Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy/Archive 1

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Anarchism Task Force

Hey folks, a few of us who do work on anarchism-related articles figured it would make sense to have a project of our own, and thought it might be easiest to just create an Anarchism Task Force here, akin to the Marxism Task Force. But I wanted to check in here before just creating it, and make sure that there aren't any weird hoops we have to jump through to make it happen. Opinions? Concerns? Murderbike (talk) 04:31, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds sensible to me - almost as many anarchist philosophy students as vegetarians ones! Alternatively, you could operate in the aparently uninhabited Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy/Social and political task force. You might want to leave a message on GregBard's talk page too, given that he set up the taskforce system - although he seems to check here regularly. Anarchia (talk) 21:01, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the response Anarchia! I've sent Greg a note, anyone else care to pipe in? Murderbike (talk) 08:06, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The anarchism task force as a task force of philosophy doesn't really fit in with my vision of the organization. However I am certainly open-minded on how things can work out. The task forces were set up with the idea of mirroring a university philosophy curriculum. There are at least eight political cultures: Anarchism, Oligarchy, Fascism, Tory Corporatism, Classical Liberalism, Radical Liberalism, Democratic Socialism, and Communism. From my limited experience I've only seen classes in Marxist Thought taught, but none of the others. I think Marxist thought was considered a major tradition in philosophy. However I don't think that is as true today. That's okay. I think anarchism qualifies just fine.

The main function of the banner tag is assessment. The goal is to have a set of articles which together form a meaningful field to potential authors.

I have populated the assessment by tagging a lot of articles in certain categories, however I have not started on the Social and Political task force. The category Anarchism was originally meant to be under that one. This task force turns out to be rather large, and so it might be a good idea to split it out like Marxism. (Maybe fascism isn't far behind)

There are a few ways we can make it work...

I. We can designate it as a subproject of the potentially large social and political task force and just tag these with the social=yes or political=yes inserted into the banner tag. This is consistent with the Philosophy of religion task force's relationship with each particular religion's wikiproject. We haven't been bringing in a lot of religion other than concepts and philosophers. I'm not really sure how far open the gates are for topics under philosophy so I present this option. This option will avoid creating a whole new task force.

II. We can designate a new task force under wp:philosophy. This will reduce the need for the potentially large soc+pol task force in those areas, although we may have an overlap of some of the most relevant articles. This leaves open the question about fascism and perhaps others. I will have to add the new task force into the banner script, etc.

III. We can designate it as a WikiProject with a separate assessment system. The size and subject qualify as nearly as I can tell. There will not be any problems with anyone claiming any particular article is "not philosophy." However, I think the trend these days is to task force-ize as much as possible so as to cut down on banner clutter, and expand the exposure of those articles to people interested in the broader subject of philosophy, especially academics.

I think we should tag the soc+pol task force articles first. I will tag only the most important and relevant anarchism related articles as under soc+pol. Then we will see how big soc+pol is. I'm pretty sure option number two will work just fine. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 10:33, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I definitely think option 2 would work best for us, a whole new WikiProject seems like too much, and I don't really see the point of the first one. We've got our project page about done, just kind of waiting for opinions here for the step to go live. Murderbike (talk) 23:22, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't count out the first option completely. The more I think about it, the more I think a larger reorganization is apt. I am thinking of some combination of I and II. Also, the more I think about it, the Marxism task force deserves a bit of a demotion in the heirarchy so that it makes sense for the volume of articles and relevance to the larger project.

I think it can be arranged so that the Social and Political Philosophy task force has subprojects that benefit from the assessment of the Soc+Pol Phil group. Marxism, Anarchism, and potentially Fascism could also have their own assessment statistics that inform the soc+pol statistics. Perhaps a similar restructure under phil of religion too? Each "subproject" in this scheme could have all the appearance of a full fledged wikiproject, but with an organizational structure within the philosophy hierarchy.

Currently I am populating the Soc+Pol task force, but I have been slowing down in the tagging lately. I have reverted to piecemeal efforts.

Feel free to move your Anarchism task force work into the redlink address under the option II. None of the proposed directions will be effected by that I don't think.

Comments? Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 02:06, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I think I speak for the rest of the potential contributors to the Anarchism Whatever Force when I say that we don't really care about where we fit into the hierarchy (i.e. equal or subordinate to soc/pol), but that we would like to associate articles related to anarchism with the AWF. I think the implication of this is that as long as anarchism-related articles are tagged with anarchism=yes as well as any other tags (i.e. soc/pol=yes), and that we have an independently-listed assessment statistics (even if the anarchism articles are assessed in the same manner/by the same group as the soc/pol, marxism or whatever other taskforces). So the best thing to do I think is to go ahead with Option II for the time being, and leave it up to you, Anarchia and the other meta-contributors to WP:Phil to decide where it fits in the hierarchy once you have the soc/pol task force where you want it and matters are clearer. Skomorokh ^incite 16:28, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I think I like II as well. It seems likely to make it simpler for the anarchists to access the information they need and for others to avoid them :P. Anarchia (talk) 23:03, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I definitely couldn't have put it better than Skomorokh did. All the hierarchy talk goes way over my head. I don't really care where we are, as long as we have a space, and can tag anarchism-related articles as being affiliated with our task force. Murderbike (talk) 23:09, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Option II has been implemented per consensus. Thanks very much for your input and let me know if I've screwed up any of your delicate parser syntax and whatnot! Regards, Skomorokh ^incite 02:14, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Importance ratings: taskforce or WikiProject?

Hello, a question from the Anarchism taskforce. While rating articles for importance to anarchism, we have come across some articles that have existing ratings for importance to philosophy; where there exists a difference in im Max Stirner for example, is highly influential in anarchist thought, deserving of a High rating, but of marginal significance to philosophy (Mid perhaps). A further problem is anarchism-relate articles that are completely unrelated to philosophy, such as Black Bloc - these articles are included in the philosophy categories. For the moment, we are treating importance to anarchism as the relevant criteria for importance ratings, but some clairification/technical tweaks could be useful. Skomorokh ^incite 18:39, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

New article needs some help

Hi there. Via a post at Requests for feedback, I've been trying to help a new editor clean up the article he started on Semiotic Matrix Theory (SMT). I've done what fixes I can, but since this is far enough outside my personal area of knowledge, I don't even have enough confidence that I understand it enough to even write a lead to summarize the article. I'm hoping some of you who understand it better can whip it into a better Wikipedia standard. Cheers! —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 00:25, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Glossary of philosophical isms

This glossary is nearing completion (and is one of the most comprehensive glossaries on Wikipedia), and has only about 80 entries that are missing definitions! If everyone contributed a definition or two, it would be completed easily. Please chip away at this objective by chipping in. The simplest way to provide definitions is to copy and paste them from the lead section of the article of the same name (and then edit them to fit better, reduce wordiness, etc.). Thank you. The Transhumanist 04:08, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Now only 75 entries without definitions. The Transhumanist 06:03, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

It's now down to only 51 entries that are missing definitions! Please help finish it. The Transhumanist 08:24, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

41 entries left! Please help finish these off. The Transhumanist 03:11, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I can't believe you've left out Anarcho-primitivism! Murderbike (talk) 04:02, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I can't believe you left it out even after you mentioned it! The Transhumanist (talk) 12:37, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Touché! Will do it now. Murderbike (talk) 02:22, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Cool. The Transhumanist (talk) 07:10, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Only 32 entries left undefined! Special thanks to User:Sharkface217 for completing 20 entries. The Transhumanist 12:37, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

A number of the -isms in the glossary are not philosophical. How was the list compiled? Postmodern Beatnik ([[User talk:|talk]]) 18:35, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Be sure to post this on the article's talk page - the editors there will no doubt want to know this. The Transhumanist (talk) 07:10, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

It's pretty darn finished right now. With a little bit of love (and a lot of copyediting), I think this page could become a featured list. --Sharkface217 20:06, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Heidegger: need some help

I am new to the english Wikipedia and did some editing of Being and Time and commented on Martin Heidegger on the discussion page, but did not get an answere so far. I worte the german articles Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Letter on Humanism and think I can improve the english ones as well. But I'm no native speaker and often my grammar need corrections and I do some typographic errors, that need to be recheckt. I also would need someone who could look up the english translations for some of Heidegger's terminology. We could archiev a great deal by this work, because as a native german speaker I have "access" to Heidegger's complete works (Gesamtausgabe (Heidegger)), this means also the works that are not translated (yet). So is there anyone here who's interessted in Heidegger and his work and who'd like to work with me? Greetings from Berlin, Germany -- Tischbeinahe (talk) φιλο 08:43, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Avicenna and Avicennism

Hi, Recently we have splited Avicenna article into two article and moved philosophical thought of Avicenna and the effects of his philosophy to a new article, Avicennism. Please check this article and help us with it or add your idea in the talk page. Thanks.--Seyyed(t-c) 11:03, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Untangling a knot

Please participate in the discussion of Pragmatic maxim (AfD discussion). Uncle G (talk) 18:33, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Is www.earlymoderntexts.com spam?

I've argued in favor of linking it at Talk:John_Locke#Bennett_link. Having got no response from User:RJC today, I'd like to see others' opinions. Note links to the site are potentially relevant to the articles of thirteen major philosophers and some of their works (maybe more in the future). trespassers william (talk) 02:13, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

It's full!

All but two of the definitions in the glossary of philosophical isms have been filled in! Be sure to thank Sharkface217 for all his hard work. He deserves it.

That's right, there are only two terms on there that are missing definitions.

The glossary is now the most comprehensive ism resource I could find on the World Wide Web. If you know of any that have philosophical isms on it that this one doesn't have, please point them out to me.

No doubt there are still some philosophical isms missing. If you know of any, please add them in.

The Transhumanist 07:19, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

It's pretty darn finished right now. With a little bit of love (and a lot of copyediting), I think this page could become a featured list. -- Sharkface217 20:07, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Category:Metalogic

A somewhat famous mathematician has proposed to delete Category:Metalogic. (discussion)The category is perfectly wonderful. I see this as a part of the whole math-centric culture. I think it is seen as a threat or something. Silly. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 03:42, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

P.S. They are also proposing to merge Metalogic and Metamathematics. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 22:05, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

If I understand Gregbard correctly he is claiming that there is a notable part of philosophy which is called "metalogic" and has huge overlap with the mathematical subjects of model theory and proof theory. However, I find it hard to trust the writer of the above messages when he makes such an unintuitive (to me) statement. I would really appreciate the input from experienced philosophers to the deletion discussion on Category:Metalogic. --Hans Adler (talk) 20:43, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I am pretty sure that Hans and I have improved our trust issues. Now that the WP:MATH people look like they will not be able to kill the metalogic category, the math people are proposing to depopulate it, and remove it out from under the category:mathematical logic. I think my frustrations with the math people are fairly well known. I hope everyone sees why now. Hans, their most recent proposed action supports my "unintuitive" thesis as stated above. I looks to me like what they intend to do might be against SOME policy, but I am not sure. There should be some form of protection against this kind of activity. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 16:16, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

As I've stated before, I'm nowhere close to familiar with the complexities of the category system on Wikipedia. In this regard, I trust both Anarchia and Gregbard implicitly. However, it is the clear implication of the argument I made in the deletion discussion that the category should not be depopulated. And since my opinion did not prove to be the kiss of death for once, and indeed seems to have been decisive, I suppose I should clarify. Metalogic has at least two senses, both of which should be reflected in both the article and the category. The first is the sense that is already covered: the study and analysis of the semantics and syntax of formal languages and formal systems. This comes up in the course of Whitehead and Russell's attempts to defend logicism, the belief that mathematics is ultimately reducible to logic. The second sense is also hinted at in the article: the metatheory of logic. This includes both early formulations of logic and all attempts to justify the use of and reliance on logic as a discursive tool. Insofar as there are two senses, it does not make sense to depopulate the category of articles pertaining to the first sense merely because we are extending it to include the second sense as well. We are not, after all, substituting one sense for the other.

