User talk:Lacatosias/Archive4

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[edit] Had enough

As you see Frank, 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 07:46, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Understandable. I'm not going to try to talk you out of it. I am finally going to take up my cousin's idea of writing a book containing my own, original ideas and having it translated and published in Italian. I don't even have an idea what subject to write about yet, but I am profoundly convinced that I have a great deal to offer the world and that I need to get it all down on paper at some point in this wretched life. This will take up much of my time obviously, so I won't be able to work here very much, if at all. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:14, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I was deepy upset by your comments on the project page. I have always supported everything you have done in WP, including many of your own rants. The incident referred to on the project page was just the last straw. But I'm upset. If there was one person in this place that could make me upset, it was you. There you go. Dbuckner 15:11, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
What specifically in my remarks has made you so upset? Sometimes I suspect that what frustrates you so much is the simple fact that people might actually have the coglioni to disagree with you on occasion. Why do you keep coming back to this place anyway? What is the fatal attraction? Seriously, I really don't undretand what you expect to accomplish with "expert's rebellion", a few unrealistic proposals and then quit. Surely you're intelligent and mature enough to know that NOTHING in life falls into place exactly the way you want it, exactly when you want, without a great deal more effort than that. Or maybe your life has been a great deal easier than mine. I'm disappointed. That's all there is to it.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:29, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
It was the realisation, as you say, that they were unrealistic. Again, I'm sorry. Dbuckner 16:33, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Ah hah. You really were convinced of all that and I was defintely not. I'm too much of an Italian and a cynic underneath. Nothing is ever the way it appears. Assume bad faith. Always look for the hidden motives. It's difficult to survive in the south of Italy while assuming good faith!! No need to apologize. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 17:00, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Omnipotence paradox

Hey there. What's your opinion on the status of the page? Is it closeable do you think? I asked Db, but per above he's not up for continued work (he's made a comment about still outstanding issues on his talk). Maybe give an update on the FAR page when you get a chance. Cheers, Marskell 14:52, 5 September 2006 (UTC)


I feel that I must have some responsibility to try to stop the best people from leaving this damned project when I genuinely thought that it was at least modestly improving!! Is there something wrong with that?? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THAT?? Now, I get disappointing, ourtaged, upset?? Gve me a break. This place IS desperate for experts and good writers in all areas. Ahh, forget it.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:58, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

what seems to be the problem?- I used to help around in the article.-Procrastinating@talk2me 09:55, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
No, I was just expressing some frustration that knowledgable people like Dbuckner (above) and several others keep leaving Wikipedia when it needs to be attracting more experts and professionals, IMO. Nothing to do with anyone in particular. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:03, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I'd like to commend you on attempting to address the shortcomings within this article, especially the listy section I cited in the FARC section. It's nice to see an FAC/FARC where someone is actually working on an article. Good work. LuciferMorgan 18:25, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Oh, that one. To give credit where credit is definietely due, that was mostly the work of Brian Morton and Dbuckner. But I put a little work in there on sourcing and so forth. Thank you for the compliment.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 18:29, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] brain in a vat

You might like to temper your academic genius with a shred of civility. I got well past Phil101, actually, but that was decades ago. Forgive my less than photographic memory for fairly tired metaphors. ElectricRay 17:14, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's it, of course. Keep up the good work.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 17:17, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Congratulations

For getting Hilary Puttnam to Today's FA. An inspiration to the rest of us. Itsmejudith 19:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank's Judith. I hope I inspired some other serious-minded editors to try to improve the disastrous philosophy and psychology articles, at least . I doubt it, but I'm trying. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:44, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] FAR and FARC

I agree with your comments regarding FAR and FARC completely, indeed the process vets FAs and is slowly separating the wheat from the chaff - it has a long way to go yet though. The FA star should be only for the select few and not as easily achievable, and also be an assurance of quality and reliance, which frankly the FA doesn't currently do. As a result of this, respect for the FA isn't what it should be, but the FA in general has to earn that respect. Once all these sub-FA articles are identified, then I feel the FA star and even Wikipedia in general will get slightly more respected.

FA articles as recent as late 2005 don't even meet the criteria - I feel that an article should mandatorily be up for review every 6 months to a year. The FAR/FARC room is where I mostly hang around to critique FAs, as my lack of time prohibits me doing any major work on articles apart from correcting the odd typo here and there. Wikipedia is capable of achieving a lot, but it needs the correct editors, who have the time also, to initiate this. LuciferMorgan 12:18, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your user page vandalized?

I noted what appeared to be a vandalism of your user page. As I noted that you will not be able to devote as much time to WP, I am fixing it. If that material was yours, perhaps as a self-deprecating note to yourself to fix up the page somehow, I profusely apologize for meddling. You can compare histories to check. Baccyak4H 16:43, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

If you had looked through the history you would have found that it WAS my own comment! But I appreciate your anti-vandalism effort. Don't worry about it. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:06, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah, if I only follow my own advice....("compare histories"). I will be much more careful treading on userpages next time. Again, my apologies, although sincere thanks for being cool about it. Baccyak4H 02:33, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A FAR note

Francesco, I wanted to thank you for all the good work you've done at FAR. When I went to the Wiki Philosophy Project page to ask for input on the two outstanding FARs, I noticed some comments about Tony there that aren't in your best interest to be making on Wiki. Tony, and other FAC reviewers, helped you to achieve a very nice FA. Regardless of how you may feel about that process, making personal comments about Tony on a Project talk page doesn't reflect well upon your abilities. Just something to think about. Sandy 09:34, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not even going to touch this one. Suffice to say, there are still some points on which I disagree with Tony1. No big deal. But I regret any comments that I may have made that were of a truly uncivil or confrontational nature. Incivility is pointless and counterproductive, I definitely agree. I apologize for that, as I have before. But I will state my disagreements when I have a difference of opinion, no matter who it is. As to my "abilities", or lack thereof, you've opened up too broad a topic that goes well beyond Wikipedia there. I don't think I have any abilities. Or, if I do, they are not sufficient for either myself or the rest of humanity. Never mind. My concerns, at the moment, go WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY beyond Wikipedia. But keep up the good work.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:51, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, you do have abilities. Hang in there, don't let the little stuff get you down. Sandy 09:56, 13 September 2006 (UTC) PS: I just saw the note at the top of your talk page. I'm sure things will turn around soon, and will be thinking of you. Sandy 09:58, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Ok, Thank you. I appreciate your concern. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 11:06, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I am becoming tempted to a depressing theory of experts on Wikipedia. Personally, I have great struggles with feelings of low self-worth, and often find this an emotional bar to aggressively submitting my OR for publication. I would rather discuss the hard stuff with someone privately, via conversation or email, than to submit a half-polished discussion to an academic journal. So I submit more rarely than I should. Here on WP I can contribute to meaningful work in philosophy, and yet ... I notice that you also seem to struggle with low self-worth. Several times, people have expressed the sentiment that "real" experts wouldn't be here, they'd be doing OR for pay, at SEP, or IEP or something (both of which give one article a piece to tons of folks, rather than letting anyone contribute heavily). I wonder, is it scholars with low self-worth issues that tend to hang around WP in general? Or is it just the philosophy section? Or is it just you and me? Any thoughts? Bmorton3 18:50, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the thoughts on my page. I think I probably agree with you, especially about the relation between WP and blogs. But there is another dynamic here I have been thinking about since yesterday. My stepfather is also a geologist, and he does it because he loves doing geology, not because he loves the field of geology. He'll spend a summer living in a camp in the rockies, it if means he can look carefully at stones, and yes publishing and/or money helps him finance later trips to look at stones. But if you gave him a grant to go look at interesting rocks, on the condition that he couldn't tell anyone about it, or get credit for what he learned, he'd say sign me up! His incentives aren't money or fame, they are the ability to go to exotic places to look at cool rocks (which he understands relates to money and fame normally). But philosophers and mathematicians, and folk like that we care about the discipline. I want cool new answers and approaches, but I also want people to learn philosophy. If you offered me money and fame but the price was turning the world off to philosophy a little bit more, I'd be resistant. I could have made far more money in another field (say law), and probably gotten more fame elsewhere, and so could most of the philosophers and mathematicians I know. Our incentives and pay-offs are more for the intangibles. So I have a choice, work hard on a paper on free-will that if I can get past the stupid block I had all June, might be publishable in a journal where a couple dozen professionals will look at it briefly, or try to improve the quality of the free-will discussion on wikipedia where thousands of amateurs will look at it when curious. Well what are the marginal utilities? The experts already know most of what I have to say, and I will have at best a new wrinkle or two for them, marginal utility of 30x1.5 ideas, say 40-50 ideas total for months of work. The free-will page is decent before we work on it, although crufted up with denominational theology, but our improved version has dozens of ideas in it the casual reader won't have seen before. Suppose they absorb only a few of the many ideas present, say 3-4 per amateurs who really reads it. Thats still orders of magnitude better pay out, and better marginal utility. On the other hand the journal helps my career so that we can keep doing Wikiwork, and continue to have access to decent libraries and an office away from the kids and so on. Now a blog would have even better exposure than WP, at first. But after the fad passes few people will bother to look up your blog at all, whereas if WP can keep some degree of quality control it can continue to be valuable. I think the marginal utilities show why work on WP IS in line with the incentives, if one's incentives include service to your discipline. Bmorton3 14:32, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I think there are a good number of people who share this basic idea working on Wikipedia, in fact. In addition, a lot of people enjoy the sense that they are sharing their knowledge immediately with people from all parts of the world, instead of sitting and working over a paper for years that has to be reviewed, sent to various journals, possible rejected several times, published after 2 years and so on. Certainty I can understand such a perspective. I hope I did not leave the impression that MY only considerations, those of my cousin, or THE only considerations for "experts", should be money, recognition and so on. Far from it. My only point was that, to the extent that "experts" and "professional" authors do not participate or DO participate on Wikipedia (or things like Wikipedia), it is almost surely not a question of self-esteem that determines it. For those who don't, it's usually a question of TIME, Priorities, and other facts of life. Many don't even know about it!! Also, there are many philosophers, and others in the humanities, who are shockingly computer illiterate. I'm sure your aware of this. For experts who do contribute, I think they do it out of the kind of considerations you have mentioned, in addition to the many possibilities that are offered by hyperlinking texts, graphics, and who knows what in the future. Whatever can be said against Wikipedia (and their is certainly a great deal), there is one fundamental characteristic that can never be taken away from it: it is one of the absolutely unique, revolutionary, most powerful experiments in the history of the gathering and dissemination of human knowledge. I look forward to seeing what evolves out of all of these experiments in about ten to fifteen years!! A new life-form? Knowledge on demand? Who knows? The most important thing now, I think, is to get basic technology into the hands of the majority of the human population which is still deprived of access to it though. Not an easy task. Otherwise, even blogs and Wikipedia will remain a sort of pastime for the elites and geeks of the Western world. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 16:38, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, sounds like we are quite on the same page here (or perhaps that you have persuaded me, or cheered me up). I sometime wonder if Diderot and his crew felt similarly about their encyclopedia. Thanks for the Barnstar, BTW, it is my first. I'll probably list it as a service award next time I have to write my "Faculty Activity Report" and you can laugh!
Achh, the Encyclopedie is often discussed as an example of overambitiousness and failure. I think there was a lot of hyperbole on the part of some of the contributors (and I seem to have engaged in a bit myself in the above comment!!). But there is no doubt that it too was a unique and revolutionary project. Although it certainly did not achieve the repersntation of all knowledge, etc., it did inspire the whole idea of Encylopedias, collaborative projects and probably helped to spread many of the basic principle of Englightmentn humanism. Not a total failure. Wikipedia is the technological development of the idea. Who knows where it will go?

