h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Can you suggest where it should be submitted? I've made a few suggestions but they have not yet been taken up.

Thanks for the responses - I was away for a while and it was useful to see them build up rather than take them on one by one.

Actually I'm still keen to get the Entry into the EG, since I feel it is really necessary for balance.

I am certainly willing to change any personal content, tone and style to meet the guidelines. Perhaps this being my first entry I have triped up over some of these in earlier versions, We all learn.

I will make over the weekend a revision trying to dilligently take in the constructive remarks.

BTW - As for the comments on Objectivity/Subjectivity, I'll address these further in the revision. For now for those of you who are still interested & wondering if the claims are well founded (and not just a personal view) I invite you to take a look at the wikipedia entry on the "Subject on Analytic Philosophy". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject_(philosophy). And the "Subject-Object Problem" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject-object_problem

These issues are clearly mainstream. I feel this issue is an absolutely crucial one in our way of looking at the life, the universe and everything. To leave it out or marginalize it would be a serious ommission in the h2g2 remit in my opinion.

Notwithstanding my comment that a new revision is underway, I wanted to answer in part comments from Otto in posting 48...

1/ I appreciate your comments about where the current version is strong and where it is weak and will take that into account in the revision.

2/ I 100% agree with your sentiments about the "Objectivism" of Ayn Rand by the way. So my point that we don't have to be personally adherents to any particular EG entry for it to be accepted by this h2g2 community as a valid entry is made (between us at least).

3/ As for some of the "controversial claims" I'll revise it to avoid the heavier arguments, which does to mean to say the argument is wrong, but it avoids getting into a personal dispute with others who may react with offended sensibility.

4/ Where I have referred to “LP” I have done so from the perspective of Popper's Critical Rationalism. I can explain with more “lay worded” detail to clarify that.

5/ You say "morality may be one way for one person, and another way for another? There's no reason to assume that morality is objective." Actually you have made a good point. I think we are "Anti-realists" without some kind of Faith, but that my personal view (see next 2 points)

6/ I'd be interested in how you can "dispute the claim that faith is required to avoid relativism and subjectivism". It may be that your definition of “faith” is the issue (it need not be faith in a transcendent God, maybe it’s a faith in something else. But I predict that some kind of axiomatic objective truth assertion (i.e., a kind of “working faith”) will be necessarily made to avoid the pitfalls of relativism and subjectivism. But we need to be careful to stick the point here and not fly off at an argumentative tangent – we would be engaging in a personal discussion.

You see points 5 and 6 are merely discussion items between you and I, and worthy as they maybe, it is not ultimately important to the issue at hand. What is the issue here is agreed between us in point 2 above. The validity of an Entry to EG is not determined by everybody agreeing that it is True for them. Entry in h2g2 requires a piece that is; non-personal, representative of mainstream currency of thought, and presented in a way lay folks can access and benefit from, and other writing guidelines – right?

This is another link for those interested in looking at the Realist/Anti-Realist debate (that my Entry is in part based on) current in certian Philosophical circles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-realism

It's an area largely developed by the British Philosopher Sir Michael Dummett. Dummett's work in part has been understood as based on those Philosophical disagreements about whether a certain type of entity objectively exists or not. Thus, we may speak of (anti-)realism with respect to other minds, the past, the future, universals, mathematical entities (such as natural numbers), moral categories, the material world, or even thought.

I mention this to further demonstrate the piece I have written is within a mainstream discourse of a certain kind.

It has to be written for the lay reader, remember? 'Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge'. In other words, you can spell things out without talking down to people. And don't be afraid of adopting a chatty style. Read my entry on the Sokal affair and that will give you some pointers.

Thanks - I'll keep that in mind

Since you brought up Wiki...

What I would really like to see is, as opposed to their 'just the facts, ma'am' approach - is a really well written EG entry. And I'm hopeful that with such an active PR thread, and a willing author we could get that here.

(with apologies if some think this post is too fluffy )

It's great to hear you're still interested in the Edited Guide. As the entry will need a lot of work though (and so isn't approaching 'finished'), the best thing to do is to go to the Peer Review forum, find your entry (you might have to click back a page or two) and remove it from the forum. Those who are already subscribed to this conversation will still be around to offer suggestions.