As for taking metalogic out from under mathematical logic, this makes sense—but only because mathematical logic more properly belongs under metalogic. (Or at least under logic, or maybe even both. Again, the complexities escape me. The system does not seem to be based strictly on a hierarchy, but it is still hierarchical in nature. I will have to trust you to take what I say and know how to apply it, should you agree with me.) Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 02:42, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually not. "Mathematical logic" is not really logic in the strict sense. It's a collection of mathematical disciplines that have, you might say, a common frontier with logic, or where the logical form of assertions or properties comes up more often than in other areas of math, or that are historically connected with logic in some way. The usual list is set theory, recursion theory, model theory, and proof theory, and it would be reasonable to add category theory and universal algebra, though this is less often done.

The only one of these six branches that is even arguably "logic" in the sense of "the science of making valid inferences" is proof theory. --Trovatore (talk) 02:50, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I support everything Trovatore said. I am a model theorist, but I am by no means a logician in the sense of philosophy. My knowledge of, and interest in, philosophy is very limited, and this does not affect my research in model theory in the slightest, since the subject is clearly much closer to algebra than it is to computer science, and much closer to computer science than it is to philosophy. The relevant professional organisation for me as for most mathematical logicians is the Association for Symbolic Logic. It covers a wide and somewhat interdisciplinary area, but philosophical aspects are relatively marginal in its publications. My lack of experience with philosophy is the reason for my initial misunderstandings with Gregbard. I try to avoid making any judgements on philosophy when editing Wikipedia, but when a philosopher does something that is counterintuitive to me and which affects mathematical articles, then I want to trust him (and I felt I couldn't in this situation), or I will start asking questions on a subject I don't understand. If your reasoning is correct for mathematical logic, then I would expect that all of mathematics should be a subcategory of metalogic. This actually looks plausible to me from what you say, but it is for philosophers to decide this; I also doubt that it is what Gregbard had in mind. --Hans Adler (talk) 10:57, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps there is a misunderstanding among philosophers that mathematical logic, and model theory in particular, are mainly about the things they are interested in, like Gödel's incompleteness theorems and the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem. That is wrong. In modern model theory the incompleteness theorems play a marginal role outside introductory courses, and the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem is just one of the fundamental tools we are using all the time without even mentioning them. Our motivating questions are often metamathematical, but of a very different kind: "Vector spaces and algebraically fields both have very nice and rather similar dimension theories. Can we make this statement precise?" (Answered by Morley's theorem.) Or: "If we represent queries on a database as first-order formulas, for what classes of formulas can we find a fast ('polynomial') algorithm?" (No complete answer yet.) --Hans Adler (talk) 11:09, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

You would both do well to notice that I didn't say "mathematical logic" should go under "logic," but rather that it would go under "metalogic." Your arguments pertain to the former, but it is the latter that is at issue. Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 16:58, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Whatever "metalogic" is (and I don't think that's been made entirely clear in this discussion), it is certainly not anything that includes "mathematical logic" in the sense I'm talking about. For example, it certainly doesn't include set theory, understood as the study of the objects occuring in the cumulative hierarchy, seen from a realist/Platonist point of view. Or, if it does, then some explanation of "metalogic" is needed other than "logic applied to logic". --Trovatore (talk) 19:26, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

What metalogic is hasn't been made clear in the discussion here because this is not the place to discuss it. This is, essentially, a noticeboard (though it admittedly serves many functions). But since the merge discussion has been closed—with a decision that favored my position, I might add—it is no longer appropriate to clarify things there. I clarified here for Gregbard's sake, and I suppose I could have cross-posted to Category_talk:Metalogic. As I have stressed, however, I am not one for the complexities of Wikipedia's categorization process. That I leave to others. When philosophical issues are misunderstood, however, as I feel they were here, I am willing to comment as I find appropriate.

Regarding your characterization of metalogic as "logic applied to logic," this is incorrect. It would be more appropriate to think of it in terms of "philosophy applied to logic," which would include, of course, logic about logic. That is, metalogic is the metatheory of logic. This was all covered in prior discussions.

As to your contentions about mathematical logic "in the sense [you're] talking about," I fail to see how it is different than the sense that the rest of us have been talking about. The description on Category:Mathematical logic says a few things. First, it says that the term "originally referred to symbolic or formal logic." This is the logic studied by all introductory philosophy majors. The article goes on to say that it "then came to be associated with the study of the logical (and even philosophical) foundations of mathematics." In this sense, it is quite akin to metalogic as understood by Whitehead and Russell (and their position, called logicism, which asserts that mathematics is entirely reducible to logic). Finally, we are told that "the term refers to several branches of pure mathematics whose study involves careful attention to formal axiom systems and formal definability." What the phrase "pure mathematics" is supposed to mean here is unclear, particularly in light of the fact that formal axiom systems and formal definability are logical concerns as well (and if logicism is correct, they are mathematical concerns largely by inheritance). Mathematical axioms may be divided into "logical" and "non-logical" categories, albeit misleadingly (the distinction fails to note that logic includes both rules of derivation and rules of transformation), but it remains the case that formal axiom systems and formal definability are concerns of logic.

There is, however, your further assertion that logic does not concern itself with set theory, "understood as the study of the objects occuring in the cumulative hierarchy, seen from a realist/Platonist point of view." The first thing to note is the how odd it seems that you could think that the stipulation of a realist/Platonist point of view is vital and yet non-philosophical. Plato liked math, to be sure, but I'm fairly certain he is most correctly termed a philosopher. The second thing that comes to my mind is the difficulty in figuring out how to think about set theory in this context. Philosophers, such as Russell and Wittgenstein, have certainly been quite concerned with set theory. Russell was also a mathematician, of course, but both men were primarily concerned with how set theory could be incorporated into a second order logic that might itself be brought into the fold of philosophical logic. Unfortunately, it has not yet obtained a reasonable enough state of development to be a viable logical tool. This is the only sense, however, in which logicians do not concern themselves with set theory. Philosophers specializing in logic have written papers, dissertations, and books on set theory and how best to solve its myriad problems. To dedicate one's career to an issue certainly demonstrates concern to me. Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 21:30, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

(←) When the discussion about Metalogic started, I wanted to get a handle on what metalogic is (since the term is all but unused in contemporary mathematical logic). I looked through some things at Google books and the reference Gregbard supplied. My impression at the time was that metalogic is a term used by some philosophically-interested authors for the portion of mathematical logic and metamathematics that concern formal logic itself (rather than, say, the metamathematics of group theory). That realization made it much easier for me to understand what the article on metalogic was trying to say. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:05, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Merging total and average utilitarianism

Can we get a few ethics inclined people to discuss this merge? It's been floating for several months now. Richard001 (talk) 06:49, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Spiritualism (philosophical use)

There appears to a lack of any topic on the philosophical use of the term "Spiritualism", am I wrong?

I see "[[Spiritual philosophy}" but this refers to "New Age" philosophies, which is not right, and is fairly lightweight. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I have been working on spiritualistic topics, quite a different form of Spiritualism and started a fairly general page Difference between Spiritualism and Materialism which is basic but I feel accurate enough. Any pointers or assistance is welcome, its already been trolled fairly heavily by the new page patrollers, youngsters with no interest or specialism in the subject at all.

My intention is basically to raise, itemise and broaden the documentation of the use of "spiritualism" to reflect its uses, in totalis. I would ask for a small amount of help from those within the disciplines of ethics, metaphysics and epistemology. In the bigger picture, I would envisage a series of pages on each specialist usage and have already fell on the rocks of those that wish to assert its use for Spiritualism (religious movement) only. An entirely unacceptable limitation in all ways.

My reasoning for using this page as a starting point is that, a) it segues neatly into my other work; and, b) in an environment designed to inform and broaden the interests of a fairly general audience, it is often easier to teach by broad contrasts in the first place rather than specifics that might go over heads.

Criticism welcome. An AfD placed with 9 minutes as I edited, here; [1]. Thank you very much. --Lucyintheskywithdada (talk) 08:14, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Arguments in logic

I haven't read through each one, but it seems very strange that there are two articles on arguments in logic: argument (logic) and logical argument. Going by name alone, and first impressions, they seem to be about the same thing. Is this just a case of people not being aware of the other article, i.e. should they be merged? Richard001 (talk) 05:18, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Boolean algebra task force

I am looking for other editors to participate in a broad task force to organize Wikipedia's articles on Boolean algebra, propositional logic, and related topics. The current organization is quite idiosyncratic, and has been the subject of discussion before. The initial goal of the task force would be to outline the current structure of these articles (the topics covered by each and how they interconnect) and discuss improvements to this organization. If we are successful we will come out with a proposal that can be announced more widely.

Participating in the task force would not require a large time commitment. If you are interested, please look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Logic/Boolean algebra task force and add yourself to the list of editors. The page was created under WikiProject Logic only for convenience. I hope that I will be able to gather editors with a wide range of backgrounds to participate. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:00, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

a "Set" is an abstract object

Greetings folks. I am in the middle of a discussion (part one, part two) with several mathematicians who do not want to identify a set as an abstract object in the lede of the article. They do not see that as important to the concept at all. I am quite frustrated by the strong opinions on the other side. I have a lot of challenges whenever I try to elucidate on any logical/metalogical/metamathematical/philosophical foundations of "mathematical" articles. The prevailing culture of mathematicians are quite active, narrow and rigid about "their" turf. Any help in making the case would be appreciated. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 19:15, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Help needed with Moralistic fallacy

Hello. I have stumbled unto Moralistic fallacy through the uncategorized pages. The whole article looks dubious to me. For one thing it defines the fallacy as the opposite of the naturalistic fallacy but it also says:

The moralistic fallacy says that because something is morally wrong, it could not be a part of human nature

Now a implies b is equivalent to not b implies not a so this is in fact equivalent to

If something is part of human nature, then it is morally right

which of course is the naturalistic fallacy. I think the article is in dire need of competent help. Pichpich (talk) 14:32, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Speculative realism

Could someone from the project check Speculative realism to see whether this movement is significant enough to warrant a separate article? Thank you. Pichpich (talk) 00:17, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Another merge

Any comments on my proposed merge of false compromise and middle ground would be appreciated. Richard001 (talk) 05:11, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

These articles discuss precisely the same thing and only have different titles because their authors used names from competing websites. The Latin name for the fallacy discussed on both pages is argumentum ad temperantiam, which would be properly translated as "argument to moderation" (though for the sake of English semantics, many would translate it as "argument from moderation"). As such, I would suggest they be merged under either "argumentum ad temperantiam" or "argument to moderation" and the list of fallacies be changed accordingly. As the list of fallacies tends to favor English translations over the original Latin, I suppose "argument to moderation" might be the better choice. The currently existing pages false compromise, middle ground, and argumentum ad temperantiam could all serve as redirects to argument to moderation. Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 17:03, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

State transition table and Finite state machine articles

(Crossed linked with Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer science & Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy)

The two articles State transition table and Finite state machine are interlinked. For some reason, the state transition table article is under the WikiProject of Philosophy. Plus there are certain things not mentioned in the state transition table article, and could use some more complex examples. The state transition table directly relates to a finite state machine but the article itself seems lacking. Also, the reference section for the finite state machine article seems highly unusual. --AllyUnion (talk) 23:22, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

