From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Sat Jul 1 14:57:07 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Sat, 1 Jul 2006 14:57:07 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] How we all can get to work Message-ID: <006d01c69d59$4be13b60$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> Dear all, After some attempts to attract some specialists on the texts we've chosen to serve as editors of the pilot project, I have to admit I've only had a few expressions of interest from some (actually excellent) Hobbes experts. But we do have 21 people on textop-en-phil, and something like 8-10 of them have specifically expressed interest in helping out with the pilot project. That's a quorum, albeit "leaderless." I am strongly inclined, therefore, to suggest that we all just get to work! In particular, I suggest (and would like any of your comments on this) that (1) we proceed *without* any editors, but simply with the general rule that, if a specialist is on the scene, we defer to him or her on issues of his or her specialization; and (2) you feel free to choose any works of English language philosophy *clearly* in the public domain (so, not Russell--sorry) you personally feel moved to collate, so long as you are committed to finishing the collation of that work. Want to do Wollstonecraft? Have at it. Hume? I might help out. Something more obscure like Reid? Great! As long as you're not just doing one or two paragraphs, but commit to doing the whole thing systematically, you have my blessing. Discussion? Objections? Please don't think this "has been decided." I want your input. If there's no discussion, though, I'll be posting a "let's get started" announcement within the next week. The next thing I personally will do for you all is (finally) to write up a general instruction page on how to collate texts, generally speaking--based on my own experience. After I've got it drafted I hope you will feel free to edit it based more or less on common sense and consensus. (So anyone, including Mrs. Ifcher who despite not being a philosopher has loads of common sense, could do that.) At this point, with this few people, consensus (and common sense...) is possible. Later on, however, we'll have to have a more formalized decisionmaking process. What's great is that *we*, you and I, can now set out the general features of the process. What we decide about how to proceed will probably govern this project. I don't know about you, but I find that exciting. Another thing I've been working on, by the way, is a list of the benefits of the Collation Project. It's a *huge* list and very inspirational. I'll post it soon, I hope.--I'm also at work on a FAQ. You might see me at work on the wiki this weekend. --Larry From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Tue Jul 11 15:31:56 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 15:31:56 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Skypecast Friday; also, Guardian article Message-ID: <003f01c6a539$d10f0820$7e02020a@D6WD1391> All, We didn't have a Skypecast last week--many people were away on vacation. So let's have a Skypecast this week, same time, via this URL (note the URL changes with each new Skypecast, and I should update the link on textop.org whenever a new Skypecast is planned): https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/skypecast/detailed.html?id_talk= 17837 The topic du jour will be: how to get started with the pilot project. Want to start collating philosophy books? Join me and learn how. I will answer questions and do a walk-through. This will be helpful but not required for participants. By then, I will have finished a "how to collate a text" tutorial, which I've started here: http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=How_to_collate_a_text Also, I understand that tomorrow an article in the (U.K.) Guardian about my career will appear, and (I hope) prominently mention Textop. It'll be our first press coverage. We might get some more interest and opportunities out of it, but I can tell you from experience that the *only* thing that gets a collaborative project like this off the ground is, simply, a critical mass of motivated contributors--and then, hard work. --Larry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.dufoundation.org/archive/textop-en-phil/attachments/20060711/5a9dd7f6/attachment.htm From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Thu Jul 13 13:17:07 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 13:17:07 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Reminder: Skypecast tomorrow Message-ID: <001401c6a6b9$508a2870$7e02020a@D6WD1391> All, Again, please join me tomorrow at 9 AM PDT/Noon EDT/4 PM GMT for our second big Skypecast. Connect via this page: https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/skypecast/detailed.html?id_talk= 17837 The topic du jour will be: how to get started with the pilot project. Want to start collating philosophy books? Just want to get a better idea of the procedure I propose to follow? Join me and learn how. I will answer questions and do a walk-through. This will be helpful but not required for participants. I will also consider this a personal kick-off of the pilot project: i.e., beginning with this Skypecast, I will devote some time hopefully every day to work on the pilot project. I will also start bugging you to help. Hope to talk to you there. ---------------- Dr. Larry Sanger Director of Collaborative Projects, Digital Universe Foundation 100 Enterprise Way, Suite G370, Scotts Valley, CA 95066 larry.sanger at dufoundation.com http://www.digitaluniverse.net/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.dufoundation.org/archive/textop-en-phil/attachments/20060713/db5956a0/attachment.htm From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Sat Jul 15 13:42:43 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 13:42:43 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] At work on "how to collate a text" Message-ID: <000d01c6a84f$38a68e00$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> All, The last month has been pretty trying--baby's fussiest time is around six weeks and we're over that hump, so I'm getting back into the saddle. I'm nearing completion on a tutorial, "How to collate a text," which I think you might find interesting. Do feel free to edit or offer comments: http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=How_to_collate_a_text I am also *very* interested in getting my hands on some video screen capture software and making a downloadable video about how to collate a text and why Textop will be so valuable--basically, a broadcast version of the Skypecast we had yesterday (but better). Does anyone have any pointers for me on doing that--particularly what software I should use? Once these things are ready, I'm going to ask us to get to work and I myself will commit to working at least an hour a day on collating activities. This could happen next week, and it might be the week after, but it *will* be soon, so don't lose interest on me now. And by the way, non-philosophers *will* have some things to do if they are interested; see the last section of the above wiki page. TIA --Larry ---------------- Dr. Larry Sanger Director of Collaborative Projects, Digital Universe Foundation 100 Enterprise Way, Suite G370, Scotts Valley, CA 95066 larry.sanger at dufoundation.org http://www.dufoundation.org/ From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Mon Jul 17 21:10:28 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 21:10:28 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Let's get started! Message-ID: <000001c6aa20$1c8e48c0$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> Dear all, I'm excited--we're ready to get to work on the pilot project! In this connection, I've got several things to announce and ask. I've (1) finished the pilot project instructions; (2) made two instructional videos; and (3) pledged to work on the wiki for an hour a day five days a week. Last but not least, I am (4) CALLING FOR VOLUNTEERS, do see below. ===== (1) Over the weekend I completed a useable draft of "How to collate a text": http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=How_to_collate_a_text I invite you, philosophers, to follow the instructions there. If you're motivated, then pick an English language public domain philosophy text, upload it, and get to work. If you need more training, as I am sure many if not all of you might, please see (3) below and I *will* help you! Also, *discussion* of any part of those instructions is very apropos for this list. Let's have your thoughts. ===== (2) I also (by request) created and uploaded two videos, available here: http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=Tutorial_videos One is about how to get started, sign in, find a text, mark it up, and edit the outline (43 **MB**); the other is about how to find, prepare, and upload a text to the wiki (58 **MB**). I'll do more such videos if you find them helpful. They're easy for me to make (now that I've figured out how). ===== (3) I pledge to work on the pilot project wiki for at least an hour a day at least five days a week for the next few months. You might notice (http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges) that I have been working every day of the last four days on the wiki. This is one way in which I personally am going to try to get things started. ===== (4) Finally, I would like to call for volunteers. If you like, I will give you specific assignments, or you can choose your assignment and I will take specific notice. Are you interested? If so, I want to give you some one-on-one training over the phone. Don't think this is an imposition or anything on me--it's my job. We'll chat on the phone and I'll walk you through the system and answer any questions you have. I think it's important that I train a few people in this way, because this will help achieve some "critical mass" on the wiki. By the way: I've done this before. I can already tell you it's fun, or at least interesting and educational. I think it will be even more fun when we're doing it together. Let's get this party started! --Larry ---------------- Dr. Larry Sanger Director of Collaborative Projects, Digital Universe Foundation 100 Enterprise Way, Suite G370, Scotts Valley, CA 95066 larry.sanger at dufoundation.org http://www.dufoundation.org/ From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Wed Jul 19 00:16:23 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 00:16:23 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Volunteers desired Message-ID: <002101c6ab03$3dcc2b40$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> All, You might not have noticed item #4 in yesterday's mail: I'm looking for volunteers. Two people have responded encouragingly, but I was hoping for more interest. So let me