Talk:Philosophy/Archive 7

message: * JA: A true philosopher is someone who thinks that Wff means "warm fuzzy feeling".  & dat's da truth!  Jon Awbrey 19:20, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition 

message: I agree with Mel's position.  Indeed I argued last December that we should stop working on the article and create a draft page somewhere.  My problem then, and still is, that this article doesn't have enough qualified philosophers working on it.  I am prepared to work with a bunch of people who have studied it or teach it in a reputable institution, but not with anyone who writes stuff like this
"It [philosophy] spans the nature of the universe, the mind, and the body; the relationships between all three, and between people."
"In the modern context, it is used both formally and informally to refer to concepts in knowledge, reason, logic, and belief in their most elemental and abstracted forms."
or who claims that philosophy is a kind of alchemy or whatever.  Mel, I put you in the first category, and there are are few others.  But not many.
I looked at the Schutte version.  It's not bad, but filled with ungrammatical or plain bad things like
"The mid-twentieth century for the English-speaking world is less united behind a major philosophical trend than it had been in the past"
" During the same period, much great Western philosophy was coming from philosophers with non-Christian backgrounds"
However, this article follows a largely historical plan, and because we haven't worked out a plan for the article, we don't know yet whether we should put stuff like this in History of philosophy which we reference in a brief paragraph or whether we put the whole lot in.
Nonetheless, this version is the first to step back from the obsession with the Introduction, and look at the content.
I agree with Mel that we should step back.  Agree an overall 'size' for the article, agree what the main sections should be, agree at the same time what to do with the overlapping articles History of philosophy, History of Western philosophy, Western philosophy.
Also, we should think about what the major articles 'underneath' should be.  The point of the 'top' article should be to draw the reader into the main subject areas underneath.  Thus the history bit would draw the reader to the three eras of classical philosophy, 'medieval' philosophy (everything from Augustine to Suarez), 'modern' philosophy (or however you want to carve it up).
Dbuckner 08:58, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: How it can be improved

message: I hope nobody minds, but I have been doing some much needed copyediting on this page.  I will do my absolute best to keep authorial intent, but if you notice something change drastically, let me know and I will fix it.  The biggest problem throughout the first half of the article was mainly verbs, with ineffective sentence structures coming up second.
:Copy-editing is greatly appreciated, the article does need it ;-). Ig0774 05:01, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Necessary Copyediting

message: An issue mentioned by no one here, as it is implicitly assumed to be insignificant or the correct approach, is that the article is wholly West-centric. The article is about philosophy, not about Western philosophy, which already has the lion's share of philosophy articles on Wikipedia. It is not enough to merely put up token sections on Eastern philosophy, the article itself must attempt to reach a balance by using the broadest definitions of Philosophy that encompass various historical traditions instead of simply repeating the insularity and narrow-mindedness of typical Western introductory coursebooks. These points came up before, a long time ago. You can visit the achives to review the discussions. At that time the article did not reach a suitable final form, but it did at least begin to reach a point where the POV was not as overt and offensive. Take a look at this edit for example - these parts have rather conveniently disappeared:
:In Ancient Greek philosophy, these five broad types of questions were respectively called analytical or logical, epistemological, ethical, metaphysical, and aesthetic. They are not the only ones, and Aristotle, who was the first to use this classification, also considered politics, modern day physics, geology, biology, meteorology, and astronomy some of the other branches of philosophical investigation. The Greeks, through of the influence of Socrates and his method, developed a tradition of analysis, dividing a subject into its components to understand it better.
:Other traditions did not always use such labels, or emphasize the same themes. Though Hindu philosophy has similarities with Western philosophy, there was no word for philosophy in Japanese, Korean or Chinese until the 19th century, despite the presence of philosophy there over millennia. Chinese philosophers in particular had a different conception of categories from the Greeks, and their definitions were not based on common features, but were usually metaphorical and referred to several subjects at once [1]. However, there are no distinct boundaries between categories even in Western philosophy, and since at least the 19th century, Western philosophical works have more often addressed a nexus of questions without sorting them into distinct areas.
Or these links:
*Chinese philosophy   
*Buddhist philosophy   
*Hindu philosophy  
*Islamic philosophy
*Jewish philosophy
*Russian philosophy
*Czech philosophy
*Japanese philosophy
Also, in speaking of modern philosophy, there is a tendency to overemphasize Anglo-American aspects and denigrate Continental philosophy as much as possible, which is partly understandable given that most English Wikipedia editors come from the same background and the majority of Philosophy departments in English speaking countries are fairly ignorant of or self-righteous about anything slightly outside the mainstream. However, until the inherent POV among the article's editors is reduced, the article will stay unsatisfactory and biased. -- Simonides 05:03, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inherent bias 

