Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy/Before Dec 2004

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Contents

Starting the project

The current definition of the project is nothing more than a rough draft on my part. Does anyone have any suggestions? What would you like to use this page for? — Adam Conover | Talk 09:54, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)

Hello Adam, I just joined. Your draft is very good and sets out some good goals for the project. It also outlines "problems" well; we need experts. I am not an expert, merely interested, but I'll help in edges and corners where I can. ✏ Sverdrup 10:51, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)


Hey Sverdrup, great to have you! Thanks for the compliments -- I'm glad the draft was adequate. I don't think that we need experts, per se -- after all, the wiki ideal seems to be that many editors who are "merely interested" can combine to form an expert in their own right. ;) In any case, I think the real problem is that philosophy is an extremely complicated and nuanced discipline. It's not a matter of finding facts to plug into an article -- you need to be sure that you really understand a topic before you can feel confident to write about it, and every topic is so complicated and nuanced itself that building that sort of confidence is really difficult. In addition, philosophy is highly a specialized, so even an "expert" might only feel confident to contribute to a small number of articles. As a result, the philosophical articles on the 'pedia are uneven -- some topics are given a terrific treatment, while other quite important topics have nothing more than stubs or swaths of Larry's Text. A terrific example is Critique of Pure Reason -- it's the most important book in the history of philosophy, but we have nothing about it. The reason why is obvious -- who feels themselves confident to summarize the CPR? The hope is that by getting our heads together we'll make the problem more tractable. (Sorry, that was a bit of a rant -- just thinking out loud, I guess. Again, thanks for helping out!) — Adam Conover | Talk 11:12, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)

I've created an "Open Tasks" box (similar to the general open tasks box on the main page) listing philosophy pages that need work. The MediaWiki markup to insert it on a page is {{msg:PhilosophyTasks}}. Everyone is welcome to edit the box, so please remove an item if you've worked on it, or add one if you find it.

Comments, anyone? — Adam Conover | Talk 14:11, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)

I’m in. I’ve done a bit of work on some of the existing articles, but am never quite satisfied with the result. Some coordination and mutual support would be a great help. I’ve contemplated setting up such a project, but never made the commitment. Thanks, Adam. Banno 02:24, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)

I'm in. A little tangential to my areas of focus, and I'm not expert, but I suspect I'll have some useful contributions to make. -- Jmabel 21:19, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I am in the process of reading the Critique of Pure Reason, and have put in a short summary of its subject matter in the CPR Wikipedia entry. As I continue reading, I will continue adding more to the entry. The next step might be to identify and list key concepts in the Critique. --Michael

Definitely. Michael, you might look at a copy of Norman Kemp Smith's Companion to the Critique of Pure Reason, and Caygill's A Kant Dictionary. I have copies of them myself, so I'll help out however I can. — Adam Conover † 21:39, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)

I'm also in. I've contributed to several philosophy topics already, listed on my User: page if anybody feels like going over them for fact checking or editing (actually, I'd appreciate it as, although I've read a lot, I'm no expert -- yet). Like everyone else, I've thought about doing this but I'm just too lazy. Sigh. So, thanks for doing it! -Seth Mahoney 21:41, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for signing up! (And don't feel bad -- I only took the initiative because I was looking for a way to avoid working on my thesis...) — Adam Conover † 21:48, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)

Structure of the WikiProject page

How should we structure the WikiProject page? Right now we have Goals, "How you can help", Participants, Open Tasks, Mediawiki Custom Elements and Metadata all on the front page. Out of these, Open Tasks seems like the most obvious choice to move to a separate page. This would give us space for more detailed information on each task -- notes, a signup area, etc. Would anyone find this useful?

perhaps keep it all on one page for a while, so it is easier to see how it is developing. Banno 22:24, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)
Sounds good. We'll split off again if it gets too unweildy. — Adam Conover † 00:19, Apr 10, 2004 (UTC)

Secondly, a big goal for me in starting this project was to get the philosophy articles more organized. A good way to do this would to be to create Wikipedia:Article series about particular subfields or areas of interest, such as Philosophy of mind or Enlightenment philosophy. This would also give us a chance to go over each of those articles individually and get them up to snuff. Why don't we create separate pages for the discussion of such projects? — Adam Conover †