reiterate. If you really are interested in joining in, now's the time: I want to get us actually doing some work on the wiki. I myself am doing work every day on the wiki. So please write me and (if I don't already know about you) tell me about yourself, and we'll arrange a time to talk, determine some goals, and get you started. I hope it's obvious that this *does not* mean that you're going to be *committed* to doing anything. I just want you to get *started*, that's all; if you stick with it, grand. If not, that's too bad, but I'll be grateful for what whatever you contribute. If you do hours of work every day, I'll be stunned. If you do 15 minutes of work a day, I'll be very pleased. But we do have to get a pilot project started or I fear we'll never get this extremely worthy enterprise off the ground. One person--not a philosopher, actually--simply asked what she could do, and I had 4-5 personal tailor-made suggestions for her. I plan to follow-up (although the ball's in her court now!) with discussion, explanation, etc., as necessary. I've gotten groups of people together to interact and work online before, you know, many times since 1994 or so. I know that the first push to get things moving is the hardest. I know that, while some people just really are too busy to do anything just now (I totally understsand), many others just need an extra push. Once people start working together and interacting, it's really all downhill from there; then people support each other, and create interest in and add value to each others' work, and it gets fun. What's particularly exciting about *this* project, to my mind at least, is that this project really has a revolutionary potential. I think more and more of us will see that and come to agree with that assessment as we do more actual work on the outline; the work itself really will open your eyes, I think, about the potential of this project. --Larry BTW one thing you might volunteer to do is, rather than actually adding new content, review and improve what content is already there. Just to take one instance, if you look at http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=Insanity_%28or_%22madness%22%29 , you'll see several issues. Probably, that one chunk needs to be divided into two or three, and given summaries. Also, you might want to discuss the issues involved in naming of nodes here...that would be very welcome. Such work and discussion would help us expand and settle on better project policies. From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Thu Jul 20 22:46:18 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 22:46:18 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Report on first work, and next steps Message-ID: <000301c6ac88$fd05bfe0$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> All, As far as I'm concerned, the pilot project has kicked off! It's a pretty unspectacular kickoff, to be honest, but I'll give you a report anyway. As promised, I've been working on the wiki for something like an hour a day, five days a week, for nearly the last week. In addition to finishing instructional material, I've been working quite a bit on the outline. I've been formatting chunks from my previous work and putting them into the outline. I've also been working with Philippe a bit on his drive to clarify the relations between nodes. It has been well over six months since I looked at the outline in any detail, and I've come to a number of conclusions: (1) Once I've filled up the outline with what chunks are available, I want to go back over the whole thing with a fine-toothed comb and render the whole thing much more conceptually coherent. (2) As a result of revising the outline, I'll propose a number of rules. A lot of the present incoherence of the outline stems from the simple fact that I never made any clear decisions about matters that would have to be articulated and codified. Well, it's clear to me now that if we're going to work on such a thing together, it *will* have to be articulated and codified. (3) If I just forge on ahead and no one is working with me, I'll probably be working on it myself forever. So I have a new scheme to get you to work with me. I will post *parts* of the outline (or some problematic chunks) here on this list, and I will for each part (or the chunks) raise a number of questions about it/them. I hope I'll be able to inspire you to at least discuss these matters with me even if you don't feel emboldened to contribute on the wiki yourself. In fact, though, I think that such discussion will serve as a nice entr?e into wiki work--that's my scheme. Those three of you who have volunteered (more are very welcome!), none of the above changes anything I said--the ball is in your court--please get back to me at your convenience! ---------------- Dr. Larry Sanger Director of Collaborative Projects, Digital Universe Foundation 100 Enterprise Way, Suite G370, Scotts Valley, CA 95066 larry.sanger at dufoundation.org http://www.dufoundation.org/ Office: 831-227-2602 Cell: 831-359-0582 Home: 831-335-3521 From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Sat Jul 22 20:12:27 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 20:12:27 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Metaphysics section Message-ID: <000201c6ae05$d3b4f880$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> All, I've decided to just kick off the discussion of some outline issues, rather than waiting until I've finished putting the text into The Outline, the content of which is growing nearly every day, here: http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Outline You might notice, by the way, that I made the top two levels of the outline wiki page section headings. I *hope* this makes it a little easier to follow. At least it provides a nice little table of contents, as you'll see. I thought I would kick things off by raising a few issues about the first section of the outline, which I have titled "Metaphysics." Here's what it looks like right now. Metaphysics Nature Fiction Motion Time Causality Divinity 1. to file elsewhere: Religion 2. to file elsewhere: origin: Explanation of religion 3. to file elsewhere: objection: Argument against religion per se 4. Theism -- the doctrine or belief in the existence of a God or gods 1. object: Concept of God 1. naturalness: Naturalness of the concept of God 2. conceivability: God's conceivability 3. result: Man's relationship with God 4. personification: God personified 2. origin: Origin of the belief in God 3. argument: Arguments for the existence of God 1. Best argument for the existence of God 2. Ontological argument for the existence of God 3. Cosmological argument for the existence of God 5. issue: Issues in philosophy of religion 1. Freedom and predestination (or foreknowledge) Life Here are some issues of which I'd appreciate any discussion: 1. I shouldn't be using names of disciplines, like "metaphysics," as node headings, should I? It has always made me uncomfortable. The reason I chose discipline names is in order to dodge difficult questions that could be raised about the relationship between the top-level headings and the subheadings. For instance, while each of the concepts under the heading "metaphysics" have been studied-as-part-of metaphysics, if I were to substitute "Being" or "Being in General" or "Being qua Being" or "Stuff in General" (which have been proposed as the object, in general of metaphysics), then I would have to answer questions like "Wait, do 'fiction' and 'divinity' really belong under 'being'?" So you could help me think about this. 2. Bear in mind that the outline is meant eventually to serve *all* disciplines, not just philosophy. Where do you see physical principles, like theorems from Newton's *Principia*, fitting in this outline? Is another top-level node necessary, or what? 3. Any ideas on more interesting internal structure, given the list of metaphysical subtopics? To wit: nature, fiction, motion, time, causality, divinity, and life. Feel free to propose a few chunkless nodes just to make a little sense of it all. I just haven't even tried to do this! 4. The material re religion I put there only because...nevermind, it's a long story. Question: where should the stuff about religion, its explanation and the argument against it, be moved? Look at the chunks before answering this please. --Larry ---------------- Dr. Larry Sanger Director of Collaborative Projects, Digital Universe Foundation 100 Enterprise Way, Suite G370, Scotts Valley, CA 95066 larry.sanger at dufoundation.org http://www.dufoundation.org/ From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Mon Jul 24 23:46:40 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 23:46:40 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Metaphysics section Message-ID: <000801c6afb6$15a855a0$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> Hi all, OK, I'm sure the following is going to be pathetic, since it seems like I'm talking to myself, but I'm going to go ahead and answer my own questions! First, a report--huge news day for the DU: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/personal_tech nology/15109345.htm http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060731fa_fact (HILARY PUTNAM was interviewed for this!) http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-haisch24jul24,0,4744260 .story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-opensource23jul23,1,774105,full.story And here are my blog replies: http://www.dufoundation.org/blog/ I'm also happy to report that I'll be working with at least two of you in the coming days! As to the rest of you, please see if the following makes any sense. ======== > 1. I shouldn't be using names of disciplines, like > "metaphysics," as node headings, should I? It has always > made me uncomfortable. The reason I chose discipline names > is in order to dodge difficult questions that could be raised > about the relationship between the top-level headings and the > subheadings. For instance, while each of the concepts under > the heading "metaphysics" have been studied-as-part-of > metaphysics, if I were to substitute "Being" or "Being in > General" or "Being qua Being" or "Stuff in General" (which > have been proposed as the object, in general of metaphysics), > then I would have to answer questions like "Wait, do > 'fiction' and 'divinity' really belong under 'being'?" So > you could help me think about this. The deep question here really is whether names of disciplines should ever be used for an outline of knowledge. The reason this makes me uncomfortable, I think, is that "metaphysics" is properly speaking the name of a *study* or *intellectual endeavor*, which is not the most general topic. It's *what metaphysics studies* that is the most general topic. So--I've persuaded myself--for the nonce, "metaphysics" (and other names of subdisciplines) will have to