• Do people really want State Transistion Table within WikiProject Philosophy? Apprently someone thought, "Logic is part of philosophy, and this is part of logic, ergo ...". Pete St.John (talk) 18:13, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes it's an interesting observation. Many of the participants of WP:MATH who are involved with the WP:LOGIC did not want to have all these "non-mathematical" logic topics polluting their precious categories, organization etc. Instead of one comprehensive logic project, it was determined to have a split project with a philosophical logic worklist, and a mathematics worklist. So for anything that falls through the cracks, we put it under the philosophy side. It very much does takes the principle "Logic is part of philosophy, and this is part of logic, ergo..." If we don't take that principle then all of the computer science, linguists, etc gets left out. This is the pragmatic reality around here, I wish it were different. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 00:32, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Clearly some logic material is technical computer stuff (e.g. state transition tables), some technical math stuff (e.g. nonconstructible sets), some is surely academic-philosophical (Kripke possible universes), and some particularly multidisciplinary (undecidability). I'm just sceptical that philosophy wants State Transistion Tables. Can we send our electrical engineering students to you? :-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by PeterStJohn (talk • contribs) 19:53, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Free will

I've been unable to get any attention on the talk page about this, and I'm unsure if anyone currently takes an interest in the article, but the lead is too short to qualify for FA (or even GA) status. I thought I'd bring it up here before taking it to FAR. Richard001 (talk) 23:20, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to second Richard's request for increasing the size of the intro, but I also would like to ask for anyone who is around to take a look at the series of edits and edit wars by LoveMonkey to the Free will page. Once we get this sorted out, then perhaps we can turn back to more constructive things like getting the lead beefed up. Edhubbard (talk) 16:03, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Argument Argument (logic) Argument (disambiguation)

I would love to see a comprehensive article on this. I have been trying to put this on the path to GA status, but someone is deleting sections that don't fit a narrow view of the topic, and moving the articles around without regard for the wikilinks etc. Any new input appreciated Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 00:37, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• I just want to mention a social effect that may be pertinent (but may not be real :-), viz, the arguement that logic does not pertain to editorial debates, because logic is OR. Of course phrasing it that way is patently self-defeating, but I suspect a trend, which I think I've spotted on math pages (about logic). (An example might be Dlabdot's rebuttal to me preceeding this diff at the contentious discussion of a plant that is used by homeopaths -- a three-way battle among pro-science, pro-alternative-medicine, and anti-anti-science -- he didn't get my point at all, not that I expressed it very well.) I'm happy for Logic to be something of a tug-of-war between people who use terms like modus ponens and are burdened with lawyers, vs people who use symbols to refer to the names of symbols, and are burdened with physicists; but I fear a third front opening up in the war, which may overwhelm us all. Pete St.John (talk) 18:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

To argue that logic (and its cousin, common sense) is OR would be ridiculous. Otherwise, I have the right to completely alter every astronomy-related page based on reliable sources I have found supporting the geocentric model of the solar system. Granted, some are centuries old—but they were written by some of the most scientists ever (and besides, Einstein's dead, too). And others are quite current and referenced in many articles (by foolish "expert" types attempting to refute such an obviously true position). Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 22:39, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Well yes, it's obvious to us, and it should be obvious to anyone, but it seems to be an extant rhetorical device. I'm merely suggesting a source of problems in some logic-related articles stemming from (nutty) rhetoric in the debates at any article's talk pages. Imagine defining a more egalitarian "logic" to go along with "new sciences", such as Creation Science. But maybe this is just my own soapbox. Pete St.John (talk) 22:45, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Socrates

Hi folks, I thought I'd drop a note here because I'm planning on trying to improve Socrates - one day, I'd like it to be an FA - I don't see any reason not to aim for it anyways!

If you pop by there, you'll see (on the talk page) - that I've begun by tweaking the structure a bit, and rewording the first little bit - and that I'm working in a personal 'Sandbox' area, just to have a bit more freedom to tinker etc. - I could certainly use any help that anyone may be able to offer, so thanks in advance! best, Privatemusings (talk) 00:43, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

New article

Transmission of Greek philosophical ideas in the Middle Ages. Kind of a mouthful, but see what you think. Wrad (talk) 04:20, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

A comparison between Wikipedia and two other Web–based philosophy resources

See this new article in First Monday; it also contains a list of philosophers we may be missing.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:11, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Interesting reading. Now, how do we enhance our coverage of philosophers working primarily in countries where languages other than English is the daily language? GRBerry 03:17, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Cull the wikis in other languages? Pete St.John (talk) 03:51, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Good idea. User:Nihil novi, author of history of philosophy in Poland, would be happy to help with Polish philosophers, I am sure. I am working on stubbing Polish sociologists; I don't know about other languages.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 07:48, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

There is no problem, really. Every one of the names at the appendix have an article! I categorized most of them with Category:20th century philosophers or the french subcat now. Some are stubs, of course. Anyway, I think it's quite a methodological flaw, to regard cats as salient a navigational aid, as Elvebakk does. How many people really use them that way? trespassers william (talk) 21:56, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Arguments by Analogy and Example

I turned to Wikipedia to find out whether arguments by analogy and arguments by example are considered sound or valid (not sure which term would apply). I was disappointed to find that not only do these subjects not have their own articles (despite Wikipedia's many articles on logic) but they're not addressed ANYwhere in Wikipedia! Or if they are, then it's not easy to find the information. Can somebody who knows about logic please start articles on "argument by analogy" and "argument by example"? And in the meantime, can somebody please refer me to a place where a philosophical lay person can read about it? I know that in informal discussion, arguments by analogy and example are used all the time, but I don't know how the rules of formal logic apply. Minaker (talk) 06:21, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

This is true! I have been meaning to start the following articles as (good) informal reasoning techniques: Relevant difference reasoning, Common thread reasoning, as well as Causal reasoning and Analogical reasoning (also called "reasoning by analogy"). These are all sound reasoning techniques, however they are informal rather than formal techniques, so one still has to be careful in applying them. I suppose one could formulate examples in terms of formal (symbolic) logic. Happy reasoning. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 10:22, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Philosophy: Articles of unclear notability

Hello,

there are currently 32 articles in the scope of this project which are tagged with notability concerns. I have listed them here. (Note: this listing is based on a database snapshot of 12 March 2008 and may be slightly outdated.)

I would encourage members of this project to have a look at these articles, and see whether independent sources can be added, whether the articles can be merged into an article of larger scope, or possibly be deleted. Any help in cleaning up this backlog is appreciated. For further information, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Notability.

If you have any questions, please leave a message on the Notability project page or on my personal talk page. (I'm not watching this page however.) Thanks! --B. Wolterding (talk) 15:56, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposal for next step for wp:philo

There has been a proposal to tell the project banner to split the importance rating tag into importance and anarchism-importance. I guess this is a natural outgrowth of the existence of articles which are quite important to anarchism studies, but of little importance to philosophy in general. My proposal to deal with this is a little different. I would like to tell the banner script to put the anarchism articles under social and political philosophy, but not under philosophy in general. Any thoughts? Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 11:02, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Intuition

There is a discussion on Talk:Intuition about converting the current dab page into a primary topic and moving the dab to Intuition (disambiguation). Since this concerns Intuition (philosophy), a philosophy-related article, your thoughts on the talk page linked above are welcome. Thank you. Viriditas (talk) 22:55, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

"Purpose"

The article titled purpose could probably use some attention from someone schooled in philosophy. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:07, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Family resemblance

I have just started a rewrite of this article which I feel will have to be fairly extensive. Would appreciate any help anyone can offer.A 44 will get you 99 (talk) 00:39, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Subjective logic

I was just looking at the subjective logic page and was left going "HUH??" Is there any way we can simplify it and have less formulaic jargon so it makes more sense? Also it appears to use material from only one author (although several sources by the same author are used). Should there be more extensive referencing? Thanks. Kristamaranatha (talk) 03:16, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Quick question

How do I get my name on a task force list? Thanks Kristamaranatha (talk) 03:48, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Some edit to the template must have caused them not to work. I have fixed the edit link for all of those. If you look in the upper right corner of any task force list you will see "v d e". E for edit. Welcome aboard! Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 21:05, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Bias?

There is a dispute going on at Transmission of Greek philosophical ideas in the Middle Ages about POV. Please help out. Wrad (talk) 20:24, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Free will FAR

I've finally put this up for FAR. There's not a huge amount of work to do but the article is seriously lacking in active contributors to do the work that needs doing. If a couple of people want to join in or at least help maintain it that would be great. Richard001 (talk) 07:01, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Good article icon

A proposal to add a symbol identifying Good Articles in a similar manner to Featured ones is being discussed: see Wikipedia talk:Good articles#Proposal. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 19:35, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

cultural iconography

The article on the hapless Marilyn Monroe not only finishes with breathless tittle-tattle about some porno flick but also starts off with a breathless listing of her "iconic" statuses. Among these earnestly linked buzzphrases, "cultural icon" seemed particularly bizarre and so I clicked the link. In a word, "ugh". Surely the phrase is "philosophical" in the sense of being the object of investigation of philosophy, and more specifically of a particular work by Harry Frankfurt. Could somebody whose eyes, unlike mine, don't immediately glaze at the sight of words such as "iconic" take a look at this stuff? (I've written comments on its talk page.)

If this really does seem beyond the pale for philosophy, then ask yourselves why you list Carl Jung among your good articles [sorry!] then feel free to move this somewhere less unsuitable. -- Hoary (talk) 10:58, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if "beyond the pale" is the right turn of phrase, but I do think that this is outside the scope of WikiProject Philosophy (Harry's self-indulgent attempt at fame notwithstanding). Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 19:24, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Please aid discussion about Featured Article categories

Currently on the Featured Articles listing page of Wikipedia, there is a singular category "Philosophy and Psychology" (rather than listing these as two, separate categories). As I'm sure most people here will appreciate, Philosophy and Psychology are very, very different disciplines, with people who are searching for psychology not necessarily desiring any philosophical information, and vice versa. I have started a discussion here in the hope of granting Philosophy its own, separate category. Please join in! --Aquillyne-- (talk) 01:41, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Critical philosophy

Have you guys seen the article on critical philosophy? An absolute mess! I can say without joking that it might deserve a task force all to itself. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 07:49, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

• I gather that the vast majority has been lifted from Hegel's Logic via The Critical Philosophy. - Bilby (talk) 07:59, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

It might be easier to completely remove everything after the second paragraph and begin from there, rather than sort through all of that intractable material. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 08:13, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Vancouver, British Columbia meet-up

Vancouver Meetup Please come to an informal gathering of Vancouver Wikipedians, Monday, May 5 at 6:30 pm. It will be at Benny's Bagels, 2505 West Broadway. We'd love to see you there, and please invite others! Watch the Vancouver Meetup page for details.

Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 15:36, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Interpretation (logic)

There is a mathematician who believes that an interpretation in logic does not have to assign unique names to each object in the domain of discourse, also believes that it is objects that we assign, not truth values. Third party requested. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 17:10, 30 April 2008 (UTC) Hi Gregbard. Do you disagree with a mathematician? IMHO surely: a) if in an interpretation the universe of discourse was say, People (past present or future) or say Protons, then if a mathematician were wrong we would we have to assign a name to each such person (or proton) in an interpretion of (x)Fx as with F: Is mortal (has positive charge). I have never heard of such a requirement. Do you perhaps mean that an individual constant must be assigned to every member of the domain? I have no heard of that either. What would be the point of either requirment? If they were requirments, then I should think that in the first Person case we could never finish the task until all people had shuffled off this mortal coil and we had managed to give them all a name. In the second Proton case, it would surely take a really really long time to name every proton in the universe or assign each one an individual constant and a really really large piece of paper to list all those individual constants; and then how would you assign each constant to a particular proton? I hope therefore a mathematician is right, but if not you better get cracking right away! So much to do; so little time!. I'll be down the pub with a mathematician; let us know when you're finished. Suppose they were requiments. Suppose further that we propose an alternative convention exactly the same but without the requirments. Would it be worse or would it just enable you to join us for a drink?

b) we would normally assign in an interpretation (i) the value True or False to each sentential letter, (ii) a member of the domain of discourse to each individual constant (if any and not the other way round) (a member of the domain not the name of a member of the domain) (iii) a relation on the domain of discourse to each predicate letter (not the name of a relation) (iv) to each function letter... &c.

b(i) above causes me a certain unease, since I keep having this feeling that we should assign sentential letters to assertions not their truth values. I know its wrong, and I am sure Frege would tell me not to be so silly, but I keep getting this feeing although I really try to think of something else or take a cold shower; can you help?--Philogo (talk) 12:49, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I am pretty sure the mathematician and I have come to an agreed formulation. While the canonical account does not require a unique name for each object, that is only for fairly specialized uses, AND NOT the way you are using it btw. We have no problem uniquely naming all humans (or protons) in a formal language {h₁, h₂, ... , h_{total population}}. That article could still use some philosophers looking at it. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 23:51, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Gregbard: Please cite standard Logic text book requiring assign unique names to each object in the domain of discourse (I have none to hand). Exlpain why the requirments are said to be necessary. Please provide an example of an intepretation that names every person, or proton: I would like to see what it would looks like (do not forget future peiple and protons). Say whether by "unique name" you mean individual constant. --Philogo (talk) 13:14, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Someone over there at interpretation has pretty much mish-mashed YOUR example concerning Socrates and Aristotle, so you might want to talk to them about that. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 00:10, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll go take a look. I hope --Hans Adler has documented the reasons for his revisions, saves a lot of time--Philogo (talk) 13:14, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the "someone" was me. I would appreciate some feedback on my lay-philosophical original research, which I wrote mainly to explain in the article interpretation (logic) what is wrong with the article. I just don't know what philosophers understand by interpretations. Their definitions sometimes sound close to the mathematical ones, but then the examples show that they mean something much more fuzzy. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:16, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I have responded at:

Talk:Interpretation_(logic)

Don't take that whole mish-mash thing too hard, you've done a lot of work on it which is all right, but I have questions about some of it. Be well, Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 00:21, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Countering systemic bias

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Mathematics

I have set up a page under Countering systemic bias to deal with what I perceive as a tendency for the articles on logic to be heavily weighted in favor of the mathematical aspects, while giving short shrift and even intellectual hostility towards the philosophical aspects. This is an issue I have observed for quite some time, but did not know what to do about it myself. This seemed like the "work within the system" thing to do. Perhaps it will evolve to deal with a general tendency to marginalize the philosophical aspects of other articles as well. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 23:59, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Featured Article Categories Problem

I have been discussing at length a problem with the categories at Wikipedia:Featured articles, being the combination of Psychology and Philosophy into a singular category, when these two subjects are so utterly different and unrelated. I won't repeat the discussion here, but would like to draw attention to it: please comment here! Thanks. --Aquillyne-- (talk) 12:48, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

As someone who shudders everytime I enter a bookstore with a "Philosophy and Religion" or "Philosophy, Spirituality and The Mind" section, I can't help but think we got off lightly here. Skomorokh 13:14, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Opportunity for Inter-project Collaboration

WikiProject Medicine and WikiProject Pharmacology have proposed a collaboration to improve Placebo, an article that is supported by this WikiProject. If this topic interests you, and you would like to help (in large ways or small) improve this article through collaborative editing, please go to the WPMED project's collaboration page and sign your name (~~~~) to show your support. The next collaboration will be chosen in about five days, and the article with the most votes from potential collaborators is chosen. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:40, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Duplicate Topics

Within Category:Rules of inference, Conjunction elimination and Simplification (logic) contain different, though conceptually equivalent, text. Both are also stubs.

Merged. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 06:15, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

template:logic

Someone is requesting comment on the philosophy of logic section of the logic template. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 23:17, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

We could actually use some comment over there. This guy thinks the logic template should delete a lot of these philosophies of logic. Apparently because they weren't very good philosophies. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 20:35, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Vital articles

Any editor with a broad knowledge of philosophy is invited to take a look at Wikipedia:Vital articles and offer suggestions on how to improve the list of 1000 vital Wikipedia articles, as well as on the process of choosing them. It suffers from a severe lack of attention and POV editing. — goethean ॐ 01:48, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

It's very good of Goethean to admit to his POV editing, but I do agree with him that we could use all the help we could get. Many of the philosophy articles are at issue right now and we could use divergent opinions. Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 12:09, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Assessment please

Is this the right place to request assessment of an article? Feedback and quality/importance rating from anyone with time to look at Popper and After would be appreciated. Cheers Alastair Haines (talk) 02:32, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think I'm authorized to give it more than a B with going through GA process. It looks all right to me. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 05:44, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Quintessentialism

The Kurt Andersen article mentions quintessentialism. What is this and do we need an article about it? Badagnani (talk) 04:55, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

For a definition see wikt:quintessence. Richard001 (talk) 00:21, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

An issue in ethics

An important issue in ethics, which I don't know if there is a name for (but there should be!) is the "if I don't do X, someone else will" argument. Similar is the "everybody else is doing it" argument, e.g. USA: "Why should we cut our emissions if China doesn't have to?" and China "why should we cut our emissions if the US isn't going to?" (which happens to form a convenient loop of justification). It's a case where the ethical status of an action is purported to depend on the actions of others (is there a name for such situations in general, if this isn't the only one?). It was mainly the first one I wanted to ask about. I'm interested in what, if anything, has been written about such arguments/situations, and what, if anything, they are called.

By the way, isn't the bot being a bit too aggressive on the archiving? It seems it prunes all but the last couple of threads. I find that underarchived pages are much more prevalent, but I think it's a bit much here. Richard001 (talk) 00:18, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

What you're describing sounds to me like collective action problems, specifically Tragedy of the Commons. --Padraic 14:44, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's certainly very closely related to the Tragedy of the Commons, perhaps inseparable. There isn't really much discussion there from an ethics point of view though, is there? It's not even in an ethics category, unless you consider game theory a subset of ethics! I think the philosophical/ethical aspects of it deserve an article of its own (and perhaps one on the essay itself rather than the concept, too), though it's not that surprising we don't have one. We also don't have one for the ethics relating to future generations and the future in general (as far as I'm aware) which basically reflects how little we care about the subject (indeed, judging by the status of future we don't seem to care about the future in the least). Richard001 (talk) 02:38, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Family resemblance

There appears to be a bit of a dispute developing on this page. Grateful if someone could have a look and comment of the various versions.A 44 will get you 99 (talk) 14:29, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Animals and ethics

Posted to WT:WikiProject Philosophy, WT:WikiProject Animals and WT:WikiProject Animal rights, discussion preferred at WT:WikiProject Philosophy

I don't think we have a broad article on the place of non-human animals in ethics. There are a few specific articles like animal rights, ethics of eating meat, animal cognition etc, but nothing on the broader issue. Going in the opposite direction, there are articles broader than animals that cover more 'holistic' views, e.g. environmental ethics and deep ecology, though given that most animals are probably not conscious beings that would also overlap with the subject. I guess such an article could be called animals in ethics or something like that. It might also mention the prehuman precursors to morality seen in other animals (which relates to the origin of morality, another needed article), although this is broadening the scope a little more. Richard001 (talk) 04:41, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Possible joint task force?

There is currently a proposal at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Christian theology for a group to focus on content related to Christian theology. Considering that that field also falls within the scope of this project, I was wondering whether you would possibly agree to it being set up as a joint task force of both projects. Opinions? John Carter (talk) 17:52, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd be willing to join such a task force. Rick Norwood (talk) 20:59, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Natural Theology and "Astrotheology"

The expertise of those knowledgeable in the subject of Natural theology would be very helpful both in that entry and on the possibly soon deleted Astrotheology entry. There is a content dispute that broke out on the second of the two entries, which has now spilled over to the first. Exactly what natural theology includes and how best to define it are at the heart of this dispute. Thanks for any help. (Note: I am cross posting this on WikiProject(s):Religion and Christianity).PelleSmith (talk) 21:40, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Emanuel Lasker

I've been editing the article on Emanuel Lasker, who is generally best known as a chess player and writer. However he also wrote a few philosophical works. I'd be grateful if you could review Emanuel Lasker and correct an yerros or omissions. In particlular, have his philosophical works had any influence? Philcha (talk) 17:28, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Philosophy articles flagged for cleanup

Hello,

currently, about 2.500 philosophy articles (or 30%) are flagged for cleanup of some sort. Are you interested which articles are affected? I offer to generate lists of these articles; see User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. These lists can either be generated for the project as a whole, or for individual task forces.

If you're interested, please sign up at User talk:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings. --B. Wolterding (talk) 08:30, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I did sign us up for this service. It looks great. You can see the listings at Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy/Cleanup listing. Thank you Wolterding. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 01:33, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Help request: Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hello, I would like to request some help with this article, which is under the scope of this project. I fully sourced it over the past week, and I would like to help it get to GA or FA status. It would be great if any editors from this project could look it over, possibly do some copyediting, and give some feedback in the peer review. Thanks, GaryColemanFan (talk) 23:35, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Judith Butler reception: Summary style or POV fork?

See Talk:Judith Butler and Talk:Influence of Judith Butler's concepts. Thanks! Hyacinth (talk) 03:29, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

What constitutes a philosopher?

Current discussions at the Talk:Ayn Rand page seem supportive of the notion that the Project develop some Wikipedia-wide policy on criteria for considering someone a philosopher or not. Ideas? Skomorokh 21:05, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think we need anything formalized by WP:PHILO beyond what already exists for WP as a whole. If there are sources that name a person as a "philosopher", then it is justified to say so in WP. The question really falls to the reliability of the source. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 23:49, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Greg; the issue with Rand is that she is inconsistently referred to in reliable sources - sometimes as philosopher, sometimes as author/novelist, sometimes as "originator of the philosophy of Objectivism", so editors were looking for some guidelines on how to refer to her in the article. Skomorokh 00:53, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

A philosopher is anyone with a Ph.D. and tenure. No, sorry. Yes, Ann Rand is a "philosopher". She's an amazingly bad philosopher, but she thought about the big questions. You can't decide who is and isn't a philosopher based on quality. J. Fred Muggs was an artist, after all. Rick Norwood (talk) 00:24, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Agreed that quality of thought/qualifications/tenure are insufficient indicators. I was thinking more along Greg's lines, so that we would have a guideline that said something like

X is considered a philosophy/philosopher if there is an article on it in at least one of the following authoritative sources:

1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
2. Oxford Companion to Philosophy
3. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
   

No, the condition is too weak.

A philosophical dictionary may well have entries for people clearly recognized as non-philosophers, such as Hitler. Such a person may even produce what he and his cult members regard as philosophy: in Hitler's case, this would be Mein Kampf which contains long philosophical tirades and the appearance of "reason".

