User talk:Peter J King

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My apologies for extending this welcome to you so late - perhaps too late. Banno 21:17, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Philosopher-King
Greetings,and welcome to Wikipedia. I truly hope you are philosopher King, because we need a Philosopher-King to tell us what philosophy is.
 * So Welcome.

Posting your published work would be most helpful - because that receives the greatest weight.
 * It would be most helpful if you confine yourself first to the specifi issue at hand.
 * We have all (but 1 or 2) agreed to drop rational from the opening.
 * Now you come in and say, again, philosophy is rational.
 * So you have now reintroduced the issue - no doubt your status as King will have its influence.
 * The authority I have cited was merely Lord Quinton. Do you know him personally?
 * What your take on Postmodernism and Marxism?
 * Best regards, --Ludvikus 00:35, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Welcome Peter
Welcome indeed. I hope you stay. I see you have already had a visit from my friend! I hope you won't remove the reference to rational enquiry or whatever. Dbuckner 09:43, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

PS Ludvikus has many interesting and inventive arguments to prove that the method of philosophy is not rational enquiry. I summarised them here. His main argument is that some philosophers are not rational, ergo the philosophical method is not rational. I'm still uncertain about the deductive leap there, but he is certainly a very persuasive person.

Some tips if you are new. If you want to see where a user is coming from, go to their user page and click on User Contributions. The great thing about Wikipedia is the audit trail. Many arguments, as you know, involve people shifting their ground somewhat. 'I never said that!'. The audit trail allows you to identify exactly what they said, when. I did that above. You click on 'last' or 'diff' and you get a time-stamped version of what the user said.

However, beware of 'sockpuppetry'. This is where the same individual has two different accounts. Frowned on in Wikipedia, because it can give the appearance of many people being in a discussion, all apparently supporting the same view. I don't think, however, there such a problem, yet, on the talk page. Regards Dbuckner 10:00, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for the welcomes. I shall be editing very intermittently, I'm afraid, as a heavy term has just started, but I shall try to respond to questions or comments whenever I can. --Peter J King 16:30, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I have extremely strong doubts about your identity, Philosopher King. You are using an Appleal to Authority as if we were still living in the middle ages. If you are whom you say you are, namely, Peter J. King, why don't you just give us page numbers from your famous book - you had allegedly written about 100 gret philosopers. I will go to Barnes and Noble and buy you book today. I can assure that anything you have written in your book will receive the greatest weight by me.
 * I've asked you many times to cite from your book. But you refuse to do so. Why. Is it because you are not in fact him? Besides, like Mel, you make reference to your being busy with your classes. I believe you have convinced Dbuckner of your status - and have in fact become on of the two Philosopher Kings he believes in. The other is Mel Etetis. You both are engaging in an Appeal to Authority. And that certainly is a fallacy here, to the extent that neither of you are whom you claim to be. You both have a Wiki right to conceal your identity. However, if you wish to have a more than equal voice than any of us, the way to do so is to cite from your published works.
 * You clearly demonstrate by you behavior, on this Page, that Philosophy cannot be unconditionally categorized as a Rational inquiry - as your conduct here is Unreasonable. Unfortunately, Dbuckner interprets that as meaning that Philosophy is Irrational - I conclude from that that he has no understanding of Cartes1an doubt, or Skepticism, or Three-valued logic in which the their value may be considered as Unknown. One reason I have for the dropping of Rationality is they way the "Dialectic" over "Philosophy" is taking place here, on these two pages.
 * I did not introduce the notion of a Cabal here - but look at the compaign launched here tomarginalize one participant in the debate. Do you really consider it the kind of Rational behavior of philosophers to engage in? Well, I'm more generous than you are: I do call you a Philosopher. But I refuse to call you Rational. But you cannot accuse me of having called you irrational.
 * Do you undewrstand me, Philosopher King? --Ludvikus 16:05, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually two editors
There are in fact two editors, L1 and L2, who seem to operate by writing large amounts of rather disconnected stream-of-consciousness stuff in broken English, and whose edits to the article are generally peculiar. The only difference is the level of politeness. One is completely un-housetrained, the other generally polite unless goaded. Both are hyper-editing the article itself, without any kind of consensus or meaningful discussion, in a point-by-point way.

I don't see much hope. There is a specific policy about disruptive editors, i.e. who are preventing other editors from doing anything. I did raise an RfC the other day, but didn't follow through. What's to be done? Dbuckner 17:20, 19 January 2007 (UTC)


 * PS Found the shortest definition yet: "Philosophy is thinking clearly and logically about deep questions". There are thousands of these on phil. dep. websites.  Amazing that these definitions were cobbled together by all these different people, yet they broadly agree.  Why can't Wikipedia do that?   Es kann sich ueberhaupt keiner einen Philosophen nennen, der nicht philosophieren kann.  Philosophieren laesst sich aber nur durch Uebung und selbsteigenen Gebrauh der Vernunft lernen. Dbuckner 17:35, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

deleted the lot
As per this. It really has gone too far. The guy is out of control. Dbuckner 19:33, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I feel badly about this, especially in view of the horrible state of the Philosophy article, but I don't hink that I can continue to be involved. Ludvikus seems to be genuinely mentally ill, but there are also other people editing at the article and arguing at the discussion page whose ignorance of the subject is matched only by their enthusiasm (even fanaticism). Most of the stuff about the Analytic/Cointinental distinction isn't only factually inaccurate but plain loopy. With all the teaching and other work I have on my hands, I just cannot devote the time to this that it needs (if any amount of time would be enough). I wish Dbuckner and the other sensible voices luck, but I am afraid that I think that you are fighting a losing battle. The Wikipedia article is good for only one thing: a perfect example of what non-philosophers think that philosophy is. --Peter J King 11:35, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I appreciate your views, Peter. You happened to come in at a particularly bad time, during one of the periodic squabbles that are an unfortunate part of the Wikipedia. I assure you that these are the exception rather than the rule, and that most editing is far more sane and directed that the recent babbling at Philosophy.


 * You are quite correct that competent philosophers are a rare thing on the Wiki. To that end, I hope that you might reconsider your involvement.


 * High-profile articles such as Philosophy do attract poor editors. One solution is to work instead on lower-profile articles, such as biographies, arguments or terminology. Another is to work for the most part on articles that are of personal interest, and unrelated to Philosophy, but to put in two cents worth every now and again.


 * I am an administrator on the Wikipedia, and I place myself at your disposal. If you have any questions or problems, please contact me either by posting to my talk page or by email. Banno 21:17, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I might point out that this talk page and the associated user page are yours to do with as you see fit, and you may like to delete some of the comments. Banno 21:29, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your messages. I'm sorry that I haven't responded before - this has been a horrible beginning of term, and is going to get worse.  I think that I shall leave all the comments; they show better than I can express some of what the problem is. --Peter J King 11:26, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments on the philosophy talk page
Very useful - thanks. I'd be interested in your view of what I said on Talk:Analytic philosophy. Dbuckner 08:41, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Tendentious editing on Being and Time
See my message on the talk page of that article. Dbuckner 19:11, 2 February 2007 (UTC)