go. Another advantage of jettisoning these headings is that it does not bias the discussion in the direction of any one discipline. Logicians and mathematicians might be more likely to contribute to certain parts of what I want to put under the new heading if the supercategory isn't labelled "metaphysics" (if it's "things in general" instead, for instance). Similarly, if "right and wrong" are used rather than "ethics," anthropologists will be more comfortable getting into the act. Before asking whether "being" is a good name for the top-level node, I should discuss at least a little what the parent-child relationship *means*, or what relationships are supposed to order the hierarchy. I can't get into this too deeply. I've already talked about this quite a bit with Philippe and others, and I've put some programmatic thoughts down in a section of "how to collate a text" called "Part of the outline is ordered according to semantic reducibility" (see http://tinyurl.com/mpf6h). I hardly need to tell philosophers that it's very contentious to say that all concepts can be placed in a hierarchy in which they are semantically reducible to, say, concepts learned directly by experience. That such a thing is not possible is supposed to have been one of the negative results of the Vienna Circle. But to hell with that, I say. Let's pretend *as if* concepts were thus reducible. Let's pretend we are na?ve naturalistic reductionists. The idea, then, is that philosophical topics--and all other topics too, except for ones about spatio-temporal particulars like Greece--are arranged by the concepts they mainly concern, and the ordering of any two concepts X and Y is determined by whether X can be defined without Y (or any term(s) that iteratively depend on Y), or vice-versa. It is possible to talk about being in general without talking about any particular type of being; it is possible to talk about life in general without talking about human life; it is possible to talk about the mind in general without talking about specific mental functions; it is possible to talk about some aspects of individual human beings without talking about human beings in society; and so on. I am hoping that this all sounds at least somewhat familiar to you. Personally I have thought quite a bit about the hierarchy of concepts that I am proposing. Just bear in mind that it *isn't* my view that semantic reducibility is *sufficient* to structure the outline: other relations have to be used as well. The problem, however, as I think Aristotle found, is that it is impossible to say anything even about the most basic concepts (which he called "categories") without talking about other basic concepts at least. You can't talk about properties without talking about objects; you can't talk about objects without talking about properties (or predication anyway); you can't talk about possibility without talking about consistency and law; you can't talk about law without talking about necessity; and so forth. I don't know to what extent these various "you can't talk about X without talking about Y" claims are true, but without arguing about the details, I'll hope you know what I mean and agree. So I am inclined to think that, if we're going to behave like naturalistic reductionists, then we're going to start with a whole set of categories. You might say that we can start with Being, but frankly I think it's possible to talk about mere possibilia that do not enjoy existence (nor do I claim that enjoy any sort of special reified "being": I just think we can and often do talk about stuff that doesn't exist). So the most encompassing category would be things. And I don't mean physical objects. I mean things in general. Items. Stuff--which may or may not exist. But it gets very messy right after that, because if existence *is* a property, as I idiosyncratically believe, then we might be busy defining it in terms of "bumpability" (as OSU's George Schumm colorfully put it), i.e., having a spatio-temporal location. But then we have to say what sort of things *can* have a spatio-temporal location in order to distinguish existent things from mere possibilia, and it gets very complicated, as I said, particularly if you're partial to bundle theories of objects. This is why my "Metaphysics" category has no structure yet. Does anyone have a way to help? Anyway, I have persuaded myself to make one change: in place of "metaphysics" you will now see "things in general." Comments very welcome... > 2. Bear in mind that the outline is meant eventually to serve > *all* disciplines, not just philosophy. Where do you see > physical principles, like theorems from Newton's *Principia*, > fitting in this outline? Is another top-level node > necessary, or what? > > 3. Any ideas on more interesting internal structure, given > the list of metaphysical subtopics? To wit: nature, fiction, > motion, time, causality, divinity, and life. Feel free to > propose a few chunkless nodes just to make a little sense of > it all. I just haven't even tried to do this! > > 4. The material re religion I put there only > because...nevermind, it's a long story. Question: where > should the stuff about religion, its explanation and the > argument against it, be moved? Look at the chunks before > answering this please. I'll have to answer these later. The above is enough for one evening! --Larry From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Tue Jul 25 23:46:06 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 23:46:06 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Top level outline headings Message-ID: <000001c6b07f$2be32740$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> All, On this page http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=Outlining_rules I've proposed a rule that generalizes something I said yesterday on this list: "Outline headings should not be names of disciplines or of studies, except in the relatively rare case where the discussion is explicitly about the discipline itself, rather than about what it studies." It seems I can proceed to try to make the outline fit this rule, but if I want to do so, I'm going to have to rewrite the top-level headings. Right now the list is: Things in general Human being [and here I need to start editing...] Philosophy of Language Epistemology Methodology Ethics Political Philosophy Philosophy of Education Now, let's suppose I rename the last six nodes according to the main subjects of those disciplines, so that the whole list looks like this: Things in general Human being Language Knowledge Inquiry Right and Wrong (?) Governance Education This change would require, or make possible, some other changes: (1) What are now some subtopics become the top-level topics: since there is a "knowledge" subtopic under "epistemology," the former simply takes over the place of the latter in the outline. (2) Certain of Philippe's labels for relationships between nodes become incorrect. The labels would have to be either changed or deleted, I think, or risk becoming "metadata cruft." (3) I've said that all of the top-level headings after the first (so, "human being" on down) should be locatable in the outline for one of the higher-level headings. To illustrate, you may see now that, now that I have re-labeled the "human nature" node to "human being," I could put make "human being" a subnode of "life," which I have done here: http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Outline#Life If you click on the "human being" subnode, it drops you down to the "human being" top-level heading. In a similar way, then, "right and wrong" (or whatever should replace "ethics") has to find its place within the "human being" part of the outline. The whole thing could, in this way, be collapsed/transcluded so as to be all underneath one top-level heading, "Things in general." I hope that makes sense...so anyway, that's another tentative rule I'll add to the rules page. Now to answer some of my other questions from a few days ago: > 2. Bear in mind that the outline is meant eventually to serve > *all* disciplines, not just philosophy. Where do you see > physical principles, like theorems from Newton's *Principia*, > fitting in this outline? Is another top-level node > necessary, or what? I think the short answer is: yes, more top-level nodes will be necessary. I'm just not sure what they will be, precisely; maybe "motion" and "energy" (for physics). "Life" obviously will be a top node. In the end, when many different disciplines are represented in the outline, probably there will be several dozen top nodes. But again, my proposal is that each of them (except the first) elaborates a part of the outline that occurs underneath some other top node found higher up in the list of top nodes. > 3. Any ideas on more interesting internal structure, given > the list of metaphysical subtopics? To wit: nature, fiction, > motion, time, causality, divinity, and life. Feel free to > propose a few chunkless nodes just to make a little sense of > it all. I just haven't even tried to do this! I now think I made the right decision to leave aside any attempt at making any more internal structure to metaphysics. It will be easier to think about, and easier to "test theories" of how metaphysical concepts should be structured in the outline, when we have more metaphysical texts to work with. The Leviathan was pretty light on metaphysics. > 4. The material re religion I put there only > because...nevermind, it's a long story. Question: where > should the stuff about religion, its explanation and the > argument against it, be moved? Look at the chunks before > answering this please. I am distinguishing between God and things divine, on the one hand, and religion as a phenomenon, on the other. Hobbes, for example, spoke about both. *Qua* social group phenomenon in general, it clearly belongs to the study of society. *Qua* the details of the specific tenets/theologies of individual religions, I suppose religion belongs wherever we put the topics of metaphysics, ethics, and history. *Qua* history of religion, under history again. *Qua* academic subject in its own right ("religious studies") the topic of religion belongs under "inquiry" (or whatever I substitute for "methodology"). --Larry (happily babbling away to myself) From phmartin at phmartin.info Wed Jul 26 01:47:04 2006 From: phmartin at phmartin.info (Philippe MARTIN) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 18:47:04 +1000 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Top level outline headings In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 25 Jul 2006 23:46:06 MST" Message-ID: <200607260847.k6Q8l42c005841@pc070372.sci.griffith.edu.au> > (2) Certain of Philippe's labels for relationships between nodes become > incorrect. The labels would have to be either changed or deleted, I think, > or risk becoming "metadata cruft." Clearly. If you keep