But it's important to look back and see how far things have already progressed to get some idea of how things might be in the future. I remember the days when there was Gopher and e-mail was a big thrill. Real-time comminication was almost unthinkable. That was in the US!! When I came to Italy to visit during the 1990s, the notion of a desktop computer was still reserved for the ultra-rich. The state company Telecom had a monopoly on telecoms and telephony and Internet connections, beside being limited to 4k/s and busy 90% of the time, were charged by the minute on your phone bill as regular international phone traffic!! Now there's 24-hour access, ADSL, and fixed phone bills. On the software side, blogs and Wikipedia have replaced static web pages. Now there's youtube and so on. Despite all the failings, there's enormous potential at the bottom of the whole thing. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:00, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Grammatical changes

The script I use to do the gramttical changes is not built for this purpose and is therfore a bit dodgy, I will refrain from using it once I have another means of editing quickly and efficiently but for now I just can't find a way of achieving this. Maybe Vandalproof would help me, i'll apply and see what happens. Thankyou for your concern, I understand what you are saying and will try to solve the problem.-- JiMoThYTALK 14:58, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok. Just be careful with very large-scale edits that are unclear and can cause confusion; many people have put a great deal of time and effort into some of these articles. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:14, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Eigenvalue, eigenvector and eigenspace

Hi there. You commented extensively on this page here during its review period. It's at decision time regarding whether its FA status should be removed. If you'd like to post a comment on its present condition, please do so soon. Cheers, Marskell 19:04, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article on compossibility

Do you want this article? If not, I'll get rid of it. Lucidish { Ben S. Nelson } 03:11, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Eh?? Which article is this now? Is it an article on Compossibility on Wikipedia?--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:17, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I got it. Left a note on your talk page.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:30, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Sorry for being blunt. I've usually got barely any time in between shifts. Hope you find the article insightful! Lucidish { Ben S. Nelson } 15:45, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Got your mail and responded.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 12:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Out of curiosity (and unrelated to this article) have you ever read anything on Lewis's argument against transitivity? I recently came across the idea in reading a paper but it seemed so mind-bogglingly absurd that I must have missed something. Here's a quote from the paper:

"In his classic discussion of these matters, David Lewis says:

'For a direct counterexample to transitivity [and presumably hypothetical syllogism], consider this argument:

If Otto had gone to the party, then Anna would have gone.
If Anna had gone, then Waldo would have gone.
Therefore: If Otto had gone, then Waldo would have gone.

The fact is that Otto is Waldo's successful rival for Anna's affections. Waldo still tags around after Anna, but never runs the risk of meeting Otto. Otto was locked up at the time of the party, so that his going to it is a far-fetched supposition; but Anna almost did go. Then the premises are true and the conclusion false. Or take this counterexample, from Stalnaker:

If J. Edgar Hoover had been born a Russian, then he would have been a communist.
If he had been a Communist, he would have been a traitor.
Therefore: If he had been born a Russian, he would have been a traitor.

In general, transitivity [and presumably hypothetical syllogism] fails.. [when] the antecedent of the first premise [is] more far-fetched than the antecedent of the second, which is the consequent of the first. Then the closest worlds where the first antecedent holds are different from--and may differ in character from--the closest worlds where the second antecedent holds." Lucidish { Ben S. Nelson } 15:37, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's taken directly from Lewis' book Counterfactuals, as a matter of fact. First of all, it's an argument againt the transitivity of counterfactuals, not against transitivity of conditionals in general. What's the problem with it? It's probably much easier to grasp if you're familar with the underlying theory of counterfactual as comparative similarity between possible worlds. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 16:10, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
[and presumably hypothetical syllogism]fails. This is definitely NOT in the text. I wonder how he would have responded to that. Interesting. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 16:29, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
OK, it makes far more sense when we're talking about non-truth-functional matters, like the modal conditional. I guess the "hypothetical syllogism" parenthetical remark threw me off, for obvious reasons. Thanks.
In context, the discussion which I pulled it from was about certain applications of modal logic, so I don't know what the parenthetical remark was doing there anyway. (It was in a paper by a pretty prominent contemporary philosopher, too. Goes to show that everyone makes mistakes.)
Incidentally, have you read anything on the treatment of degree words (i.e., "All x are somewhat y")? I've been whittling away some of my thoughts on a logical system which might make sense of such sentences. Also, have you ever encountered any intensional logic which did not resort to a "possible worlds" semantics? I ask you because it sounds like you have a well-rounded education in the field, which is something which seems to be somewhat lacking over here. Lucidish { Ben S. Nelson } 02:24, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it might have helped if I had explained that David Lewis defined counterfactuals as "variably strict conditionals". In other words, they work somewhat like the (NEC) x -> y, except that there "spheres" of accessibility (and hence truth conditions) can vary from one sentence to another. This is what happens in the above examples, according to Lewis and Stalnaker. BTW, he has TWO counterfactuals. The "would" counterfactual and the "might" counterfactual. "If Otto had gone....it might have the case" is analyzed as the NOT "if Otto had gone....NOT it would have been the case...". Transitivity does work in the case of Lewis' might counterfactuals. It gets rather bizarre when he introduces "weak and strong would" and "strong and weak might"!!.
By "degree" words, I assume you means things like tall, short, fat and so on. I have read a few articles about it, but I'm far from an expert. There are different views on the matter: some have suggested that a hidden variable is involved at the level of syntax; other suggest that the issue is one of pragmatics and so on. Jason Stanley and some others (my memory's going now too!!) have some intersting articles on-line that attempt to deal with this. It seems to be one of the "raging controveries" at the moment. As to your last question, all I can think of at the moment is that there are so-called "metalinguistic theories" of counterfactuals which treat them as sorts of abbreviation of arguments with hidden premises; nothing to do with possible worlds. But, given that some philosophers still reject possible worlds, I suspect there must be some alternative formulations of tense logics and so forth without any use of possible worlds. I don't really undertand why, since they are obviously an extremely useful tool even more non-realists of PWs. But.... that's an intersting question.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:00, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
You lost me with the "spheres of accessibility"! I'd have to know what that meant in order to understand your explanation. Anyway you solved my original inquiry.
I don't mean words like "tall", "short", etc. as "degree words". (Maybe others do call them "degree words", I dunno.) Rather, I mean the possibility of using words like "somewhat/totally" as formal elements of any given logical sentence, as a way of indicating whether or not a subject is somewhat or totally characterized by a certain predicate. You know how a logical sentence is built up like so: Quantifier (All/some), [Qualifier-1 (not)], Subject, Copula (is), [Qualifier-2 (not)], Predicate. The degree word would be between the qualifier and the predicate, for instance: "All x are not somewhat y", or "All x are not totally y". I guess I was wondering whether or not that was an avenue of formalization which has been explored.
Why are "possible worlds" unappealing? Well, granted, they're clearly far and away more powerful than classical treatments, but on the other hand they also seem to be beating around the bush a little bit. If I want to know whether or not "bachelor" means "unmarried man", I don't need to look across possible worlds, I just need to look inside the concept. That continues to be my worry about PW, despite PW's obvious advantages.
Your comment re: Stanley reminds me of a comment my old prof (Stainton) made in passing: "He's completely wrong. I love him, though." Lucidish { Ben S. Nelson } 22:23, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

As I'm feeling a bit lazy and not up to the task of exposition right now, here's a very accessible, non-technical explanation of the so-called "standard treatment" (including both Goodman's metalinguistic theoery and the Lewis-Stalnaker PW approach) of transitivity of counterfactuals. Note that Lewis DID point out that his treatment did allow for the successful counterexamples by explaining them in terms of A>B, A&B>C, ergo A>C. He thought there was an implicit "strengthening of the antecent" in the cases of successful transitivity. But his discussion is very brief and he did not go into a detailed defense. It's a fascinating issue. It seems that you can argue the case either way, depending on what you are trying to accomplish. The main strength of Lewis view is that it falls out as a logical consequence of his traetment of counterfactuals in terms of closeness of similairy of possible worlds, and is not just ad hoc. A is much less similar to C tha B, so although A is similar to B and B to C, A is simply too distant to be able to accomodate the truth of C.