message: There are some good free articles at the link below. For people completely ignorant of the various meanings of philosophy outside a single tradition, it's a fairly good start. If you are a student or a staff member at a University, you can also probably access the subscription-only articles:
http://www.rep.routledge.com/signpost-articles
Hopefully these articles from an acclaimed philosophy encyclopedia (rather than some general one) will give us some pointers on how to write a good introduction that differentiates itself from articles already on Wikipedia. Comments, thoughts, suggestions etc welcome. -- Simonides 01:04, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I wrote Definition of philosophy in an attempt to show where other reference works agree or disagree in the definition of philosophy.  No definition given here should be radically different from those ones.  It should not necessarily be the same of course.  Dbuckner 08:23, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online 

message: The latest rewrite is awful.  It tries to cram three sentences worth of ideas into a single sentence.  But it is no more awful than dozens that have gone before.  A number of intelligent, informed people who write well have worked on this article.  Fragments of what they have written remain, here and there, in the motley that the article has become, due to extensive rewrites on almost a daily basis for months.  But most of the good writers are gone, because this is one of the few places were the wiki way seems to fail, where bad writing drives out good.  There are too many tenured professors of philosophy who, after teaching their classes, have hours to spend.  Wiki, with no referee to refuse to publish what they write, must seem an ideal way to pass an otherwise dull afternoon.
So, here is my suggestion.  Everything must be footnoted.  If it isn't footnoted, out it goes.  That won't help the prose, but at least the content should improve.  Thoughts? Rick Norwood 19:04, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A modest proposal. 

message: To disagree with someone's point of view, even to disagree strongly, is not a personal attack.  Nor is it a personal attack to critize a piece of prose.  The only point where things went too far in the area of name calling that I recall was the whole "dog's breakfast" episode -- which I think we can now all see left the article in much worse shape than it was before.  But even "dog's breakfast" was an attack on the article, not on the people writing it.
It seems to me that the biggest problem here is those of us willing to write a thousand words when a smaller number of well chosen words would be much more effective. Rick Norwood 23:31, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, but you seem have a problem with the well chosen words.  Dbuckner 12:39, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Heh, after that episode I'm leaving this article well alone. Infinity0 talk 00:13, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  That was the intended outcome.  Dbuckner 12:39, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Not in that section. The reference to Simonides as a "crank" is what I was referring to. Lucidish 00:26, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  On bullshit 

