Talk:David Stove

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Comments[edit]

206.173.47.7 23:59, 27 July 2007 (UTC) It would be very helpful if the article presented appropriate criticism of Stove's position.[reply]

I also dispute the point of view of this article. I ran by Stove's views in The Rationlaity of Induction by those interested in such matters. It is a terrible argument. He is "confused indeed" said one. David Stove simply is not a good philospher.

I'd like to see a little more arguments, gentlemen. Here ...

I DISPUTE THE POINT OF VIEW OF THIS ARTICLE FOR SCOTT CAMPBELL IS A FOLLOWER OF DAVID STOVE AND THE BIAS STILL SHOWS : "witty attacks...etc"

... and here. --84.146.40.95 01:36, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some reply to the comments above is in order.
1. Yes, links to critics are noted on the talk page below, and will be added to the article in due course.
2. I wonder if the anonymous editor's anonymous friends consistitute a peer-review better than Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which cites Stove in five topics. Forgive me if I doubt that "those interested" had five cites between them.
Cheers. Alastair Haines (talk) 12:19, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Recent edits[edit]

In recently going through and trying to clean up the POV of the older entry, I believe there are several statements, which seem to be the original author's interpretations and not Stove's. For example:

"What he calls the 'Cave Men' theory - a view that T. H. Huxley often resorted to - says that while the "Darwinian struggle" no longer occurs in extant human populations it did so amongst cave-men"

If the statement about Huxley is not part of Stove's argument then it should, it seems to me, have some citation to document that it is correctly attributed to Huxley.

I did not add a section of criticisms of Stove's view, but I agree with the comments at the top of this page that this entry should have such a section, as do most other entries about philosophers.--Calamus 2355 EDT, 31 July 2006

Death[edit]

This article implies Stove died of cancer. However I have been told by a reliable source that his death was due to suicide. Does anyone know the full story? -- FP 02:41, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

I've got the full story and added to the article. -- FP 03:02, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

The addition contained one error, which I (who am David Stove's son) have taken the liberty of correcting. My mother did not predecease Dad; although she had a massive stroke less than a year before Dad's death, she actually survived him by seven years. -- User:Respighi (a.k.a. R. J. Stove), 14:06, May 6, 2006

NPOV?[edit]

Could this entry possibly be any more starry-eyed and adoring?

  • "...easily the wittiest philosopher of all time..."
  • "...witty and devastating..."
  • "...a semi-mythical status in philosophy of science circles..."
  • "...Stove mercilessly and hilariously exposed the methods by which Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyeraband managed to make their philosophies seem respectable..."
  • "...What made Stove a great thinker..."
  • "...brilliantly original argument..."

I mean come on. Can comeone clean this drool up so it's a little more in line with the NPOV policy?

I've edited the text to make it more netural. The anonymous commentator above might like to read it again.
Scott Campbell.
There's no doubt that Stove could be hilarious. The first part of "Four Modern Irrationalists" is a complete hoot. It reminds me a bit of the monologues of Australian comedian Paul Hogan. I actually disagree with Stove about almost everything, but I've never read anything by him that is not instantly engaging, whether delightful or infuriating.
I don't know anything about David Stove except what I read in this wikipedia article., but if this is what the "more neutral" version of the article looks like I'd be terrified to see what the previous version was like. It's obviously a good thing for the article to present Mr. Stove's views, at the article as it stands is laudibly comprehensive in that respect. But this is wikipedia, so it needs to be written as [i]descriptions[/i] of Mr. Stove's views, whereas this is just relentless advocacy for Mr. Stove's views. --awk
Perhaps you would like to actually provide some examples of "relentless advocacy" in this article if you are going to make such a claim?
Dextux 12:24, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In this particular article, I must admit I resent the NPOV requirement, I'm sad to see all those true and verifiable comments about David Stove consigned to the talk page archives. C'est la vie — Ned Kelly. Alastair Haines (talk) 11:37, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The reason why no sufficient critcisms have yet been added?[edit]

Perhaps because Stove is so irrelevant to the global philosophical community that nobody bothers. Those who know of him know he is a crackpot and that he is himself a prime example of his enfant-terriblism. Just a thought.

