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Philosophy Noticeboard

This is the central discussion area for WikiProject Philosophy. Feel free to discuss any topics relating to philosophy here. It is recommended that members watchlist this page.

WikiProject Philosophy was featured in a WikiProject Report in the Signpost on 25 July 2011.

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Proposed Changes to Atheism Article

Hi, a series of proposed changes to the atheism article and have been outlined at Talk:Atheism#article_.2F_source_discrepancies, comments would be appreciated.

Philosopher popularity

Here's the list of the top 20 most significant western philosophers as found in the book Human Accomplishment. The second column contains the philosopher's position on the wikipedia popular pages listing for philosopher.

The Man	Murray	popular	links
Aristotle	1.	012 (+11)	5235
Plato	2.	015 (+13)	3919
Kant	3.	025 (+22)	637
Descartes	4.	023 (+19)	558
Hegel	5.	076 (+71)	669
Aquinas	6.	045 (+39)	116
Locke	7.	018 (+11)	47
Hume	8.	063 (+55)	106
Augustine	9.	035 (+26)	126
Spinoza	10.	088 (+78)	367
Leibniz	11.	089 (+78)	357
Socrates	12.	021 (+9)	2110
Schopenhauer	13.	102 (+89)	285
Berkeley	14.	195 (+181)	146
Nietzsche	15.	019 (+4)	732
Hobbes	16.	036 (+20)	135
Russell	17.	062 (+45)	81
Rousseau	18.	029 (+11)	283
Plotinus	19.	276 (+257)	659
Fichte	20.	373 (+353)	94

I'm not at all surprised to see Plotinus getting the short end of the stick. Shopenhauer deserves better as well.

Any thoughts on this list? -Pollinosisss (talk) 16:54, 6 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nietzsche is severely under-estimated. Where is Kierkegaard? I'm an advocate of Hegel, but he is slightly over-estimated. Fichte seem over-estimated; I would suggest William James, Husserl, Heidegger or Wittgenstein in his place. The guy who wrote this list doesn't think very highly of 20th century continental philosophy. Rusell is over-estimated. I would make Plato numero uno, but that's just me. — goethean ॐ 17:49, 6 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, the book is by Charles Murray. Who cares what he thinks? — goethean ॐ 17:52, 6 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The list was made by looking at how much space philosophers were given in authoritative reference works. The author's opinion doesn't really have anything to do with it. He doesn't look past 1950 either. I suppose I should have mentioned these things.

I guess what I was curious about is how people felt about the wikipedia popularity list, especially as compared to the scholarly consensus list. My earlier remarks on Plotinus and Shopenhauer were regarding their positions on wikipedia. I may not have been very clear. Pollinosisss (talk) 18:14, 6 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What I am interested in seeing is "most wikilinked" which is not available in these listings :< Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 20:48, 6 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There you are. Paradoctor (talk) 12:59, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mathematosis (will be its own destruction?)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mathematosis

I wonder if anyone in the philosophy department will comment on this? I happen to think its a wonderful article, myself. The prevailing view seems to be that it should be merged with W.V.O. Quine, however only mathematicians have commented so far. I don't think the decision should be left to them alone for obvious reasons. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 20:55, 6 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Interlanguage cooperation in Marxism

Hallo, Science and Philosophy in general, and especially Marxism is a worldwide project without language-borders, or at least it should be. To me it seems that in the field of Marxism, the de.wikipedia and en.wikipedia are the most advanced projects as far as the number of articles, the depth of presentations are concerned. But for single topics, there are also important articles in the Spanish, Portugese, French, Italian, Dutch etc. Wikipedias. Due to a lack of skill in reading and language-comprehension, I don't survey the situation of Marxism in the Russian, Chinese or Japanese Wikipedia.

Now, most articles are written by amateurs or experts on the topics, article by article, without any coordination of the entire development of the encyclopaedia. So although much individual effort is put into the single articles, there is in comparison only few activity de:Wikipedia Diskussion:WikiProjekt Marxismus, and it seems also very few activity here in Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy/Marxism.

Further, there is an almost complete lack of exchange between the single projects across language borders. In comparison, a well coordinated project which I could imagine would try to bring each article to the best possible level by comparing articles in the different languages and supply the contents available.

So my question is, how could we organize an exchange of contents between the English and German Wikipedia in the field of Marxism (to start with), and could we extend such an exchange to other languages? Of course this refers a large number of articles (I guess much more than 1 000 articles), an would mean a large amount of work to be done, which on the long run could not be realized by a single person, or only a small group of persons.