message: Notes:
Firstly, I haven't started editing on this article myself because a) I respect the fact that everyone's having a discussion on it; it's more civil than some of the other Talk pages I participate on, anyway; b) edits I make would probably affect the whole article, so c) I don't want some editors to think I'm pissing on their work and being arbitrary, hence my long, preliminary justifications.
Next, I of course accept dbuckner's apology, I'm happy to put these silly episodes behind, but I am not retracting any of the impersonal points I brought up regarding the slant of the article and the fact it reproduces much that can be found on other articles.
Thirdly, I think it's a bit disappointing that all of us here, who have some relation or the other to philosophical texts, reasoning etc aren't analysing the roots of the problem well enough, and that our solutions aren't constructively creative enough. Let me give a few examples of thorny areas, all of which relate to my points about Philosophy not being the Philosophy predominant in Anglo-American academia:
1) The use of categories, themes etc is itself problematic. While these were well-defined areas about two centuries ago, they don't have a lot of relevance to the way philosophy comes about in some European schools of thought - there isn't so much of a philosophy of (some subject - law/etc) as a philosophy applied to a variety of subjects. For example, even though writers like Foucault, Barthes and Bourdieu did not call themselves and were not professionally designated as 'philosophers' (unlike Lyotard, Deleuze, Derrida and others) no contemporary philosopher in the Continental tradition would ignore their work, and they are widely considered 'philosophy' despite their specializations in other areas, although they are of peripheral interest if at all to 'philosophers' in Anglo-American traditions ; the same would go for thinkers like Marx, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard from the 19th century. Most or all of these writers were not interested in developing a 'system' or adding to an existing one. While their work may be seen as a unified whole and thus a 'system' to the extent that it is self-consistent, approaches problems in a particular way, or creates a new subset or framework of thought, they aren't 'formal' or 'tabular' in the way certain works on logic are, or as Spinoza's and Kant's books, etc were. To say 'philosophy can be subdivided into the philosophy of mathematics/politics/ethics etc' creates a false picture of philosophical work being the extension of some well-defined, foundational system of confirmable truths the way science is.
2) The idea that there is a single tradition called Philosophy 'in the West' itself relies on two abstractions - a general agreement on what philosophy is (which doesn't exist, as hinted above) and that there is a clear notion of what constitutes 'the West.' It's generally assumed that what is not Eastern is Western, or that what is Anglo-American-European is Western, when, for instance, there are traditions within Europe itself that aren't grouped as part of 'Continental' philosophy. First I have to clear up something - nowhere have I written or insisted as RK complained there is a 'national' or 'ethnic' way of thinking, this was his own strawman to provoke reverts, etc, unimportant here - rather, I've always mentioned 'traditions' or 'authors' whose work is not confined by geography. There are some interrelated issues with respect to any discussion of tradition:
*Unfortunately, such authors or traditions may only be remembered best or studied seriously in certain geographical areas, which leads to their geographical categorisation. What do I mean by this? Simply that, for example, the religious, social or political problems raised by some East European philosophers have for numerous reasons - barriers of language, or political alienation, etc - been ignored, forgotten, or never emphasized by academics who insist on their own, narrowest ideas of philosophy. Are these works less philosophical or important simply because they are not known? Of course not. There are usually a variety of factors contributing to their lack of recognition outside a certain (sufficiently large) community.
*Not mentioning them leads to the false idea that there is no interest or serious work done outside of the countries where the 'major philosophers' lived, worked etc in and to the nonsensical ideas criticised above, ie that there are 'national'/'ethnic' ways of thinking, or at least 'predispositions'/lack thereof towards philosophy. This is not to deny, of course, that where a set of cultural norms/ ethnic groups, and body of philosophy coincide, there is a reason to speak of a certain 'national' tradition, ex. China.
*A certain 'tradition' itself is not an exclusive strain, like a rare biological species; rather, 
:#there is a great deal of osmosis, at least from one predominant cultural tradition to another, especially where a 'reverse' osmosis might not exist. For instance, since many Indians speak English, an Indian philosopher is likely to study a great deal of both Anglo-American and Indian Analytic philosophy and use comparable concepts from both; however, an American Analytic philosopher may never be interested in the work of the former, or anything in the Indian tradition.
:#the fact that such osmosis exists doesn't mean that the tradition is open to or open-minded about other competing traditions. The Indian philosopher, again, may not be interested in similar work done in Japan which uses elements of Japanese and Anglo-American Analytic philosophy.
:#a 'tradition' always ends up being a hybrid, ex. Latin American philosophers whose core references may all be to European philosophy, but whose specialised areas of study are the works of other Latin American philosophers. Their philosophy is not less important/interesting/innovative etc, it simply doesn't receive the same kind of attention in, say, the UK that a UK philosopher might. 
This is why the 'narrowest definitions' of a tradition are inherently false, condescending and detrimental. It's not that only certain countries or ethnic groups engage in such narrow definitions, it's common to the majority.
Essentially, traditions have to be talked about not as 'secondary areas' or 'geographical variations' but simply differing approaches to philosophy (their degree of difference being another issue). Understandably, this brings us back to being broad-minded about the definition of philosophy itself, and writing an article that is respectful of all these differences. That is not to suggest that there is a 'default', 'median', 'standard', etc philosophy, simply that philosophy itself is a kind of aggregate, with certain defining but not always essential features in common.
3) The idea that contemporary religious philosophy, Eastern or Western, is 'unphilosophical'. I happen to be an atheist, but I don't think religious philosophy is worthless, and the works of Levinas, for ex., are among the most highly praised philosophical pieces of 20th century European philosophy; and people too easily forget that most European philosophy until the mid-19th century could be classified under 'religious philosophy', no matter how secular its methods and conclusions were. This creates the problem of distinguishing philosophy from non-philosophy, because religious philosophy begins from the very assumption of ideas, of faiths, that have no confirmable value - yet we're also aware that 'religious philosophy' can be confused with any mystical or evangelical nonsense that is a favourite domain of religious nutjobs; some compromise has to be found between dismissing all religious thinking as inherently unphilosophical, and accepting all religious belief or practice as a 'branch of philosophy' (which is false). 
In addition:
4) The difficulty of separating something that is superficially 'like' philosophy (ex. Ayn Rand) from what most critical people accept it as. Or the work of certain popularisers, etc. - all of these people may have impressive credentials, and their publications may be intelligent and perceptive, without being philosophy, so credentials, popular acceptance etc are themselves are not a good source of credibility.
5) Generally speaking, there is also a problem of historical perspective: 
#most people tend to overevaluate work (in any field) that is recent or contemporary, comparing it favourably with past work of a much higher stature.
#they will also redefine past work according to current paradigms regardless of nuances, the philosopher's own claims, etc; for ex., after the popularity of Existentialism, a great deal of work which is not really so has been tagged with the term; the same with the label 'Postmodernist' which does not actually apply to Derrida, for ex., but is constantly used in this sense both popularly and by some people either in academia or its fringes, giving it the semblance of appopriateness.
6) Let's not get too hung up on definitions or the intro. The less spoken of the better, so we can go straight to the problems, varieties etc of philosophy.
Forgive me if this is preaching to the choir. I just think such issues aren't sufficiently addressed, even if they have come up before. -- Simonides 12:07, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a very clear elucidation of some of the major problems we have to tackle here.  Any ideas on how we might approach them? KSchutte 22:34, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Talking about Philosophy 

