[Textop-en-phil] Welcome, and first steps for pilot project

[Larry Sanger]

Diane,

Thanks for the reply!

> I must say that the Leviathan is not a book I would have chosen as a 
> first attempt - I would prefer Locke's  "Essay Concerning Human 
> Understanding".

Yes, I personally prefer Locke--but this started out as a personal project
in which I was going to start by going through, in historical order, a dozen
or so classics of English-language philosophy.  That accounts for the
Hobbes.  Then I thought that so much more could get done if I invited a lot
of people to help me.  That's how this got started.  I greatly look forward
to tackling Locke, myself.

> Upon reading your outline of the Leviathan, I 
> immediately saw the potential for references indicating precursors of 
> Hobbes' thought which inevitably leads to the question of 
> limiting the 
> pilot, at least, to English language works.  It's very, very 
> difficult 
> to cover philosophical ideas if we limit ourselves to those works 
> originally published in English - or is this not what you intended by 
> the phraseology.

I agree--the only question is *when* we should take up works in other
languages.  I think it is important that those works be presented and
chunked at first in their original languages.  But internationalization (or
what should it be called?) then poses all sorts of logistical problems (see
http://www.textop.org/internationalization.html) that can be deferred until
after we have familiarized ourselves with the more basic problems associated
with simply doing an outline (in one language) at all.  That's why I've been
insisting on English language only--not, of course, because I think only
philosophers writing in English are worth collating!

Here is what I suggest: we choose something like 3-6 works of philosophy to
collate into the outline I've started
(http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=Sample_outline).  (But do check
to see that you're comfortable with the latter suggestion.)  Once we're
finished, a few short months from now I hope, we'll have all sorts of
recommendations to make about how to proceed in terms of procedure, rules,
software, governance, and so forth.  Then I'd like to get software written
that handles internationalization intelligently, so that we can really
launch the project in as many languages as possible.

I'd like to make some decisions, fairly soon, about which works we doing the
pilot project should use.  Once we've settled on a list, it will be much
easier, I think, to get some people excited about helping out.  I'll
approach specialists on the texts we choose, and ask them to ask their
graduate students to get involved (and you'd be welcome to do the same).

> As far as my own expertise, my dissertation research was on 
> the concept 
> of causality as it has been used in philosophy, the law and 
> in science 
> and I focused on a very specific problem - that of toxic 
> torts.  Since 
> receiving the PhD in 1999, I have spent most of my time reading and 
> continuing research in the field of causality.
> 
> I will be pleased to help where I can.

Pleased to meet you, and thanks for getting involved.

--Larry