-- Schwalker (talk) 14:07, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose one of the first steps in such an undertaking would be to identify articles that are in one wikipedia but not the other, but before that could even be done we would need to know what we ourselves have on the English wikipedia. At the present we have less than three hundred articles tagged as being related to Marxism; I very much doubt that this is a complete list of all English Marxism-related articles. Since September first, only thirteen articles have been added to the Marxism task force, and nine of those have been added by myself --someone who is completely uninterested in Marxism. In short, the interest appears to be lacking. - Pollinosisss (talk) 18:20, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Slightly less than 3000 pages on en.Wikipedia contain the string "marxism", so 300 pages is not bad. To set up an interwiki project, you might find the various embassies useful. Paradoctor (talk) 20:30, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Created Wikipedia:WikiProject Socialism... the Marxism taskforce should be merged...

Into the newly created project about the Socialist movement. --TIAYN (talk) 20:40, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That would be fine. I think they both should be organized under the social and political philosophy task force. However , it is not crucial that it is. The libertarianism group seems to operate fine outside of WP:PHILO and the anarchism group seems to operate fine within WP:PHILO. Perhaps we could do a better job really focusing in on the philosophical aspects if we kept a separate "marxist (or socialist) thought" group. There are a lot of movements, groups and events which do not lend themselves to the philosophy group in general. This is also true of some anarchism topics too. Perhaps we could split them all out from WP:PHILO to form a separate Social and political philosophy wikiproject with libertarianism, anarchism, socialism, liberalism, fascism set up as task forces of it. I think the assessment data collection might be be more meaningful if we did.

WikiProject Social and political philosophy separated out from WP:PHILO with task forces:

Socialism <== merge ==> Marxism
Libertarianism
Fascism
Anarchism
Liberalism (the content of which is covered by WP:POLITICS in general)
Corporatism (the content of which is not yet organized at all)

Any thoughts? Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 00:10, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really like the idea of breaking out "Social and political philosophy" into its own project. I wouldn't mind seeing the marxism and anarchism task forces as stand alone projects though. The anarchism task force has a ton of articles that aren't even about philosophy. Pollinosisss (talk) 03:19, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Proposals

I have given it some thought and I have four possible proposals (I support proposal IV):

I. Subsume Libertarianism, Fascism, Socialism/Marxism, and Anarchism into the Social and political philosophy task force of WP:PHILO.

II. Split out the Social and political philosophy task force from WP:PHILO into its own WikiProject and then subsume Libertarianism, Fascism, Socialism/Marxism, and Anarchism into it.

III. Just kick Anarchism and Marxism out of WP:PHILO.

IV. Designate the Social and political philosophy task force for only the most important and general topics in philosophy AND create a separate Social and political philosophy umbrella WikiProject subsuming Libertarianism, Fascism, Socialism/Marxism, and Anarchism. The assessment scheme is the only thing that changes in this proposal. Both the task force and the wikiproject can share the same namespace. The administrative issues remain unchanged. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 02:33, 2 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

African Philosophy

I'd like to bring this article to the attention of this wikiproject and ask if the members agree with this recent edit which essentially reset this article to a bare-bones stub. I'm definitely not an expert in the subject matter, but am concerned that such a drastic removal of content can be made without any attempt at preserving the useful bits. Also posted at the African WikiProject talk page. Apologize for the cross-posting. -- œ ^™ 01:25, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There is some useful content in the old version, but most of it was inappropriate for a quality encyclopaedia entry. Skomorokh, barbarian 01:43, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Projectivism

Is in dire need of clean up and has been for some time for anyone who is familiar with the topic. 207.69.137.23 (talk) 04:58, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comparative phenomenology

Can someone familiar with this topic look at the comparative phenomenology article? It looks like the author took it from his/her master's thesis and therefore has a conflict of interest. I'm not sure if the article is warranted as stand alone, should be merged with phenomenology, or should be deleted all together. Regards, PDCook (talk) 21:08, 28 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Analysis

It would be nice if some people from this project could have a say on Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_November_28#Category:Analysis. Thanks Mion (talk) 21:55, 28 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Deep Thinking

They're not philosophy as I understand the word, but "diactic" and others I've sent off to AfD are the coinages of a purported philosopher, so somebody here might conceivably be interested. (I don't know of a better place to announce this.) -- Hoary (talk) 01:32, 29 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, there is a deletion noticeboard for philosophy after all. Though until a few minutes ago it wasn't listed in the expected place. -- Hoary (talk) 13:23, 29 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Philosopher redirects

It's up for discussion. Do you want it? — This, that, and the other (talk) 09:19, 29 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pageview stats

After a recent request, I added WikiProject Philosophy/Medieval and others to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at:

Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the toolserver tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 00:36, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Philosopher's Summaries

I've just come from the Hume page. I think it would be excellent if in articles about philosophers, the beginning part included one or two key questions that the philosopher was interested in exploring, as an accessible yet intellectual introduction to topic.