message: I've started a new heading, in hopes of moving on to the next section of the article.  I would really like to see this article in good shape before the Spring term ends.
The article Definition of philosophy is, unlike this one, full of actual research.  I think the definition section here would benefit by simply summarizing the research there. Rick Norwood 15:09, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  definition 

message: There is currently an AfD for Omnibenevolence.
My thoughts are that the articles on arguments about god need something to link to to explain the concept of (omni)benevolence, and benevolence is currently about a totally unrelated subject. Infinity0 talk 19:33, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  AfD on Omnibenevolence 

message: The main thing needed in this section are references.  Which of Aristotle's works contain this classification.  What book by Christian Wolff should be referenced. 
The last paragraph is clearly original research, and the assertion that in phylosophy there are no specialists is unsupported. Rick Norwood 22:57, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Aristotle's works were not published by Aristotle--they were divided up into different books by later thinkers, based on notes from his lectures (See Corpus Aristotelicum and a comprehensive list of his works in the bibliography section of Aristotle).  So even the question of exactly how they got divided up the way they did is a historical question, where answers have changed according to the historian.  To sum up, "Aristotelian classification" comes from both Aristotle and the people who came after him, organizing his works (and adding ones of their own under his name).  WhiteC 18:33, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

text: This division of philosophy into several categories has a long history, but it is not directly traceable to any of Aristotle's (extant) works. That said, there are certain phrases in Aristotle's works that hint at how he may have conceived the structure of philosophy (though, rather unhelpfully, commentators disagree on what this structure might be...). I am, however, unsure where this specific division of Aristotle's works originates (though it is fairly obvious which works it stresses). Ig0774 20:26, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

text: See below but in direct reply, further research suggests the article Christian Wolff is correct.  Dean Buckner
I originally wrote the branches of philosophy section (now somewhat changed – what is the bit at the bottom doing?  I do have a reference for the claim that the modern division originated with Wolff, but in any case the claim is clearly inaccurate.  
On Aristotle's division, that comes from an old Thomist book of mine.  But as CWhite pointed out, these divisions were imposed by later editors.  
I'm not sure of a good approach to this section.  But I'm pleased to see less of the piecemeal editing approach & a rational discussion about how to put the article together.  Altogether more promising & I will contribute to the discussion when I have more time next week.  Dbuckner 08:52, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Generally, I agree with KSchutte here.  I would like to see something like "The definition of philosophy is a difficult matter, but..." and then a discussion of what philosophy is, trying to avoid an etymology of the word 'philosophy' except as needed to differentiate between contemporary and earlier uses of the word.  Unfortunately, that doesn't mean I can think of a good, brief replacement for the OED definition.  I do like the end of the 1st paragraph and the 2nd paragraph of the introduction, though.  WhiteC 16:03, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Am I the only one who thinks that using the term 'modern philosophy' to refer to all philosophy since Descartes is out of step with academic practice?  I think several authors would not use 'modern philosophy' to refer to anything after 1900.  WhiteC 16:18, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is any area in which there seems to be no universal agreement among academics; some say we are still in the "modern" age, others disagree (you might note that this article equivocates on the use of this term as well). I am not sure that there is a satisfactory way to deal with this other than to carefully contextualize each use. Ig0774 17:04, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

text: "Post-modern", despite being a relatively unenlightening and horrible term, is used by respectable scholars (i.e., Chuck Levine and Jim Cote) to describe a particular kind of philosophical apathy and anomie in advanced technological societies, especially with respect to issues relating to politics and personal identity. The difference between the quacks and those who are genuinely concerned about this sort of thing can be drawn between those who defend "postmodernity" (like Kenneth Gergen) and those who don't. Having said that, yeah, "postmodern" is a lousy term. IIRC Cote and Levine suggest "high modern" instead. Lucidish 20:05, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I prefer "contemporary" to "postmodern", and I think "contemporary philosophy" lacks cuteness, but I am not sure how widespread its usage is to refer, approximately to philosophy of 20th century and later.  I would like to see an explanation of the difficulties/disagreements in defining "modern" philosophy mad explicit somewhere in the article, even if it is a footnote.  WhiteC 18:59, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Branches of philosophy