I'm not sure if I agree with the statement that Stove is "irrelevant" or a "crackpot". Look around the internet and you'll find a number of very well educated individuals who have high respect for his philosophical views.
LoL, I'm not sure many have managed to come up with criticisms of Stove that cut the mustard in the guild. Several of his friends disagree with him on various issues, both serious analytical issues, and undoubtedly many social issues. However, the thing people seem to most appreciate about him is his ability to "clip the wings" or "burst the bubble" of philosophical excesses. Common sense realism was not what I signed up for when taking philosophy, but they gave me Stove and I got it in spades. I still remember him patiently answering my stupid questions brilliantly, charmingly and entertainingly. He was a real gentleman. How slow I was to learn. Alastair Haines (talk) 11:29, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject class rating[edit]

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:55, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Critical reviews[edit]

  • Scott Campbell, 'Defending Common Sense', review of David Stove, Against the Idols of the Age, in Partisan Review 67 (2000).
  • "[The Plato Cult] captures and records many of [Stove's] best comments, weaving them together into a caustic critique of what regularly passes for academic philosophy." — Andrew D. Irvine, Review of David Stove, The Plato Cult', in Canadian Philosophical Reviews 14 (1994): 59–63.
  • "A none-too-gentle shaking does us good, once it was Moore who did the job. Nowadays it is above all Stove, and he does it with devastating wit. Naked emperors beware." — David Lewis
  • "Stove’s essays are elegant, insightful, beautifully crafted and enormously interesting. They are also outrageous, opinionated, occasionally unfair and almost always side-splittingly funny … He says things that need to be said and that others lack the courage — or foolhardiness — to say." — Stephen Stich of Rutgers University
  • "[Reading Stove] is like watching Fred Astaire dance. You don’t wish you were Fred Astaire; you are just glad to have been around to see him in action." — Michael Levin of the City University of New York
  • "As so often and so unfairly happens in intellectual history, [Stove's] reputation has grown considerably since his death. Long before this, though, he had a small circle of admirers, most of whom were academic philosophers, who appreciated not only his intellectual brilliance and the polish of his unadorned prose, but how very funny he invariably was." — Keith Windschuttle

Alastair Haines (talk • contribs) 10:44, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Stove's 'Jazz Age' is reprinted in Anthony O'Hear, Karl Popper: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, Routledge, 2004.
I feel I'm going to have to write up a summary of Popper and After at some stage.
I still hear people trumpeting falsifiability as the gold standard, not only of scientific theory, but of personal enterprise in various ways. They're not interested in listening to any other view, of course. If challenged, a smug smile, a straightening of the back, a spring in the step, a warm glow suffuses them. "Ah! Another poor soul who can't get past the counter-intuitive nature of falsificationism," they think. I should "go away and think about it" or "read Kuhn" they suggest.
Oh really!
Stove was one of many working to educate my generation, as well as his own. They were outnumbered, the results show in a number of places in our society today. Alastair Haines (talk) 15:49, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]


OK, I'm doing a web-trawl for a bibliography.

"There are already signs of the rehabilitation of classical and logical probability, and in particular the principle of indifference and the principle of maximum entropy, by authors such as Stove (1986), Bartha and Johns (2001), Festa (1993), Paris and Vencovská (1997), and Maher (2000, 2001)."

—Hajek, Alan. 'Probability: Interpretations of'. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2002.
[Notice something here, 1993 (Festa) minus 1986 (Stove) = 7 years, Hajek places Stove 10 years ahead of the rest!]

Stove is cited five (5) times in the online version of the Stanford Encyclopedia, in the articles:

  • 'Interpretations of Probability'
  • 'Karl Popper'
  • 'Miracles'
  • 'Pragmatic Arguments for Belief in God'
  • 'Russell's Moral Philosophy'

He is actually cited twice more ... in the titles of works by other philosophers! (Critics though they are.)

  • Brecher, Bob. 'Why Patronize Feminists? A reply to Stove on Mill.' Philosophy 68 (1993): 397-400.
  • Brown, DG. 'Stove's Reading of Mill'. Utilitas: A Journal of Utilitarian Studies 10 (1998): 122-126.

