Talk:Profession

List of Professions

Teachers should be removed they follow federal and state guidelines for what they teach in most cases. Thus there is little sense of autonomy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.200.202.160 (talk) 05:45, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Interpreters should be removed. To be an interpreter does not require any formal training (only understanding of 2 languages, spoken or otherwise), nor is there any professional body charged with the development of interpreting as a profession and enforcement of professional standards.

Stockbroking should be added, along with fincial advising; they do meet the above criteria and other usual criteria. WikiDMc (talk) 15:26, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Several of the alleged "professions" should be removed, as they do not have any sort of licensing regulation. Professors and scientists, for example, are not licensed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.9.212.197 (talk) 01:50, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

The whole List of Professions section needs to either be removed, or completely overhauled for a number of reasons.

• The list is inexhaustive and which professions end up in the list has no consistent rule. It reads as though they were all added randomly by contributors who felt that their own profession needed to be in the list.
• There is debate as to various inclusions. Comments as to which professions meet the outlined criteria should not be in the article. Debate should take place here on the talk page, never within the article itself.
• The list sits oddly within the context of the article, and jars the reader's flow.
• The references given relate to only some of the list, and are somewhat weak. Perhaps the list would be better of if simply pulled directly from one government source. i.e.
• This list is not particularly illustrative of the rest of the article. It does not continue the points made, or interelate with the concepts of Professionalism.

Perhaps this list would be best moved to its own article, so that "Profession" can keep a tighter focus. In short, the current status of this list does not serve this article well. Andrewaskew (talk) 00:23, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Split

This list would be best moved to its own article, so that "Profession" can keep a tighter focus. There is enough information here for a list article. That article can then outline formal criteria for inclusion and notability. --Andrewaskew (talk) 05:01, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Support: I support the split, SchreyP ^(messages) 20:27, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

The concept of profession

The present article is strongly influenced by current business usage. It could be improved by placing "profession" in its historical context and recognizing the diversity of its related meanings: 1) The Latin word professio means a public declaration or acknowledgement (D. P. Simpson, Cassell's New Latin Dictionary, NY 1960; there are probably more updated sources for this). It is related to the verb profiteor, "to profess," which could at that time include announcing one's candidacy for public office. 2) This original meaning survives today in the "profession of faith" or creed in the Catholic Church and probably other religions. (See Roman Missal) 3) It is also used for "religious profession," in which a person becomes a member of a religious institute by "professing" poverty chastity and obedience through vows or promises. See Code of Canon Law, Canon 654: "By religious profession members assume by public vow the observance of the three evangelical counsels, are consecrated to God through the ministry of the Church, and are incorporated into the institute with rights and duties determined by law." 4) Already in classical Latin, a person could "profess" a science or art, such as law or philosophy, indicating his competence to be of service in that area. The idea of "profession" as an occupation occurs in Suetonius (cited in Cassell). 5) In the early Middle Ages, religious life was considered a "profession" in the occupational sense. John Cassian, writing ca. 425 about his life as a monk, says, "Our profession also has a scopos [goal] proper to itself." (John Cassian, The Conferences, transl. by Boniface Ramsey, O.P., Ancient Christian Writers #57, Paulist Press, NY, 1997, I.3) The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary gives all these nuances and more. I am using the 6th edition (Oxford, England, 2007). SrMElizabeth (talk) 13:20, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

My response is that NOT being an article about history, religion or medieval society, it's hard to see how much of what you say can be fitted in, interesting though it is. Maybe you can insert into the article a short paragraph of just a few lines to summarise your points with citations? And see how others see it. That might be a great starting point. It is up to others to keep or throw out whatever you come up with. thanks Peter morrell 04:53, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I find the historical background very interesting; it's precisely the kind of information I like seeing in a Wikipedia article. Under its own subheading, I think information like this provides an excellent background context. It's likely, in the coming century, that our concept of professions will continue to evolve. I feel that the historical context contributes by demonstrating how malleable the concept of professions is, by showing how much it has already changed. --EcoChap (talk) 10:24, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Science as not fitting rule 5 and 6

Plenty of national associations out there... many commonwealth nations have a Royal Society (not to mention THE Royal Society). America has the AAAS. All of these societies have codes of ethics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.174.168.16 (talk) 01:22, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Scientist is quite a broad term. In the UK, the terms Chartered Environmentalist, Chartered Scientist and Chartered Biologist are legally protected and only granted to professionals. --EcoChap (talk) 10:16, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Philosophy

Philosophy does not meet criteria 6-7, but it does meet 5. For example, in America, we have the American Philosophical Association. So I have changed the entry to reflect this fact.

Concerning criteria 6-7: Philosophy does (and probably always will) fail to meet criteria 7, but criteria 6 is a strange standard to apply to philosophy. Given that philosophy takes ethics as one of its topics of research, philosophy is uniquely unable to adopt a profession-wide standard of ethics. If the profession is inquiring into, disagreeing over, debating, and questioning ethics, the profession cannot have a profession-wide ethical standard. Which is to say, you can't have a profession-wide ethics for philosophy for the same reason you can't have a profession-wide theory of physics for science. Inquiry into, disagreement over, debate concerning wildly different theories of physics is one of the subjects of science and so science cannot have a theory of physics imposed upon it as a professional standard.

I am not saying criteria 6 is an incorrect criteria for professions, but this would seem to be a special case given the nature of this particular profession that it only makes sense to judge philosophy by criteria 1-5 and 7. Which is to say, that given the unique circumstances regarding philosophy, criteria 6 doesn't make sense as a criteria for judging whether or not philosophy is a profession. Criteria 6 must be "bracketed"/"ignored" here since philosophy uniquely cannot force a philosophical ethical theory on the field as a whole. Good general criteria often need to make exceptions for unique cases, and philosophy is one of them concerning criteria 6 given that ethics is a part of the subject matter of philosophy.

- Atfyfe (talk) 22:34, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I tried keeping it short, but in some way indicating that while philosophy fails to meet criteria 6-7, criteria 6 may be inappropriate to apply in this case. Here's the way I put it in the entry: "Philosophers (does not fulfill criteria 7, thus does not qualify as a profession as described above; also does not fulfill criteria 6, but 6 may be uniquely inapplicable in this case since ethics is a subject in philosophy)" - Atfyfe (talk) 22:46, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Doctors are not necessarily physicians

The link of Doctor should be corrected and pointed to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_%28title%29 which is more appropriate than physician.