Article series seems like a good idea ? but the box would be quite large? Banno 22:28, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)
Maybe we could break it up into 5 or so major disciplines, each having 5-10 sections, each having 10-20 subsections? Okay, this is getting complicated, but some sort of tree structure for organizing these articles is probably going to work best. I've been thinking, though? How are we going to find all of the philosophy articles? -Seth Mahoney 23:15, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Well, first of all, there is already Philosophy basic topics. Even though it's extremely disorganized, out of date, and often incorrect, we could work on the heirarchy there instead of on this page, and thus work on a heirarchy while improving a general wiki resource. Secondly, I think a tree sort of model is definitely a good idea, but that we should limit the "branch level" we're going to list. (assuming that the branches of the tree denote a move from more general to more specific topics.) For example, under Ethics we should certainly cover utilitarianism and Aristotelean ethics, but probably not veganism or abortion -- those topics are too specific, and if we started getting into that level we'd have way too many topics to cover. As for finding all the articles, I would suggest that we just make the list as we go -- if we start from the general and work towards the specific, we'll naturally find the articles that are most important. — Adam Conover † 00:19, Apr 10, 2004 (UTC)
The edits I?ve just added to the hierarchy are just some playing around. I suspect that it will not be possible top construct a hierarchy, since many philosophical topics probably don?t fall into neat categories. Banno 22:24, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)

It's perhaps best to categorise as we go, having drawn up a best guess categorisation system based on the familiar arangement of topics. I think it's a little premature to start adding series msg: tags on the basis of this heriarchy. Better to improve the linking together of articles first. I'm not sure that one heirarchy is going to be sufficient. I think it would be good to try to get a bit of clarity on how the topics are related by looking at how they are linked. Some good suggestions for categories have been made-- I'm not sure they're all distinct, though. Mr. Jones 18:01, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC) Rephrased by Mr. Jones 18:13, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

We could also try something like what has been done with the presocratic philosophers (Heraclitus for an example), and have links to related philosophy topics at the bottom for quick reference. -Seth Mahoney 19:40, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

That's an example of a concrete classification (I guess-- anything that is pre-something is a bit suspicious; I wonder how many philosophers are refered to or have left work that has survived who lived before Socrates). Bottom-up does seem a lot easier than top-down. At the moment :-) Mr. Jones 18:18, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I agree with you, MrJones -- I think we'll get ahead of ourselves if we try to make one end-all heirarchy. A better strategy, as Seth suggests, is to work on individual article series like Mediawiki:Great Philosophers and Template:Presocratics. This way we can still connect ideas, but do it in an organic (and furthermore, public!) way. (For instance, I hope to eventually make an article series on topics in philosophy of mind. If we also eventually created an article series for subdisciplines of philosophy, this would create a natural, rather than an artificial heirarchy.) Does this sound good to everyone?

For now, unless anyone has any objections I'm going to move the heirarchy definition into a sub-page, so we can save the draft but not clutter up the main page with it. — Adam Conover †]] 19:53, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)

General Strategy and Discussion forum

Just to explain myself, I am discussing the organization of other philosophy-related articles on the main page of the WikiProject under General Strategy and Discussion forum. It makes sense that the WikiProject main page is for discussing the organization of other articles, while the WikiProject talk page is for discussing the organization of the WikiProject main page. --Wikiwikifast 04:43, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Article Series

I moved the article series section to Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy/Article Series in order to streamline the main page a bit, and so that it could have its own separate discuss page. If anyone disagrees we could certainly move it back. — Adam Conover † 22:51, Apr 10, 2004 (UTC)

Timeline

Is there a timeline of philosophy or Philosophy timeline article somewhere, listing important events in philosophy? It'd be nice to see the contributions of Socrates, Augustine, Godel and Kant on a comparative timescale, like it is done in timeline of mathematics Yorick, Jester of Elsinore 23:05, 2004 Apr 10 (UTC)

  • Yorick -- that's a great idea. I don't see any such article, and we could definitely use one. There are a number of timelines online -- the Google search is easy, so I'll let you do it yourself if you're curious -- and most good one-volume reference guides have one. Unfortunately, it will be probably be a lot of work no matter what to convert such a timeline to the wikipedia, not to mention a lot of paraphrasing... — Adam Conover † 05:08, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)
  • Excellent idea. I'd help to work on it. It really shouldn't be that big of a project, though - once it is started we can add to it as we notice stuff, and hopefully other people will add to it as well. -Seth Mahoney 19:42, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • Consider it done. I have the goods at my web page, as transferred from Garth Kemerling's philosophypages.com. It'll take no time at all to transfer it. Lucidish 01:46, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Removing and archiving Open Tasks

Banno said:

    • At what point to we remove items? hould we keep a list of the things we have completed? Banno 04:30, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

I think that in general we should remove them when we're done. The WikiProject is small enough at the moment that I doubt we need a vote on such matters -- if someone disagrees, they can just repost the task. As for archiving them, Wikipedia:Cleanup doesn't seem to archive its tasks, so I don't see a need to. Still, I made a link to an archive page at the top of the task list in case anyone feels that the discussion or post about a particular task is too important to lose. (Of course, this information could easily be archived on that article's talk page as well.) Either way, if you do archive it, make sure to add a note reading "status: resolved" or something. Does that work? — Adam Conover † 05:08, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

Merge of Analytic philosophy and Philosophy of language

The core material is identical, so unless someone wishes to add some content to philosophy of language that would not also be appropriate in analytic philosophy, why not move phil. Lang material to analytic philosophy, and re-direct/

I disagree with this. Though analytic philosophy was (or is) highly based on philosophy of language, they are still two different fields, and deserve two separate articles. The clearest difference between them is that analytic philosophy is a school of philosophy (that is, it is a way of thinking about philosophy, and is often used to refer to a particular historical group of 20th century philosophers), while philosophy of language is a sub-field of philosophy, much like epistemology or philosophy of mind. I.e., one may be study philosophy of language without being an analytic philosopher, though the reverse may not be true.