using relations in the outline, their meanings need to be respected, even the meaning of the default relation (the specialization relation): "Human being" cannot be a specialization of "Things in general" (since "a 'human being' is not a 'things in general'") but it can be a specialization of "Thing" (since "a 'human being' is a 'thing'). The following may or may not make sense: "a 'right and wrong' is a 'thing'". Apart from that, generally speaking, the changes are in the right direction. Philippe From cfrees at imapmail.org Wed Jul 26 15:16:14 2006 From: cfrees at imapmail.org (Dr. Clea F. Rees) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 15:16:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Top level outline headings In-Reply-To: <000001c6b07f$2be32740$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> References: <000001c6b07f$2be32740$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 > Things in general > Human being > [and here I need to start editing...] > Philosophy of Language > Epistemology > Methodology > Ethics > Political Philosophy > Philosophy of Education > > Now, let's suppose I rename the last six nodes according to the main > subjects of those disciplines, so that the whole list looks like this: > > Things in general > Human being > Language > Knowledge > Inquiry > Right and Wrong (?) > Governance > Education What is the intended audience for this? Would it make sense to include both these labels and the discipline labels? (e.g. Language (Philosophy of)). If Language will contain more than this, maybe the discipline name should be included in a sub-heading. I personally would find it annoyingly difficult to navigate given the proposed outline. Of course, I'm a philosophy. I realise the discipline names are not obvious to everyone, though, which is why I think a combination might work well. I don't think "Ethics" can become "Right and Wrong" unless this is meant to deal with only a part of ethics and the rest is going to go somewhere else. You might try "Value" which should capture both ethics and aesthetics. "Right and Wrong" leaves out virtue ethics, much of feminist ethics and, possibly, meta-ethics. Where will feminist philosophy fit? I don't think that the various subjects discussed in this discipline can be properly subsumed under the other headings. Where does mind fit? Is "Human Being" intended to cover this? What about continental philosophy? I know the distinction is controversial and don't intend to take endorse either position. Nonetheless, the work involved (including discussions of the controversy) cannot really be ignored. Where will discussions of game theory etc. fit in? I thought of this because I couldn't see Pascal's wager fitting into the religion outline. This seems right because that is meant to be under metaphysics, I think. I'm not sure where it fits in the renamed version. Clearly there is not a 1-1 mapping here and I take it this is intentional. (6 becomes 7 for a start.) Is logic/phil of maths intended to fall under "Enquiry"? > I am distinguishing between God and things divine, on the one hand, and > religion as a phenomenon, on the other. Hobbes, for example, spoke about > both. *Qua* social group phenomenon in general, it clearly belongs to the > study of society. *Qua* the details of the specific tenets/theologies of > individual religions, I suppose religion belongs wherever we put the topics > of metaphysics, ethics, and history. *Qua* history of religion, under > history again. *Qua* academic subject in its own right ("religious > studies") the topic of religion belongs under "inquiry" (or whatever I > substitute for "methodology"). Why? Why not under "Knowledge"? I'm not much less certain about the distinction between knowledge and enquiry, on the one hand, than i am about that between epistemology and methodology, on the other. Babbling back, Clea - -- Dr. Clea F. Rees Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Philosophy Cowell College University of California Santa Cruz CA 95064 U.S.A. Tel: +1-831-459-5045 +1-831-459-2609 (msg) Fax: +1-831-459-4880 NB: From UK, dial 00 before the appropriate number to access the international system. cfrees at imapmail.org http://people.ucsc.edu/~cfrees/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.4 (Darwin) Comment: Dr. Clea F. Rees iD8DBQFEx+myz89yvazbspYRAj0/AKCH4VMxkyB7kzNLPE6rk4okHy9eBwCguLVa tJYJolLHb/13I3zq/8IBsMU= =b179 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Wed Jul 26 15:48:55 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 15:48:55 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Correction: you're not committed to finishing Message-ID: <004301c6b105$acba9660$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> Hi all, I just wanted to make a correction of a common misperception that at some point I myself must have planted. So, to be clear: I *don't* expect you to finish work on a text just because you start work on it. I'm very sorry if I ever said or implied otherwise. Frankly such a policy would be unnecessary in a project that is explicitly devoted to collaboration. Other people can pick up your slack. That is the beauty of distributed, collaborative, asynchronous work! Hope that makes a few of you feel a little more motivated to help. --Larry From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Wed Jul 26 16:09:56 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:09:56 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Another idea Message-ID: <006101c6b108$9c661bb0$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> All, Sorry for the intrusion but an offlist mail impels another clarification. Please distinguish: (1) Chunking (2) Outlining We can *easily* set up a process whereby you can chunk a work (divide it into chunks and summarize the chunks) without placing the chunks into the outline. IN OTHER WORDS, if you are interested in summarizing philosophical texts without working on the outline, then please let me know, and we can think through and write up the simple procedures needed to do this. (Basically, I think all we need to do is mark *whether* a chunk has been put into the outline or not.) Also, if I don't get interrupted, I'm going to make another video right now on how to chunk a text. --Larry From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Wed Jul 26 16:23:54 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:23:54 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Top level outline headings In-Reply-To: <200607260847.k6Q8l42c005841@pc070372.sci.griffith.edu.au> Message-ID: <006401c6b10a$8fe7a4b0$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> I wrote: > > (2) Certain of Philippe's labels for relationships between nodes > > become incorrect. The labels would have to be either changed or > > deleted, I think, or risk becoming "metadata cruft." Philippe MARTIN wrote: > Clearly. If you keep using relations in the outline, their meanings > need to be respected, even the meaning of the default > relation (the specialization relation): "Human being" cannot > be a specialization of > "Things in general" (since "a 'human being' is not a 'things > in general'") but it can be a specialization of "Thing" > (since "a 'human being' is a 'thing'). The following may or > may not make sense: "a 'right and wrong' is a 'thing'". This really does point up a problem with specifying relations clearly at this point: it makes it harder to edit the outline, because you have to edit the relationship metadata too. Is there any clear advantage, that would justify that inconvenience, to wanting to keep relationship metadata up-to-date from this early stage in the project? I'm afraid I'm not seeing one: I don't see why we shouldn't just add in the relationships, and processes for keeping relationship data accurate, once the outline is better developed? What would be much more useful at this point is not the analysis of a rough, rough draft of an outline, which is what my work is, but instead a discussion of some *practical, usable* principles involved in actually structuring *this sort* of information into an outline. I would greatly appreciate such a discussion from you, Philippe, if you feel up to it! As to whether "Human being" is a specialization of "Things in general": well, aren't you being a little pedantic here? It's just a matter of formulation. I can use the name of a set ("things in general"), the name of an abstraction ("thinghood"), or a singular formulation ("thing"). The reason "things in general" sounds more natural than "thing" (or "the functions of language" instead of "function of language") is that the former is what you say when asked what you're talking about. It's purely a matter of style and readability. Will it make it the slightest bit more difficult to identify the proper relationship between nodes if we do not fastidiously insist on the singular form? > Apart from that, generally speaking, the changes are in the > right direction. Great! --Larry From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Wed Jul 26 17:13:56 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 17:13:56 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Top level outline headings In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <006e01c6b111$8d165810$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> Clea Rees wrote (in response to me): > > Now, let's suppose I rename the last six nodes according to > the main > > subjects of those disciplines, so that the whole list looks > like this: > > > > Things in general > > Human being > > Language > > Knowledge > > Inquiry > > Right and Wrong (?) > > Governance > > Education > > What is the intended audience for this? Well, researchers and students, ultimately, I guess. > Would it make sense > to include both these labels and the discipline labels? (e.g. > Language (Philosophy of)). Makes perfect sense, but I'm not sure that it's the best solution any longer, as I said last time. My main reason for saying so is that we want the outline we're developing ultimately to be an interdisciplinary one, not just about philosophy. As anyone who has studied philosophy of language knows, there are many areas where its topics shade off into semantics (a branch of linguistics) and into cognitive psychology. Furthermore, I can see *philosophical* discussions of "communication" (which is how I've relabeled the node in question) taking a place right alongside more empirical/scientific questions. It's philosophers, for instance, who will examine what 'sign' means; but it's linguists who examine patterns of sign processing (?). I can see part of the outline devoted to the definition, and a "nearby" part devoted to empirical generalizations about signs. If the top-level label is "Language (philosophy of)," the result is that we end up sorting chunks based on academic departments...which is not only unnecessary, I think such a move