[If anyone invokes "Godwin" I shall scream. "Godwin" described what goes on, it isn't prescriptive, and unlike the Mikester I don't think it's funny that people invoke Hitler, for many technical people have undiagnosed authoritarian personality disorder and are indeed on the same vector as Schicklegruber. The foul treatment I've been subjected to by Hans Adler, with his language isomorphic to that of ethnic cleansing, is exhibit A.]

Of course, common sense, along with basic decency (inextricable from common sense) would reject a claim, based on Hitler being biographied or mentioned en passant in a philosophical dictionary.

Other marginal characters may also "serve to swell a scene or two". Alfred Rosenberg thought he was a philosopher in his "philosophy of the 20th century" but common sense, along with basic decency (inextricable as the latter is from common sense) would not call Rosenberg a "philosophy".

Yet the German jurist Carl Schmitt, whose philosophy of law was in support of Naziism, and most notably Martin Heidegger, Nazi-appointed Rector at Freiburg, are considered philosophers, the one a source for the philosophy of law, the other world-class.

What gives?

I am prepared to accept mention in one or more of the three sources you have mentioned as a necessary but not sufficient condition. The article must present the individual described as a full-time, card-carrying philosopher who makes or made a serious effort over a period of years, NOT a gifted teacher of philosophy NOR a person who thought she was thinking Deep Thoughts.

Schmitt unlike Rand didn't proudly boast of not having read the texts of the Western jurisprudential tradition from which Schmitt demurred: he did his homework. Heidegger unlike Rand didn't make the thug's claim that something the thug doesn't know about doesn't matter: he understood Western positivism and thought it was a dead end.

Merely thinking Deep Thoughts does not a philosopher make:

"I wish that somebody would invent a fruit that had no seeds, tasted delicious, and screamed when you ate it" - Jack Handey

"“Who is John Galt?” - Ayn Rand [who cares?]

You can delete this (probably to steal passages and vocabulary a month on). But in the case of Ayn Rand, a celebrity-worship rule controls at the article, along with fear of the selfish Randroid Wales: it is that "since history has ended, nobody can be famous in any field unless they are financially successful in another". This rule was applied to Donald Trump, and it is being applied to Rand.

Stop, just stop, this madness, this "objectivity" which you have learned as subaltern technicians, who are used and thrown away by uncaring corporations as technical writers and code monkeys, later clerks at Costco 'cause there ain't no jobs: you let them take your middle-class jobs and you didn't get rowdy, many of you, which is why I distub: which is why I "insult".

It is an "objectivity" which has reversed polarity since the 17th century: it is a collective subjectivity, afraid, desparately afraid, to apply other than the black and dead letter of a law it rages for, not realizing that in a "libertarian" void, trolling, and the ethnic cleansing of "trolls", is the natural result, because common sense and common decency (inextricably linked as the latter is to the former) have apparently become "orginal research"...replaced by the willingness of an Adler to use, albeit unconsciously, language isomorphic to that of ethnic cleansing. Use your own MINDS to agree on the truth: that while Ayn Rand, or a cleaning lady, may have more or less by accident (as a typewriting ape) had insights worth discussing, or in the case of the cleaning lady a true subaltern insight which should make you ashamed but won't, there are too many questions about Ayn Rand, too many suspicions, to merit her being treated as a philosopher.

Edward G. Nilges

additional criteria here etc.

Skomorokh 00:53, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

If quality and reputation is not relevant then we will all be philosophers, opera-singers, psychologist, doctors etc. and the terms would cease to have any significance. Quality, reputation and qualifications are implicit in these terms. If someone claims to be a doctor, but is not qualified we call them a quack doctor. So perhaps we should speak of quack philosophers?

--Philogo 10:12, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

No one was suggesting that reputation was not relevant. "Quality" is entirely subjective and thus useless as a metric. What I am suggesting is using authoritative sources such as those listed above as an objective indicator of reputation/importance. Skomorokh 16:07, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I second Skomorokh's suggestion. Rick Norwood (talk) 13:07, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

If the criterea for being an X was be definition be said to be an X in authoritative sources, then no authoritive source could ever list a new X. --Philogo 11:54, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, as an encyclopedia, Wikipedia needs to be conservative and wait till authoritative sources define X, otherwise Wikipedia is engaging in original research. Jjshapiro (talk) 13:59, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Philogo your statement is ambiguous. If Wikipedia's criterion for being an X was that the thing in question was defined by authoritative sources as being an X, this would have no effect on authoritative sources ability to add entries to their list of X's. The source changes what it considers to be an X, and Wikipedia mimics it, simple. Skomorokh 14:30, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

That's different and not a problem. A might decide to say something is an X if authoratative sources say it is X; very sensible. (Of course A still has to decide what is an what is and what is not authorotative). But I said and I say again that the definition of being an X, or the necessary qualities for being a X cannot be "authorotatative sources say it is X". Otherwise, naturally the authorotative sources will make no new entries, in fact they would never have begun. Unlike Wikipedaia, authorotative sources must decide by some other criterea whether something is an X. In my experience authoratative sources take quaility into account when deciding what people or things to list as beng an X, Otherwise, as I pointed out, we would ALL be listed by authorotative texts as great wags, comediens, leaders of men, opera singers, scientits evil bastards and so on. Wiki editors have just to decide whether a source is authorotaative, and it would be interesting to see how that can be done while avoiding judgments as to quality.

--Philogo 20:26, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Fortunately or unfortunately, verifiability, no original research, and undue weight considerations are firm pillars of Wikipedia policy. The problem that editors are finding over at the Ayn Rand talk page, like at other talk pages regarding controversial biographies, is how to stay faithful to reliable sources and policies when the sources contradict each other or are simply inconsistent in labeling the subject's occupation accurately.

My concern with Skomorokh's good-faith proposal is whether or not labeling someone based on one authoritative source is representative of the field as a whole. Put differently, if three authoritative sources don't list Rand as a philosopher, but one does list her (or vice versa), what does that tell us about the state of the field and its thinking about Rand as a philosopher? I would think that we're never going to get 90% agreement (let alone 100%) among authoritative sources because of a diversified range of opinions in democratic societies with free speech. BUT, we should at least try to narrow the gap a little bit for the sake of accuracy, no?

First, what about the possibility of agreeing on several authoritative third-party sources on philosophy. Those suggested so far are an excellent start, in my opinion. Are there any others? Second, of that list, we potentially reach some kind of agreement on how many authoritative sources (roughly) corroborate the view we ultimately adopt in labeling Ayn Rand (or any author) as a "philosopher"? Say, 50 or 60 percent of the authoritative sources? What are the pros and cons of that type of method? Thoughts? Mind you, mine is just a suggestion for the sake of discussion. J Readings (talk) 12:24, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

This thought makes sense to me.Jjshapiro (talk) 13:59, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

One other thought: It seems to me that the definition of a philosopher has changed historically, and that such historical changes affect whether someone counts as a philosopher for encyclopedia purposes. For example, in the course of my life I have met people without any formal training in philosophy who have uttered statements or apercus of a similar kind and level as the utterances of certain pre-Socratic philosophers. If they had lived in Greece in the 5th century B.C.E. and these utterances had been recorded, they would count as philosophers. But they simply can't count as philosophers today. George Carlin, who died yesterday, said things of a philosophical level and quality comparable to Diogenes of Sinope, but he does not qualify as a philosopher in today's context, although he probably could be called a social critic in addition to his official designation as "comedian". Since philosophy has become an academic discipline with an intellectual history, it is hard to justify calling someone in contemporary modern or post-modern society as a philosopher who doesn't engage with the thought and work that has emerged within that discipline and history, even though her/his thought may be of a philosophical character. For similar reasons, a person today who discovered and read Plato or Plotinus or Thomas Acquinas or Descartes or Kant and started writing books in the style of and continuing the thought of those philosophers without any reference to subsequent philosophy and current philosophical discourse, debate, and analysis, wouldn't, in my view, count as a philosopher, even though they would have if they had done that at the time of those prior philosophers. And there are quite a number of "pop" philosophers who develop systems of thought on their own, without really engaging with current philosophical issues, discourse, literature, and debates, but who develop followings and disciples and are considered philosophers by their followers and disciples, most of whom have not studied philosophy, but who would not be considered philosophers by academic or professional philosophers. So it seems to me that historical, intellectual, and social context needs to be taken into account in appropriately labeling someone a philosopher. Jjshapiro (talk) 13:59, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Good points! Yes, George Carlin was a social critic but didn't break new philosophical ground. In this connection I have asked if wikipedians would allow a person to be called a "physicist" in wikipedia if she had published popular books and told a talk-show host that she wuz a "physicist".

The computer scientist, Edsger Dijkstra, created new and interesting mathematical proofs based on his experience with computer math including a non-visual generalization of the pythagorean theorem to non-right-triangles. But most mathematicians I've spoken to about Dijkstra refuse to consider him a mathematician because (1) Dijkstra like Rand was unread in contemporary math and (2) his proofs while novel reinvented the wheel.

Thus while I think that Dijkstra was a helluva guy and a hero computer scientist, I do not dress him in borrowed robes. Same with Rand. Just because she wrote books you like doesn't mean she's a "philosopher". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.102.35.156 (talk) 07:49, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Interesting point, but I disagree with a part of it, and think that disagreement can be used to make a better criterion. You note that someone who only studies philosophers writing through the 18th century and then continues from their works would not today be a philosopher. I disagree. They might not be a good philosopher, but they could very well be a philosopher. Certainly there are modern academic philosophers whose primary research is to expand on the direct work of Kant, Plato, and Aristotle. A better standard would be the extent to which the person spends a significant portion of their adult life producing works of a philosophical nature. Producing a volume of work equivalent to that of Thales today wouldn't require more than a couple of months, and would thus not meet that standard. But someone who spends 20 years directly analyzing Kant's Critique of Pure Reason would, even if their work did not include any contemporary sources. Huadpe (talk) 20:37, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. There is no place from the standpoint of coherence alone to allow in head cases who decide to travel back in time and become adepts of some Master without accessing more recent sources.

You cannot "reinvent the wheel" and expect a goddamn Nobel prize. This is what Rand tried to do, for her derivation of a notion of bourgeois "freedom" from the experience of novel writing had been anticipated and exhausted in Europe (you know, Yurup) by 1960. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.153.108.172 (talk) 13:25, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

The problem with making our authoritative sources necessary conditions or requiring a number of them in order to adjudge someone a philosopher is that they only list important philosophers, and sometimes not even then (the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy lacks devoted articles on Althusser, Aristotle, J.L. Austin and Avicenna, for the A's alone). There are thousands of philosophers who do not now, nor never will have entries in such sources; Miranda Fricker, for example, is certainly a philosopher, but has not done anything of such importance to merit inclusion in these sources. So let me make my original reasoning a little clearer;

1. If x takes y seriously enough as a philosopher to have an entry on them, Wikipedia can objectively take y seriously as a philosopher without fear of granting undue respect to charlatans, quacks and mystics.
2. Where x is an authoritative source, suggestions of which are listed above, and y is a notable figure for which Wikipedia has a biography.

The idea is that authoritative sources don't give credence to charlatans etc. These sources tend to be conservative with regard to covering the work of recent philosophers, so we can rest safely on this count. What I am not proposing is that any conclusions should be drawn for biographies of those who do not have entries in authoritative sources; in these cases we just rely on our regular policies. I hope this clarifies things. Skomorokh 14:25, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

This, particularly Rand, has been an issue for at least five years; see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of major philosophers and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of major philosophers (second nomination) for the occasion when I first encountered it. (The deleted talk archives of that page evidence it going back to 2003.) I don't expect a terrific solution to the problem to emerge.