After glancing at the articles, it seemed to me that they were sufficiently different, though they both need a lot of work. Still, if both articles were at their ideal quality, there would be no question that they deserved to be two distinct articles. The problem is that if we set up the redirect now, it will be less likely that editors will work on them as separate topics. (There's more info on this problem at Wikipedia:Redirect.) Finally, I think it would violate the "principle of least astonishment" if a reader who clicked on "philosophy of language" was taken to "analytic philosophy". — Adam Conover † 00:07, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)

An understandable position. I will be interested to see what material will be in Philosophy of language but not in Analytic philosophy. Ok, leave them separate. Banno 00:53, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I can't say myself, because it's not my subfield. However, I can think of at least one example: Any respectable article on philosophy of language should make reference to Noam Chomsky and "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously", but the same is not true of analytic philosophy. — Adam Conover † 01:20, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)
On the contrary, I’ve seen it used in a critique of speech act theory (or was it Kripke? It’s too long ago…) – which is definitely part of analytic philosophy. But let's just let it pass, and see wht happens. Banno 07:52, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)
We can also discuss philosophy of language as a movement in continental philosophy, so I'd say its not the same thing as analytic philosophy. -Seth Mahoney 19:33, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The meat of the philosophy of language article hasn't even been written yet...I'm frustrated that it was even suggested to merge this article with analytic philosophy. B 03:53, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)

Relax, it won’t happen. This is an old suggestion. The bulk of analytic philosophy is in poor shape, and the main motive behind suggesting the merge was simply so that we could write one article instead of two. The work you are doing in philosophy of language is excellent, nice work with Russell, too. I look forward to seeing the finished product. I’ve not done much on analytic philosophy – I’m stuck at Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, and will probably need to expand that article before continuing analytic phil. Banno 04:23, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)


Truth

(Moved from WP:WPP) Does it make sense to have a Wikipedia article on Truth? There seems to be no consensus, and Talk:Truth is chaotic as well. --Wikiwikifast 01:25, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes. What is true, what makes a statement true, and what is the nature of truth are important philosophical topics. -Seth Mahoney 07:38, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Truth is part of the series of articles on epistemology, so firstly it is needed in oredr to complete the set; secondly it is important that it be consistent with those articles. The aim should be that someone reading the series of articles would obtain a fairly reasonable understanding of the overall topic. A disambiguation page is a reasonable solution. Banno 08:20, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

It is pretty funny that the factual accuracy of the article on truth is disputed... -Seth Mahoney 02:29, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Larry's Text

(Archived from WP:WPP)

  • Larry's Text. Larry's Text is a mess. None of the articles that he wrote are encyclopedaic -- rather, they're all lectures that are aimed at beginning undergraduates. They are thus conversational in tone, and often gloss over serious issues in philosophy. What's worse, they frequently take up space that should be devoted to serious examination of philosophical topics.
  • That's not to dis Larry's contributions: he's said himself that the articles need reworking. Let's see how it goes.
    • Certainly not. His articles are quite good as introductory lectures -- in fact, I think they'd make a great wikibook if we collected them together. So what should we do about them? One proposal I've heard is to collect the original versions of the pieces (available through the page history of the pages linked to on Larry's Text) and move them to the User_talk namespace. This would allow us to start fresh without losing good material. i.e., if an article is particularly lacking, we could then include a "for more information see..." link, instead of having a very un-encyclopedaic article as the main text. — Adam Conover † 16:59, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)

