Wikipedia:Peer review/Global justice/archive1

Global justice

I'm particularly interested in peer review:

1. from fellow political philosophers on whether the article identifies and accurately describes the main positions in the GJ debate; and

2. from others on whether the article's clear, or too technical. Is there enough detail, or too little, or too much?

But all comments and improvements welcome, of course. Cheers, --Sam Clark 16:47, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sam, I've made some minor changes to bring this in line with the standard format around here: links to main articles and futher templates above the section text, important names integrated into text, see also moved above references and other such minor formalities. As to accuracy of content, I'm pretty weak in this area so I'm not in a good position to judge or help out much there. The article is very clear and concise, but I would like to see some of the very brief sections expanded a bit. Something like the article philosophy of mind with two or even three paragraphs is the usual standard. The article is not at all over-technical and it is nicely organized and comprehensive. Just needs a little bit MORE detail, IMHO. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 18:20, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - the article looks a lot more professional now. I take the point about very brief sections, especially under 'Central questions' - but the advantage of having the separate headings is that the 3 questions appear in the contents.--Sam Clark 12:02, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, AZ _t 17:06, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's shaping up into a very nice article. There's always some redundancy, as this automtaed monster here points out. More imprtantly, watch out for words like "some", "many" and other so-called weasel words. Even a citation would be sufficient. Nice images!! Lastly, more citations never hurts on Wikipedia. Good work!--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:29, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi I read through the article and made a few changes to sentence structure, wording etc. I think its a very good start! A couple of suggestions:

I think the paragraph under the heading Central questions could be better worded.

Original: Three related questions are central to the problem of global justice, and the main positions in the debate may be distinguished by their approaches to them, and ways of relating them.

Suggested: There are three related questions that are central to the debate on global justice. These questions concern the scope of justice, the distribution of justice and the institutions responsible for justice. The main positions in the debate on global justice can be distinguished by their approaches to these questions.

I'm not quite sure if that is what is meant by the three headings (particularly distributive justice), but you get the idea.

You link the scope of justice to moral universalism without actually defining what moral universalism is, and then later in the article you refer to it. Perhaps you need to spell out how the question on scope of justice relates to moral unviersalism.
You don't do the little summary bit (the sentence which spells out its answers to the 3 questions) for The society of states section.

They're the only suggestions I have at this stage. I would love to read more about it, and the article could definitely go much deeper into the different issues in the future. In regards to your comments above about the history, it would be interesting to know why or if anything triggered the conceptual shift towards justice on a global level, and also if the different positions in the debate came all at once, or in response to one another, or a particular event. Does there seem to be any sense of reaching a consensus or is there strident opposition to other positions? Etc JenLouise 02:51, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - really helpful. I've made some changes which hopefully go some way to answering your points. Actually, I'm not sure quite why GJ has become such a big issue in politial philosophy recently. I suspect that, as with so much in the discipline, it'll turn out to be something to do with Rawls. Cheers, --Sam Clark 10:56, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What's here looks pretty good, but could it be more global in scope? This looks like a good summary of the main positions which are popular in the English speaking world. Is there a good way to mention Communist views, Confucian views, or Liberation Theology? All 3 seem like popular approaches to global justice that don't quite fit into the rubric here (are there more? What do Indians think? Do we need some discussion of post-colonialism?). Am I misunderstanding? Bmorton3 18:51, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi - thanks for looking the article over. I'm in two minds about the issue you raise, to be honest. On one hand, of course you're right that anglo-american insititutional philosophy doesn't have a monopoly on the idea of justice for the whole world. On the other, I'm concerned that the article will bloat out of all recognition or usefulness if it tries to cover every such idea, as well as duplicating a lot of material from elsewhere (some of which I point to in the 'See also' section). I did consider moving the whole thing to a new article called 'Global justice (philosophy)', but I tend to think that political philosophy shouldn't be completely separated from the immediate puzzles and worries that make it necessary. At the moment, my half-hearted solution is the first sentence: Global justice is an issue in political philosophy. Whether this'll do, I'm not sure. Cheers, --Sam Clark 10:55, 4 ugust 2006 (UTC)