On degree words like somwhat, the closest thing I can think of is fuzzy logic. In this, you can be tall to degree .8, more tall than X by .2 degrees, somhwat tall might be translated as tall to degree .6 and so on. I'm not sure if this is what you're getting at. Possible worlds are not used to treat extentional statements such as "Bachelor is an unmarried man" but things such as necessity, possibility, obligation, permission, "in the past, "in the future", where classical treatment does not apply. The truth conditions of "Frederick is a man" do not capture the meaning of (NEC) "Fredrick is a man". Frederick is a man is a contingent statment which may be true because Fredick had a sex change. If this were the case, then (Necessarily) Frederick is a man is false. It is possible that Frederick was a woman in the past and is now a man. How do we deal with this possibility and this temprality in classical logic. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:52, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the link.
I guess I was thinking of degrees monotonically. Maybe it's irrational, but I'd like to avoid fuzzy logic as much as I can before succumbing. Lucidish { Ben S. Nelson } 03:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm far from being a serious mathematical logician. But my general attitude is: if it's useful for something, why not use it. I suppose this is actually an anti-philosophical approach in a sense. This is probably because I studied computer science before I got seriosuly intersted in analytic philosophy. My first love is science. I prefer analtyic philosophy to the other types mainly because it is less hostile to science!! This is especially true here in Italy, where the word "science" is basically an epithet. Possible worlds, for example, seem perfectly acceptable to me, as long as I don't have to accept their existence. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:41, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm quite sorry to hear that the intellectual climate over there is anti-empirical. Personally, my first inclinations are towards artistry, writing, and so on, and I could never quite stand programming or mathematics. (Musicians, I have found, are more likely to be appreciative toward mathematical and logical systems than other sorts of artist. All that focus upon metre and so on seems to appeal to some natural faculties.) Yet I was strangely smitten with logical systems when introduced to them, perhaps in part because of its connection with language, and perhaps in part because the informal fallacies are of such earnest and obvious importance. I think approaching analytic problems from a humanities sensibility -- or really, with an open-mindedness, which isn't distinctive to the "humanities" -- allows one to appreciate logic as a strange, beautiful, and intuitively valid thing once it is taken seriously.
I should add that my admiration for the work of PWS authors is motivated by this intuitive approach, albeit in a negative way. It was immediately and obviously evident to both me -- and, I suspect, to everyone in the intuitive mood -- that the truth-functional treatment of the conditional was a horrible translation of the natural language expression. (I also felt strongly against the Double Negation rule, although I've softened a bit when I realized how messy the alternative, i.e. Brouwer's treatment, was.) So I was quite pleased when I read up on PWS, because it provided an account which didn't have all the obvious problems of the truth-functional conditional. So PWS seems like a meta-language that can capture at least that part of natural language, and I'd be the first to admit that it's a vast improvement in that respect.
But one thing that I find puzzling about "possible worlds" semantics is that they engage in talk about the "similarity" between one world and the other. Yet, if we presume that this concept of "similarity" is open to us, I have to wonder whether we need possible worlds in the first place -- we could define a property through its similarities with other properties. Another worry about PWS (and almost all other logics) is exactly that they are object-oriented, having satisfaction conditions which depend upon examination based on domains of objects. Those of us who are unabashedly fond of the dictionary find the leap downward, from abstract properties of an intension to the membership of an extension, to be a disheartening approach to semantics (or at least, lexical semantics).
Needless to say, neither of these are reasons for dismissal of PWS. They're just reasons to be uncomfortable. Lucidish { Ben S. Nelson } 01:48, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jake Refs.

Could I ask you to desist from shortening September to Sept and placing publication names before links? I am following [reccommended policy], and it's enough that we have to keep changing them, let alone having to do it twice! Thanks for all your help anyway. Ta, Dev920 15:47, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

WHOOOOAAA, a cease and desist order!! Take it easy, kid!! Hey, you can do it ANY way you damned well like, of course. My goal was to get YOU motivated to DO IT in the first place!! Period. Your welcome for the help and good luck on it. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:54, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Gonna vote support then? :) Dev920 16:36, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Alright!! Now GO BACK and finish it up!! (; I KNOW you can do it!!--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 16:56, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your note

Sorry, Francesco, I didn't mean not to respond; I've just been a bit tied up. I'll try to look at the article later. I can't promise I'll be able to contribute anything, but I'll certainly look. My apologies again for being slow to respond. Cheers, SlimVirgin (talk) 17:10, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Alright, thanks. I realize your busy. There's no need to apologize. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 17:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Francesco: Took a look at the article, spent some time on it. If you didn't know, it has actually been "de-FACed" recently, but the talk page does not yet indicate that. More than editing, the article needs a little "connective tissue" because there are a lot of sentences that just feel like they've been randomly pulled in from a source. I didn't quite finish reviewing it, as I've had enough for now. I'm sure with a bit more effort it could become an FA. –Outriggr § 04:18, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Alright, thanks for taking some time to go through it. I appreciate that. Didn't know it had been "de-Faced". Ah, that's too bad. Dev is a bright kid and put in some hard work. But I'm sure she will be able to handle it better than I did with my own failed FAC. Thanks again.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:14, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
I see you're back. What do you think, better on the whole than a few days ago? I figure Career is more fundamental and should come before Personal Life for interest's sake. –Outriggr § 08:16, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

(Still need to get rid of one- and two-sentence paragraphs though!) –Outriggr § 08:17, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

(edit-conflicted)

Vastly improved, man!! VASTLY improved. It's almost depressing, but I have to admit I didn't see all those potential improvements as I looked at the article. Maybe I'm just completely hopeless as a writer. Nice work anyway. Usually, personal life comes before career in encyc. articles, but in this case it seems to work better for some reason, IMO. I'm not sure if there is a requirement on this in the MOS. If not, I'd defintely leave it the way it is. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:29, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I didnìt notice any one-sentence paras. the two sentence paras can only be removed by adding some more meat to the article, I think. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:29, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

No, it's fine the way it is. The Uma Thurman article is not very impressive at all. So I looked at the FA on Eric Bana, another actor who I've never even heard of (;, and it has career first and then peronsal life. I'm looking through that one to get some general idea about what kind of thing is needed for actor FAs. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:43, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. (Now, didn't I see a comment from you warning someone not to compare their FAC to FA's on similar topics? Heheh) Yes, if your friend could find a few places to fill this out - another couple of sentences on his activism, or a bit more on how he came into the limelight, or something more on his family connections that seem like they might have helped him in the business... such things that would fill it out just a bit more, then one more copy review by us, and it should have a good chance. I can't believe I'm helping with a "pop culture" article, but at least the guy's played some interesting roles (saw Donnie Darko long ago). –Outriggr § 09:24, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Just curious: do you plan to submit Dualism (philosophy of mind) to FAC? At a quick glance it looks good. –Outriggr § 21:54, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm...intersting idea. I had thought about it actually. It's one of the less technical, more accessible articles that I've done major work on. It still lacks some references and needs some reworking (I haven't touched it in months). It might still be over-technical for Wikipedia in places. But the main reasons I haven't put it up are that I'm not sure I want to go through the whole FAC madness any more. Is it really worthwhile? The result is usually that you get the article on the front-page for a day and it gets assualted and hammered by fifty people questioning why this crap was allowed to pass, why wasnìt this included, etc..? Secondly, I think much of the material overlaps with philosophy of mind. But , you know, this is a collective project. If YOU and others think it's close to FA-worthy, then I can certainly fix the referencing problems and add or delete material for balance, etc.. I'll tell you what: I'll look at it and work on it a bit and, then, if you think it's worthy, I'll let you nominate it. Thanks for your comments anyway.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:27, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, I realized my question was naive after writing it, given your last go-round in FAC. I would be willing to try "fronting" for the Dualism article in FAC (when you feel it's ready) if I could pass on any concerns to you that are related to its philosophical coverage. You, in turn, could ignore the whole FAC rumbling entirely. I could give the article my "I'm-not-Tony-but" copy review. (I have seen so many FACs which said the article had been "copy-edited x times", yet was still a mess, that I feel I'm not half-bad at the task.) Let me know when and if you wish to proceed. No rush. –Outriggr § 23:57, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, I'll be busy for a little while just bringing some old articles up to the new GA standards. Mostly a matter of in-line citations. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 17:31, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Tibalt!! What more favor can I do for thee, then by this hand which did cut thy youth in twain, to sunder his, that was thine enemy....

Forgive me cousin.


Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle, e questa siepe, che da tanta parte dell' ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude. Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani silenzi, e profondissima quiete io nel pensar mi fingo; over per poco il cor non si spaura. E come il vento odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello infinito silenzio a questa voce vo comparando; e mi sovvien l'eterno................................................ e le morte stagioni, e la presente e viva, e il suon di lei. Così tra questa immensità s'annega il pensier mio: e il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare.

[edit] Interesting comment I ran across at the Village Pump

Found this comment which I realized sums things up extremely well with regard to egoism, FA, GA, etc, on some talk page or other.

I think the FA and GA stuff is all tied into ego. When it comes down to it, who cares? If you want to write a really good technical article that professionals will recognize as really good, then go for it. That is the type of validation you should go for. Do you really need validation from a VERY SMALL group of editors who control the FA and GA process? If that small group of editors want to deem articles that are more "readable" to be worthy of their little club tag, then who cares? Let them tag all the little articles that they want. It doesn't increase or diminish the value of YOUR article. It's not like your article is going to be deleted because it is not FA or GA.