A Larry Layout

  • Hi folks. I don't know where to start with Larry's texts. Maybe we should probably have a plan of action and review just for coodination's sake.
    • Larry's "Introduction to Philosophy" lectures (the motivation to philosophize, introduction to philosophical method, definition of philosophy, philosophical subdisciplines) all seem to have pretty much trickled into the current Philosophy article. So we don't seem to have to worry about them.
    • For the Logic lectures, some topics that are basic to the discipline seem to need to be integrated into the "Logic" article, and others separate from it. I'm thinking:
      • Integrate: argument, logical fallacy, argument form, validity, soundness, deduction and induction, syllogisms, extension, intension, ambiguity, vagueness
      • Separate: college logic -- argument form(s) -- cogency -- good argument -- modus ponens -- modus tollens -- disjunctive syllogism -- affirming the consequent -- definition -- genus-differentia definition -- fallacies of definition
(In cases where we want to mention a topic and include a small definition into the main article, but also expand it out in a separate article, consider them a part of the "separate" category)
    • Metaphysics, same problem
      • Integrate: introduction to metaphysics, metaphysics, ontology, nonexistence, universal-metaphysics, type-metaphysics, class (the section "classes vs. types"), identity and change, essences
      • Separate: being, category of being, abstract, concrete, the existence of physical objects, objecthood, substance theory, bundle theory, mind, problem of universals, Platonic realism, Aristotle's theory of universals
    • Philosophy of religion
      • Integrate: philosophy of religion, faith and rationality, theodicy, eternal existence
      • Separate: the nature of God in monotheistic religions -- obviously bad arguments for the existence of God -- traditionally respectable arguments for the existence of God -- the ontological argument -- the cosmological argument -- the teleological argument -- the problem of evil -- the rationality of atheism
    • Philosophy of mind
      • Integrate: philosophy of mind
      • Separate: mental event -- mental functions -- consciousness -- the mind-body problem -- reduction -- monism -- neutral monism -- dualism -- dualistic interactionism -- physicalism -- philosophy of perception -- free will and determinism
    • Philosophy of language
      • Integrate: philosophy of language, the meaning of meaning, proper names, meaningfulness, naive relativism about truth, truth
    • Epistemology
      • Integrate: epistemology, theory of justification, a priori and a posteriori knowledge, knowledge
      • Separate: knowledge, skepticism, the regress argument in epistemology, common sense and the Diallelus
    • Ethics
      • Integrate: ethics, value theory, theory of conduct
      • Separate: meta-ethics -- ethical naturalism -- cognitivism -- ethical non-naturalism -- non-cognitivism
    • Political philosophy
      • Integrate: political philosophy, the purpose of government, social contract theories
      • Separate: the justification of the state, anarchism and natural law theory -- consequentialist justifications of the state -- libertarianism -- socialism
Any thoughts? (I reposted the list here because I didn't want to feel Larry's wrath by editing his page.) Lucidish 21:36, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Where should we discuss?

In my recent cleanup of the main project page, I moved the discussions that took place on the main page to this talk page. Above, however, there's a suggestion that we use this talk page for discussion of the main page, and use the main page to discuss the organization of other pages. What does everyone think about this? Personally, I feel that the main page will become too cluttered to be useful as a home base if we start discussions on it -- instead, perhaps we should create a few discussion pages under the Wikipedia namespace. For example, we could create a "Philosophical Reference Desk" modelled on Wikipedia:Reference Desk as well as a General Discussion discussion page. (We already have an Article Series page and an Exemplary Article page.) Under this model, we would restrict discussion on the main page to the task list, and put all other discussion of philosophical issues on subpages, saving the main page as an organizational guide. — Adam Conover † 19:36, May 16, 2004 (UTC)

Or we could just have all our discussions on this page, and use headers to organize them. That way it is easier to see when there are new messages - no need to look over 4 or 5 pages, and it will be easy to see when a message has been posted on a specific topic. -Seth Mahoney 06:03, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
That's a good point. Though I was originally thinking of having a "philosophy reference desk", since the same people will probably be using it, there isn't much reason to have a separate page. Any ideas on what we should call this discussion page? I assume it would be Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy/Something. — Adam Conover † 06:10, May 17, 2004 (UTC)
Blah! I actually took a look at the Reference Desk (suppose I should have done that before I commented) - that's totally the sort of thing I was talking about, so yay! -Seth Mahoney 08:00, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
Ok, so how about Wikipedia:Philosophy Reference Desk as our main discussion forum? (I feel like Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy/Philosophy Reference Desk is far too long of a title, and there's no real reason that we need a subpage.)
Works for me. -Seth Mahoney 16:33, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Eastern philosophy

I think that this project could include more of Eastern Philosophy. I recently wrote the first half of Confucianism but this page need peer review and copyedit (as I'm not native English speaker). I guess Daoism, Legalism and many other pages should be included in a project about philosophy. Actually, I'm not quite sure that Chinese thought is philosophical (in a narrow meaning), this is debatable, but anyway it had a major influence on one third of humanity during more that twenty centuries, and thus can't be neglectable. Imho Wikipedia deserves a wider and deeper covering of this domain of studies. What do you think? gbog 05:58, 24 May 2004 (UTC) (also posted on MediaWiki talk:PhilosophyTasks)

Well, as far as Chinese thought being philosophical or not, most philosophy departments have courses on Eastern philosophy, which includes Chinese thought, so I'd at least say that it is considered philosophy. Anyhow, I agree. Wikipedia should have more and better articles on topics in Eastern philosophy. Unfortunately, I'm not really knowledgable enough to contribute, but I'm glad you're willing! -Seth Mahoney 17:12, 24 May 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. If you have some spare time, having a look at my additions on Chinese thought articles could help, because my English is far from that level of accuracy needed in those topics. I'm also wondering if it's possible to create some kind of "msg:Philo" (for now, I don't understand how to create those usefull boxes) and include those articles about Chinese thougth. gbog 05:26, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Eastern vs. Western philosophy

It makes a lot of sense to separate the main tradition of European thought from that centered around China and India, but isn't it a misnomer to call this division Eastern <-> Western? What about Islamic philosophy, assocaited mostly with North Africa and the Middle East? Is it "Western"? It certainly had substantial contact with what we call Western philosophy in medieval times, but today it is a different tradition, one that is not mentioned in the current article on Western philosophy.