Quoting something I said back in 2006:

... Remember that philosophy is a word broad enough that it covers all thought, standing by itself, and used to be used in the phrase "natural philosophy" for everything that we now think of as "science" (plus more). Someone's thought can have a major impact in other fields without thereby becoming a major philosopher. An example is Thomas Jefferson. His philosophy/thought about government has had a major impact on modern political systems. However, he is not a major figure in philosphy; he is a major figure in politcal science.

Importance in the field of philosophy is best judged by practicing philosophers, because the philosophy is ultimately a conversation among philosophers. If someone's philosophy is being talked about by philosophers, then they are significant to philosophy. ...

Practicing philosophers are primarily to be found in academia. (A few, for example in the ethics subfield, are found in consulting positions or think tanks.) They produce most of their work in academic journals or academic books. ...

There are also encyclopedias and dictionaries of philosophy produced as general summaries of the field. (...) So a sufficiently broad sample of such encyclopedias could also be used to establish major importance. ...

I'm not certain if philosophy has any review/abstract journals. If it does, they are a synopsis/review of the conversation. So they could be stand-alone basis for tests, or could be combined with the encyclopedia/dictionary test.

Ultimately, for an individual, the issue is one of whether reliable sources describe them as a philosopher, and then what the overall evaluation of such reliable sources is. But remember that a source's reliability is a function of the claim being made. So the issue to address is "what sources are reliable for the purpose of asserting or rejecting the claim that someone is a philosopher"? Focus on that question, you'll get somewhere. Focus on Rand and you'll get nowhere. GRBerry 20:55, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Proposed definition for "what constitutes a philosopher"

Leave this section alone unless you wish to contribute to the discussion. The ability to write isn't vandalism except to convenience store clerks, aliterates, and Vandals. I have added footnotes to aid comprehension

子路曰衛君待子而為政 ... [1]

1. Tsze-lû said, "The ruler of Wei has been waiting for you, in order with you to administer the government. What will you consider the first thing to be done?" 2. The Master replied, "What is necessary is to rectify names." 3. "So! indeed!" said Tsze-lû. "You are wide of the mark! Why must there be such rectification?" 4. The Master said, "How uncultivated you are, Yû! A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious reserve. 5. "If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. 6. "When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music will not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot. 7. "Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect."

If, having achieved financial success in an unrelated field, you can be anything you want to be by going on a goddamn talk show and saying you are, then Houston, we have a problem, and it is the problem identified by Master Kong Fu Zi in Analects XII. Wikipedia as a slave republic is doing a lot to create a world of megalothymes [2] stealing the labour of men and proclaiming their expertise in areas in which they have no standing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.153.108.172 (talk) 13:31, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Proposed criterion (Nilges Feb 2008):

"A 'philosopher' worthy of mention as such appears in most (a majority of) secondary sources identified noncontroversially as such, and is described by those sources as (1) seriously knowledgeable about her tradition of philosophy, (2) doing original philosophy in her time and peer-accepted by people already considered under this criterion to be philosophers, and (3) if a past philosopher, cited as such in secondary and primary sources. Original philosophers (index zero philosophers) such as Heraclitus and Kong Fu Zi (Confucius) do not have to fulfill condition (1) and living philosophers need not fulfill (3)."

"After this test is met, the candidate for identification must pass two further tests, both forms of the "Caesar's wife" test, where it is said in legal areas that "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion."

"There should be no controversy attendant on her application such that existing members of the set of approved 'philosophers' would be displeased by her admission. This non placet subset, however, must be diverse in their philosophical views so that no suspicion exists that they are generalizing their unhappiness with the ideas of the candidate to nonrecognition."

"In addition, in view of the low reputation of wikipedia and its unavoidable affiliation with the culture of the subalterned male, who feeds upon sources including science fiction, popular science and who is, for better or worse, a byword for sexual and other dysfunction, it behooves wikipedia to clean up its act."

"Therefore, the second Caesar's Wife criterion is that philosophers who emerge from popular literature should be denied admission at this time, using a higher bar than is used by more reputable sources."

"Examples of would-be philosophers eliminated by the Caesar's Wife test in its second form would be any candidate whose books are so easy to read as to be popular with the mass market, including but not limited to Robert M. 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' Pirsig and Eric Hoffer."

"But, merely writing in a popular register should not disqualify the candidate. Albert Camus and Bertrand Russell may be mentioned as exemplary authors able to boil pots on the one hand, and make original contributions on the other. Whereas Pirsig fails to revive the Sophist and Hoffer is merely an apologist for the AFL/CIO."

"The unavoidable impression of snobbery here is a necessary compensation for wikipedia's grubby look and feel. A greater selectivity, and what Master Kong (Confucius) called the 'rectification' of names would go much further towards improving Wikipedia than various campaigns of ethnic cleansing and personal destruction, which merely add to its louche reputation."

Edward G. Nilges 29 June 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.153.108.172 (talk) 13:01, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

NOTES

[1] Kong Fu-Zi (Confucius) felt that part of the reason for the chaos of the "warring states" was that various thugs and warlords felt that names meant what the strongest felt they meant. The situation is a little different today, when names often mean what the weakest feel they mean. But, this pseudo-democracy only reinforces the will of the stronger. Ayn Rand got rich and successful by writing beach trash and on a talk show said she was a "philosopher". This prefigured the ability of wealthy men such as Donald Trump to define words.

[2] Francis Fukuyama, a more genuine philosopher than Rand because he made a serious effort to understand Continental philosophers, said that in the post-modern era certain men should be allowed to be recreationally "megalothymic", demanding more recognition than the ordinary slob...like Donald Rumsfeld on a wilderness vacation, throwing his bulk around and telling everyone who would listen, what a "real man" he was or is. Of course, Open Content is despite its virtues tailor-made for megalothymic clowns who can create the impression that they've invented something like wikipedia while in actuality using their Vandals and their thugs to bully and persecute real contributors, driving them away, after stealing their intellectual production.

Radical rethinking of criteria for 'desirable titles' needed

The following includes bits, mostly from my own posts, taken from the ‘Ayn Rand’ discussion of who is ‘a philosopher’. It has been concluded there that the discussion of the question there needs to be resolved more generally, ie. here.

I would say the question is important: to be a philosopher’ is desirable to be someone who teaches philosophy or who writes papers on philosophy is much less so. Furthermore, the issue is a general one. roughly the same if we wanted to talk about 'artists' or 'nuclear physicists'. You have to have provided some peer-group recognised work to jump from your day-job (' Mad Max, a lecturer in Fine Arts at Hull University') to the more attractive designation "the modernist painter, Mad Max"...

But let’s just take the question of being a ‘philosopher’ Wikipedia philosophers, I checked, are a strange group. ‘Most’ but by no means all of the ‘traditional ones’ and hundreds of ‘new ones’. We should be so lucky...

The judgements being made at the moment are not objective ones, based on ‘sources’ but subjective ones being made on prejudices and biases.

So let’s start with that controversial figure, Ayn Rand - should she be identified as a 'philosopher' - or not? Many comments look at the use of the term - the article itself cites one usage example in the NYT. But this is I think not the standard. Many, many people are called 'philosophers'. It seems anyone with an academic post in a 'philosophy department' can be called 'a philosopher' on WIkipedia. Even a few without - several articles create new 'philosophers' out of people whose status rests solely on editing philosophy magazines, ,or writing articles 'on philosophy' in newspapers, or writing descriptive accounts of philosophy in books. But of course such philosophical pundits and commentators are indeed, widely referred to as 'philosophers'. Wikipedia cannot use this as its standard, or 1. the term means nothing and 2. the term covers far too many people. A list of ‘British philosophers should resemble the list we might find in an encyclopaedia of philosophy. In Wikipedia’s case it does not - it includes a disproportionate number of contemporary writers and academics.

Clearly when someone is designated 'a philosopher' in an encyclopaedia it must be because they have produced a work recognised by a significant number of the community of scholars (not just academic philosophers, but nor is it the general public) as a contribution to philosophical knowledge.

So , for example, Ayn Rand's claim, I suggest, rests NOT on usage - the footnote [1] on the Wikipedia page referring to her NY Times obituary is quite irrelevant, but on her supposed contribution to philosophical thinking - 'objectivism'. Yet 'Objectivism' is not recognised, as the article accepts, by the scholarly community as 'philosophy' at all. In as much as there is a theory, it is a very old one - egoism, or to be more precise, 'infantile egoism' - the view that the only relevant consideration in taking decisions is the benefit it will bring the individual.

TallNapoleon responds on the Ayn Rand discussion page that 'Objectivism may be *bad* philosophy (this is my opinion) but it is still philosophy'. But to present a philosophy does not mean you are a 'philosopher'. Many writers present distinctive views of the world which are later described as their 'philosophies' - but they remain writers. Or take Mao for instance. Mao wanted to be taken as 'a philosopher' and wrote many self-consciously 'philosophical' works PLUS he contributed a distinctive new philosophy to the world: 'Maoism'. But no one says of him 'the philosopher, Mao Tse Tung, wrote... blah blah blah - and Wikipedia's entry rightly does not introduce him as a philosopher.

Rand, like Mao, like many others, presents a 'philosophy' and wishes to be remembered as a 'philosopher'. This, i hazard, is true of just about every academic and quite a few amateur 'philosophers' too. Yet if their ideas are not accepted within the philosophy world (and this after a suitable period of time has elapsed) as sufficiently novel or useful to justify their inclusion in the necessarily limited ranks of 'philosophers' then they should not be included in the ranks of WIkipedia philosophers. If they are, the term, as I say, ceases to mean very much, and certainly does not mean ‘outside Wikipedia’ what it means inside

If we reduce eligibility to be ‘a philosopher’ then we will likely need alternative titles for those no longer to be called 'philosophers'. For instance, there might be 'academic philosophers', or writers specialising in philosophy, or writers whose works present a particular philosophy. (Rand is perhaps best seen as one of this last kind.)

Skomorokh complains that this approach is somehow elitists, and imagines it favours academics - so I should stress very plainly that my view is that academics teaching or researching philosophy should NOT be counted as 'philosophers'. (Skomorokh directs fire at a paper tiger.)

As explained above, if academics were acceptable, we have a handful of 'historical philosophers' and about one million new ones. Rand and others can certainly join in with other writers-whose-work-has-philosophical-content to this new category. But it would be as Grocuho Marx quipped, a club that if he was allowed to jon, he would no longer want to.

The second point was that if we preserve the term as 'meaningful', we might still want 'very occasionally' to confer it on some new people.

So then, who will decide? I suggested it should be a judgement made not by the 'general public' but by the relevant expert bodies. That' I guess is where the 'elitism' comes in. So, for example, if works like the Oxford Companion to Philosophy include Rand and treat her as 'a philosopher', we have to follow their judgement, whatever, as TallNapoleon says, we may think of the quality of their work itself. But if such philosophical works do NOT count her as a philosopher (and in this case they do not) then it is no good appealing to newspaper articles and online sources compiled by computers or generalists (as in the sections below, eg Ask the Media: Novelist, Philosopher or Both?

The suggestion already made on this page that, for instance, the Internet Encyclopedia/ Standford are suitable sources I would dispute that. We should use sources that represent the views of the philosophical experts not anonymous compilers or philosophical browsers affected by considerations of marketing and current celebrity, drawing themselves on unknown sources.

