Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy/Assessment

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[edit] Assessment

I'm going through and making initial assessments. I'm not throughly reading the articles, so most of the assessments are based on rather shallow criteria, like length and sectioning. I am, of course, not committed to any of these assessments so you are welcome to change them if you see fit. Also, I've been spending some time putting the philosophy template on the talk page of anything with philo-stub (without paying too much attention to whether the article actually deserves it). Many of these "articles" shouldn't exist at all and/or shouldn't have either philosophy template on them. I encourage you to remove the philosophy templates and/or propose that the articles be deleted as you see fit. KSchutte 16:38, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Importance criteria

I am having problems rating the importance of articles because the criteria seem to conflict. Topics that are generally very well known about by non-philosophers may not play a particularly vital role in philosophy (e.g. Global justice. Topics that are vital to philosophy may be virtually unknown outside of philosophy (e.g. empiricism). People who are very well known and internationally important may be of comparatively little philosophical interest, and vice versa. I have been trying to kind of amalgamate the various criteria, but it leaves me feeling unsure about the importance ratings I am giving the articles. Anarchia 09:18, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Consider Top importance articles. The assessment page says:

  • The article is one of the core topics about philosophy. Generally, this is limited to those articles that are are included as sections of the main Philosophy article

But there is no 'philosophy of science' or 'mind-body dualism' (etc.) section in the philosophy article, and there is a phenomenology section. And the assessment page also says:

  • A reader who is not involved in the philosophy field will have high familiarity with the subject matter and should be able to relate to the topic easily.

Readers uninvolved with philosophy are unlikely to know anything about phenomenology, but may well know something about the philosophy of Karl Popper or mind-body dualism.

Any suggestions? Am I just trying to read the assessment criteria too literally? Could they be clarified?Anarchia 06:07, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi Anarchia! You're doing a great job rating them. I agree with most of your ratings to date. Those assessment criteria are generic and they come from the WP1.0 assessment team. These are my personal opinions for assessing philosophy:

For Top Importance,

  • No one person ought to be in Top Importance.
  • No one book ought to be in Top Importance.
  • Logic, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Ethics, Aesthetics, and especially Philosophy are always Top
  • "Philosophy of X", where X is a historically popular and historically important topic (Religion, Mind, Politics and Science have always been popular and important. A Philosophy of Sex might be popular, but hasn't been historically important. A Philosophy of Physics might be historically important, but not exactly popular)
  • One or two of the most popular topics from the above subjects (e.g. Free Will of Metaphysics, Dualism of Mind, Knowledge in Epistemology, Truth of Philosophy)

For High Importance,

  • Famous philosophers well known to the general public must be included and they must primarily be thought of as philosophers first. (e.g. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche). Marx's a tricky one, but Godel would definitely not be High. See for example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Core biographies#Philosophers, 18. Or even that BBC Top Twenty Shortlist. Or the many books that have generally listed key philsophers, like "The Philosophers" by Honderich or "Fifty Major Philosophers" by Collinson
  • One or two of the most famous or popular books by each of the famous philosophers must be included.
  • Some of the most popular topics from the Top subjects. (e.g. Utilitarianism in Ethics, First-Order Logic in Logic, Beauty in Aesthetics)
  • "Philosophy of Y", where Y is an historically important topic first, and must be somewhat popular.

For Mid Importance,

  • Other famous or important philosophers somewhat well known to other philosophers of a different tradition must be included (e.g. Frege, Husserl, William James, Boethius) except those whose philosophical and popular heyday were since 1950 or later (e.g. Deleuze, Rorty, Searle, Kuhn, Gadamer, Austin, Feyerabend) (The Lasting Significance clause)
  • Most philosophical books by the High-Importance Philosophers included.
  • One or two of the most important books by each of the Mid-Importance philosophers must be included.
  • Every other famous thinker, not usually or sometimes thought of as philosopher, and whose work has had enormous philosophical significance (i.e. Godel, Darwin, Gandhi)
  • Most of the rest of the most popular topics from the Top subjects.
  • "Philosophy of Z", where Z is a historically popular topic, and must be somewhat important.

For Low Importance,

  • Any other person thought of as a philosopher, not counted as High or Mid.
  • All philosophy books not counted as High or Mid
  • Any other topic not counted as Top, High or Mid
  • Anything left of the rest of the most popular topics from the Top, High and Mid subjects.

Heh, this is just off the top of my head. Feel free to add or debate some points! Poor Yorick 08:41, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

NICE! And much appreciated. Anarchia 11:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I think that the Importance Scale is a VERY bad concept. Human knowledge processes most from seemingly unrelated fields. Kin dof like "disruptive technologies". Today the best scientists are scientists have a specialists from several fields so they can further the fields. What else is Wikipedia that creating ties between various fields? This is why internet is so powerful because the speed of information moves faster from seemingly unrelated fields. So scaling information because they seem "The article is not required knowledge for a broad understanding of philosophy" is really silly. Beside: "philosophy" means the love of knowledge. There is no required knowloedge to love knowledge. Aristotle is not required to be a philisopher. Ask Aristotle himself ;-) Fabrice —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.160.247.158 (talk) 22:09, 21 December 2007 (UTC)