I think that the opposition between East and West does not do justice to the different classes of philosophy we are talking about. Would the following changes be good?

  • Move Eastern philosophy -> Far Eastern philosophy (with redirect)
  • Move Western philosophy -> ???? --- What would be good names? Bad names that are in at least some respect better than the current would be:
    • Christian and Post-Christian Philosophy: unwieldy, ignores Jewish et-al contributors;
    • Eurocentric -- ugly, and like Western philosophy it fails to do justice to the globalised nature of this tradition.
    • Ancient Greek and Post-Aristotelian Philosophy -- unwieldy, might subsume Islamic philosophy;
  • The section of the Western Philosophy article should discuss the role of Islamic philosophy in the transmission of ancient thought to Christian European philosophy.

Edit war

I hate to ask, but anyone want to take sides on an edit war that has been going on, mostly in slow motion, for months, maybe even a year? The article is Gödel's ontological proof, and the perpetrators are myself and Fairandbalanced, who has made some really great contributions to other articles but has, in my opinion, raised objections to the proof in question that don't actually address it. We argued back and forth on the talk page for a while, but for the past few months he has just been going in about once a month and reverting the page, which I then revert back once I notice it, and all discussion has ceased. I'd be willing to accept whatever consensus is reached, and am hoping that he would too. -Seth Mahoney 06:42, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

There's no way I can read the whole of that screed on the talk page. Oi! But it seems to me that if it's under the 'criticisms' section, then it's a moot point. Nobody reads those. And by nature, it seems to me that whether or not they're good criticisms doesn't matter; a person could criticize Godel for having a funny looking head and it would be admissible, technically. Lucidish 03:06, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Hey, thanks for taking the time to check it out. I've been doing some light edits on a bunch of other articles over the past month or so and have noticed a trend in the criticisms sections (actually, two trends): 1. they tend to be repositories for original research, which would qualify them for the VfD page if they were articles on their own, and 2. they often have the rather hokey form "so and so might say X" (the "might" is often inserted by someone attempting to make it more NPOV) followed by "however, such and such may retort Y", repeated three or four times per article. It seems to me it would be a good idea to adopt a rule of thumb that if a criticism of an idea, philosophy, or whatever, is going to be included in an article it should be sourced and who says what should be explicitely referenced, or the criticism should be deleted. Or, at the very least, that sections of articles should be held to the same standards as articles themselves. At present, the criticisms largely make for worse, not better articles, or at least articles that look more mishmashed. Any thoughts? -Seth Mahoney 16:50, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)
I agree that the "some would say" thing is a bit hokey, but it's useful in that it allows people to offer their thoughts. Citations would be nice, but I don't know if they ought to be mandatory, because there are sometimes filters on published materials that are a bit stifling to intellectual discussion. If that generates misunderstandings, then ... I dunno, I guess you can appeal to professional authorities (like profs who specialize in the field), or some kind of limited peer review online (which is hard; what are the odds of finding, for example, a Godel scholar without beginning a Wikipedia-wide manhunt?).
I definately agree that there ought to be a word limit, though, so that the critiques don't get too long. If they do get long, then they deserve their own wikis. Reasonable persons, I think, will agree to that.
I don't know how Wikipedia deals with unreasonable persons. I'm more or less new here. If all else fails, you can mark the article as "disputed" (not sure what the tag for that is).
Lucidish 17:40, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Definately, "some would say X" is useful, and especially useful in an article with a lot of people doing a lot of edits coming from a lot of different points of view - it seems to eventually average out into a good sentence. In the less-often edited articles, though, they tend to just get left there, and without anyone saying who the "some" is, it reads a little sketchy. As far as references, again, rule of thumb rather than absolute, and really only as a way to avoid having original research introduced into an article. I also agree that criticisms shouldn't be too long, though like everything else on wikipedia, its probably best to approach that sort of thing as a rule of thumb rather than something fixed in stone, with appropriate measuring instruments and equations. As far as the whole criticism of criticisms goes, I'm really mostly talking about philosophy (and humanities) articles, as they seem especially prone to that sort of thing, and I'm not so much proposing a task force be sent out as I am saying maybe we should adopt a set of loose, general conventions on style for the philosophy pages that will help to avoid this sort of problem. Last on the list, I think disputed tags are generally used when the article is either NPOV or factually inaccurate, and neither is quite the case here.-Seth Mahoney 18:15, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)