Docmartincohen (talk) 20:16, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Request for input on dispute about inclusion of content in Nietzsche article

Please forgive me if I am posting in the wrong location. I am looking for suggestions and input regarding an edit I have attempted to make and defend in an article that is part of the Wikiproject Philosophy. I attempted to place two sentences in the Nietzsche article, in the section entitled "Nietzsche's Reading". The sentences read as follows:

"It is also possible that he read and was significantly influenced by Max Stirner. However, this theory has a long and controversial history and, while such influence cannot be ruled out, it appears impossible to conclusively establish."

One editor on the page suggested that these two sentences gave undue weight to the theory of Stirner influence on Nietzsche and removed them. He or she also suggested these two sentences constituted support for a Fringe Theory. I provided some 20 citations on the talk page. These citations showed that the theory has a long history, a controversial history, and that it has been debated in both popular and academic settings. At least of six of these references showed clearly that the idea that Nietzsche was influenced by Stirner is still current, though it is a view held by a significant minority (including such well known figures as Deleuze).

I do not feel that the inclusion of one sentence mentioning the possibility of influence, and another providing caveats about controversy and the fact that it cannot be established conclusively constitutes undue weight. I also feel that the suggestion that this is a fringe theory is disingenuous. Can anyone provide me with suggestions or guidance here regarding determining whether or not these two sentences constitute undue weight or if they are improperly endorsing a "fringe theory"? --Picatrix (talk) 11:34, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

It appears this issue is settled (at least for the moment). Thanks in any case. --Picatrix (talk) 21:01, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Fair trade GA Sweeps Review: On Hold

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria and I'm specifically going over all of the "Culture and Society" articles. I have reviewed Fair trade and believe the article currently meets the majority of the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. I have left this message at this WikiProject's talk page so that any interested members can assist in helping the article keep its GA status. In reviewing the article, I have found there are some issues that may need to be addressed, and I'll leave the article on hold for seven days for them to be fixed. I have left messages on the talk pages of the main contributors of the article and several other WikiProjects. Please consider helping address the several points that I listed on the talk page of the article, which shouldn't take too long to fix if multiple editors assist in the workload. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk) 20:51, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I have also reviewed Gender which falls under this project and have raised several issues on the talk page. Please assist in addressing this issue so that the article can continue to keep its GA status. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page. Happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk) 08:13, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Request for discussion of norms, policy, and criteria about things to include and exclude

I would like to request discussion of how to establish norms, criteria, or policy about what to include and exclude in and from Wikipedia philosophy articles, with regard to philosophers' criticisms of other philosophers, with regard to the proliferation of separate Wikipedia articles about individual works by philosophers, and with regard to what the reference lists or bibliographies of the philosophy articles should look like. Iam taking the liberty of copying to here some comments I wrote earlier today with regard to a proposed article for deletion (on Schopenhauer's criticism of Kant) that bear on these questions. Please forgive me if they have already been discussed or settled during the past 2 1/2 years, since I have not been available during that time and so have missed a lot.

If we had articles on every philosopher's criticism of every other philosopher, Wikipedia would just become a loose mishmash. Should we have separate articles on Hegel's criticism of Kant, Marx's criticism of Hegel, Marx's criticism of Feuerbach, Feuerbach's criticism of Hegel, Marcuse's criticism of Sartre, Adorno's criticims of Husserl, Husserl's criticism of psychologism, Freud's criticism of prior dream theories, Jung's criticism of Freud? This would be crazy. And it would be in contradiction to the nature of an encyclopedia, at least not a general encyclopedia, although a case might be made for it in a highly specialized philosophy encyclopedia. For me the issue isn't about this article in particular, but about the general issue: we need a policy and set of criteria on this with regard to the Wikipedia philosophy domain, and perhaps also social thought. It seems to me that the general policy should be:1) the essence of anything that is an important criticism in the history of thought of one thinker by another should be included in capsule form, i.e. in at most one paragraph, under the article of the thinker being criticized, if it shaped subsequent thought; 2) it should also be included in capsule form in the article about the thinker doing the criticizing if that criticism was important in the development of that thinker's own thought, as was the case with Schopenhauer's criticism of Kant, Marx's of Hegel, Jung's of Freud, and so on; 3) anything over and above that should belong in references or links to specialized scholarly literature on that specialized topic. That's why there is scholarly literature and libraries. Wikipedia can't encompass the totality of scholarly literature and libraries, it's just an encyclopedia. Part of the point of an encyclopedia is to give the reader a general short introduction to a subject and encourage them to follow up any more specialized interest through appropriate references. That's the way all good encyclopedias operate. Any editor who is so impassioned about one philosopher's criticism of another should be submitting a paper about it to a philosophy journal -- Wikipedia can't be a cheap, easy alternative to the labor of submitting a paper to a peer-reviewed journal.

By the way, I happen to think that the same goes for the proliferation on Wikipedia of individual articles about all of the individual works by individual philosophers. For any major thinker, there are only a few works that deserve specialized articles in a general encyclopedia. For example, in the case of Kant, it makes sense for the three Critiques and a few other works; but it doesn't make sense for every individual thing Kant wrote, especially in his pre-critical period. Even philosophy encyclopedias don't have such things. Again, that's where one goes to a library to peruse scholarly literature about Kant. Same for other thinkers. I have several books on Kant which devote short sections to some of Kant's pre-critical writings, and that's appropriate. But Wikipedia is not a scholarly study of Kant or of any other thinker.

And, by the way, something similar is happening in some Wikipedia philosophy articles with regard to references, i.e. people are just inserting books that they happen to like or have read or been influenced by, and we're ending up with unwieldy bibliographies that would be useless to a general reader, because he or she wouldn't even know how to choose among all of these references. An encyclopedia bibliography should be a short list of major classic and recent works that a reader could go to to learn more and to find out about more specialized literature if they're interested. I just did a quick scan, and at this moment there are 66 books listed in the Kant reference section. Because Kant is one of the major philosophers, it is understandable that there should be a substantial number of references. But I doubt if more than two dozen are appropriate in a general encyclopedia article. Jjshapiro (talk) 21:25, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Rename proposal for the lists of basic topics

This project's subject has a page in the set of Lists of basic topics.

See the proposal at the Village pump to change the names of all those pages.

The Transhumanist 10:14, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

double-archiving

This page has or had been doubly archived, and pages like Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Philosophy/Archive_3 created that are not accessible from the archives box up there. The problem is, their contents isn't to be found elsewhere. I didn't look into this, but maybe someone who likes that stuff want to. trespassers william (talk) 20:49, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
• The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
• A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 21:01, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Simple English needs your help

Hello all; I am an administrator on the Simple English Wikipedia. Our goal is to present the knowledge, but use simpler sentences ot do so (so that those learning English can also understand it). Our main problem at the moment is that we are a small community, of about 40 named, regular editors. There are many philosophy-related stubs (for example: Causality), but we currently do ont have the knolwedge to expand them. I would therefore like to invite all those that are interested to Simple English Wikipedia. The main difficulty with Simple English is to find easy words (without multiple meanings, if possible) to explain the concepts. I therefore hope to see many of you there. If you want to contact me, please use my talk page on simple, I rarely edit here. --Eptalon (talk) 16:17, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I've done work on the Simple English Wikipedia, and found it rewarding, but...does anyone actually read the Simple English Wikipedia? How many hits does it get, compared to the English Wikipedia? Rick Norwood (talk) 19:00, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I have to admit I have no idea. We recently hit 32.000 articles (about 20.800 of them have a stub template - Thats another problem we need to solve soon..) - Where are the sources that tell you how many hits for enWP, would they not also list simple? --Eptalon (talk) 19:08, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Hello again; it looks like I am the only editor that edits philosphy-related articles; I asked fellow editors to put those articles they think need work onto this list- the list is empty at the time of this writing; What about taking another approach - like was done with religion-related articles: As a Wikiproject you problably have philosphy-related articles you consider more important than others. Since you know these (probably), what about looking that there is a version of them in Simple English wikipedia that you are happy with? (For my part, I cannot help there; my formal education does not include Philosphy at a sufficiently detailed level). These are of course just thoughts.. --Eptalon (talk) 11:34, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Where IS this simple english encycolapedai and an explanation of its reason for being?--Philogo 13:01, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

(unindenting) see simple:Wikipedia:Simple English Wikipedia for the reason for existence. The main page is at simple:Main_Page --Eptalon (talk) 13:12, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I still suspect it is a waste of time. It's hard to find. I think most English speaking people believe they read well enough to read the English Wikipedia. Whether they are correct or not is another matter. No use for an Encyclopedia nobody reads, however well intentioned. Rick Norwood (talk) 13:30, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

connotation/denotation

To me, Connotation and denotation looks like a sophomore's rather ghastly term paper. However, I'm definitely not the right person to fix it. Help, please! -- Hoary (talk) 09:17, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh dear, too true. Looks like it needs a start from scratch approach. Do we have an "articles in need of attention list" and is it on it? --Philogo 12:59, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

India

I notice that many Philosophy articles assert the historical primacy of philosophers from India, most recently noted in Philosophy of Language. The same is true of many mathematics articles. There is a problem, in that these assertions are almost never referenced. I hate to just delete them all, but assertions really should be referenced. Rick Norwood (talk) 13:36, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Have you flagged fact/"citation needed"?

That's a good suggestion, but I've seen flagged "facts" stay around for years. Still, it is probably what I need to do in the future.

Sir Thomas L Heath in Euclid, the Thirteen Books of the Elemants, Vol 1: Dover New York 1956 page 160 draws our attentionto Albert Burk's Zetschrift der deuthshen morgenlansishen Gesellschaft (LV 1901, pp 243-591 and elwhere) translating and writing about Das Apatabba Sulba-Sultra. Heath quotes G Thilbaut in The Journal of Asiatic Society of Bengal, XLIV, 1875 part 1. commenting on Burk's works opining on the dates and significance of Das Apatabba Sulba-Sultra, and "roundly maintains, not only that the Pythagoras' Theorem was known and proved in all its generality by the Indians long before the date of Pythagoras (about 580-500 b.c. ), but that they had discovered the irrational; ; and further that, so far from Indian geomerty being indebted to to the Greek, the much-travelled Pythagoras probably obtained his theory from India (loc. cit, LB, p 575 note)"

Heath, loc. cit.--Philogo 22:30, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Evidence of absence

I added some further reading to Evidence of absence, a new article, and tagged it for notability. More comments at Talk:Evidence of absence. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 07:59, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposed deletion - Aous Shakra

In doing some work for Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Article Cleanup, I came across the article Aous Shakra, who according to the article was an existential philosopher. I could not find anything via ghits, gbooks, gnews, gscholar or my libraries EBSCO database on this individual so I added a Prod template. Posting here for your info. --Captain-tucker (talk) 09:00, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Learned Hand peer review

user:Slp1 and I have put Learned Hand up for peer review, prior to a submission for FAC. This was the article planned by a group of Wikipedians as a tribute to Newyorkbrad because, on leaving, he expressed regret that he couldn't now fulfill his plan to bring this article to FA. We would very much appreciate reviews from those with knowledge of philosophy. Hand was influenced by William James and other Harvard philosophers, and the article has a major section on his political and legal philosophy. Many thanks in advance to anyone who can help us with a review. qp10qp (talk) 12:50, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

C-Class

C-Class doesn't seem to work for this project's assessment template. Is this a purposeful exclusion? --Millbrooky (talk) 20:48, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

No, we are lazy, non-admins and the template is fully protected. Skomorokh 00:28, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Non sequitur, undistributed middle, affirming the consequent and denying the antecedent

I recently finished rewriting the article on non sequitur and I believe the articles mentioned here seem to overlap somewhat. They definitely need attention to clean up each page as to properly identify the distinctions between them. I'm not an expert on the field, but it seems like affirming and denying can be seen as fallacies of the undistributed middle, which in turn is a non sequitur. I'd like some input on this from people who've studied this more than I have since I'm getting slightly confused right now. I'd also appreciate it if someone took a look at what I did with the [[[Non_sequitur|non sequitur]] article since that also needs improvement. Vadigor (talk) 20:37, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Vacuous truth

(Cross-posted from wt:wpm)

Our article on vacuous truth, until April or so of this year, was about the concept that I assume most people here understand as the phrase's referent: Conditionals that are true because their antecedents are false, and universals that are true because the domain of the universal quantification is empty. But then someone revised it so that it now seems to be more about analytic truth, or logically necessary truth, in general. I think this is wrong but I didn't want to just revert a long series of changes. I left a message at the article's talk page but have seen no response. Does anyone have suggestions as to the best way to proceed? --Trovatore (talk) 21:35, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Have you left a message on the talk page of the person responsible for the changes as well? People often don't watch pages, even those they make substantial changes to. Richard001 (talk) 02:36, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Portal:Feminism

Portal:Feminism has had a lot of changes and work recently and is currently up for portal peer review. Comments would be appreciated at Wikipedia:Portal peer review/Feminism/archive1. Thank you, Cirt (talk) 23:38, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Leonardo da Vinci peer review

Any comments at Wikipedia:Peer review/Leonardo da Vinci/archive3 would be most appreciated. It's a vital article, so it would be nice to get as many views as possible. Thanks. Papa November (talk) 08:22, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Alan Moore??