Best of luck,

Well, I think this has the basis of a good entry to it. I also think it would work best if it set out at the beginning as to why we lay readers should care about this debate. The *main* reason for so doing I suspect is Pope Benedict's recent (and provocative) utterances on this subject, and some talk about them would help set this debate in a wider context.

Jimster,

As I mentioned to some of the conversation parties I am working on a revision over this weekend taking into account feedback, and would like to post that for comment and peer review. If the consensus is that there is nevertheless a lot of work is still left to be done, I'll take it off the forum

- OK?

Thanks FM - Good point, starting from that point would make a topical entry to grab folks attention

If you are a philosopher, which is a rigorous and very contentious discipline, you got to take on all comers. It's how the game works, and what makes for a good philosophy. The anti-pomo position is a legitimate and well reasoned one, and if you are going to present your article as you wish, you need to represent what your opponents are saying and explain why their objections are countered by your reasoning and method. Repeating "Felonious Monk is Mean", instead of actually taking on the anti-pomo objections, shows that you are not prepared to write this article and cannot defend this article in the way that you need to, in order to get it into the Guide.

Sorry, that last post has totally thrown me. Have you read the whole thread, Sea Change?
Wilma

Wilma - is right. FM is not mean any longer . I am not a "party member" of the PoMo position anyway (I am quite anti-PoMo of some of its exteme expressions myself). and I fully intend to be fair an unbiased.

Here is the revised version. I am not aware how to build the proper fonts for titles and work the foot notes system in Brunel as yet . Still I trust you can look past that for the purposes of peer review. I would appreciate your comments.

A14480804 - Towards a Critical Rational Fideism, or When a Rose is Not Not a Rose

Right - I'm saving the reading of it until later

but in the meantime here's a handy link

Thanks for sticking withthis, P4T, PR was in danger of getting its 'nest of vipers' title back for a while there!!

I don't know whether anybody's already mentioned this but to write Headers use your chosen title and for Subheaders use your chosen title

Wow Pilgrim, you have taken on a hard corner to defend, and show terrific tenacity.

If you want to use the EG to put a philosophical point, you must walk a particular tightrope, and reduce your voicing of opinion to such a small proportion, so carefully put, that it actually can go unnoticed. I have got away with quite a measure of this.

I would welcome a piece on the facts of the case. What the pope said (straightforward), what it implies (getting dodgy but interesting) and what the reaction has been (plenty of fact there). Unfortunately what is not welcome is a suggested solution. That's for another forum.

About the seech itself, I would be interested to hear what you make of his reference to Kant. To me it looks as if there is a step or three missing, or perhaps it has been mistranslated:

"When Kant stated that he needed to set thinking aside in order to make room for faith, he carried this programme [liberation of faith from metaphysics] forward with a radicalism that the Reformers could never have foreseen." --so far so good, but he continues:

"He thus anchored faith exclusively in practical reason, denying it access to reality as a whole."

This foxes me. Is he saying that (for Kant) metaphysics belongs in pure reason, and everything else (faith included) in its opposite, practical reason? And implying that reality contains more than is available to practical reason?

Looks like it; and yet can this really be what Kant meant by "set thinking aside"? On the face of it this just looks to me like a gigantic whopper.

Besides, does anyone credit a category of Pure Reason any more?

Hi Pilgrim4Truth

I'll leave commenting on the content of the Entry to those that understand the subject matter. I just wanted to advice you to ignore post # 77 >>I don't know whether anybody's already mentioned this but to write Headers use your chosen title and for Subheaders use your chosen title<<

That won't work, as you have not changed the Entry to GuideML. There's quite a bit of work involved, if you wanted to change to GuideML, there's enough of use here to help you, but I think it best to get the content sorted, and not worry about GuideML.

Opti, will you *please* not post advice like that, when the author is 1)new to PR, 2)has not changed to GuideML. Besides that, there are some ampersands in the Entry that will need character codes. The reason no-one else had mentioned how to do Headers/Subheaders was because it wasn't relevant to the Entry at this time.

Emmily

Thanks Emmily & OpticalIlusion,

I appreciate your offer of help very much, I wont try formatting just now in case I make things worse. Nor foul no harm as they say in the States (though I am a Brit in Singapore - but nevermind!)