205.157.110.11 00:24, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


A whole book could be written on this, but I'm not feeling up to it at the moment. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:35, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


Hey Francesco, I had come here to, once again, commend you on the hard work that you have put into keeping the Eliminative materialism article up to date with the new GA standards. I had a little unanticipated free time, and was going to do some of the references, but it looks like you've beat me to it. However, I saw this post, and wondered if you might be feeling stressed out about all the philosophy GAs that you've worked on getting tagged with the notice about in-line citations if they are going to stay GAs (how many did you work on that are going to need to be brought up to date, all at once?). I understand your frustrations... It's hard to keep up with a moving target. In the long run, the new standards are good ones, but I'd be frustrated too, if I saw a bunch of the pages I like suddenly in danger of being delisted. Is there any "grace" period, or phase in for the implementation of these new rules? Is there anything I can do to help? Edhubbard 17:06, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Nah, it's all nonsense. But I think the article on elim. should be satisfactory for all parties. I do NOT think it is possible, nor even desirable, to revise anomalous monism and semantic holism according to the standard "readable by the lay reader". What sort of lay reader goes around checking clicking on an article called "Semantic holism" and expecting to find something, basically, compltely devoid of logical terminology and analytic philosophy!! Anomalous monism should be accessible to the lay reader? The title itself is beyond the lay reader!! It's a waste of time. --Francesco Franco 17:18, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
LOL! I agree with about 72.4% of what you say here. Obviously, no lay reader is going to walk in off the street, and just say, oh randomly, "I'd like to find out more about anomalous monism..." To a certain extent, I also worry that the "lay reader" criteria could become a battering ram; essentially if one of the GA reviewers can't or won't put in the effort to understand it, they complain about the writing, when, in fact, some topics are just difficult, be they philosophy or neuroscience (note, this doesn't necessarily assume bad faith). That's why people go to school for ten years or more to discuss these things! But, at the same time, if educating people is our goal, we should always strive to make things as simple as possible, but not simpler. Perhaps BM3 would be a good person to ask to pitch in on some of these things, since he has been teaching this stuff day in and day out, probably often to students who don't really care, but have to take a philosophy requirement. Me, I love reading about philosophical topics, since it grounds out the bigger implications of the stuff I am doing in neuroscience. Edhubbard 17:34, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
As I said, it's all nonsense. I've delisted the other articles from GA myself to avoid having to systmatically reduce these articles to the level of intelligence and readability of the average bonobo.--Francesco Franco 07:59, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
To me, it seems like some madmen who are negatively obsessed with Wikipedia are complaining about other madmen who are positivtely obsessed with Wikipedia. Go ahead, go ahead NOW!!! It's a personal attack, someone will cry. Madman is not an insult in my idiolect in any case, folks. You damned LOONS!!--Francesco Franco 13:02, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
The worst thing is that I can't decide if my obsession is postive or negative! I think you just want someone to block you because you can't make yourself take a break ;-> Go on, take a day off... wikipedia will still be here, warts and all, for you to love and hate at the same time. Edhubbard 13:25, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
The Internet (wikipedia, blogs, forums, or whatever) is an extraordinary development which I often take for granted. I live in a backwoods area of the south of Italy and I am often homebound for health-related reasons. It can get extremely lonely and excrucitaingly boring without any intellectual excitement beyond the level of the latest internecine family conflict about whos baby is prettier than whos and local gossip about the mayor being on the take from the bank manager. F***ing horrible!! Besides going to the University to follow a few courses, and so on, when I'm not feeling like death, I live in books and on the Internet. Though it is often fascinating, obviously educational and intellectually stimulating, such as an existence is fundamentally horrible. Hence, I have often deliberaltely sought out controversy, debate and even confrontation on the Internet to liven things up. Blogs and forums are fantastic for this kind of thing. But that gets repetitive, menaingless and boring after a while. I used to be much more combative a few months ago on Wikipedia as well, but that has not ben the case recently. I have scrupulosuly avoided provocatave comments and responses to provocaive comments, stayed away from controversial topics and had completelyt eliminated personal attacks as counterproductive. Every once in a while, I may still express very harsh criticism of some policy or of Wikipedia in general. What I wrote yesterady was not intended as a personal attack on revieers or nominators. I just read this comment on anothr thread and thought I would wax a bit sarcastic and contrarian, partly at my own expense, about the fact that one can become obsessed and infatuated with these FA and GA processes. I think there is some truth in this, after all. I did not think out the consequences of describing groups of people as mentally ill (it's almost always intended as a joke when I use such terms). But, as it happens , someone, reasonably, thought I was aiming directly at them. Then, aftre the person immeditaly objected on my takl page, I felt as if were being spied on and monitered. So I fired back in outrage and frustration as a consequence. What the heck can I tell you? I make comments on-line that, anyone who actually knew me in person, would refuse to beleive could come from someone as quiet, gentle and peaceful as I. --Francesco Franco 16:32, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

(resetting indent) I feel somewhat the same as you do, being here in France now. My intellectual community is probably bigger than yours, as I am still in a research environment, but there isn't the same sort of intense intellectual (over)stimulation that I got when I was doing my PhD work in the US. Now, don't get me wrong, the people I work with are intelligent, educated people, but there is some lack of passion here that leaves me looking for other things to do with my energy. This, and a genuine desire to get a few things that are near and dear to my research interests right, is what brought me to wikipedia. It does provide an intellecually stimulating environment, and I get to feel like I am helping to educate people about things that I care about. Of course, the fact that I care about these things is what makes me an expert in them (or is it the other way around?), but also what makes it hard to take when someone comes along and deletes a whole list of things that I have worked on, and then makes abusive comments before eventually leaving (I'll tell you the story some other time if you want, but I'm sure we all have stories like this). To survive in the wiki-world, it's almost like you have to edit something you don't care about, so that when someone else comes along and changes it for the worse, you don't get upset. But, if you work on pages that you care about (or, heaven forbid) are an expert on, you are bound to be frustrated. I think it comes down to there being two conflicting goals on wikipedia: democratization of knowledge, embodied by the universal editing rule, and the goal of creating an excellent encyclopedia. Not everyone is equally knowledgeable. That's why we have teachers, and professors, and whole classes of educators. When we let the lunatics run the asylum, we're always bound to have trouble. The amazing thing to me is that, despite this, somehow wikipedia is better now than it was, say, two or three years ago. There must be an enormous amount of energy coming into wikipedia to counteract that entropy. Of course, the energy going in cannot always counteract all of the entropy, so we see things like the downhill slide of the free will page that then requires a big infusion of energy to get it back up to standards (that and the standards are rising, thank goodness). But, some of us are on the same side here; the people who believe that wikipedia can be an important source of information, and who want to help it to achive this (unattainable?) goal. So remember to pick your fights carefully; friendly fire causualties are much more painful than ones that come from the other side. Edhubbard 18:49, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

You're right.It almost certainly IS better than it was two or three years ago as a result of the. This is very difficult to deny. For direct evidence of this, compare the so-called "Featured Articles" on the Italian wikipedia (which is probably similar to where Wikipedia was three or even four years ago!!) with the average Good article on the Ebglish version.

It's not just that they lack in-line citations; they usually lack more than one or two dubious references at the bottom of the page, are badly organized with lists and graphs interspered randomly in the text, etc.. There's just not enough interest and there are no procedures or rules at all. For example, I once read the article on fascism and it made a bald, nd rather suspicious, assertion that "Garibadi invented the term fascio during his secret meetings with the Knights of Columbia Freemasons of Lombardia" (or some sush madness), so I asked for a reference on the talk page. No response. I deleted the sentence. No one noticed. You obviously need a certain level of critical mass to even get a project like this off the ground. The Italian version, and probably most forign langauge versions, do not even have enough people with Internet access or knowledge of the existence of Wikipedia. So there is undounted improvement with new standard and so on. What to do about edit-creep and the other problems that face many experts is somethinf that I have thought about, but cannot come up with an ideas that do not violate the basic principles of Wikipedia. Difficult questions.--Francesco Franco 07:19, 29 September 2006 (UTC)


Oh my!! Today's]

Featured article (Articolo in vetrina) on the Italian Wikipedia is really special. It starts out with two one-sentence paragraphs as the lead section. After a brief discussion with more one-sentence paragrpahs, there is an almost infinite list of extrernal links. Finally, there is an infinite gallary of images. End!!--Francesco Franco 09:29, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Me again (timidly :-) I'm not spying on you, Francesco. I keep everyone I care about or who is a productive, helpful editor I often encounter on important articles on my watchlist. Lots of people do that. For me, it's simple: if I don't watchlist the people I need to contact, I won't remember where to find them when I need to contact them. The memory doesn't work the way it used to. I hope it doesn't bother you: if it does, I will unwatch your page. I could tell you more about why I was concerned about the particular comment you made, but I acquired a stalker on Wikipedia, so I can't really spell it out here. I hope you know I never took it personally. Be well, Sandy 19:25, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I understand your point. You have the right to watch the page. I don't mind. I appreciate your comments and I shall be even more careful in my use of language that can be interpreted as offensive even on this talk page in any case.--Francesco Franco 07:28, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Experts and wikipedia

I've been thinking about this a little over night, and I think that the problem is that wikipedia is getting into a sort of Catch-22. They don't have any "experts", and still hold onto this completely democratic ideal, which means that everyoneone is considered qualified to evaluate the content of the articles, but very few, if any, have the necessary background to actually do so. Instead, wikipedia is forced to fall back onto things like number of references per paragraph as a proxy for verifiable, intelligent content. This focus on form over content tends to frustrate expert editors like you and I, who know quite well how to cite work and who are more concerned with the quality of the content. In my professional life, I often review OR papers for publication, and if my review was 90% about the citations and word choice, as it is here, I would never be asked to review again. This focus on form over function risks driving off the very experts who might be able to judge the quality of the content, and thereby exacerbates the very problem experts were supposed to help alleviate. When wikipedia was just starting out, and there was little content, and little of it was good, almost anyone armed with a little desire and an internet connection could make useful contributions. This may still be true in pop-culture areas. However, many technical articles have evolved beyond this early stage, to the point where it now requires a certain amount of expertise to be able to contribute to and evaluate the content of the article. This is good for wikipedia, but I feel like they need to develop some more intelligent policies to deal with the overall increase in quality. An expert steering committee? But, how do you evaluate the "experts" when you don't have any "experts"? How would wikipeida verify credentials if they even wanted to? Edhubbard 09:39, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