I'm sure Alan Moore has views on this, that and whatever (like many of us), but I'm not aware of any contributions to philosophy or any other reason why he might be in here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.55.55.235 (talk) 00:35, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I've responded to your comments on the Alan Moore talk page, but I'll summarize them here. Alan Moore is a self-avowed anarchist, and so he falls under the domain of the Anarchist Task Force of WP Philosophy, which is interested in anarchist biography articles. Moore's philosophical views have also been repeatedly incorporated into his work, which justifies a section of the article being used to explain what his positions are. Such a section has yet to be developed, but I have it on my list of things to do. --Cast (talk) 01:48, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I would submit that having views on a philosophical issue is not enough to merit inclusion in a list of philosophers. Many people have their own points of view of things, particularly where politics is concerned. Quine, Kripke, Plato, Alan Moore. One of these things is not like the other Hairhorn (talk) 07:43, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you completely, but your comments are entirely unrelated. Alan Moore is not on a List of Philosophers, nor is he included in any such categorization. The anonymous comment above is referencing the inclusion of the WikiProject Philosophy banner in the talk page of the Alan Moore article. I've explained that this is due to the fact that Alan Moore's biography falls under the domain of the Anarchist Task Force, due to his repeated espousal of anarchist philosophy in interviews when he is asked about his political views. --Cast (talk) 01:42, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Speech Act

The Talk page for the Speech Act article lists a great many longstanding problems, and I have just added further serious criticisms.

Much of the article is highly technical and I do not really feel that I'm the right person to correct it, so I'm posting here instead. I'll have a go in a week or two if no-one else is interested. MaherCoen (talk) 12:55, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup listings for workgroups

Hello,

apart from the cleanup listing for the main project, recently subscription to cleanup listings were added for several work groups of the project (Ethics, Metaphysics, and Logic). Unfortunately the bot that generates the listings encounters a problem in these cases.

Because the work groups share their project banner with the main project, the bot needs to identify the articles of the work groups via categories. Basically, all talk pages of articles of each work group need to be in one category, not in its subcategories. (This is well tested and works e.g. for all work groups of Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia.) However, for the work groups of WikiProject Logic, these categories seem to be missing.

To add these categories, it would be sufficient to modify the {{Philosophy}} banner accordingly. For example, all articles of the Logic work group could be put into Category:Logic work group articles. Changes would then be effective with the next data update, probably around end of August or mid-September.

Would this solution be OK for you? --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:56, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

FAR listing

Law has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. -- Vision Thing -- 18:41, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Philosophy template C-class

I think someone with administrative powers needs to add the C class entry to Template:Philosophy/Class, given it's been protected from editing and that C class isn't recognised when entered as a class in the template. Bungle ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:03, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Invitation to CfD Category:Pseudoskeptic Target Discussion

Due to its relation to this project within WP, members might have an interest in this discussion.-- self-ref (nagasiva yronwode) (talk) 19:28, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Georges Palante

I hope this is the right page to ask that, so here's the message I posted on the main talk page:

Hello, I added some precisions about the French philosopher Georges Palante, translated from the French article, but I'm not sure of the orthography, so it'll be nice if someone could take a look to correct some of my mistakes.

The main task is to only to correct mistakes or words that shouldn't be used on WP. Regards, --Sins We Can't Absolve (talk) 15:05, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Medieval philosophy

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:32, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Marxism

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:33, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Philosophy of science

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:34, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Philosophy

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:34, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Modern philosophy

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:35, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Michel Foucault FAR

Michel Foucault has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Thanks! Lesgles (talk) 20:59, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Brief epistemology and logic articles to be merged

Recently, a couple of short articles about reasoning and knowledge sprouted, that probably should be merged with existing Wikipedia articles: Evidence of absence and Negative proof. The debates are in need of attention from philosophy experts. See:

• Talk:Evidence of absence and
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Negative proof (closed: to be continued at Talk:Negative proof)

--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 09:40, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Stereotypes page

Can someone help me? There is a huge white stereotypes section and only a few meager sections for nonwhites. —Preceding unsigned comment added by YVNP (talk • contribs) 01:42, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Task force proposal

Would anyone be interested in creating a task force from this project which focuses on 19th century American Transcendentalism? --Midnightdreary (talk) 15:59, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Request for comment on Leonardo da Vinci article

A request for comment has been made at the Leonardo da Vinci article, which is supported by this WikiProject. The question for the RFC is "Does the praise in the lead section constitute peacock terminology?" Please visit Talk:Leonardo da Vinci#Request for comment on style of lead section if you would like to comment. Papa November (talk) 19:56, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to redirect Seth Material

There is a proposal to redirect Seth Material (an article within this Wikiproject's scope) to Jane Roberts. Please comment at Talk:Seth Material#Redirect to Jane Roberts. Gandalf61 (talk) 12:23, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

New article propossal

I want you to create a new article or somewhat of a list about Anglo-American Philosophy, which I believe tends to be a little different than Continental Philosophy (so I could give a better exam on contemporary philosophy next week). haha I mean it seriously, I need this --Andersmusician NO 06:27, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I think you may be looking for our article on analytic philosophy. Regards, the skomorokh 06:40, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

thanks a lot, time to read for me --Andersmusician NO 21:29, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Eudaimonia and eudaimonism

I've placed merge tags on eudaimonia and eudaimonism but I'm not entirely sure how to proceed. Could an expert take a look at both of these articles and determine the best course of action? FWIW, eudaimonia was the original article, created in Feb. 2003. Eudaimonism was created a year later, in Jan. 2004. Viriditas (talk) 09:03, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

WP:Featured lists

If you can see here, you can see that the topic, Philosophy and psychology, have absolutely no featured lists. So I was wondering if members of this WikiProject can participate in making more lists related to the topic that you guys must be interested in. Thanks. -- SRE.K.Annoyomous.L.24_[c] 03:58, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools FAR

I have nominated French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:29, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Heidegger dispute

Are there any project participants who are knowledgeable concerning Martin Heidegger? There is a dispute at the article's talkpage over the treatment of Heideggers association with Nazism among other issues that could use informed input. Any help appreciated, Skomorokh 04:37, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

SOPHIA

SOPHIA (European Foundation for the Advancement of Doing Philosophy with Children)

Can members of this project help improve this stub article? Michael Hardy (talk) 02:50, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Popper/Historicism: Notable

Karl Popper's The Poverty of Historicism is currently tagged as having multiple issues. IMHO the article does need work, but I was surprised to see that one concern listed is that the article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines. Does anybody want to defend the notability of this work? (In that article or its Talk, please, not just here on this page.) -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 04:12, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Done, thanks for the heads up. Skomorokh 06:30, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

New portal

I made a portal for existentialism, Portal:Existentialism, and is not yet complete. Anyone can help finishing it? Thanks! Wandering Courier (talk) 05:34, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Great idea, thanks for your initiative! I'll take a look. Regards, Skomorokh 06:30, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Meaning (philosophy of language)

The article Meaning (philosophy of language) is flagged for deletion. It was previsued inaccurately called linguistic meaning to the annoyance the linguists. It is variously criticised as redundant, PV and OR.--Philogo 00:49, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Individual reassessment of God

The article God is currently under individual reassessment, which can be found here. Editors are encouraged to participate. Thank you. DiverseMentality 22:28, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Metaphilosophy/quotations

I'd like to draw the attention of the project to this newly created article, which showed up on my radar screen but is outside my domain, but certainly relevant to the project. Looie496 (talk) 01:38, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Applied Ethics

The category Applied Ethics is situated under Applied disciplines which may be the correct placement.Since ethics is a part of philosophy would it not make more sense to have it under Applied Philosophy?Just thought I would check on here before being too bold. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Workster (talk • contribs) 09:46, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Qualia undergoing rewrite by new editor

Could project members please look in on Qualia? Article is currently undergoing "a fairly extensive edit" by User:Edmond Wright, who writes on the article's Talk page: "As the editor of the most recent collection in which arguments for qualia has been presented (The Case for Qualia, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2008), I felt that I was an appropriate editor."
The account User:Edmond Wright was created on 4 February 2009 and has made several dozen edits to Qualia over the last few days.
I've noticed that new and enthusiastic editors often benefit from the advice of more experienced editors. (I have no opinion at all on the quality of User:Edmond Wright's edits so far -- just would like experienced members of this project to take a look.)
-- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 13:34, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Encouragement of Wikipedia ruled by Oligarchy?

What is the perceived benefit of recognizing regular contributors? This is dangerous at best as it risks creating a situation where the knowledge represented on Wikipedia becomes a reflection of the beliefs of a small group of people, and minimizes the impact of the remaining population and whatever superior perspectives they might have brought to the table.

Wikipedia is supposed to sample the best ideas of the entire population and not conform to the ideas of a small group of people who insist on patting each other on the back and reverting any edits that a member of their group did not make or agree with. -Anon

Your analysis is absolutely correct. The vast majority of WP contributions come from a very small number of people. The best that we can do is hope they are good, and encourage them. Other than that, recruitment is key. Be well, Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 19:29, 10 February 2009 (UTC) P.S. (The other thing we can do is keep an eye on each other. I would encourage you to do that.) -GB

Philosophy_of_logic_and_philosophical_logic

Can I get an "amen" about the title of this article, Please. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 05:32, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

This artilce has been resplit.--Philogo (talk) 00:56, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Loki's Wager

I learned about this fallacy in a Philosophy class at UT, but I can't come up with a reference for it, having long since tossed out my textbook. Anyone here ever heard of it? -- Kendrick7^talk 04:23, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Methodology

Anyone good with thise topic? Needs a lot of citation and broadening? As a core topic, can it be upgraded on your importance scale? Only two external links of which two are dictionary entries. ~ R.T.G 14:51, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps Review of Kohlberg's stages of moral development

Kohlberg's stages of moral development has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Articles are typically reviewed for one week. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. --Malleus Fatuorum 18:21, 15 February 2009 (UTC)