would prove ultimately, after many texts had been collated, to be conceptually incoherent. > If Language will contain more than > this, maybe the discipline name should be included in a > sub-heading. I personally would find it annoyingly difficult > to navigate given the proposed outline. Of course, I'm a > philosophy. I realise the discipline names are not obvious to > everyone, though, which is why I think a combination might work well. I see...so the discipline names call clearer ideas to mind. I can't disagree with that. But consider, as I worked through *Leviathan*, one thing I discovered was that, without having done any reading in an area, I wouldn't have the slightest clue what some headings meant. (Example: "Neutrality, or Hobbesian 'contempt'": might need a better heading.) Furthermore, in some areas I felt I really wasn't the right person to produce headings, such as all the stuff about the passions; sometimes, I think it's going to take a specialist to choose just the right heading for a node. The point, then, is that you *can't* expect to look over the outline and have instant recognition. As a result, for many months now I've been thinking that students will eventually actually *study* some mature version of the outline, because they will find such study to unravel the structure of various topics, and because it will make their research easier. The people who work on the outline will eventually be "experts" on the outline because they'll know right away "where" something can be found (or placed). I don't think there is any way to avoid this sort of initial confusion. I invite you to look over http://www.thegreatideas.org/hap.html and http://www.hti.umich.edu/d/did/tree.html and consider that, on the one hand, neither the structure and nor the content is apt to be obvious to any student on first glance; while, on the other hand, particularly if you have studied enough of the right subjects, some careful perusal of these outlines will make their intent clear enough. Now if a philosopher, after more than cursory examination of my outline, does not know what I'm going on about at all, then clearly that's my fault. But I don't think that's a reflection on the viability of the enterprise. We just have to accept that interpreting outlines is not as obvious as one might think at first. > I don't think "Ethics" can become "Right and Wrong" unless > this is meant to deal with only a part of ethics and the rest > is going to go somewhere else. You might try "Value" which > should capture both ethics and aesthetics. "Right and Wrong" > leaves out virtue ethics, much of feminist ethics and, > possibly, meta-ethics. Yes, I was just throwing something out. After *a little* more thought I went with "human conduct" for the time being but we can change that, too, particularly considering that "goodness or value" applies to many more things than human conduct... I suppose the real question is whether we are really justified in putting all of what philosophers now put under the heading "Ethics" really is a unified subject. Perhaps it really deserves to be divided up. After all, metaethical topics that go deeply into value theory often have no more to do with "right and wrong" than they have to do with beauty and aesthetic value... We'll have to think more about this. > Where will feminist philosophy fit? I don't think that the > various subjects discussed in this discipline can be properly > subsumed under the other headings. Feminist philosophy is obviously an interdisciplinary area, and so feminist approaches are going to be spread throughout the outline. > Where does mind fit? Is "Human Being" intended to cover this? Yes--I haven't made a "mind" subcategory but I probably will. Here we have a bit of a problem in that we don't want to prejudice the question whether nonhumans have minds, but most discussions of "the mind" are about the human mind, after all. > What about continental philosophy? I know the distinction is > controversial and don't intend to take endorse either > position. Nonetheless, the work involved (including discussions of the > controversy) cannot really be ignored. Well, as you can see, I'm not very interested in dividing things up according to academic specializations, traditions, movements, and ideological affiliations. The loveliness I see in the idea of the Collation Project is that it has the potential to put *all* the texts that concern, say, the notion of knowledge (or purported knowledge) as power in one place. This will help put people from different fields, different approaches, and different languages, who are really talking about the same thing (e.g., knowledge as power) in better touch with each other. I don't know much about continental philosophy. I think it would be fascinating to see how the approaches Habermas and Gadamer (OK, once we get the right to put their works into the outline) take to questions of method and language etc. look alongside texts on very similar questions from philosophers, linguists, scientists, etc. > Where will discussions of game theory etc. fit in? I thought > of this because I couldn't see Pascal's wager fitting into > the religion outline. This seems right because that is meant > to be under metaphysics, I think. I'm not sure where it fits > in the renamed version. Clearly there is not a 1-1 mapping > here and I take it this is intentional. (6 becomes 7 for a start.) Well, remember that we are filing *chunks* into the outline, not whole topics. That's one reason that I am optimistic about the viability of this project. That relatively fine-grained focus allows us to distinguish parts of Pascal's text into (...quickly picking Pascal off the shelf...) the epistemology of religion, truth, epistemology more generally (the limits of reason), human action ("...but you must wager. There is no choice, you are already committed."), and probably more. This one short text (on the Wager) is actually quite rich. And then the various *topics* discussed in this text are "naturally" (so to speak) placed in different parts of the outline. You can talk about God, period, without talking about religious epistemology; but you need to talk about epistemology before you talk about *religious* epistemology. The point is that even this one brief text is scattered around different parts of the outline. I think that once you actually give this whirl yourselves, much will become clearer. > Is logic/phil of maths intended to fall under "Enquiry"? That I don't know. Yes, for now, but in the long run I'm not sure where to put it. > > I am distinguishing between God and things divine, on the one hand, > > and religion as a phenomenon, on the other. Hobbes, for example, > > spoke about both. *Qua* social group phenomenon in general, it > > clearly belongs to the study of society. *Qua* the details of the > > specific tenets/theologies of individual religions, I > suppose religion > > belongs wherever we put the topics of metaphysics, ethics, and > > history. *Qua* history of religion, under history again. *Qua* > > academic subject in its own right ("religious > > studies") the topic of religion belongs under "inquiry" (or > whatever I > > substitute for "methodology"). > > Why? Why not under "Knowledge"? I'm not much less certain > about the distinction between knowledge and enquiry, on the > one hand, than i am about that between epistemology and > methodology, on the other. I see. Perhaps there's something wrong with those labels, then. Obviously, in the same way that there is such a thing as religious epistemology, you can put "religious knowledge" or "spiritual knowledge" or some such thing somewhere under "knowledge." But when you're talking about *chunks that talk about the study of religion*, a.k.a. religious studies, those belong, I think, under a part of the outline that talks about studies, or inquiries, or disciplines, or what have you. Thanks Clea, keep up the "babbling" ;-), I think we're getting started on some really important, basic issues here. --Larry From cfrees at imapmail.org Wed Jul 26 18:48:06 2006 From: cfrees at imapmail.org (Dr. Clea F. Rees) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 18:48:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Top level outline headings In-Reply-To: <006e01c6b111$8d165810$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> References: <006e01c6b111$8d165810$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 >> Would it make sense >> to include both these labels and the discipline labels? (e.g. >> Language (Philosophy of)). > > Makes perfect sense, but I'm not sure that it's the best solution any > longer, as I said last time. My main reason for saying so is that we want > the outline we're developing ultimately to be an interdisciplinary one, not > just about philosophy. As anyone who has studied philosophy of language > knows, there are many areas where its topics shade off into semantics (a > branch of linguistics) and into cognitive psychology. Furthermore, I can > see *philosophical* discussions of "communication" (which is how I've > relabeled the node in question) taking a place right alongside more > empirical/scientific questions. It's philosophers, for instance, who will > examine what 'sign' means; but it's linguists who examine patterns of sign > processing (?). I can see part of the outline devoted to the definition, > and a "nearby" part devoted to empirical generalizations about signs. If > the top-level label is "Language (philosophy of)," the result is that we end > up sorting chunks based on academic departments...which is not only > unnecessary, I think such a move would prove ultimately, after many texts > had been collated, to be conceptually incoherent. > I just think there ought to be some way in via the labels - however crude and misleading these may be. It may actually be more important for non-philosophers than philosophers, for example. Suppose somebody has come across the term 'metaphysics' and wants to know what that is about. Whereas a specialist might be able to find the relevant sections by studying the outline (and what is beneath the outline), somebody whose question is of this kind will not be able to do that. Maybe disciplinary maps could be included with brief explanations of terms and relevant links. (Not all the links, obviously, but good "starting places".) I think it is important to think about "ways in" for both specialists and non-specialists. If the outline really requires extensive study in order to find anything, few people will take the trouble - at least on the web. They will quickly move on to the next link Google threw up for them (or whatever non-Google engine they use). This is partly why I asked about the intended audience. How accessible is it supposed to be? It could be accessible, I think, even if one needed to study the outline a great deal to get the most out of it. I suspect it may also matter