That's a start. There's a lot of cites for DC Stove. Interestingly, there tends to be an emotional element in most of them — respectful and appreciative of ideas and humour on one side, somewhat scathing on the other. That suggests to me "A hit! A hit! A very palpable hit!" Alastair Haines (talk) 10:36, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am going to be bold[edit]

Citations requested for references to David Stove's passing have not been provided. Unless this is considered worthy of publication in reliable sources, Wiki has no precedent to consider it appropriate, notable or relevant. A source that reported this would presumably also provide sufficient context for an adequate appreciation of any significant and relevant circumstances. In any case, since the text has been challenged, and no published citation provided, over the course of more than a year, I am removing the text. Alastair Haines (talk) 06:08, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A deletion[edit]

I am deleting the sentences: "Rafe Champion has provided a rejoinder to the main claims against Popper, especially the claim that he led the rush to postmodernism. Nobody has been discovered (yet) who became a postmodernist or an irrationalist as a result of learning about critical rationalism and the philosophy of science from Popper or anyone who has a good understanding of his ideas." Stove never claimed that - only that Popper started the branch of the tree of research down which postmodernism lies. Feyerabend lies further along that branch, for instance; he clearly could not have written as he did without Popper's work, and he points very clearly to postmodernism - AG, Stockport. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.53.69.150 (talk) 17:44, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Stove's "Contrariness"[edit]

I don't see any reason to use the fawning term "contrariness" to describe Stove's views on race and gender. Why are these views contrary, and not simply bigoted or hateful? Stove said such things as

I believe that the intellectual capacity of women is on the whole inferior to that of men. By "on the whole," I do not mean just "on the average"; though I do mean that much. My belief is, if you take any degree of intellectual capacity which is above e average for the human race, as a whole, then a possessor of that degree of intellectual capacity is a good deal more likely to be man than a woman....
The question is a perfectly proper one morally and intellectually, and should not be hard to answer....The reasoning involved, then, is reasoning from inferior performance to inferior capacity. It is reasoning of the same general kind, therefore, as that which convinces us, even if we understand nothing of the internal make-up of cars, that Fords are on the whole inferior to Mercedes; or as that which convinces dog-fanciers that Irish setters are not as smart as labradors; or as that which convinces everyone that the intellectual capacity of seven-year-old children is on the whole inferior to that of nine-year-olds. They do not do as well, and we infer from this that they cannot do as well. (The Intellectual Capacity of Women)

This is trashy tabloid prejudice: it is not philosophy. I suggest we change the label of "contrariness" to "prejudices". Dr satsuma (talk) 13:01, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Those who accuse Stove of racism and sexism, besides obviously violating the standard of neutrality, have clearly read little to none of what he wrote. In "Racial and Other Antagonisms," Stove makes the point that "racism," "sexism," etc. are useless words because the statements usually associated with them are true or false regardless of whether they are "racist" or "sexist." (You will specifically find this argument on page 149 of "Against the Idols of the Age.") You can disagree with the positivism that led Stove to this view, but the impulse to accuse him of racism and sexism proves nothing more than the political bias of the critic. (My point here is about the comment in the article that Stove made "bigoted and sexist" comments.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thehumancontraband (talk • contribs) 17:59, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply] 

Dr satsuma (talk) 13:01, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Those who accuse Stove of racism and sexism, besides obviously violating the standard of neutrality, have clearly read little to none of what he wrote.

Nonsense. If the man were still alive he's be pissed off at being labeled as a "contrarian". Stove happily embraced being a racist and a sexist and would be horrified to see his clear intent obscured by being called as anything so mealy-mouthed and milquetoast as "contrarian." The man's thinking was a miserable load of horse manure, rife with casual sophistries passed off as wisdom and stunning errors of fact and logic, all intended for the purpose of selling books by offering glib, vaguely intellectual-seeming arguments in support of reactionary ideology. There is no issue, no question, no matter of interest, on which the man can be said to have brought any kind of clarity or light or even answered coherently enough to constitute a good strawman.

