Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy/Ethics/archive

flaws - analysis of arguments - place in the wiki

As the project page says, Moral Philosophy is difficult and important, ergo it's an important subject area for wikipedia to cover well and accurately.

Various of the famous philosophers make errors in their arguments. (For example the elliptical argument about stealing categorical imperative.)

In most cases, people will be reading an article for one of two reasons, to learn about it and consider it for themselves, or to write an essay on it. In either case, I think they would consider it useful to have errors in the arguments pointed out in that article itself.

Taking Kant as an example, I think an article on his categorical imperative is more than an exposition of Kant's theses and arguments, but an exposition of the thesis itself - rather than just an explanation of what Kant said about it - which cannot be complete without illuminating it's true form, cracks and all.

Because philosophers throughout history regularly criticise each other, it's not feasible to be at all comprehensive over whose counter-arguments to use. Therefore I propose that counter-arguments such as the one showing Kant's argument about theft to be elliptical, be written into the article in the editor's own words.

I suggest the best way is to have a section entitled "Flaws", set as footnotes to the place in the argument where the flaw occurs. Oliver Low 02:56 2 April 2007

ethics category

I see that there is already an ethics category, which might be a good place to start searching and/or adding to relevant articles. (I'm not sure how to link to this in a discussion--it wants to go at the bottom) WhiteC 19:54, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

You can link to categories using [[:Category:Ethics]] and it will show up like this: Category:Ethics. --malathion ^talk 18:19, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Ah, many thanks. I just removed the bit at the bottom of the talk here (for reference it was [[Category:Ethics]] ). WhiteC 04:53, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Categorical imperative

I just totally rewrote this article. I'm looking for some peer review fact and NPOV checking. --malathion ^talk 11:50, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Looks good in general (I'm not a Kant expert), but why did you remove all the criticisms of the theory? WhiteC 22:35, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Two reasons (I knew this might look suspicious):

1. The objections in that article were, in my opinion, very bad. It's not just that I don't agree with them. But they completely miss the boat, for the most part, with the possible exception of the enquiring murderer.
2. The categorical imperative is more of an idea than a theory. Since the use of the categorical imperative is practically synonomous with Deontology nowadays, I thought it would be better to let Categorical imperative be a reference article to explain the principle, and have the criticisms of the broader theory of deontology go in that article. --malathion ^talk 22:44, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

OK, I guess that would make sense. Could (some of) those criticisms be moved to Deontology then? I'm not sure how the two should be split myself--I don't know that much about any other deontological ideas, and these criticisms seemed to me to have more in them that those on the deontology page. WhiteC 23:14, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, revamping Deontology is my next big project. After that, it's Utilitarianism :-) I ordered a couple books I plan to use as references, and once they arrive, I'll get to it. --malathion ^talk 01:26, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Links with [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy]

I'm taking the liberty of adding the {{Philosophy}} banner to each of the sub-projects - hope this is OK with you. No Wiki imperialism is intended, this is not a take-over bid, nor an invasion; just a way to link the projects together. Banno 21:00, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 18:13, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Userbox

Where is the Userbox for this project located? -PatPeter 02:21, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I really hope someone corrects this but I made this userbox at {{User WP Ethics}} -PatPeter 03:49, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

please hold on

Hi everyone listed on this project, I wonder why this has been created, we at WP:PHILO need members to a wider focus on articles, but making ANOTHER project for just Moral (then there might gonna be a proj-per topic) makes this more difficult to us. I strongly encourage you to return, please --Andersmusician VOTE 01:39, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

This is a descendant project, and not the only one, of WikiProject Philosophy. It is helpful to know we have people focused on certain areas so that we know where we are and are not covered. And besides, it's not like we can't do double duty! Postmodern Beatnik 17:09, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I would like to go on record as seconding Andersmusician's point. I don't want to belong to a bunch of different user groups just because I have a background in logic, ethics, metaphysics and other areas of philosophy. I am a philosopher. Why can't philosophers work together in a group and the article names and categories be used by those who want to work on specific kinds of articles? Do we really need three boxes relating to philosophy project groups on one article - as is happening now? I have no desire whatsoever to get into an extended argument about it. But, I did want to express my view.

On another matter - could the moral philosophy box PLEASE be made the same colour as the others rather than that revolting 'look at me' yellow? Anarchia 09:10, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it works to divide at all. I think some people come to wikipedia via the phil project, some through the descendant projects. It doesn't really matter. People are going to edit whatever they edit (does anyone here ONLY work on ethics articles!?) The point is to give them the tools they need. People in the descendant projects are for all intents and purposes also a part of wikiproject philosophy. Sign up for one or all, it doesn't really matter. Gregbard 09:19, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

The colors aren't set in stone. (I'm sure the aesthetics people are grateful) I set it to "gold" because I was thinking golden rule. I just wanted to make all the branches of philosophy a different color. Gregbard 09:39, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
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• A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 21:06, 4 July 2008 (UTC)