HAH! You've touched the central problem of all right here of course. But the topic has been, and is contuinuing to be, discussed to death. It's like beating on a dead cow with a broken stick. In any case, here are some relevent links to related discussions,proposals. etc. (some of whcih I have participated in and others I have just read through and found futile): Wikipedia:Expert Retention, User:Hillman, User:LinaMishima/Experts Problem,Wikipedia:Expert Rebellion, Wikipedia:Expert Editors,Citizendium,Wikipedia:Wikiproject Philosophy etc., etc....--Francesco Franco 15:48, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] San Tome

Thanks for the invite, Francesco, but my Italian isn't good enough for article review. What are all those URL's doing in the middle of the article? Best, Sandy 11:57, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I was only kidding about reveiwing it. You don't need to understand Italian, though. The lead has two sentences: the first para is one sentence; the second is the other. The infinite links are there to may it look cool or something. That's also why it has about 15,000 images at the end. And, at least on my comnputer, most of them don't even appear!! But it actually does have seven or eight references, so this is one of the better ones. --Francesco Franco 12:05, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Ah hah!! No, I was wrong. It had been vandalized. I just fixed it. Still tells you something though: it had been left like that all morning and afternoon and probably would have remained like that if I hadnìt reverted just now!! Jesus!!--Francesco Franco 12:13, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Leaving? :-(

Hey Francesco, I just saw that you added yourself to the people that are leaving wikipedia on the Wikipedia:Expert Retention page. I hope that it is only for a break. We need someone around here dedicated to keeping philosophy articles up to snuff. Also, from a personal perspective, I enjoy being able to talk and work with someone bright and intelligent in an entirely different country on shared projects and concerns. Best wishes, Edhubbard 08:51, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. I just don't feel motivated to do this anymore. I haven't actually been contributing anything lately in any case. The problem does not lie with wikipedia in fact. I feel I need something much more than Wikipedia to fill this huge gaping whole in my spirit that was created by 15-odd years of meaningless suffering and the absence of a goal or project in life at this point. I appreciate your concern. Maybe I will take a break. Certainly, whatever the hell it is I'm chasing after, I can't find it on blogs, forums or Wikipepdia and I feel that too much time is being taken away from my serach by staying on line and dveoting so much time to this strange, anonymous project.--Francesco Franco 10:04, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, I can't disagree with your feelings about feeling motivated (you're the only one who knows that), and I agree with you 100% that there is more to life than "this strange anonymous project." On the other hand, I disagree when you say that you haven't been contributing anything lately. I know that you've been doing more work lately just to keep things up to snuff with improving GA standards and so on, instead of creating new entries, but even that is contributing to wikipedia. Hell, there are plenty of anonyomous IPs who contribute by simply correcting typos and reverting vandalism (and plenty that insert the vandalism, too!). But, this type of contribution wouldn't fulfill me, and I assume it wouldn't fulfill you either. Perhaps cutting back on wikipedia some (limit yourself to 10 hours a week?) is better than quitting altogether. I hope you stay, but whatever you decide, I wish you the best. Edhubbard 10:34, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
You're right, I'm so habituated to contributing in some sense, that I didn't include monitoring my watchlist articles for vandalism and correcting nonsensical edits, etc., as part of contributing (0:- So I am still contributing, but not doing massive overhauls or new articles at this point. --Francesco Franco 08:27, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Francesco, sometimes some time off helps one come back to a project renewed and with a different perspective. I'm not saying you need a different perspective, but since the project isn't fulfilling you right now, some time to think about it may give you some answers about which way you want to go, and how Wiki can be more fulfilling for you. You have a good spirit: the cream always rises to the top. Be well, whatever you decide, Sandy 16:12, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the very kind words, Sandy. Geesh, I almost felt like crying after reading all these comments. I've (virtually) "met" some really fantastic, intelligent people from all parts of the planet on the Internet and I know there are great folks with superlative intentions contributing here voluntarily, in particular. Therefore,I have decided not to abandon this thing entirely, but to simply cut back the amount of time and heavy-duty research that I will put in to it for a little while. I'm certainly still available on this talk page (or even by email if necessary) for requests for help, comments, advise (from me or to me), references and so on. --Francesco Franco 08:27, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

That's a wise choice, Francesco. There is so much wrong with Wikipedia, and so much work we could all do to make it better, that it seems wise to simply focus on what you *enjoy* doing, and try not to worry about the rest, including the politics. I enjoy work at FAC/FAR, because I get to read some fascinating articles, and help improve them. Take some time for gelato, and when you Wiki, try to stick to what is enjoyable as often as you can, avoiding areas that aren't contributing to your well-being. Auguri, Sandy 14:45, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Hey Francesco, When I saw the changes you made to the free will page this morning, I cried out "He's back!" I'm glad to see that you're still around, but I'm also glad to see that you're taking some mental health time. I agree with Sandy, that all of us should only work on the things that make us happy here. I consider it a privilige to work with you on the pages where our interests and expertise overlap. Best wishes, Edhubbard 16:49, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Typology of the Free Will Debate

At Ed's suggestion, I'll take this up with you. IMHO, there's an important distinction within the "libertarian" position not reflected in the typology employed in the article or the stylized image of it.

Some proponents (i.e. Catholic theologians) contend that free will is a "faculty" in the sense of faculty psychology generally -- that it is a gift from God that makes human actions neither determined nor random. But there are others (like William James) who find randomness quite enough to break up the "block universe" and to vindicate their incompatibilism. In other words, James would have been delighted by the discovery of quantum mechanics if he had lived long enough to see it, but Thomism should regard it as a matter of indifference, since no quantum-mechanical randomness within our neurons can possibly be "freedom" in the sense they have in mind. This is, I think, and important distinction and rather buried in the article as it stands. We might call them "spiritual libertarianism" and "naturalistic libertarianism" respectively.

What do you think? --Christofurio 18:55, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Hey Francesco, Just a point of clarification. I suggested that Christofurio bring this up on the talk page for the free will article, but did also say that you and BMorton were the experts on these things. See our original conversation here. Also, Christofurio, given that this is tied up with theological views of free will, which I hadn't appreciated when you first brought this up, does this belong on the main free will page, or on the free will in theology page? Edhubbard 19:14, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Look, that thing took an EXTRAORDINARY amount of work to bring back from assolute BS to the truly outstanding Featured Article it is now. If the door is opened even a crack to theological distinctions of the sort your are suggesting, it will go downhill very, very fast indeed. It belongs in Free Will in theology. If anything dhould be done to the Free will article (and EHubbard, I, BMorton and the others have discussed this extensively), it would be to remove create MORE sub-pages and thereby cut back on the unneccesary fat that it already there. The distinctions you are talking about are NOT part of the basic four or five poistions. They are minor variatians and should be noted, if at all, elsehwre than on the main page. --Francesco Franco 07:18, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Ok, as Christofurio explained a little more on your talk page, it already started to become clear to me that this might not be something that we wanted to add in to the main article, but I am glad to have a second opinion. Edhubbard 07:52, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Francesco: Yes, I certainly recognize the tremedous effort and achievement on your part, and BMortons. I'm grateful to you for it. But I'm talking about this because I think improvement remains possible. Ed, thanks for the suggestion. I'll look over free will in theology before taking any action. --Christofurio 16:11, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Who? What? No, my remarks are neither aimed at (nor provoked by) your comments. I hope you have not misunderstood something here. --Francesco Franco 16:15, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
However, now that you bring it up, I might as well make my position clearer. It's not there is "no room for improvement". The problem is that, and this is strikingly evident from the history of that artcile in particular, EVERYONE THINKS THERE IS ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT and EVERYONE THINKS THAT THEIR PARTIULAR IMPROVEMNTS are ABSOLUTELY NECCESARY IMPROVEMNENTS. It's natural. We are biological egositic creatures. What happens though is the phenoneoen that Dbuckner (or whoever has coined this brilliant term!!) has called EDIT-CREEP. When you put ALL of those improvements into the article, you end up with the version that was put into Reveiw. NASTY STUFF!! And no one's fault. Everyone was sincerely trying to "improve" the article. --Francesco Franco 16:29, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ultimate Reality AfD

I have recently nominated this article for deletion. Your comments would be appreciated on its deletion discussion page -Shaggorama 08:25, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I almost regret voting against it. It provided some useful comic relief. But we must try to let seriousness prevail or Wikipedia will start to be seen as The Onion or something. I look forward to reading some of the defenses of this, though.--Francesco Franco 08:46, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
The article has been assissinated. We, the conspirators, have killed it. I heard it cry in its death throes, "et tu, Brute?". Rintrah 16:29, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Don't feed the trolls