At the moment in the Hume example, there are many references to other historical entities, which makes it obscure if you have little knowlege of the background. As questions provoke responses in the reader, it may open up deep and abstract subject matter, and draw people in. --79.78.235.118 (talk) 17:29, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Positive action

Isn't positive action a philosophical term? ~ R.T.G 21:47, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It may very well be; I'm not sure. May I ask why you ask? Pollinosisss (talk) 22:42, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Seeking helpful input. I should explain, it currently redirects to Affirmative Action (note capitals) with a defintition from Stanfords Dictionary of Philosophy that it "means" (in short) equality law. Of course positive action, action without negative connotations (note no capitals) is a much used phrase in its broader sense. The usual sourcing method, plain old searching the internet, is similarly swamped by the American coin on equality law. It says on Affirmative Action that Positive Action is the term used in the UK but as is evident from the sources, the term used in the UK is "take positive action" not "take Positive Action". That can be explained but would be pointless without possibility of improving the article(no good enough sources found). It's not a big deal but these phrases are often defined crrectly even when they are coined to something else. Perhaps someone here can quote or suggest a text or an online source? It's a common phrase in these waters Britain and Ireland. I don't think there was a time limit for defining it and as the parent of the Affirmative Action approach, will hardly dispute the meaning of that phrase (maybe folk will dispute it I don't even know that). I could have just stuck the project sticker on it but that does not qualify it for attention as it is obviously not a core philosophical topic. ~ R.T.G 03:36, 2 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Images

Looking for a free image of Zeno of Elea, I stumbled across this set, some of these images are probably of interest. Paradoctor (talk) 01:24, 2 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've looked in vain for a picture of Zeno of Elea. The one picture at Wikimedia [1] is definitely an engraving of a bust of Zeno of Citium. Although LIFE identifies this Marcus Meibomius picture as "Zeno of Elea", I strongly suspect that this too, is probably Zeno of Citium. There's a certain irony in the fact that Zeno of Elea is nowadays the more famous of the two Zenos. Until the twentieth century, the opposite was probably true. Singinglemon (talk) 17:59, 2 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'll let the Aesthetics task force butt heads over that one. ;) Pictures should be up in a few hours. Paradoctor (talk) 19:30, 2 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the proof, BTW, that the Marcus Meibomius image is of Zeno of Citium. Singinglemon (talk) 21:10, 2 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Book-class

Since several Wikipedia-Books are Philosophy-related, could this project adopt the book-class? This would really help WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, as the WP PHILO people can oversee books like Epistemology much better than we could as far as merging, deletion, content, and such are concerned. Eventually there probably will be a "Books for discussion" process, so that would be incorporated in the Article Alerts. I'm placing this here rather than on the template page since several taskforces would be concerned.

There's an article in this week Signpost if you aren't familiar with Wikipedia-Books and classes in general. Thanks. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 02:58, 2 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We already have the Philosophical literature task force. I wonder how they will develop together. Phil lit includes a lot of non-book literature.Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 03:15, 2 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think you misunderstood, this is for Wikipedia-Books and not for books or other literature. Take a look at Wikipedia:Books/Epistemologyand it should be a bit clearer. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 03:23, 2 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh I get it. The Book-class isn't for articles about books, its for "Books" constructed by Wikipedians. I don't see any big problems or big advantages in adopting it, so we might as well... Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 04:53, 2 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 261: / Line 261: @@
 Looking for a free image of [[Zeno of Elea]], I stumbled across [http://images.google.com/images?q=Marcus+Meibomius&q=source%3Alife this] set, some of these images are probably of interest. [[User:Paradoctor|Paradoctor]] ([[User talk:Paradoctor|talk]]) 01:24, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
+:I've looked in vain for a picture of [[Zeno of Elea]]. The one picture at Wikimedia [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Zeno_of_Elea] is definitely an engraving of a bust of [[Zeno of Citium]]. Although [[Life (magazine)|LIFE]] identifies [http://images.google.com/images?q=Marcus+Meibomius+zeno&q=source%3Alife this Marcus Meibomius picture] as "Zeno of Elea", I strongly suspect that this too, is probably Zeno of Citium. There's a certain irony in the fact that Zeno of Elea is nowadays the more famous of the two Zenos. Until the twentieth century, the opposite was probably true. [[User:Singinglemon|Singinglemon]] ([[User talk:Singinglemon|talk]]) 17:59, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
+:: I'll let the Aesthetics task force butt heads over that one. ;) Pictures should be up in a few hours. [[User:Paradoctor|Paradoctor]] ([[User talk:Paradoctor|talk]]) 19:30, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
+:::[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zenonzitiokoa.JPG Here's the proof], BTW, that the Marcus Meibomius image is of Zeno of Citium. [[User:Singinglemon|Singinglemon]] ([[User talk:Singinglemon|talk]]) 21:10, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 == Book-class ==