But at least give the guy credit for owning his own words. He was racist and sexist. He was proud of it, or at least acted like he was. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.2.129.176 (talk) 14:06, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

He called bullshit on the term "racism", perhaps read it in context[1] so it is hard to argue that in "his own words" he would have used "racist", the category he just rejected as phony, as a self-description. As for "sexist" we don't even have a reference where he uses the term in "his own words", let alone as a self-descriptor. All we have is an opinion on the distribution of "intellectual capacity", in principle verifiable (as long as "intellectual capacity" is reasonably well-defined), I don't see any "-ism" attached to that. I don't know that the claim does check out, though, but there is tons on research going on for decades trying to establish an authoritiative answer on just the point he expressed an opinion on, so it is hard to argue that he was completely outside of what is amenable to reasonable debate. Afaik it turns out the mean intelligence is almost gender-independent, but standard deviation is larger in males -- which (if true) would mean his opinion has been falsified, but in 1990 there wouldn't have been enough data to decide either way. --dab (𒁳) 21:09, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So wait a minute: Stove was not a racist or a sexist because he didn't use those words to describe himself? And despite saying clearly that he thought racism was true? That's... an almost Stovian argument. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.84.215.34 (talk) 14:31, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment[edit]

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:David Stove/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Excellent article. It is appropriately sober and neutral. Contains a great deal of information, but it is organized logically and developed clearly and steadily. There is a lot more content than Start would suggest. I am upgrading to B-class for quality. Progress needs more detailed interaction with Stoves' work and with critics (pro as well as con). Stove is cited 5 times in different topics at the online version of Stanford Encyclopedia, each of those deserves expansion here.

As an Australian, I'm also upgrading the importance to Mid. I am influenced in that by having been a student of Stove's. But the point is, I am one of many. There are not many Australian philosophers with 5 cites in Stanford. That's at least Mid importance from an Aussie POV.

G'day all. Alastair Haines (talk) 11:59, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Last edited at 11:59, 26 April 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 13:00, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Please note: Wikipedia:Dispute resolution recommends first and foremost: "When you find a passage in an article that is biased or inaccurate, improve it if you can; don't delete salvageable text."--Aboudaqn (talk) 03:19, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Over the next week, I undertake to salvage, so please desist from further wholesale deletions.--Aboudaqn (talk) 03:19, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
If you believe that there is anything of value in this version of the article, then please restore it piece by piece, in a carefully considered way, rather than engaging in a wholesale restoration of dubious content, as you did here. Large portions of the content you restored were uncited or tagged as possible original research; it definitely was not a helpful or appropriate thing to have done to simply restore all that material. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 05:11, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) If you had followed your own advice and restored piece by piece, we wouldn't be here. You could still do so. I volunteered to help. I added back information per Wikipedia guidance. I was coming back to trim (even hack) – but one or more people involved in this matter are too involved to accept any way but their way (even if other ways are Wikipedia's ways). Over, out, and gone --Aboudaqn (talk) 13:52, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Dispute resolution requested[edit]

Click here

I'm afraid that didn't go anywhere useful.
There's no need for there to be a dispute, much less dispute resolution. The material in question fails to meet Wikipedia inclusion standards in its current form and has been challenged by multiple editors. I understand that User:Aboudaqn would like to work on the material in place, but that's not an acceptable method of working up challenged content. It would be perfectly acceptable, however, for Aboudaqn to make a userspace copy of a past state of the page (with appropriate attribution) and work on improvements there. Leaving a pointer here would allow other interested editors to help. Once the material has been brought up to encyclopedia quality, it could be re-introduced section-by-section (taking care not to lose intervening contributions made in the interval). This will allow a vision of the "whole tree" before pruning, but do it out of the glare of the public eye. — jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 15:43, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Just to state the obvious again: I have no objection to the possible restoration of some of the material that was removed so long as it is done in a carefully considered way and there are good reasons for it. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 23:51, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Pass back to you two. There was far too much discourtesy going on for my taste. Besides, I'm getting tired of critics who will not do the work. Knock yourselves out, FreeKnowledgeCreator and jmcgnh! --Aboudaqn (talk) 22:05, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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