...And don't let them get to you either. You're better than this. I've responded more completely on my talk page but wanted to make sure you at least had an orange tag when you log in next... Edhubbard 21:28, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Any time you need to vent, come to my talk page. In the meantime, we'll leave the troll to his own devices. It must be miserable to be him. Edhubbard 07:15, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
That's an interesting comment. It's puzzling about such people. Judging from his website, the fellow seems to have a very good, high-paying, intellectually-stimulating job, probably has a wife an family, etc., etc., and yet he feels the need to troll around on and deface the few half-decent philosopy articles on Wikipedia. I don't think he's miserable and I certainly don't feel sorry for him. I suspect he is, in fact, an insufferably arrogant, offensive JA who just feels the need to "blog" and rant about every topic about which he has read one or two articles. This is why my first instinct was to react aggressively. I find it impossible to believe that someone like this is acting in "good faith". I know too many people like this. --Francesco Franco 07:38, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
I suspect you are right about him being arrogant. For some people, increased education leads to increased humility... I know what little I know, and I know that there's a lot I don't know about! Other people, it seems to make them think they know more than lots of other people. But, my general feeling is that people that troll around like that are clearly either not very secure, or not very satisfied with their lives. Being happy is not necessarily about accomplishments or material posessions (although a certain minimum level may be required). Anyway, I can't say I feel sorry for him either.
Psychoanalysis aside, I tend to agree that this is more about his personal POV than about making a good encyclopedia entry. That's why I pointed to his edit history, and so on... If I can be made to rise to his bait, I will be sure to stress that aspect of his behavior in any and all replies. This is an encyclopedia, not a philosophy cafe. In the meantime, we ignore him... and basta! Edhubbard 09:02, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Good enough. Agreed. --Francesco Franco 09:17, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Radicals, Libertarians, and so forth

Thanks for the explanation on the Radicali in Italy. They do sound somewhat like U.S. Libertarians (although a lot of the more genuine U.S. Libertarians actually oppose the war in Iraq - I believe the Libertarian Party has come out against it, for instance. Those that support the war tend to be Libertarians of the "Republicans who smoke pot" persuasion). I think the thing about US Libertarians that is so weird is that they basically view any form of state power besides, essentially, police power and national defense, as more or less illegitimate, and view taxation as illegitimate coercion. In terms of actual political positions advanced in the real world, they may be rather like European classical liberals, but the underpinnings are much more extreme, if that makes sense. john k 12:19, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree actually. I can't imagine any Italian radicals sustaining that taxation is essentially a form of theft!! Certainly, the quasi-cultish Randian type of libertarianism is not to be found anywhere outside the US. But, I haven't been long in Europe and I was just using the closest thing that I know of for comparison.--Francesco Franco 13:09, 4 October 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Whoah, Francesco!

Hey man, settle down... take a chill pill... As your friend, as one of the people that asked you to please stay, I'm asking you to take the rest of the day off. Threatening friends who you have worked with on other articles isn't going to endear you to anyone, and is ulitimately counter to what you want to accomplish here. Remember, the big goal is to keep philosophy from being a laughingstock. You can't do that if you quit, but attacking Lucidish and driving off another editor who shares your goals doesn't help either. I'm posting this to your talk page, instead of on the article page as a friend... to say, chill. Chill. Lucidish isn't out to ruin a good article.... he knows how much work you put into wikipedia, and he wants the same thing you do. We all know about edit creep, but as I said yesterday, as long as someone keeps their stuff to the talk page, I am happy with that. The article page is the one that counts. I'll put any reflections I have on the actual discussion aside, and just ask you, to please go have a good glass of wine. They say it's good for the heart. Edhubbard 17:11, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Lucidish IS out to ruin a good article. I will go to all the way to the bottom on this one. You can either side with the troll or with me. Period. --Francesco Franco 17:15, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm with you. Go check this out. It's a little something a friend passed on to me when I was about to lose it yesterday venting video. Edhubbard 17:21, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
I can't watch it. I don't have an ADSL connection.

The problems is that I got an ISDN line about 4 years ago and I have gotten deeply attached to having the computer and one or two telephones all gping through the same line. Right now, ADSL is still somwhat expensive over here, so I canìt afford to pay for both. At any rate, ISDN is too slow for videos. --Francesco Franco 17:38, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Bummer about the ADSL... I'll explain. It's from The Big Lebowski, and they have cut and pasted together every instance of the word "Fuck" in the movie... all 281 of them. It was about what I needed yesterday, and I thought I would share it with you. Edhubbard 17:41, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
ps: I bet we get some bot that comes to clean up the "vandalism" on your user page! Edhubbard 17:43, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

(edit-conflicted) Now HERE'S something that a professaional software engineer should be trying to resolve!!

Yeah... have any particular software engineers in mind? :-)
Alright, I think I get the idea. It doesn't come across in text though. Anyway, I'll have to move up to this Web2 thing at some point or other.

[edit] Hey Mr. "Not Go Back"

Ok, ok... I see that you've gone all the way back on the free will article. I think that this troll is starting to see the point, though. Perhaps you should really rub his nose in it and make him read the old version before we go back to the good version, and then try to move forward on it.

I saw your comment about the talk page about the moral responsibility section. I had said that it might be contentious when I added it, but I never thought it would be *that* contentious. If it saves us a lot of hassle, we can delete it. As for the definition stuff, I spent some time looking at the SEP entry, and it seems like that's all that entry talks about. What are the various definitions of free will, and how do they play out, etc, etc? The Galen Strawson entry seems to be more like our entry. What are the various different views on whether or not free will exists? After looking at those, I think that there might be two (obviously deeply interrelated) questions involved here. What is free will (definitional)? and Does free will exist (ontologic)? Stepping back from the debate, I see that our version was mostly addressing the ontological question, and didn't really go into the definitional question. an we just leave the version we had for a couple of days and then start to work on integrating some definitional stuff without opening Pandora's box? Or do you think the minute we start to open up the article to the point that different people have different definitions of free will, that we immediately open this up to the cranks and the trolls? Edhubbard 09:07, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

(edit-conflicted again)

Yes, but there's a much BIGGER problem right now. I've just vandalized the page three times and no one has reverted for almost an hour!! WT?? This is hopeless. --Francesco Franco 09:13, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
If it had been anyone but you, I would have long since reverted it, but I left it, since I assumed you were trying to make a point. I'm itching to follow my revert instincts, unless you say leave it for effect. Edhubbard 09:15, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Ok, in answer to the first comment now: it's true. The SEP article is almost entirely dedicated to characterizing the nature of free will (what IS free will?), while the Strawson article and the Wiki version focus on the question "Does free will exist" and what are the various positions on, as one author describes it, "the problem of free will" (i.e. is free will compatible with (in)determinism). Note that I pointed out somewhere the talk page that this subject is INFINITE and that a large part of the problem consisted in deciding what NEEDED to be left out. On the other hand, the question of the nature of free will is not less important than the other question. My suggestion is this: rename the current page "The problem of free will" and create a new article called "Free will". The former would remain much as it is now. The latter would address the question of the NATURE of free will, as in the SEP article. What do you think? The problem, IMO, is that, while it is possible to keep them in the same article, it would be a difficult trick to pull it off without rewriting the whole thing. E.g., this definition is better adapted to a certain version of compatibilism, therefore....this definition is used by Dennett and he argues that free will, defined thus,...... and so forth, ad infinitum. --Francesco Franco 09:38, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I think this might be a very good solution. I remember your section heading "The subject is infinite" and you, BMorton and I all agreed that we needed to decide what to fork (that even the science section was getting borderline too long) even as we were working against the FAR deadline. I definitely don't think that we want to try and integrate more stuff in. I have a slightly different suggestion though, which is to leave the main "Free will" page as the sort of roadmap to the issues, and then create a "Nature of free will" and "Problem of free will" as forks. But, this is a big project, and not one that we can try and do in a day or two. Let's give ourselves some time to do it. We could even start a "Nature of free will" page before we link back to the main "Free will" page. What do you think? Anyone else you can think of that could be helpful on this project? Edhubbard 09:47, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Bmorton is the only other person I would trust to provide constructive edits. Damn, this is getting ridiculously complicated. I still say rename this one "Problem of free will" and create a new one "Free will".
Well, I could be pretty easily convinced on any of these changes. Do we want to ask Bmorton, and see what he thinks? The article is already excellent, with its little star and all :-), so we don't have to rush to make any decision today. In the meantime, we just maintain the current version. Edhubbard 10:07, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Surprisingly, the IEP article is the best one on this. I has the following structure:
  • Importance of free will
    • Free action and free will
    • free will and moral responsibility
  • Nature of the will
    • Faculty model of the will (Ari, etc.)
    • Hierachical model of the will (Harry Frankfurt)
    • Reasons-responive free will
  • Free will and Determinisn
    • Causal determinism
    • Arguments for Compatibilism
    • Arguments for Incompatibilm
    • Pessimsim
  • Other types of determinism
  • This is probably the direction I would go in, if and when I feel up to it. Right now, I really just don't feel like doing it even if it is an improvement, though.



It would not be very diffuclt to move the explanation of Franfurt's hierarchy (which is already there) to a sub-section of nature of the will and add the the two. We already have a section on other types of detreminis and the section on free will and determinism is just an abbreviated version of ours. The main difeeren is that section at he beginnign about conncetion between free will and freedom of action and free will and moral responsibility. But then again, the IEP version excludes ALL discussion of scientific views (biology, neuroscince, etc) and relgigions views. So, I think ours is better. I suggest we leave it alone for the time being.--[User:Lacatosias|Francesco Franco]] 10:46, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My dear Sir

I have left a comment on the talk page as you asked. Stay cool. Dbuckner 16:13, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, alright. Thanks for the response. I thought you might still have been angry at me for the comments a while back. You're a bit late to the ballgame at this point, I think. The "French chap" seems to have left the field or some kind of settlement has been reached. He seems to have decided to leave it to me to implement his suggestions for "definitional" clarification (or whatever he's trying to get at). He's mostly been a disturbance on the talk page with OR suggestions and other such...........no,no, civility. --Francesco Franco 17:16, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
One more question while I'm here, though: what's the point of the collection of TRULY UNSALVAGABLE ARTICLES (or whatever you call it). You don't seem intent on fixing them, as far as I can tell. Is it for some extra-Wikipedian education purpose, such as illustrating philosophical ignorance? You're not intending to write a book with a collection of the worst of philosophy on Wikipedia? HOOOOOOOOHH. That's it!! Why didn't you let me in on this one? --Francesco Franco 17:23, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Actually I was involved in the Citizendium project for a bit, and there was a dispute about whether to copy articles wholesale or not. I did this to show that about 50% of articles are complete monstrosities, and that one might as well start again. But that project is going nowhere, anyway. I did get most of a paper written, in any case. Dbuckner 08:39, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Failed before it even started? Good heavens!! Depressing.--Francesco Franco 10:06, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Many, many other things to do in this world

