Talk:Seville Statement on Violence

International relations: United Nations / Law Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject International relations, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of International relations on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.International relationsWikipedia:WikiProject International relationsTemplate:WikiProject International relationsInternational relations articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject United Nations.
	This article is supported by WikiProject International law.

Spain Low‑importance

	Spain portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Spain, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Spain on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SpainWikipedia:WikiProject SpainTemplate:WikiProject SpainSpain articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

I don't wish to defend the Statement of Violence, yet I find the following statement rather misleading :

"The Seville Statement has been criticized as being an example of the moralistic fallacy.", with a note : Davis, Bernard. The Moralistic Fallacy, Nature, 1978 Mar 30.[1]

The article cited may describe moralistic fallacy, but as it was published in 1978, I hardly see how it could aim at a declaration made in 1986.

That does seem strange indeed. I think it is also funny that this page seems to trumpet the view that violence is biologically inherent whereas other articles point out *that* as a fallacy and decries the work of people who espouse that view as fringe viewpoints. There's certainly no scientific consensus to support the claim that violence is inherent and cannot be transcended by humans.

The whole criticism section needs to be reworked and properly sourced. As it stands I would say it violates at the very least WP:NPOV because it basically reads as a partisan screed against all nonviolence. I know a lot of editors hate having criticism sections in general, and this is basically why. Personally I would be fine if there was a criticism section on every page of wikipedia, as long as it is done correctly.

Rather than remove anything though I am going to just remove the reference since it is not what it claims to be and put a tag on that sentence so that someone who wants it there can find a real reference. I guess while we're at it we can turn the bare links into real reference links as well. Rifter0x0000 (talk) 08:24, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the interest of keeping things so they can be reworked, this is the full text of the reference link:

<ref> Davis, Bernard. The Moralistic Fallacy, ''[[Nature (journal)|Nature]]'', 1978 Mar 30.[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11643452&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_docsum] </ref>

Okay, as my edit summary suggests I removed the 1978 source because it does not support the claim of criticism of the Seville Statement. It might support biological sources for violence; I don't know because I don't have the book. But I do know that a source has to say what we claim it does. I turned the other references into actual reference tags and changed the wording of the section to be more clear IMHO. I'm not completely happy with it only because I don't see anything in the summaries of Pinker's book to even suggest he covered inherent violence, much less the Seville Statement, in the book. He probably said what the article suggests, but he might not have said it in that book, so we should try and find out where and when he did say it, and maybe .. what he said. The other articles do address what they are supposed to, but it would be nice if we could find better journals and sources. I am unfamiliar with this physorg.com site, so I don't know how reliable it is, but its article does say it is referencing stuff from scientific journals. Still I think those articles are enough to support the claims that the statement has been criticized by scientists on the grounds of a theory of inherent biology in violent behaviour. I don't doubt that even more sources could be found for this; I just would rather we make sure to use the best sources we can. Rifter0x0000 (talk) 09:09, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]