in terms of recruiting specialists. I'm not quite sure how this is meant to go with these nodes since it seems unlikely that it will be possible to get people who are really specialists for a particular node (or even sub-sub-sub-node). I'm not sure about this - it is more of a question than anything. I'm trying to fit what you're saying here together with your picture of how the editing may end up working. > As a result, for many months now I've been thinking that students will > eventually actually *study* some mature version of the outline, because they > will find such study to unravel the structure of various topics, and because > it will make their research easier. The people who work on the outline will > eventually be "experts" on the outline because they'll know right away > "where" something can be found (or placed). I don't think there is any way > to avoid this sort of initial confusion. I think there has to be or (most) people just won't use it. But I do think it might be provided via multiple "ways in". I'm thinking of some sort of set of guides to the outline aimed at particular audiences. Searching is good, but a decent guide would let people feel more comfortable with the whole system, I think. > Now if a philosopher, after more than cursory examination of my outline, > does not know what I'm going on about at all, then clearly that's my fault. > But I don't think that's a reflection on the viability of the enterprise. > We just have to accept that interpreting outlines is not as obvious as one > might think at first. At what level should this be true? Just looking at the top level nodes? How many layers of nodes should enable a philosopher to make sense of it? This is a real question and not rhetorical. I'm having trouble understanding the standards by which the outline should be judged. (As with the intended audience question.) >> I don't think "Ethics" can become "Right and Wrong" unless >> this is meant to deal with only a part of ethics and the rest >> is going to go somewhere else. You might try "Value" which >> should capture both ethics and aesthetics. "Right and Wrong" >> leaves out virtue ethics, much of feminist ethics and, >> possibly, meta-ethics. > > Yes, I was just throwing something out. After *a little* more thought I > went with "human conduct" for the time being but we can change that, too, > particularly considering that "goodness or value" applies to many more > things than human conduct... "Human conduct" sounds merely descriptive. In any case, it certainly rules out virtue ethics and much of feminist ethics. > I suppose the real question is whether we are really justified in putting > all of what philosophers now put under the heading "Ethics" really is a > unified subject. Perhaps it really deserves to be divided up. After all, > metaethical topics that go deeply into value theory often have no more to do > with "right and wrong" than they have to do with beauty and aesthetic > value... We'll have to think more about this. This may well be the case, but I do not think the heading should prejudge the action theory vs. virtue theory question. I think these belong under the same top level node, even if other things (meta-ethics etc.) should be split off. I actually dislike "human conduct" more than "right and wrong" here. At least the latter captures much of Kant's normative theory, for example. The former would mean putting the "top-level" of Kant's view elsewhere since it is supposed to apply to all rational beings. I don't think this is a problem only in the case of Kant, but Kant springs to mind as an especially pertinent example. "Human conduct" sound much more to me like anthropology/psychology/social science/history/etc. I think any replacement (or partial replacement) for "ethics" needs to capture the normative aspect of the discipline. I'm also wondering if it doesn't make sense to have a very general heading such as "value" and then several very significant sub-nodes. Right now, "several dozen" top level nodes does not sound anywhere near enough to cover multiple disciplines. >> Where will feminist philosophy fit? I don't think that the >> various subjects discussed in this discipline can be properly >> subsumed under the other headings. > > Feminist philosophy is obviously an interdisciplinary area, and so feminist > approaches are going to be spread throughout the outline. I see this as both welcome and problematic. On the one hand, I agree that feminist ethics, say, should fall under whatever "ethics" becomes. (Another reason to reject "human conduct" - some feminist ethical theories don't address (all) human conduct or (all) human virtue at all e.g. some kinds of maternal, feminine and lesbian ethics.) On the other hand, people often take this line as an easy way of ignoring the whole thing or, else, as a route to tokenism. I think the same is true of non-Western approaches. Moreover, it isn't obvious to me that these approaches can fit neatly into the outline. If somebody working in a very different tradition drew up the outline, would it look the same? How static is the outline intended to be? What conditions will need to be met in order for the top level nodes to be changed later? (Adding nodes is one thing, but changing them will be much more complicated.) This is one reason I think we need to think about as many fine-grained details as possible ahead of time. Of course, there are limits to this, but it still seems important. >> Where does mind fit? Is "Human Being" intended to cover this? > > Yes--I haven't made a "mind" subcategory but I probably will. Here we have > a bit of a problem in that we don't want to prejudice the question whether > nonhumans have minds, but most discussions of "the mind" are about the human > mind, after all. If "mind" will include psychology, it better not be limited to humans. In any case, it seems misconceived to put it under a human-only category. Arguably, not all humans have minds and many non-humans have minds. >> What about continental philosophy? I know the distinction is >> controversial and don't intend to take endorse either >> position. Nonetheless, the work involved (including discussions of the >> controversy) cannot really be ignored. > > Well, as you can see, I'm not very interested in dividing things up > according to academic specializations, traditions, movements, and > ideological affiliations. The loveliness I see in the idea of the Collation > Project is that it has the potential to put *all* the texts that concern, > say, the notion of knowledge (or purported knowledge) as power in one place. > This will help put people from different fields, different approaches, and > different languages, who are really talking about the same thing (e.g., > knowledge as power) in better touch with each other. I don't know much > about continental philosophy. I think it would be fascinating to see how > the approaches Habermas and Gadamer (OK, once we get the right to put their > works into the outline) take to questions of method and language etc. look > alongside texts on very similar questions from philosophers, linguists, > scientists, etc. Again, I'm wondering how well this will work. I know nothing whatsoever about continental philosophy, though, so I cannot say much. I'd like to know, though, how somebody trained primarily in this tradition would think about the outline and how well texts from the analytical tradition would fit into it. It isn't that I'm especially attached to the distinction - indeed, it is arguably quite problematic. So one way to get at my question would be to ask how somebody specialising in Hegel/Habermas/etc. would think about the outline. > Well, remember that we are filing *chunks* into the outline, not whole > topics. That's one reason that I am optimistic about the viability of this > project. That relatively fine-grained focus allows us to distinguish parts > of Pascal's text into (...quickly picking Pascal off the shelf...) the > epistemology of religion, truth, epistemology more generally (the limits of > reason), human action ("...but you must wager. There is no choice, you are > already committed."), and probably more. This one short text (on the Wager) > is actually quite rich. And then the various *topics* discussed in this > text are "naturally" (so to speak) placed in different parts of the outline. > You can talk about God, period, without talking about religious > epistemology; but you need to talk about epistemology before you talk about > *religious* epistemology. The point is that even this one brief text is > scattered around different parts of the outline. But the wager is especially odd, since it is not an epistemological argument at all. It is much more a pragmatic approach. >> Is logic/phil of maths intended to fall under "Enquiry"? > > That I don't know. Yes, for now, but in the long run I'm not sure where to > put it. Then it seems to me that epistemic questions fall under "enquiry" too... >>> I am distinguishing between God and things divine, on the one hand, >>> and religion as a phenomenon, on the other. Hobbes, for example, >>> spoke about both. *Qua* social group phenomenon in general, it >>> clearly belongs to the study of society. *Qua* the details of the >>> specific tenets/theologies of individual religions, I >> suppose religion >>> belongs wherever we put the topics of metaphysics, ethics, and >>> history. *Qua* history of religion, under history again. *Qua* >>> academic subject in its own right ("religious >>> studies") the topic of religion belongs under "inquiry" (or >> whatever I >>> substitute for "methodology"). >> >> Why? Why not under "Knowledge"? I'm not much less certain >> about the distinction between knowledge and enquiry, on the >> one hand, than i am about that between epistemology and >> methodology, on the other. > > I see. Perhaps there's something wrong with those labels, then. There should not have been a 'not' in the third sentence. It should read "I'm much less certain..." (I'm also not a 'philosophy' but at least claim to be a philosopher, but that typo was, I hope less misleadingly odd.) I think of "enquiry" here in terms of investigating, trying to find truth etc. So I'd include epistemology here (e.g. parts of Hume's _Enquiry_). Especially since some parts of philosophy of mathematics are epistemic (and some are metaphysical etc.). Presented with "knowledge" vs. "enquiry", I'd go for the latter if interested in say, what counts as 'knowledge' or how to obtain it. Presented with "knowledge' vs. "methodology", I would probably go for the former, though I'm not sure about this. "Knowledge" sounds as though it will contain facts - things known. I would expect "enquiry" to lead me to links about what standards govern knowledge, how the knowledge is gathered etc. etc. (and more, but I'd think epistemic questions would be here at least). > Obviously, in the same way that there