor#Most other English-speaking countries) So, being a professor is notable, and the award of emeritus, granted by fellows, is more so. Emeraude 13:38, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

• Oh, we're aware of it. Nothing in WP:PROFTEST accords automatic notability to department chairs, either; it just isn't notable in of itself. Really, the issue at stake here is simple: is he widely regarded as a significant expert in his field? If so, it should be easy to provide sources backing that up. If sources attesting to his notability don't exist, then it seems he isn't all that widely regarded after all. RGTraynor 14:26, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

• • Unable to access journals portal at the moment, but here are three sources that cite Kirk available openly on the Internet:
    • BAILEY, Andrew Zombies, Epiphenomenalism, and Physicalist Theories of Consciousness in Canadian Journal of Philosophy. here
    • CHALMERS, David J Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness in Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2(3):200-19, 1995. here
    • CHALMERS, David J Consciousness and its Place in Nature published in S. Stich & F., Warfield, eds, Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind. Blackwell, 2003. here Emeraude 15:00, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment probably a borderline case but I want to note that being an emeritus professor or having written a bunch of reviews (!) is clearly not sufficient. The key question, which supporters have failed to address, is whether there exist sufficient third-party coverage of his work to built an article in line with WP:ATT. I'm not saying that's not possible but this should be the issue. Pascal.Tesson 15:03, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment: Jstor shows that Kirk has written a number of journal articles, not just reviews. He has also written a few books, and it is a priori extremely unlikely that somebody publishing books with publishers such as Clarendon Press and Routledge, as Robert Kirk has done, will not be reviewed in the leading journals. Jstor also finds some reviews:
  • Kirk's Raw feeling: a philosophical account of the essence of consciousness, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), was reviewed by Earl Conee in Mind, New Series, Vol. 104, No. 415 (Jul., 1995), pp. 645-650, by Joseph Levine in The Philosophical Review Vol. 105, No. 1 (Jan., 1996), pp. 94-97, by Michael Tye in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Dec., 1997), pp. 968-971, by Lynn Stephens in The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 184 (Jul., 1996), pp. 417-421.
  • Kirk's Relativism and reality: a contemporary introduction (London: Routledge, 1999), was reviewed by John Greco in The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 201 (Oct., 2000), pp. 552-553, and by Gerald Doppelt in The Philosophical Review, Vol. 111, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), pp. 142-147.

Now, this is just what I find in five minutes of searching. There is possibly more, but I am not interested enough to spend more time on this. Pharamond 15:54, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment. Re Pascal.Tesson's question, I think there is in fact sufficient discussion of Kirk's work in the literature. As well as the references already cited in the article, and those quoted by Pharamond, I find the following after a quick search:

• Physicalism and strict implication, Jürgen Schröder, Synthese 151, #3 (August 2006) (discussion of Kirk's "minimal physicalism")
• The prospects for Kirk's non-reductive physicalism, A. Melnyk, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76, #2 (June 1998)
• Mind and Body, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82, #2 (June 1, 2004) (review of Kirk's book)

etc.

Spacepotato 03:39, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep clearly passes the Prof Test... plenty of peer reviewed publications.  ALKIVAR™ ☢ 16:17, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.