G'day Will,
In a message dated 12/17/2008 1:16:27 PM Pacific Standard Time, writes: Short of simply quoting Derrida verbatim, there is very little that
can be gleaned from Derrida without any specialist knowledge.>>
Then why be short? Quote him. If you want the general reader to agree on your summary of Derida's belief on A, then quote Derida discussing A.
I don't know if you've looked at our articles discussing deconstructionism lately, but the absolute *last thing* we need is more impenetrable writing. Quoting Derrida can be likened to pouring oil on troubled fires.
Phil has hinted at it, but the primary reason we should be able to summarise and rephrase the words of humanities experts is that if we don't, our articles won't make any gosh-darned sense ...
Cheers,
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 08:40:27PM +1100, Mark Gallagher wrote:
Phil has hinted at it, but the primary reason we should be able to summarise and rephrase the words of humanities experts is that if we don't, our articles won't make any gosh-darned sense ...
Not only the humanities. This same issue appears in technical science and mathematics articles equally well. And the current practice is that we can indeed summarize and reword technical material to make it more accessible. There are three main requirements (all informal, nowhere spelled out).
(1) the summary should be in agreement with the consensus of written opinion in the field
N.B. The only way to tell if an article satisfies (1) is to have a very good sense of the overall consensus in the literature. In practice this means actually being familiar with a large chunk of literature in the field. But this is already implicit in the principle of undue weight - how can you decide if something has undue weight without knowing how that thing is covered in the literature?
(2) the summary should not introduce new theories or new interpretive frameworks
For example, contemporary mathematics is all about finding very general systems of which various specialized systems are just concrete examples. But in WP articles we avoid creating any ''new'' general systems, even if it appears possible to do so. This is a common error in new editors, who may try to develop an entirely new taxonomy of some area, or try to replace theorems with more general theorems that don't appear in the literature. That would be OK in print, if you could get it published, but not on WP.
(3) when there are several conflicting opinions in the literature, the article's summary should give due weight
This is not a very common issue in mathematics except for certain philosophical aspect, and fringe/pseudoscience topics. But I think it would be more important in writing about Derrida.
- Carl
On Dec 18, 2008, at 9:19 AM, Carl Beckhorn wrote:
This is not a very common issue in mathematics except for certain philosophical aspect, and fringe/pseudoscience topics. But I think it would be more important in writing about Derrida.
Derrida is perhaps the most thorny example you could pick here, given that one of the biggest controversies over him is whether he engages in intentional obfuscation. That is, his critics accuse him of saying nothing sensible at all. This has obvious limitations for the purposes of summarizing Derrida.
But even beyond that, one of the fiercest critics of Derrida, John Searle, runs into the major problem that he egregiously and systematically misunderstands Derrida. Derrida, in fact, has an 82 page essay taking him to task for doing that. Searle, in his major engagement with Derrida, accuses Derrida of saying things that it is transparently clear that Derrida never said, and that virtually nobody who is sympathetic to Derrida thinks he said.
And, of course, the primary respondent to Searle's critiques? Derrida, who ripped them to shreds. So now we've got a double problem - Derrida mounted such an effective response to Searle that nobody has seen much value in repeating the effort. Certainly Derrida's response gets a great deal of priority, and is largely responsible for Searle's importance as a main critic of Derrida (since he is one of the critics Derrida has spent the most time engaged with).
An article that heavily relies on Searle to summarize Derrida would be a disaster. And yet the best ways to counterbalance Searle involve primary sources.
The correct solution is to summarize Derrida's essay, summarize Searle's response, then summarize Derrida's response to Searle. Then you have the conflict neatly described. And you work with your fellow editors to make sure that everybody agrees with the descriptions of what is claimed in each essay, and you get to a decent result. And inasmuch as the Derrida article deals with these issues, that is what happened.
But that is manifestly not what NOR allows. And what NOR allows would not lead to a good Derrida article.
-Phil
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 09:56:07AM -0500, Phil Sandifer wrote:
An article that heavily relies on Searle to summarize Derrida would be a disaster. And yet the best ways to counterbalance Searle involve primary sources.
I see what you are saying. I have the same issue with mathematics research papers, if they are considered "primary sources". My personal solution, which allows me to reconcile NOR with actual practice, is that Derrida's essay in response to Searle is not a "primary source" from the point of view of NOR. According to NOR, primary sources are:
"Other examples include archeological artifacts; photographs; historical documents such as diaries, census results, video or transcripts of surveillance, public hearings, trials, or interviews; tabulated results of surveys or questionnaires; written or recorded notes of laboratory and field experiments or observations; and artistic and fictional works such as poems, scripts, screenplays, novels, motion pictures, videos, and television programs."
Note that "peer-reviewed papers making analytic or synthetic arguments" are not included in that list. If "primary source" for NOR actually included Derrida's response to Searle, but not Searle's argument, then the problem you see would be genuine. However, if Derrida's argument is considered a primary source, then Searle's should also be considered a primary source.
Unfortunately, due to the wide range of things that are considered "primary sources" by different fields, I don't think there is really much hope for a clear PSTS section in the NOR policy. Recently I have just been ignoring it. If you make any progress in clearing up the language on the NOR page, that would be wonderful.
- Carl