Do not plead for me to stay. Please do not leave any messages here. I can't waste my time on voluntary work that is insulted by trolls and cranks anymore. If you need to contact me for some reason, my email adress is listed. --Francesco Franco 07:24, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry to see you go, Francesco, but I won't try to convince you to stay. I would be doing it for my own selfish reasons, to work with you on writing more good articles in philosophy. The thing that really makes me sad is that the final straw was an idiot like MZ. Of course, I hope that, after a break, you will rejoin us here to fight the good fight. Edhubbard 10:51, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your message

Was there a particular reason for that, or did you simply want to vent? :) Dev920 (Tory?) 07:19, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Just wanted to vent.--Francesco Franco 07:37, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. I've written to Raul again, asking him to pass Jake; but the fact that I wrote in a fit of pique "I withdraw this FAC" on the nom doesn't make me hopeful on this score. Thanks for your vote though. Dev920 (Tory?) 07:44, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm NOT going to post my opinions on this stuff here. But you're welcome for the vote.--Francesco Franco 08:14, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
Aren't you supposed to have left Wikipedia, anyway? Dev920 (Tory?) 08:20, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] It's that monthly book-buying time

List your recommendations in this space (does not have to be philosophy-related). I'm truly puzzled. I walk into a good bookscore and want everything there. Mre imprtantly, I absolutely MUST KNOW everything contained in every one of those books or else I will die. I cannot decide. Only one book can be chosen at a time. --Francesco Franco 11:00, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

(Assuming you're still willing to listen to me: ) I found the book "Zero" by Charles Seife interesting and illuminating. Lucidish { Ben S. Nelson } 16:25, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Collapse by Jared Diamond. Or, if you don't know any of his work, go back to The Third Ape before reading Collapse Edhubbard 17:30, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Fiction or non-fiction? Dev920 (Tory?) 22:11, 9 October 2006 (UTC)


  • Done. I have chosen Daniel Dennett's The Intentional Stance in the Italian translation "L'attegiamento intenzionale". I am almost ashamed to say that I have asbolutely nothing by Dennett on the bookshelf (althiugh I read Brainstorms years ago and have continued to read many of his articles). Anyway, thatnks for the suggestions. Jared Diamond was an obvious one. I still need to get a copy of Collapsed. But I ended up thinking more along classic analytic philosophical lines and may is available over here (mostly MAJOR works by authors like Diamond). I've never heard anything about Charles Seife's book, but I will check into it. I doubt it's even available, but I can check on the Internet Book Shop (Italian version of Amazon, without the need for credit cards). After five years, I'm still trying to figure this place out.--Francesco Franco 07:45, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
    • Excellent choice. I especially like Dennett's approach to the evolution of intentionality, given an increasing repetoire of input and output options (essentially behavioral complexity). I think it's really necessary to understand this to get what he is talking about when it comes to free will, especially in his newer book, Freedom Evolves. I don't think that Elbow Room depends so much on his ideas about the evolution of Intentionality, but that's just my reading of him... Edhubbard 08:56, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
      • You have to study ALL of these works to understand Dennett. If you want to undretand Hilary Putnam, you have to read Putnam's works, if you want to understand Quine, you have to read Quine's works, if you want to understand Harry Franfurt, you have to read Harry Franfurt's writing, etc... That's what I spend my time doing: studying these philosophers so that I can know what the **** I am talking about when I write philosophy or about philosphy. But, here we have have people like Mikal, who think that studying and understanding the arguments for, eg, compatitiblism and incompatibilism, is contrary to independent thinking and philosophy!! No, it doesn't work that way. There are people who spend their lives studying counterfactual conditionals. They become "experts" ion counterfactual conditionals. There are people who spend their lives studying free will (not me, BTW!!). They become experts on the topic of free will. Galen Strawson, for example, is an "expert" on free will. Yet out firend Mkial thinks he knows more about free will than Galen Strawson???!!! What a ridiculous project.
  • I'm with you here. I've read probably about 60-70% of Dennett's stuff and more like 90% of the Churchland's stuff (Pat was one of my outside members for my dissertation committee), and I still can hardly bring myself to edit the articles about eliminativism, and you see how studiously I avoided editing the deep philosophical parts of the Free will article. I only feel comfortable where the philosophy touches on the data, which I do feel like I know something about. BTW, have you noticed how Mkial has been silent since no one has been arguing with him? Check out his edit history [1]. He hasn't done a *single* thing on wikipedia since we stopped holding up our end of the argument... No more feeding the troll. Edhubbard 10:48, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, yeah, of course not. But how many more are there out there who think like him? Tens of millions. It's hopeless. Anyway, back to serious topics. I don't know how things work in France, but I usually end up buying the Italian translations rather than ordering the English versions of books becasue the latter can often take weeks to ship and, bizareely, often cost more than the translated versions. --Francesco Franco 12:56, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
In fact, I usually cheat, and get my girlfriend to buy my books in English in the States, where the exchange rate works in my favor ;-) In addition, I nver have to worry about not being able to find things... on the other hand, anything that I really want to read in French, I can find it here, and based on what I've seen the prices are much lower for French versions in France, even if they had to pay someone to translate it! Edhubbard 13:07, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 0.999...

Thanks for supporting the FAC on 0.999..., which passed! I gather that you're a little embittered by the whole process, but I hope you're encouraged by the sight of other editors offering their articles to be vandalized and shat upon. I certainly expect dozens of vandals to replace = with < in 0.999... when it makes its appearance. But at least they'll learn something. And who knows, maybe it won't be so bad! Cheers, Melchoir 23:53, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Excellent job on the article. I wish the philosophy section could be brought up to the same level of quality. Keep up the good work.--Francesco Franco 08:08, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bronze shinyness.

Thankyou for your support. Want to help me with my next FACs? ;D Dev920 (Tory?) 18:27, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image:230px-Ganesha.jpg listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:230px-Ganesha.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in its not being deleted. Thank you.

Don't ask me. I got it from the Commons. The person who uploaded to Commons has the user name User:Yanni or something like that.

[edit] Blog

Hi Francesco, I enjoyed reading your blog. Thanks, --Davidlud 09:08, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Of course. You are more than welcome to comment or participate, if you like. --Francesco Franco 10:38, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Truth in Citizendium

Hello my friend. Despite my scepticism, this project has not yet run out of steam. Here is the article on Truth. You are free to work on it - you register just as with WP. I might even help out if you do!. Dbuckner 14:35, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

not YET, eh? --Francesco Franco 15:15, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
I actually just sent them an e-mail today, volunteering to be an author, and even suggesting with my credentials that they might even bestow the honor of being an editor on me.... I'll keep you posted on how long it takes for them to respond. Edhubbard 15:33, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
I have several very serious doubts about this thing.

1) who's choosing the articles to transfer from Wikipedia and on what basis? It seems to me that certain people nominated to certain positions are choosing their own preferred articles or preferred topics and leaving quality out of consideration completely. Hint: J.A. 2) when the articles are transferred over, what happens to the edit history? Cancelled as if nothing happened? I think I would prefer to bide my time and see what happens with this thing in a few months. I now strongly suspect this will turn out to be another failed experiment along the lines of Nupedia. there are some ideas that sound good in principle, but I think it needs to it be put to the test of empirical verification for a good while. Anyway, I'm tired of Encylopedias tout court. My problem was never really with Wikipedia as such (though there are many things to complain about regarding the philosophy section). I'm just looking for something else. --Francesco Franco 07:53, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you are right. There seems to be a lot of hot air about policies, how people are going to work together. Not much evidence of anything being done. I started listing out all the bad parts of the Truth article, then realised there would be nothing left. Your bit on the deflationary theory wasn't bad. Dbuckner 11:09, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Need a break?

Here's the newest craze in online encyclopediae. I have a feeling you might find it both instructive and illuminating and enlightening and otherstuff.

Esp.: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy Lucidish { Ben S. Nelson } 23:47, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dualism (philosophy of mind) article

Francesco, you wrote "I don't see what extravagant interpretations published in medicine journals have to do with ANY of this, but since it's wackipedia" in commenting on the Dualism (philosophy of mind) article. The article on the use of the Cartesian Mind-Body Split in medicine is a very important subject and directly is relevant to this underlying premise article. Drs. Bracken and Thomas carried the full weight of the most highly respected medical journal, the British Medical Journal, in that their essay was on the editorial page. (the BBC also had a programme on their work in 'post-psychiatry') Philosophy has practice and real world implications to it, besides the transcendental. Oh, it's Wikipedia, not "Wackipedia". The journal Nature had an article which showed its comparative reasonableness. Regards. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 15:52, 11 November 2006 (UTC) (talk)

No, I meant Wackipedia. And what the hell is an "underlying premise article"?

