Talk:Rebecca Goldstein

This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard.

If you are a subject of this article, or acting on behalf of one, and you need help, please see this help page.

Biography: Arts and Entertainment / Science and Academia

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
	This article is supported by the arts and entertainment work group (assessed as Low-importance).
	This article is supported by the science and academia work group (assessed as Low-importance).

Philosophy: Philosophers / Contemporary Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Philosophy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of content related to philosophy on Wikipedia. If you would like to support the project, please visit the project page, where you can get more details on how you can help, and where you can join the general discussion about philosophy content on Wikipedia.PhilosophyWikipedia:WikiProject PhilosophyTemplate:WikiProject PhilosophyPhilosophy articles

Low

This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Associated task forces:
/
	Philosophers
	Contemporary philosophy

Women writers Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Women writers, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of women writers on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Women writersWikipedia:WikiProject Women writersTemplate:WikiProject Women writersWomen writers articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Women's Classical Committee

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Women's Classical Committee, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Women's Classical Committee articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Women's Classical CommitteeWikipedia:WikiProject Women's Classical CommitteeTemplate:WikiProject Women's Classical CommitteeWomen's Classical Committee articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

This article needs rewriting.[edit]

"Recently Goldstein has turned to biography with her books Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel (2005) and Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity (2006). The books reflect her continuing interests in the relationship between the life of the mind and the demands of everyday existence, and in Jewish perspectives and history." This is at best misleading. 'Incompleteness' does not especially reflect Goldstein's interest in 'Jewish perspectives and history', since Gödel was not Jewish. The whole article needs a rewrite, cribbed as it is from the bio on Goldstein's website. It reads more like a blurb than an encyclopedia article ('another heady and erotic tale...'). Lexo 09:43, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree with the need for a major rewrite, though I did tone down the blurbiness in the description of the second novel. It's hardly misleading to say that the Spinoza book reflects Goldstein's interest in Jewish history. And the Gödel book treats the subject to some extent in the discussion of his Austrian background and his relationship with Einstein - though Gödel himself was not Jewish. Casey Abell 12:06, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

36 Arguments for the Existence of God is missing[edit]

Can someone add information about her newest novel?

timhoustontx (talk) 14:46, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Apart from appearing in this video with William Lane Craig (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV4oIqnaxlg) I don't see how she is authoritative in arguments for or against God. And in that video, she is completely caught off guard with a quote by her husband Steven Pinker, and appears to be a complete air head when it comes to basic philosophy. e.g. she appears to be a dinosaur raising century old arguments like the Euthyphro dilemma that modern philosophy has definitively answered 2001:8003:6A23:2C00:C8DB:6414:FBC8:DF68 (talk) 14:30, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Request[edit]

{{Request edit}} If you find this link useful may you please add it to the article’s external links: *Interview with Rebecca Goldstein on Reason and its Limitations in FiveBooks Thank you, Anon111 (talk) 16:16, 30 March 2010 (UTC)Anon111[reply]

Not done: as per Talk:Chibli_Mallat. --JokerXtreme (talk) 09:03, 2 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Other Works[edit]

Could her books maybe be moved to a list, and perhaps add other works she has done such as online articles and interviews? Heather Chait (talk) 19:51, 25 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia standards are declining: there is no list of published works while a list of awards is given in full. The proliferation of awards makes them irrelevant, except for the author's vanity and the publisher's business.91.92.179.172 (talk) 20:45, 12 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Personal Life[edit]

I changed the wording about her divorce from Goldstein and marriage to Pinker as it strongly implied that she left the former for the latter ("she divorced her first husband and married Steven Pinker" - or something like that), which seems possibly defamatory and thus not in line with Wikipedia policy. I sought dates for when she married Goldstein, separated from him, and married Pinker but did not seek so carefully as to look at Lexus-Nexus database, and instead used the sources referenced (what she told an interviewer about when she and Goldstein separated, and a dated flickr photo for the wedding with Pinker); both seem accurate. In any case, they don't imply a causal chain. Brozhnik (talk) 02:15, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment[edit]

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Rebecca Goldstein/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

By what standards does she qualify as a philosopher?

Last edited at 02:47, 17 March 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 04:00, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

I would agree with this. I do not know how you could call this person in any way, shape or form a legitimate "philosopher". She may be married to a brilliant mind who is a psychology professor at Harvard, but she is completely incompetent in the field of philosophy - unless if you want to put it under the category of "recreational" philosophy 2001:8003:6A23:2C00:C8DB:6414:FBC8:DF68 (talk) 14:32, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

She is a professor of philosophy. That seems to pass the bar. Or do I misunderstand something? Ashmoo (talk) 14:52, 16 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]