is such a thing as religious > epistemology, you can put "religious knowledge" or "spiritual knowledge" or > some such thing somewhere under "knowledge." > > But when you're talking about *chunks that talk about the study of > religion*, a.k.a. religious studies, those belong, I think, under a part of > the outline that talks about studies, or inquiries, or disciplines, or what > have you. But "enquiry" sounds more general than this. I expect it to be about the nature, method and standards for enquiry - about what counts as success and failure, about what might justify an enquiry's conclusion. I think a different label is needed here. "Enquiries" is better, but not much. "Disciplinary approaches"? - - Clea - -- Dr. Clea F. Rees Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Philosophy Cowell College University of California Santa Cruz CA 95064 U.S.A. Tel: +1-831-459-5045 +1-831-459-2609 (msg) Fax: +1-831-459-4880 NB: From UK, dial 00 before the appropriate number to access the international system. cfrees at imapmail.org http://people.ucsc.edu/~cfrees/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.4 (Darwin) Comment: Dr. Clea F. Rees iD8DBQFEyBtez89yvazbspYRAkL/AJ9eKVkuKCNIqytMe28hdCLzKYSx1gCfeY0P 0UbfP/uJkYhnMM0XjqDYJQc= =zgb5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From phmartin at phmartin.info Wed Jul 26 20:13:20 2006 From: phmartin at phmartin.info (Philippe MARTIN) Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 13:13:20 +1000 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Top level outline headings In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:23:54 MST" Message-ID: <200607270313.k6R3DKFV017579@pc070372.sci.griffith.edu.au> Larry, > > Clearly. If you keep using relations in the outline, their meanings > > need to be respected, even the meaning of the default > > relation (the specialization relation): "Human being" cannot > > be a specialization of > > "Things in general" (since "a 'human being' is not a 'things > > in general'") but it can be a specialization of "Thing" > > (since "a 'human being' is a 'thing'). The following may or > > may not make sense: "a 'right and wrong' is a 'thing'". > > This really does point up a problem with specifying relations clearly at > this point: it makes it harder to edit the outline, because you have to edit > the relationship metadata too. Is there any clear advantage, that would > justify that inconvenience, to wanting to keep relationship metadata > up-to-date from this early stage in the project? I'm afraid I'm not seeing > one: I don't see why we shouldn't just add in the relationships, and > processes for keeping relationship data accurate, once the outline is better > developed? > > What would be much more useful at this point is not the analysis of a rough, > rough draft of an outline, which is what my work is, but instead a > discussion of some *practical, usable* principles involved in actually > structuring *this sort* of information into an outline. I would greatly > appreciate such a discussion from you, Philippe, if you feel up to it! Not in a written form, since - we already had many discussions on and off this mailing list and I have given the rationale and pointers for knowledge representation principles; - it is clear that what we have very different views on what is practical, usable and necessary; - even the meaning of the specialization relation you are not prepared to respect (as noted in your paragraph below) and this is the "least painful" (and the most important) practical and usable principle that you can follow; - I am terribly late on other tasks that I have to do. However, you can phone me (in the evening for you, around 11am or noon for me), for example via my skype identifier (which I once emailed you). As far as specialization relations are concerned, some well known methodological advices to make sure that you respect their meanings are provided by the Ontoclean (ontoclean.org) methodology, e.g., read http://www.cs.vassar.edu/faculty/welty/papers/er2000/LADSEB05-2000.pdf As you will see this is way "heavier" (from your perspective) than anything I have so far refered to you but it is a good read that might encourage you to follow (lighter) ontological principles. Regarding the use of categories/headings for domain fields, I strongly suggest the reading of Welty & Jenkins (1999) http://www.cs.vassar.edu/faculty/welty/papers/subjects/subject.html then my extension and application: http://www.webkb.org/kb/classif/_field_of_study.html http://www.webkb.org/kb/classif/IT.html In essence, categories/headings for domain fields should be avoided since anything can be placed "under" them (any subdomain, task, physical object,statements, etc.). It is a matter of "preferences". They do not provide scalable organising guidance for inserting or searching information. > As to whether "Human being" is a specialization of "Things in general": > well, aren't you being a little pedantic here? It's just a matter of > formulation. I can use the name of a set ("things in general"), the name of > an abstraction ("thinghood"), or a singular formulation ("thing"). The > reason "things in general" sounds more natural than "thing" (or "the > functions of language" instead of "function of language") is that the former > is what you say when asked what you're talking about. It's purely a matter > of style and readability. Will it make it the slightest bit more difficult > to identify the proper relationship between nodes if we do not fastidiously > insist on the singular form? I do not see anything pedantic and it is about meaning, not about style. WebKB-2 (my knowledge server) would allow you to use cryptic "identifiers" for categories (e.g., numbers instead of English nouns and, why not, plural nouns to refer to individual entities, so that for example your categories "persons" or "people" would refer to what I would call a "person") but in your project 1) you have to be systematic or otherwise anything goes, 2) you will loose precision (e.g., in your case, you will not be able to distinguish between the categories "human beings" (collectivelly) and "human being" (one "human being"), 3) it will be confusing for other people. Philippe From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Wed Jul 26 22:37:18 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 22:37:18 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Wiki software tutorial uploaded Message-ID: <000001c6b13e$ba0709f0$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> All, I've uploaded a new video, a general intro to wiki software, here: http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=Tutorial_videos I'd be curious if you find this or any of the other videos useful. Watching these is hardly mandatory, it's just supplemental material that I hope you'll find useful. I'll do the "how to chunk a text" video later... --Larry From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Thu Jul 27 23:56:16 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 23:56:16 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Work on Hobbes completely transferred Message-ID: <003301c6b212$ec572f50$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> All, I'm happy to say that, with some help from Brittney Brokenshire, we have transferred all of my work on Hobbes' *Leviathan* to the wiki. So now you can examine it, if you never have before, here: http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Outline Bear in mind that it's a draft at best. It's going to be spruced up in time. --Larry From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Fri Jul 28 02:34:39 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 02:34:39 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] Some chunking issues; restart work on Leviathan? Message-ID: <000b01c6b229$0c518470$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> All, I decided to start in (at least a little) on chunking Hobbes (i.e., a part that I haven't finished yet) on the wiki. I chunked only one paragraph, and I actually made four greatly overlapping chunks out of it: a distinction, two definitions, and an argument. See: http://tinyurl.com/eujex (I didn't actually file these chunks into the outline yet. I think that's a step that can be separated from chunking.) In doing this, I was much more fastidious than I was when I did the initial work on the outline, in that I tried to follow the (new proposed) rule I put on this page: http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=Chunking_rules If I really wanted to follow that rule, I would have to start over on the Leviathan completely. But actually, I'm thinking I ought to start over *anyway*, considering that I have thought over the project considerably more since I was last actively working on collation, I have your input and possible help, and I've been planning on going over the outline carefully anyway (I spruced up the "divinity" section considerably, filing chunks that were there down below). But if I go back over my work on the Leviathan, I don't want simply to start over from scratch. The work I've done is far from useless, I think; mainly, it just needs to be augmented and checked. But in that case, I'd have to do this: (1) upload all parts of the text of the Leviathan that I've worked on already, to multiple text pages, such as the one I've put up at http://tinyurl.com/eujex , and to organize the text pages on the central Leviathan home page at http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=Hobbes%2C_Leviathan; (2) step through the outline, going through all node pages (such as http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=Nature) and for every chunk, transfer it to the appropriate place in the text page, indented as the new chunks on http://tinyurl.com/eujex are indented. **Then**, I (we) could back over the text of the Leviathan more carefully, and we would know what I had and what I had not done. I think this is *probably* worth the effort, i.e., it's *probably* more efficient than scrapping all the work I've done and starting over completely. (If I decide to do (1) and (2), that's relatively mindless work that certain industrious persons might be interested, I hope, in helping with...) The aim of this newfound perfectionism is to render work I've already done up to the standard that I want to follow with the rest of the Leviathan. I'm inclined to think that the only way people will be able to work together on this sort of project and have a useful, non-confusing result is if they adopt some rules, like the ones I have proposed recently, and try to follow them carefully. I was able to produce a reasonable rough draft by myself because I knew (without articulating many rules to myself) more or less what I was trying to do. Such an understanding cannot be shared among two or more people without being clearly articulated; and, of course, as