The mess about Philosophy

Simonides recently C&P-moved Philosophy to Western Philosophy, and left the former as a list of interlang links. I think it's a silly idea, and I have no problem with Philosophy residing under that title, discussing mainly western philosophy, because in english subject division, Philosophy and western philosophy are synonyms. I don't have the time or desire to edit war about it, so the only thing I did was redoing his changes with proper moves, to atleast not destroy page history in the mess too. Please, help me get this straight again. Having a stub-colored link to Philosophy just looks plain weird. ✏ Sverdrup 13:35, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

With all due respect, there's no reason to see "philosophy" and "Western philosophy" as synonyms. People only treat them as synonyms because of ethnocentrism. The division was important, but I mourn for the lost content on the disambiguation page.
Lucidish 16:40, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I agree. Though we mean "Western philosophy" when we talk about philosophy here in the West, the two aren't really synonymous. Perhaps the philosophy page should give a high-level overview of what philosophy is, talk a little about Western philosophy, a little about Eastern philosophy, and go from there. -Seth Mahoney 18:45, Jun 23, 2004 (UTC)

Philosophy is the tradition of criticism and analysis started by the Greeks. Eastern philosophy is not. Philosophy should be primarily about western philosophy, with discussion of, and links to, the east. Banno 02:04, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

I tentatively side with Banno -- philosophy is, after all, a Greek word, and its method is derived from that tradition, not that of the east. Still, the issue is quite fuzzy, as all philosophical articles are. I've reveiwed Philosophy, and it seems to me that Lucidish and others have done a good job of covering all the bases, giving ample time to both sides while still emphasizing the fact that the word and concept as it is most commonly used descends from the Western tradition. This seems to me pretty fair -- after all, even though Japanese baseball exists, we don't cry ethnocentricity because the History of baseball article on the English wiki focuses on American baseball rather than Japanese baseball. — Adam Conover † 09:03, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)
I find it hard to stress how much I disagree.
Just because the etymology of the word originated with the Greeks says absolutely nothing about the meaning of the word. To say that the word "philosophy" cannot have a serious concern with - and by derived from - other civilizations is like saying that the French word "chien" does not, in fact, refer to the concept of dogs. It is not revisionism to investigate the meaning, "love of wisdom", to other cultures.
Also, the "greeks only" perspective seems to imply that philosophy is just a thing that exists in the past, which (if that's an accurate interpretation) is just utterly mistaken.
I don't think that baseball analogy really works for this situation. Though it's unclear exactly where Banno is coming from, the issue as formulated right now seems to be whether or not the phrase "Eastern philosophy" even makes any sense. Analogously, it would be like saying that Japanese baseball is a contradiction. That's the only position I can infer, anyway. Otherwise, why would this even be an issue? Lucidish 17:38, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Well, I don't want to push the issue, nor am I confident enough in my position to do so. You certainly make good points. Regardless, as I said, I think the current state of the article does a good job of laying out the topics of philosophy and outlining the distinctions between the different traditions. There has been great work on the part of all involved. — Adam Conover † 21:15, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

One of the interesting aspects of placing comments on the Wiki is the degree to which others misinterpret them. Lucidish has spent considerable time countering arguments that do not exist. Nowhere was an argument presented which was based on the etymology of a word. Nor has it been claimed that other civilisations cannot participate in the philosophical process. But as a mater of historical record, philosophical analysis grew up in the west. Banno

Let me repeat: Philosophy is the tradition of criticism and analysis started by the Greeks. The archetype of the tradition of criticism is the Socratic method, but it pre-dates Socrates, and it has been considerably extended since his time. It is characterised by seeking knowledge through a dialogue. The tradition of analysis involves dividing the subject into components and seeing how they are interconnected. These are the defining tools of the philosopher. The self-conscious application of these tools is what philosophy is. That they grew in the West is a matter of curiosity which counts neither in their favour nor against them. Banno

The chien-dog analogy doesn’t work. When Europeans were exploring Tasmania, they found a large carnivore, and named it the Tasmanian tiger. But the Thylacine was a marsupial, and certainly not a cat. Just calling it a tiger did not make it a cat. Confucianism and Taoism are called philosophies, because they look like the stuff we westerners call philosophy. But they do not descend from Plato, anymore than the thylacine is a descendent of the tiger. Banno

The claims of revisionism are simply trite. Nor have I claimed that philosophy is only the Greek stuff, nor that “eastern philosophy” makes no sense. It would be helpful if Lucidish would address what was actually said, instead of making it up. The issue is: what should one find when one clicks on a link to Philosophy. My point is that one should find a discussion of the tradition that started with the Greeks, with suitable material about how this tradition developed, and how it links with similar traditions around the world. No more than this. Banno 22:11, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

