Talk:Law of thought

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Contents 1 Notes & Queries 2 Sensible Titles 3 Leibniz's Assertion 4 Problems

[edit] Notes & Queries

Jon Awbrey 22:16, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sensible Titles

This article should be called "Laws of Thought," not "Law of Thought." The George Boole article should be called "Laws of Thought (Book)."Lestrade 19:22, 27 July 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

I renamed the article on Boole's book and I heartily agree with User:Lestrade's comment about the improper naming of this article. Academic philosophers speak of the laws of thought as a group. The term is standard. I think this page should be moved back to laws of thought. Perhaps this question should be put to a survey on this talk page. - WikiPedant 05:31, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

JA: No, in WP the use of singular is standard for a class of related things. Hence, law of thought. You can still have laws of thought redirect here, so no big problem. Boole's book title Laws of Thought needs no extra dab, since the plural Laws and the capitalized Thought already dab it, and this follows the rule of many similar cases in WP. Jon Awbrey 07:08, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Hello JA -- I can understand why you want to adhere closely to WP standards, but the fact is that the WP standards are more flexible and complex than you say. The guidelines do allow plural article names in cases just like this one, where the article is about the whole set of things (that is, the things considered as a collective) and where the collective term is itself standard usage. See Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(plurals) which recognizes exceptions to the use of singular names, such as "articles on groups of specific things" (for example, articles on particular language families, such as Romance languages and Afro-Asiatic languages). See also Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions/archive5#SOME_article_titles_should_be_plural. Furthermore, the list of exemplary featured articles contains a number of plural titles, including Médecins Sans Frontières,€2 commemorative coins, Microsoft Data Access Components, Black Seminoles, Domestic AC power plugs and sockets, National parks of England and Wales, Three Laws of Robotics, The Beatles, The Supremes, The Temptations, The Waterboys, End times, Shakers, Olympic Games, Indian Railways. And specifically with respect to history and philosophy articles, the list of good articles includes Zeno's paradoxes, Khazars, and Knights Hospitaller. So there is (a) good reason, (b) allowance within the wiki guidelines, and (c) precedent for changing the name of this article back to Laws of thought. - WikiPedant 05:26, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

JA: Let's put aside the temptations to exploit proper namess that are plural, please. As a general rule, it just makes sense use the stem word, say, logic, as the main article title if there is any occasion at all to use the stem word in text, as the regular derivatives, say, logics, logical, logicality, etc. can all be linked without having to bother with redirects. Of course, law of thought is a special case, since the law is embedded in the phrase, but the criterion of convenience here is whether one ever finds occasion to use the singular term in text, amd one often does, since law of thought, like national park, is a class name, and is often used in the singular. Jon Awbrey 19:42, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Leibniz's Assertion

Leibniz's assertion of the Identity of indiscernibles is not a law of thought. The article is mistaken by including Leibniz's assertion as one of the laws of thought.69.19.14.33 17:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

I tend to agree, and the classic Aristotelian law of identity is missing. I addressed this (diplomatically) in my edit today. - WikiPedant 05:31, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problems

JA: I reverted the following addition to the lead because it lends itself a bit too easily to a purely psychological reading, whereas it needs to be made more clear that logical laws are normative principles.

The laws of thought are the traditional, fundamental rules which collectively define how a rational mind must think. To break any of the laws of thought (for example, to contradict oneself) is to be irrational.

JA: Given the proper explanation beforehand, though, it looks like it would be pretty easy to fix it. Jon Awbrey 13:42, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Who was it that first judged that the laws of thought are not related in any way to dreaded psychology and its description of brains or minds and their acts of thinking? Was he the same man who claimed that the laws of thought are pure logical principles that would exist somewhere separately even if there were no humans who had thoughts running through their heads? 69.19.14.36 02:57, 6 January 2007 (UTC)Benighted—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.82.9.79 (talk) 04:41, 3 January 2007 (UTC).