StylumCEO

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Hello, StylumCEO, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question and then place {{helpme}} after the question on your talk page. Again, welcome! --Ytny (talk) 05:53, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is one hundred percent a wikipedia reliable source, I know because I have previously challenged it myself at the noticeboard, much more reliable than the unconfirmed claims from a released criminal that sold his story of his unconfirmed story to a newspaper, in truth, it matters not, where I come from it is clear when someone says he fell out of bed and landed on his face, it is clear when is meant, there is a WP:RSN if you have any queries about the reliability of sources. Off2riorob (talk) 19:44, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Reverting

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. You appear to be engaged in an edit war with one or more editors according to your reverts at Richard Dawkins. Although repeatedly reverting or undoing another editor's contributions may seem necessary to protect your preferred version of a page, on Wikipedia this is usually seen as obstructing the normal editing process, and often creates animosity between editors. Instead of edit warring, please try to reach a consensus on the talk page.

If editors continue to revert to their preferred version they are likely to be blocked from editing. This isn't done to punish an editor, but to prevent the disruption caused by edit warring. In particular, editors should be aware of the three-revert rule, which says that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. While edit warring on Wikipedia is not acceptable in any amount, breaking the three-revert rule is very likely to lead to a block. Thank you.--McGeddon (talk) 16:00, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

June 2013

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to violate Wikipedia's no original research policy by adding your personal analysis or synthesis into articles, as you did at Richard Dawkins, you may be blocked from editing. This is the third time you added this unsourced information. Please stop. Thank you. - DVdm (talk) 21:07, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

July 2013

I noticed that you recently made edits while logged out. There are two reasons why you should not edit while logged out: 1) doing so will reveal your IP address; and 2) people may accuse you of sockpuppetry, i.e. trying to make yourself look like multiple users in order to gain the upper hand in a dispute. If this was not your intention, then please always remember to log in when editing. Thank you. Sædon^talk 18:32, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

OK. StylumCEO (talk) 18:32, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Richard Dawkins

I agree that Dawkins is clearly a philosopher in most senses of the word. However on that talk page you are discussing the issue with people who consider themselves strictly 'scientists' and who view 'philosopher' as a bad word and don't want Dawkins associated with that kind of nonsense. Some of the responses you've received are dismissive and patronising, and I apologise on their behalf. Whether you continue with the discussion is up to you, but it will be interesting, and a little ironic, watching them invent reasons to deny any and every source you present. – Steel 17:26, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

This is a very inaccurate and well poisoning characterization. I am biologist with a strong background in philosophy, mainly focused on ethics but of course broadly on metaphysics, epistemology and political philosophy as well. At this point in my life I've gone back to school specifically to get a degree in philosophy and no longer even work as a scientist, so for you to cast aspersions of scientism is wholly unfounded.

I don't think Dawkins should be called a philosopher for two reasons: 1. He is not referred to as such in philosophical publications, at least not enough that it is justifiable to call him a philosopher outright per WP:V, and 2. He does not work within the traditions of any established academic disciplines of philosophy. That is, he does not attempt to deconstruct language so as to understand and analyze its meaning and to subsequently determine - through rigorous logic - the truth or falsity of propositions, as he would if he practiced analytical philosophy. Nor does he fit into the traditions - however broad - of continental philosophy. Granted, he does write about subjects that are within the pursue of philosophy, but he does not do so in a philosophical style. Now, I'll fully admit that the there is a sort of Demarcation problem here, and so my second point should only be considered an aside to the first point. On my first point, I'd be happy to include it in the article if Dawkins was characterized as a philosopher by a more than a couple mainstream, philosophical journals or by a substantial number of mainstream, academically practicing philosophers. Sædon^talk 20:12, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

My comments weren't directed at you, so sorry for any insult or generalisation. I do however feel they accurately describe the attitude of a couple of users in the talk page discussion.
Regardless, I think the definition of a philosopher is wider than you're allowing. I would probably refer to the type of person you've described as something like 'academic philosopher' - but one does not have to be steeped in, or follow the conventions of, modern analytic philosophy to be a philosopher in the broader sense. Nor do I think contributors to academic philosophical publications are the arbiters of the matter, since they will naturally favour their own. I think I would provisionally define philospher as 'anyone who makes a serious and considered attempt to answer philosophical questions' and this may well be considerably broader than you or Talk:Richard Dawkins accept. I will say that the one thing I'm not sold on yet is whether philosopher, by my definition, would actually be a useful category to group Dawkins with. Since if Dawkins is a philosopher then so are a lot of other people too, to the point where we'd have one in every five BLPs tagged as 'philosopher', which for practical purposes would make the term a bit useless. – Steel 21:24, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Apology accepted, however even if the characterization is accurate for other editors, it serves no purpose in bringing it up. Making disputes personal rarely enhances dialogue. Anyway, I think you've concluded basically the same thing I have: such a broadening of definition would include many people who really should not be considered philosophers. Consider, for instance, Ayn Rand. She wrote on the topics of metaphysics, ethics, etc, but she did so rhetorically and without actually attempting to prove her points using syllogistic logic. She contributed nothing to human knowledge, both because her reasoning was fallacious and because any of her actually valid conclusions had already been documented by previous philosophers (for instance, "objectivist" metaphysics are simply a renamed naturalistic metaphysics). I don't mean to group Dawkins with Rand of course as Dawkins is, in my opinion, a brilliant man who has contributed much to human knowledge. But this is my point: using such a broadened definition puts Dawkins, Rand, Kant, Mill, and Russel in the same category, which I think is prima facie an incorrect grouping.

Now, as to your point that philosophers will favor their own: well yes, but the same should be said for biologists and physicists. When we write an article on evolution we value the discoveries of biology and not of religion. Philosophy is and basically always has been an academic enterprise, starting with the post-religious works of the Sophists/Plato/Aristotle/etc as they founded the world's first philosophical academies. Since then the practice of philosophy has undergone many manifestations but even among those differences it is generally somewhat easy to tell what is philosophy and what is simply on the subject of philosophy but not actually philosophy. For instance, the analytical school of philosophy, I think, should not consider continental philosophy something other than philosophy, it is just considered to be incorrect (being very general here). From a Wikipedia standpoint, encyclopedias themselves are an academic enterprise and as such when we're considering how to assign WP:WEIGHT to a subject we do so by reference to experts in that subject. Whether rightly or wrongly, the experts on philosophy have yet to recognize Dawkins as a philosopher, but as WP editors our job is not to determine whether or not Dawkins is really a philosopher, but rather to consider the expert opinion on the matter and give due weight to minority views when appropriate. Sædon^talk 22:39, 3 July 2013 (UTC)