User talk:Mordacil

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Indeterminacy and Everything Else
Hello again!

Unfortunately, I didn't notice until just now that you'd replied to my post; I apologise for the delay.

As for where Derrida might fit, I'd tentatively suggest putting him in the Discourse Analysis section-- I think it'd be fair to say that deconstruction is a particular method or type of discourse analysis. Let me know if you disagree, though; again, I'm only passingly familiar with Derrida's work.

I haven't even checked yet whether the P in Philosophy should actually be capitalised in the title or not; as I say, some other user (and, in my opinion, not a very bright one) changed the original name of the article to begin with; perhaps it's supposed to use lowercase except in the first word of the article's title. If you've already checked this, let me know; otherwise, I'll look into it and we'll go with whichever title is most likely to please the almighty Wikipedia Administrators. I, too, thought it odd that there were pages on deconstruction, definition, discourse analysis, the "thing in itself", et cetera, as well as articles on the term "indeterminacy" as it is used in other fields than philosophy, but that there wasn't one on indeterminacy in philosophy.

As for your being seventeen years old and interested in philosophy-- well done! I'm only eighteen myself. It's hard to come by anyone else our age (or, really, anyone else at all) who's even remotely familiar with any philosophy beyond some distorted version of Platonism-- this is certainly the case here in Tallahassee and, judging by the amount of logical thinking that seems to go into, for example, any new governmental policy of virtually any Western nation, it's probably very like this elsewhere as well. I only have one close friend who's even really interested in philosophy. It seems that it is becoming increasingly difficult to convince people of the fallacy of the authoritative argument in philosophy (and, of course, this is a particular problem in Wikipedia's philosophy articles, where we're told to cite "experts"-- whatever the hell they are-- and to post "no original research", even though any truly-non-original research would be plagiarism.) Age shouldn't matter in any philosophical discussion-- age is the number of times the Earth has revolved around the Sun since you emerged from your mother's womb: what bearing can this ever have on the strength of a logical argument? (I apologise for ranting about this, but I'd bet that you've encountered "philosophical age-discrimination" before, or you wouldn't have mentioned your age. I once had a very unintelligent "philosophy teacher"-- this was during what was both the first and the last time I ever took a class in school on philosophy-- who, when he couldn't answer my arguments, literally told me to "come back in a few years" with those arguments, as though I'd simply begin to agree with him as I aged!)

You might be ahead of me in your studies-- at seventeen I was beginning to explore the indeterminacy of linguistic systems on my own, but I was only just becoming familiar with other philosophers who had already explored these concepts (other than Nietzsche, whose work I have studied since I was about fourteen-- but important elements of which, such as his "being vs. becoming", his excellent criticism of Kant, his critique of the value of truth, et cetera, I stupidly didn't connect with my own more current philosophical explorations until fairly recently.) We can work together in our studies of philosophy, if you're interested.

Let me pose a question out of curiosity: Who are some of your favourite philosophers? Many of mine are among those cited in my article-- Nietzsche and Foucault have probably had a greater influence on my own thought than have any other philosophers, except perhaps for Socrates; I find myself using Socrates' method of questioning during philosophical discussions in order to systematically dismantle unsound arguments without even giving any thought to this process, and I never really give its inventor any credit for it. I think he ought to be called the first sceptic-- Descartes, for example, wasn't nearly as sceptical of his own ideas as I imagine Socrates would have been of them; he simply called himself a sceptic and that was the end of it.

I've also recently begun to take an interest in the work of Daniel Dennett (Consciousness Explained)-- I used to categorise that book as utter hogwash without even glancing at it, since I used to believe that the "hard problem of consciousness" was actually a problem and that qualia were real phenomena that necessarily defeated any attempt at the explanation of consciousness: once I realised that qualia were utterly indeterminate, inobservable, et cetera, I became very interested in the very small fraction of modern philosophy that does not take their "existence" for granted, and there are surprisingly few eminent philosophers who agree with my position. But I've only just begun reading Dennett, so I still don't know for sure whether consciousness is, in fact, fully explained in his book. What's your position on the origin of consciousness? (Or would you even say you've got a definite position on this issue? I'm still in the process of formulating mine.)

Well, I suppose I'd better stop hijacking your discussion page for now. Go ahead and post a reply on mine any time you like. Again, it's good to know that someone else on Wikipedia is familiar with the indeterminacy of definition.

Regards,

Tastyummy 12:07, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Hello Mordacil,

Something weird is going on: you're contributing to an article, "Indeterminacy (philosophy)", which already exists and could use your help. But your edits are creating a new article:

I finally figured out why. You're editing Indeterminacy (philosophy) and I'm editing Indeterminacy (Philosophy). The P in Philosophy is supposed to be capitalised, according to the guy who changed my original title, "Indeterminacy in philosophy".

Please have a look at the article I've already written; I've extensively covered everyone's use of the term except Derrida's, and outlined its influences on, and use in, modern philosophy as well, but someone's tagged my easily-verifiable statement that "It is related to deconstructionism" as needing a source. It would be great if you could put what you've already got into a section on "Derrida and indeterminacy in deconstruction", or possibly add it within the section on "indeterminacy in discourse analysis", or something like that (so that it fits in with the current layout of the article); then I can remove the "uncited" tag from that statement. I haven't read much Derrida, so I've talked mainly about Foucault, Dennett, Nietzsche vs. the Kantian noumenon, and so on, as you'll see, but the information in your (currently) separate article would be greatly useful in the one that's already there.

I'm glad someone else has actually heard of this concept. I had a long dispute with someone who hadn't over whether use of the term "indeterminacy in philosophy" constituted "original research" and had to revert bad edits for days on end.

Thanks for your time; I can be contacted at tastyummy@hotmail.com for any reason or you can, of course, leave a message on my talk page. I hope you like what I've written so far in the larger article; it could, as I say, use your help for information on Derrida's use of the term.

Regards,

Tastyummy 21:51, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Another note: perhaps we should make a section called "history of the term", or something; that way Derrida could be credited as the first major philosopher to use it.

Also, I'm not sure whether the article would correctly be titled "Indeterminacy (philosophy)" or "Indeterminacy (Philosophy)"; as I say, I just took another user at his word on this. If the "P" in "Philosophy" shouldn't be capitalised, we'll eventually merge the articles under the non-capitalised title; however, please do your edits on the article I've already written for now, since it's currently more extensive; we can rename it later.

Thanks,

Tastyummy 18:26, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Vandal tags
Thank you for reverting vandalism on Wikipedia! Be sure to put warning tags on the vandal's user talk page (such as,  ,  ,  ). Add each of these tags on the vandal's talk page, in sequential order, after each instance of vandalism. Adding warnings to the talk page assists administrators in determining whether or not the user should be blocked. If the user continues to vandalize pages after you add the  tag, request administrator assistance at Request for Intervention. Again, thank you for helping to make Wikipedia better. Also, you might like to read WP:REVERT to learn how (and when!) you can use the wiki software to undo vandalism instead of erasing it manually. --Elipongo (Talk 16:25, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

TeX
Hi. Just a small note. A function in TeX should be $$f(z)$$ rather than $$f_z.$$ Cheers, Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:23, 18 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Just one more thing, TeX inline should ideally be small, so $$ \tfrac{f}{g} $$ is better written as $$ f/g $$ (I fixed that). And an edit summary is good too. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:18, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * And $$ln x$$ should be written as $$\ln x$$ (sorry for bugging you, I just hope this is helpful :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:19, 18 May 2007 (UTC)