User talk:Domhail

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[edit] Thanks for Xenophon - About Schopenhauer, Flaubert and wiki

I'm a Italian pathologist, and a "horse-addict". When translating "On horsemanship" into italian (thanks!) I took a look to major contributors and I found out your interest on philosopy. Well, I read some days ago "The art of controversy" by Schopenhauer, and I found inside something very interesting applying to current NPOV politics. It's into one of the last tricks, about the relation between "common point of view" and true knowledge. I'm working into wiki (mainly it.wiki obviously) just from some weeks, but I soon knock against NPOV; the problem is, there are lots of topics where "common point of view" is far from evidence, instead is mainly based on mythos and legends! So I proposed a discussion into it.wiki about a possible new term EBPOV (Evidence Based Point of View) opposted to a CPOV (Common Point of View) and clarifying the very core of NPOV, and then (before any reading of Schopenhauer!) I post into it.wiki a strange article on "Luogo comune" ("Received idea"); I know that a Dictionary of Received Ideas from Flaubert exists, but I didn't read it.

So: en.wiki hasn't so far an article Received idea. My English is really too poor to write it. Nor I have a special knowledge of philosophy...

04 January 2006 - I add an update. Barefoot horses has a NPOV mark (without any comment on discussion page). I was waiting for it! I knew it was a "flaming" topic, and I already sustained a similar discussion on it.wiki.

Horseshoeing is a very interesting topic, concerning Received ideas and "EBPOV". It's probably a received idea lasting from some centuries. The problem is, it's a received idea commonly thought true - so it's repeated without any, or very few, mention of alternative (and MUCH more documented!) points of view. So: is really NPOV to mention as "truth" a largely shared topic, only basing on its "CPOV" nature?

Would you like to think a little about?

Would you like to submit this discussion to any other admin, interested in "NPOV" philosophy? --Alex brollo 11:10, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Schopenhauer and NPOV

I apologize for so a late reply! Thanks for your interest.

If you don't know it, take a look to "The art of controversy" by Arthur Schopenhauer (published as an e-book here.

It's very interesting as a whole, thinking to wiki flamings and hard discussions ; but see this from the Stratagem XXX: "But to speak seriously, the universality of an opinion is no proof, nay, it is not even a probability, that the opinion is right."

Interesting, isn't? Something to think about, given the respect of "Common Point of View" somehow inherent to the current definition of NPOV...

The problem of "truth" vs "Received ideas" is covered in part by the wiki article Evidence-based medicine: the problem is, even "sciences" like medicine have a large component of something very similar to received ideas! It's really a hard work to identify "EBPOV" inside the Complex system of human culture.

I could try to translate my "Received Idea" into English, but my English is perhaps more or less like your Italian... :-( --Alex brollo 20:01, 2 May 2006 (UTC)