It has nothing to do with hell, Francesco. The underlying premise of Dr. Bracken's article was on the Mind-Body split problem which is the title and content of the Wikipedia article under discussion: Dualism (philosophy of mind). But you very likely knew that. So ... Ciao. Adios. Good night. Take care. Etc, etc, etc. Bye. Best Wishes. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc 17:34, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Bracken is a fool!! There is only the fucking brain, the liver, the kidneys, and other slices of meat. What's the fucking big deal about this anyway? Even Shapespeare got it right over 500 years ago without the need fo scintific data: "You worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all others to fat oureselves and we fat ourselves to fat MAGGOTS. That is all. Tell Barkcen to him to kiss my ass, while there is still time. You need to realize that the fundamnetal problem with the notion of god is that the BEAST has returned. I mean this is truly an extraordinary, unspeakable amount of unneceaasry suffering that the bastard has put me through. that is, if some such entity exists. There is absolutely NOTHING, not even an eternal paradise of perfection, that he/she/it could possibly do to make up for this level of horror, frustration and unmitigated pain. Not even if I were to become God, could this amount of torture ever be compensated. This is the phenomenological problem of evil, folks. You cannot possibly study the problem logically or empirically in some kind of external third-person manner. You would have to expeiecne precisely what I experience (yes, the irreducible subjective qualitiative aspect or whatever the fuck you want to call it) at this moment. If you did, for more than about 5 or 6 minutes, I promise you that you WILL come to KNOW that god is impossible because radically imcompatible with the possibility, nay the conceivability, nay the imaginability, of such natural suffering ibflicted in a decent human being whi has merited, if naything, quite the opposite. But not only this!! You would also realize that, sicne there is not god, there is no one to blame (my first target was naturally "the medical profession" but then I realized that there is no such abtsratc and imperisonl, omniscient creature as "the medical profession"...it's just a bunch of extremely fallible and imprefect human beings who do the best they can). I have forgiven the medical establishment, you see. Howvere, certain individual members may be permitted to kiss my ass for putting me though a good deal of extra grief and torture along the way. As Thomas Mann has put it somewhere or other (you see, ladies and gentlemen, I've read so damned many books that I don't rememeber who wrote what where at this point--- and what has all this effort at self-education and the disintereted pursutit of knowledge for the sake of kmowleegde, beauty for tthe sake of beaty, etc, ec, etc.. actually accomplished? well, not too much, I must say, that is, really, just nothing, sicne all is nothing and all efforts are vain and even, ahimè, scisse Leopardi, acnche questa mia sofferenza e quetes mie lamentele e queste stesse parole.... this is just nonsense. Absurd if you had read Beckett or Ionesco, or even Kafka and Camus, you might womnder why ou had wastd your time reading about the aburdity and futility of the universe, when you could expreicne for yourslf first-hand. But this must stop. but you people, you humans, must stop arguing and even killing each other over abslute NONSENSE: YOU FUCKING FOOLISH FAILED SPECIES of phylogenetically developmentally retarded monkeys!! The key is not what group one belongs to, what one believes or disbeleives, what one knows (or thinks one knows) or doesn't know, it is what you DO, how you act, how you deal with and treat others. How do you treat others? I can't gp there right now.

Is there anything that we (WikiPhilosophy project) can do to help you during this period? I ask because I have had a great deal of medical maladies in my life, and compassion always struck me as futile if it was not a precursor to aid. { Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish 16:53, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
No, there's not much one can actually DO for another person living on another continent over the Internet, even if they wanted to (with the excpetion of robotic surgery and such things that are being developed these days; incredible phenomena, but not of use to my situation). But I appreciate your concern, notwithstanding its practical inutility. Compassion is probably better than prayer and is certainly better than sacrificing a goat or engaging in some other reprehensible ritual. The sort of outburst expressed above may not exactly be helpful either, but I need to express it somewhere since this is not possible in my current social environment (pray to Padre Pio!! sort of thing. Give me a break!! Get off my back, you damned dead-man chiarlatan, statue-worshipping freaks!! It often seems to help a bit in these situations to know that one is, at least, being heard, if never quite understood.


The Devil appeared [to Pio] as young girls that danced naked

No, I really don't think there was any devil involved. Again, I strongly suspect it was that damned Baphomet of the Freemasons!! But the girls, from all the evidence, were quite real and old Pio was considered even by the Chruch to have beem a sick MF and a dangerous phony. That is, until the cult grew so strong that the Chruch was forced to recognice the budgetary potentials.

Does this mean I should rescind my gift order to you for a Padre Pio Doll? ;) { Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish 03:18, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Oh, that's nothing. Pio paraphernalia, media outlets (Pio channel, Pio radio, etc.), Pio restaurants, at el, are one of the most profitable scams that the Catholic Chruch has hit upon since the days of indulgences and the selling of Medieval relics of the bones and ligaments of various sanctified cadavers of historical personages. Down here where I currently reside (about 20 minutes from where Pio was born!!) 99% of the bars, restaurants, schools, homes, political party offices, unions (even the Communists!!) have Pio paraphernalia hanging on their walls or otherwise prominently displayed. Pio's town of birth, which is located in one of the the most profoundly poor and depressed areas of Italy and used to be a nothing but sheep and cow-manure, is now a thriving tourist megalopolis with thousands of stores dedicated exclusively to Padre Pio. If this is not some terrifying sort of cultic brainwashing and rabid materialist exploitation of the ignorance and fear of the masses, I don't know what the f*** it is.

One of my cousins (a fairly wealthy and successful lawyer, albeit idiot) and his wife told me last week that their 4-year-old daughter had chosen (all by herself, of course (0.) to buy a DVD cartoon on the story of Padre Pio and his battle againt the devil. She had practically memorized the damn thing and they kept goading her on to get the FACTS of the story right. This is not brainwashing. I'm not sure that it should be classed as child abuse, but it IS fundamnetally evil stuff to take advantage and poision a child's mind at the age of four. Religion is clearly intended to control what the child will grow up to believe and it starts from the highest levels of religious authority all the way to the bottom layers of parishes and local familial institutions in all societies. This is a serious social/psyhcological problem, but the social sciences are terrified to address it. Richard Dawkins has, at least, nailed this problem right on the head. Ok, ok, blah, blah, blah. But the cult of Pio is unbeleivable over here (you'd have to experience it for yourself) and is a good illustration of irrational lunacy and its exploitation. I can't discuss this with ANYONE over here.

Among those theorists who would say things exactly of that nature, you will also find Bertrand Russell. I'm presently finishing off the wiki on Russell's Power: A New Social Analysis. Right at the end, he says almost exactly the same things you have been saying: "Wherever there is autocracy, a set of beliefs is instilled into the minds of the young before they are capable of thinking, and these beliefs are taught so constantly and so persistently that it is hoped the pupils will never afterwards be able to escape from the hypnotic effect of their early lessons. The beliefs are instilled, not by giving any reason for supporting them true, but by parrot-like repetition". He had quite a wit at times, too: "Schoolboys are apt to ill-treat a boy whose opinions are in any way odd, and many grown men have not got beyond the mental age of schoolboys"; "All this, to any person with natural affection for the young, is horrible; just as we teach children to avoid being destroyed by motor cars if they can, so we should teach them to avoid being destroyed by cruel fanatics". He makes the religious connection, for obvious reasons, so would probably give Dawkins a pat on the back if he were alive today. But in 'Power' Russell's emphasis lies more with the idea that collective hysteria is the root danger, whether it be religious or not.
That being said, I wouldn't say that the social sciences are terrified to address the subject. My experience in sociology has been the complete opposite: many social scientists (esp. in sociology, economics, and political science) are essentially ethicists and ideologues who want to prove the empirical compliments to their ethical views; and the problems of socialization are certainly a core concern to sociology. Sometimes I wonder if they think about anything else! { Ben S. Nelson } Lucidish 03:25, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Italy's contributions

I may try to work up a more detailed list, and if so I'll mention it to you, but originally this was a debate on the "art" page on whether or not the bulk of the world's art came from Italy, (eesh, no joke). I joked my opinion that one of Italy's fundemental contributions to modern life was the Illy family. Francesco Illy invented the spring piston lever espresso machine in 1935 modernizing espresso and making crema possible, his son Ernesto has been the world's leading researcher in the biochemistry of coffee since getting his Ph. D. after WWII, and has actually contributed to our understanding of how the biochemistry of flavor in general. We may have build the space shuttle but you guys built the espresso machine, time will tell which is grander ... Maybe it's naively optimistic of me but I suspect there is an Ernesto Illy or Guglielmo Marconi for every Mussolini or Padre Pio Bmorton3 15:24, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Of course, I agree, when I am thinking about the topic rationally. But when I'm already in a bad mood to begin with, not feeling well, a little bit homesick and then I see some suggestion of irrational anti-Americanism, my instinct was to hurl back insults against Italy and Italians, even though it is my own "race", for whatever that concept is worth. As far as Itay's contributions to modern life, there is of course Fermi with the neutrino and his other contributions in nuclear physics (controversial category), the telephone (forgetten the name but it wasn't Bell), Marconi and the radio, and many others I would have to try to recall or look up somewhere. The writers: Pirandello, Malaparte, Morante, Moravia, Svevo, Calvino, are too many to name. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 17:06, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Hello Franco. I like Italy. Some great contributions to throughout history, e.g. the Romans (Cicero was an Italian). The Catholic church (like it or not). Volare (oh oh oh oh). Cool sunglasses and motor scooters. Those 1950's film stars and all that. Peano. Grand opera. Peter Sraffa (the one who influenced Wittgenstein just by stroking his chin, Napoli-wise). Pointy trees. Pareto efficiency. When I'm grown up I'm going to live in Italy. Dbuckner 09:07, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

On another subject, I slapped on a clean-up tag to the Philosophy article. It really is going from bad to worse. Dbuckner 09:07, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


Don't forget de Finetti and many others who don't come to mind right now. BTW, over here ALL classic (Greek, Latin) texts are published in parallell editions with translation. It was just taken for granted, until the recent US-modeled Berlusconi reforms, that you either knew that stuff from elementary school or you were some sort of barbarian. I was educated in the US, so didn't learn either. But no one I know in modern Italy, not even my cousin Dimitri (named after Karamazov) the reactionary pseudo-theologian, actually learned Latin or Greek well enough to remember more than a few phrases. So I am no less barbarian than most modern Italians. Moreover, I find Latin to be extremly close to Italian, so I may take the time to study it at some point. Don't see the pijnt right now. But, in any case, if you need Latin texts.....of course I would have to translate the Italian version into English, so it would be double translation. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 11:00, 26 January 2007 (UTC)