soon as we start articulating rules together, we'll naturally be in a healthy competition to get the rules right. The point is that there is just no way to do collation sloppily, if we want to do it collaboratively. And that, again, seems to mean we have more prep/cleanup work to do on my work on Leviathan, as I said... (I do plan to respond to Philippe Martin and Clea Rees...but I wanted to get some wiki work done today.) --Larry From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Fri Jul 28 18:27:46 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 18:27:46 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] FAQ posted Message-ID: <000a01c6b2ae$3282bbc0$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> http://www.textop.org/faq.html Let me know if you think I should add some more Q&A to it, or if you have other suggestions (e.g., maybe an answer needs improvement). --Larry From larry.sanger at dufoundation.org Sat Jul 29 13:03:39 2006 From: larry.sanger at dufoundation.org (Larry Sanger) Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 13:03:39 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] "Human being" section Message-ID: <004101c6b34a$158fdf60$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> Again, I do fully intend to respond to Philippe and Clea, but to help move along the work I'm doing on the wiki, let's talk next a bit about the 'human beingh section of the outline, here: http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Outline#Human_being This used to be labelled 'human nature'. In it I have placed Hobbes' discussions of the distinctive nature of human beings, persons, mental stuff (philosophy of mind broadly speaking), action (including free will), and some of the "state of nature" business (i.e., how people are apart from society, or without a sovereign). Especially with the heading 'human being', some sense *can* be made of the decision to group these topics together. We might specify at least three broad categories: (1) 'human being' defined or the distinctive characteristics of humanity, and other concepts essential to or somehow closely associated with the concept of human beings (such as persons and personal identity, and the relationship between mind and body); (2) the origin of ideas and the usual rather dull accounts of the different faculties and emotions; (3) human action (power, will, free will, and motives). These categories seem relatively "obvious" because we can say with relative ease what relation they have to the broader topic 'human being'. We say that (1) concerns the nature, essence, definition, or broadest characteristics of human beings; (2) concerns the human mind taken by itself; (3) concerns human action. The distinction between (2) and (3) is that between "passions" and "actions" in the early modern sense, or "things that happen to us" and "things we cause to happen." Here then are some difficulties: (a) I have a section lamely labelled 'social psychology' http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Outline#Social_psychology but the point of lumping that stuff together is to pull out elements of (2) and (3) above that exhibit some sort of social involvement, so to speak. Hobbes discusses emotions that require another person as object, as well as the nature of collective action, for example, here: http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_nature_of_collective_action The reason I pulled these topics out and grouped them together (which I did very provisionally) was that it seemed to me the best accounts and explanations of such "socially involved" matters would depend on more general accounts of human beings in groups. Actually, Hobbes does have such an account, but (remember, this is all still very rough...) I filed it much further down the list, here: http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Outline#Social_groups_and_org anizations I'm very open to help in general thinking these matters through. Maybe I *shouldn't* pull these topics out under a separate heading, as I have? (b) Clea makes the excellent and perfectly correct point that the mind as a topic does not really belong under "human being," simply because animals have minds, or so many people think. But this does raise a difficulty. Suppose I create a 'mind' category and file it provisionally, say, under 'life'. (When we get more chunks, we'll add more detail: the outline grows around available chunks, not a priori.) What part of philosophy of mind should go there, and what part under 'human being'? After all, in Hobbes as in most philosophers, including contemporary philosophers, *most* (not all) discussions of mind assume we are talking about human minds. Not infrequently, a philosopher will switch easily from remarks that could concern *any* minds, to remarks that could concern only *human* minds (as far as we know). In the same way, Leibniz switched easily from the talk of "simple souls" (monads) to human souls. What do you recommend on this score? How should the material be divided up? (c) Finally, there's the business about the "natural condition of mankind." Should that continue to be a second-level heading, as I have it now? The other option, I think, would be to scatter this material to other categories. For instance, the chunk on this page http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=Natural_faculties_of_human_beings would belong under some "human mind" node, higher up. Hobbes' famous remarks (and others' remarks on the same question) that human beings are naturally equal would belong under some node that concerns the natural variations among human beings. Finally, the "state of nature is a state of war" business, and that the state of nature is a fiction, would belong, I imagine, under "social groups and organization" as comments on *the lack of* a certain kind of social group. I'm inclined to do the latter, to spread the "natural condition" section to the four winds, as described. What do you think? --Larry From bbroke at gmail.com Sat Jul 29 13:12:07 2006 From: bbroke at gmail.com (Brittney Brokenshire) Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 13:12:07 -0700 Subject: [Textop-en-phil] [Textop] FAQ posted Message-ID: <6e1a89c80607291312t6772425cm8120119211500f54@mail.gmail.com> Mr. Sanger asked me to forward this email to the list to be answered/debated. ----------------------------- Hi Larry, I read through your FAQs and just because I had this argument a few days ago with some of my friends, I'm unconvinced of your answer on tagging. As far as I understand you ARE asking experts to tag information just in an inefficient manner - not to imply that's necessarily a bad thing. The tags you are asking them to give are: a fine-grained categorization, a linguistic function, a summary, and the source information - all meta data and each can be represented as a tag. I understand why you need to have an agreed set of tags for the categorization, but the highly touted ESP game results in an agreed set of tags for images http://www.espgame.org/. So that can't be the biggest barrier. The question I've had is why you chose to break apart an existing text and put it into an outline, as opposed to marking up the text with tags which is similar to the low-tech method I used in my textbooks. The conclusion I came to was because of the benefits of the unique view, allowing people to make new connections within and between domains. And that collaborative tagging technology just isn't there yet for the purposes of text-op. My husband is working on his masters thesis in a related area and we've brainstormed on many parts, and found that there are really no tools we know of that allow you, even personally, to tag text at the paragraph or sentence level...let alone have many people collaborate on it. I think the closest we get to this is something like del.icio.us http://del.icio.us/. I think you could accomplish the goals of text-op through a smartly designed tagging system, however the current technology fails to meet the criteria of collaborative, limited categorization and sentence level granularity, thus another method, at least for the pilot project, needed to be found. In my experience wikis are best used for rapid co-creation of content, but I don't view text-op as a content creation problem, rather as a meta-data problem (maybe this is wrong, but in my head it seems a better fit) - which seems to be the bottleneck in loads of web-based research at the moment. Hopefully some better tools for this type of problem will arise in the next few years - maybe even out of my husband's research lab or one of my many pet projects . So that was my internal argument, and I thought you might garner something from that, even if it is just how off base I am. As I found out if you have to try to convince computer science people of the validity of this project...tagging will be one of the major hangups. ---Brittney From cfrees at imapmail.org Sat Jul 29 19:37:01 2006 From: cfrees at imapmail.org (Dr. Clea F. Rees) Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 19:37:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Textop-en-phil] "Human being" section In-Reply-To: <004101c6b34a$158fdf60$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> References: <004101c6b34a$158fdf60$a0f5fea9@D7WRQ591> Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 > These categories seem relatively "obvious" because we can say with relative > ease what relation they have to the broader topic 'human being'. We say > that (1) concerns the nature, essence, definition, or broadest > characteristics of human beings; (2) concerns the human mind taken by > itself; (3) concerns human action. The distinction between (2) and (3) is > that between "passions" and "actions" in the early modern sense, or "things > that happen to us" and "things we cause to happen." So, some accounts of emotions will be under (2), some under (3) and some (which discuss emotions in animals more generally) elsewhere? Is it even possible to put everything into this sort of hierarchical outline? Some of this currently strikes me as suggesting that any such outline may inevitably beg important questions. I'm not saying this is correct. I think I maybe just don't quite understand how you see the project developing... - - Clea - -- Dr. Clea F. Rees Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Philosophy Cowell College University of California Santa Cruz CA 95064 U.S.A. Tel: +1-831-459-5045 +1-831-459-2609 (msg) Fax: +1-831-459-4880 NB: From UK, dial 00 before the appropriate number to access the international system. cfrees at imapmail.org http://people.ucsc.edu/~cfrees/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.4 (Darwin) Comment: Dr. Clea F. Rees iD8DBQFEzBtSz89yvazbspYRAtXgAJ93HnaK3V/aaqSxmkWS/0OrdYvAiQCdGFY5 FFivSnjOWry+djOiJ+fcX+o= =K8RA -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----