I have the feeling that this discussion is about to get to bit heated, so I'm going to withdraw from it. Of course, don't let this stop you -- I'm sure the debate will be a lively and interesting one. Just remember not to burn any bridges in the process. ;) Remember, in the end we're all on the same side. — Adam Conover † 22:41, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)
If you admit that the phrase "Eastern philosophy" makes sense, then there's nothing to debate, and nothing ought to be changed. Lucidish 23:25, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Well, in that case -- yes, I certainly do! — Adam Conover † 23:28, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

Philosophy articles and objections/criticisms

I'd like to make a proposal regarding something I have found especially irksome, and which has also come up one the talk page for Jacques Derrida. There are many, many philosophy articles that end in a section called "criticisms" or something similar which are filled with sentences of this sort:

"Some would say that X is Y. Others counter that Y is Z."

This appears in the following articles: Organ donation, American football, Socialism, Gettier problem, Thomas Aquinas, How to choose your pet and take care of it, Critical theory, and Teleological argument, among many, many others.

Which does not strike me as appropriate in an encyclopedia article, and especially inappropriate in an encyclopedia article regarding a topic in philosophy, which is a field that ideally holds a certain standard of rigor. That said, I'm not especially concerned about articles in other fields, but would like the articles on philosophy to be held to similar standards that philosophy its self is.

Personally, I think that objections should only be addressed by linking to an article on a philosopher, movement, or type of argument (eg, The problem of evil) in the "see also" section. This would eliminate the possibility of original research or arguments that have not been demonstrated to be sound entering articles via a criticisms section, and being attributed to an unnamed "some", something that I suspect frequently happens, and would also help to promote further research on the part of the reader by pointing them to a full article on a particular type of objection.

I recognize, though, that that proposal is a bit extreme and would like to throw out another option: as a general rule of thumb, if criticisms are to make their way into an article, they must be arguments proposed by a particular group or person, who must be mentioned by name, and ideally should link to an article or have a book reference. Keep in mind I'm suggesting this as a rule of thumb, not that we send out a task force to immediately clean up all criticism sections.

Participants in this discussion might like to look at the already-existing Wikipedia policy pages Avoid weasel terms and Cite sources. These appear to strongly oppose unsubstantiated "some say"-type phrases in all Wikipedia articles, not just philosophy articles.-- Rbellin
That may be so, but it doesn't address the already existing points expressed below. I think this is especially germane in a field like philosophy, which has ideas that stretch across the entire domain of human thought, and are sometimes hard to pin to specific individuals or movements. It's true that it's better to have citations, but when there's no other option, I see no reason to consider it being "weasely", especially when the information is helpful to the creation of a complete informative article. Lucidish 19:47, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I want to update my opinion expressed above. Citations are of utmost importance for a scholarly resource when it comes to matters of fact. I still think that use of weasel terms is understandable, but can and should be avoided through the posting of a "some people say" paragraph in the Talk section of a page, along with a request for help in citations (if none are immediately available). Lucidish 18:13, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Vote

Unless there are objections, the vote is closed (maybe to be revisited later). The results are:

  • Leave things as they are: 2.
  • Criticisms only in separate articles: 1.
  • Criticisms, with rare exception, should either be linked to a specific person, movement, or group, which should be mentioned by name, or they should be referenced as per Wikipedia guidelines for referencing books, articles, etc.: 3.

It looks like the third option won out. I'll throw up a set of guidelines for discussion here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Philosophy/Proposal_for_criticisms.