Sam, I faced a similar problem with philosophy of mind and the issue of systemic bias arises often on Wikipedia re philsophy articles. My general impression is that most people are satisfied to see some mention (a few sentences) of, e.g., how Hindu or Buddist views fit on the spectrum of the basic poistins that you are talking about. Something like, "the Chinese moral thinker X expressed a cosmopolitan position which slightly differed from this in 1078" with reference and so on. The point is to try to find examples of non-Western thinkers and sources that can be interpersed throughout the text and then work it into the existing text without bloating it. I'm not sure if this would work in the case of this article, but its just a suggestion.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:24, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I definately see your worries. Moving to Global Justice (philosophy) wouldn't help because most of these are philosophy positions. The Confucian line that the benevolent man loves all men, but loves them partially rather than impartially, is a direct response to Mohist critiques, and it works equally well against Utilitarians, and it was thought of as a philosophical position. Likewise for Communism, and post-colonial philosophies, they think of themselves as philosophy. Bloat is a real issue, but I don't know the right way to prevent it while keeping to the WP mission. If we wrote a short paragraph something like "Global Justice in other philosophical traditions" and just gestured to these, do you think that would pre-empt later bloat problems or just lead to them? Bmorton3 13:29, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is also a common way to approach the problem. Write up a new subsection, in the same summary style as the others, and link to other articles, Mohism, [[Confucianism], etc, where possible. To prevent later bloat just watch the page and insist that everything additional be cited and/or discussed on the talk-page before insertion. P.S.-- this is a pretty good review process here!!. Howvere, it shuld be ON the PR page so as to provide an example of how to go about this stuff. In fact, I'm going to move it there. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:33, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Along with Lac., I think the article looks good. There's a minimum of nonsense, it gets right to the point. My first thought is that it's a bit bare-bonesy. You had considered mentioning institutional aspects and obstacles before (i.e., talking about IMF/WTO, etc), and I'd encourage a followup with that. My second suggestion would be to break the complex sentences with semicolons down into smaller sentences, for ease of read. Lucidish 02:58, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi - thanks for the comments. I'll have a look through for complex sentences (I'm an academic, I can't help it...). I wonder if both your and BMorton3's concerns could be addressed by a 'broader context' section which talks both about the issue of global justice in history, and the various institutional mechanisms which have been endorsed and challanged? Cheers, Sam Clark 14:32, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I sympathize. I just received my Bachelor's degree, and find myself; using; colons: too much.

As long as it doesn't get too long, I think that a historical context section would be a great idea. It would also give the reader an opportunity to grasp the main issues. For instance, issues like the Marshall Plan, unilateral invasions (vs. multilateral ones), certain foreign policy doctrines (i.e., the Monroe Doctrine, esp. the Roosevelt corrollary), overseas labor, genocide, etc., are all serious topics concerning global justice which have currency in contemporary political debates and affairs. I know you touch on the variety of issues in the intro with the rhetorical questions, but a history section would ram the ideas home through illustration. Lucidish 15:02, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sam, you seem to have a few questions, first person locutions ("our", "we", etc) and italics. I didn't change them, but this is just to warn that some folks might not approve....--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:04, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I know - but I'm operating according to DBuckner's 'defer to precedent' policy. Rhetorical questions, first person locutions, and italics (especially to indicate technical uses of terms) are all standard practice in philosophy, as we both know, and I don't see why they should be lost just to satisfy someone's - naming no names - particular tastes in prose. They're too useful, for a start. Thanks for all your comments and improvements, by the way. Cheers, Sam Clark 11:03, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I absolutely agree. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 11:35, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article seems to be mainly about distributive justice, and the wikiarticle about Justice describes two other kinds. Is the Global Justice philosophy you are writing about here only about distribution, or is this article unfinished? If it's only about distribution, I think you should include that in your abstract.

I come from Hitchhiker's Guide, and first persons are verboten not because of any Unitedkingdomese predilection, but because it's part of what's understood to be what you do to make an entry encyclopedia-like. I have read the beginner's stuff on Wikipedia (I'm new!) and so it seems that doing third person stuff is something you'd do to adapt your knowledge to this particular format. Is this correct?

Sea Change 07:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)Sea Change 00:00 22 August 2006[reply]

Hi, and thanks for your comments. 1. Distributive justice is one of the three central issues for the global justice debate (along with the scope of justice and institutions). The other kind of justice mentioned by Justice is retributive justice (not sure what the third kind you mention is), but there isn't really a separate debate about global retributive justice (to the extent that the issue is mentioned at all, it'd come under 'institutions' - international criminal courts etc.). 2. First person - the view of some active editors is that this should be avoided, but this isn't policy, to my knowledge. My view (expressed above) is that this is inappropriate for philosophical articles, because the appeal to what 'we' think is a useful tactic for exposing and challenging buried assumptions, and widely used in philosophy encyclopedias (I've just opened Honderich ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy at random and found two examples). Cheers, Sam Clark 09:40, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, the first person again. This new entry on "belief" in the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy has about sixteen "wes" in the lead section alone. Without it, the article would sound so awkward and unnatural that the author would probably have had his work rejected. This is, of course, a professional (i.e. soldi!!), peer-reviewed (in the strict sense of that term) publication.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 17:27, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]