Leave things as they are

    • I think that, with a lot of the more contemporary philosophy, it would be tough to use specific sources. A lot of these debates aren't well journaled/articled/etc, having gone on in conferences, etc. I mean, I'm sure documentation could be improved, but I think that a blanket rule for sources would throw the baby out with the bathwater. I also don't much like spin-off articles - objections are an important part of philosophy, and should definitely be on main pages. In bad cases of "some scholars say," I think we can deal with those on a case by case basis. Snowspinner 19:41, Jun 23, 2004 (UTC)
      • I definately agree that with contemporary philosophy especially it can be difficult to find specific sources. However, at the same time what we're aiming at here, I think, is a viable reference work, an encyclopedia, that can be used as one method of research, and improving documentation of articles in general and especially in criticisms (as, as I've said elsewhere, it seems like original research often ends up in the criticisms sections) definately furthers that goal. One of the issues with Wikipedia is that, since anyone can edit it, you can never be quite sure that what you're reading is generally accepted or even necessarily true, as anyone who has visited the VfD page is well aware, a situation which increased documentation would definately improve. I'm really hoping for a sort of general guideline here to avoid both original research and the sort of banal "some say...others reply...some would retort..." sorts of paragraphs, not so much (though admittedly I would like it) a strict rule that must be followed in every situation. -Seth Mahoney 20:44, Jun 25, 2004 (UTC)
    • I would like to allow short criticisms and only require linking when they're long or medium-sized. Snowspinner's point above pretty much speaks for me when it comes to the issue of citations. Also, what if I, personally, come up with an objection, but didn't know if someone else has already put the idea to paper? Then there's far more comfort with equivocating. I don't want to take credit for something that ends up being banal, but at the same time, don't have anyone else to give the credit to.
And in response to Rebellin below: yeah, but what if I do have an opinion? I'm a philosopher. Should I be ignored, just because I'm a semi-anonymous Wikipedian?
Lucidish 01:21, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The reason I propose having criticisms only on a separate page isn't so much to clean up the page, but to make sure that the criticisms themselves warrant an article - that is, that a criticism is part of a philosophy, attributed to a philosopher, or part of a movement. -Seth Mahoney 20:48, Jun 25, 2004 (UTC)
Well, yes, until you publish it, you should be ignored. Wikipedia is not an outlet for original scholarship or personal opinion. I'm tempted to ignore this sometimes, too, but I think it helps keep us all honest if we agree to discuss only relatively well-accepted ideas. -- Rbellin 05:10, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Oh, fair enough then. Everyone else feel free to ignore the comments I made above that I've retroactively put into italics. Lucidish 05:43, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Caveat - the rise of the modern university, with all its shiny fast communication, has allowed a number of arguments to enter common parlance that don't have clear sources. That is, because of conferences, e-mail, and discussion among faculty members, there are some substantial general criticisms that are not published. I can think of several statements that fall into this category, ranging from the literary theory claim that "Some argue that one does not identify with a character at all, but rather sympathizes with a character, pointing out that identifying with a character would amount to psychosis." (A point that is clearly ascribable to the Chicago school (literary criticism, but that no one I've talked to can firmly nail down to a particular critic. Or the claim that "Many claim that 19th century thinkers like Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx challenged Enlightenment concepts of selfhood and thus paved the way for postmodernist thinkers like Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida." Again, I don't know where to cite for that. But it's clearly commonly accepted. Snowspinner 20:29, Jun 26, 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Snowspinner's points above and below. Leave things as they are. They should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Wikiwikifast 20:41, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Criticisms can only appear in separate articles

Criticisms or objections should be linked to a person or group who should be mentioned by name

    • I'd prefer a more stringent requirement: direct citation to a publication must be provided for all "opposition"/"criticism", whether removed to its own article or not. I think "some would say," "many scholars believe," etc., is too often a cover for individual Wikipedians' own opinions e.g.. -- Rbellin 19:35, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
      • Yeah, the deconstruction page, along with many of the postmodernism-related pages and those related to religion (curiously), are some of the worst for this sort of thing. -Seth Mahoney 20:48, Jun 25, 2004 (UTC)
      • I think that citation slows down Wikipedia articles dramatically, and opens the same set of arguments in a different way. ("But that's a minor work," "You're taking that out of context," "That's a misreading of," etc. I think the best option is to trust our Wikifaith that those of us who know what we're talking about outnumber POV warriors who want to insert their own opinions under the guise of what "many think" and that we can successfully amass the numbers to persuasively say "No they don't" as needed. Snowspinner 20:29, Jun 26, 2004 (UTC)
    • I lean this way, with the understanding that "should" is not "must". Weaselly attribution of opinion is always bad, more so here. Certainly unsourced opinion shoudl never replace sourced opinion, but it may be better than nothing. On the other hand, I would hope that the presence of unsourced opinion should always be an invitation for someone to track down decent sourcing rather than either delete it on principle or engage in further unsourced debate. -- Jmabel 22:05, Jun 26, 2004 (UTC)
  • I have changed my position on this after some reflection. It is just as easy to have the default position be "Demand citation" with an eye towards the fact that we can make exceptions as needed as it is to have the default position be "No citation required" with an eye towards demanding sources when we're skeptical. I still think there are cases we have to let it slide on, but I think, in general, we should err on the side of verifiability. Snowspinner 06:00, Jun 27, 2004 (UTC)
    • I did say above that I'd really like it if we could have citations or sources for all criticisms, but I do realize that is impractical and maybe a bit excessive. Ultimately, I absolutely agree that if a position requiring citations of some sort is adopted we should make exceptions where it is just known that many thinkers make a certain objection. -Seth Mahoney 07:35, Jun 28, 2004 (UTC)
  • I changed my mind. I'm on board with this, with the caveat that non-sources objections should be included in the talk page along with a request for sourcing if none immediately spring to the author's mind. Lucidish 18:13, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Category Tree

I've been wondering how the category scheme for Philosophy related pages ought to work. Right now, philosophy-related articles can pop up in any category; for example, there's a lot of eclectic stuff on the "philosophy" section, like the "a priori" article. So should articles be moved to subcategories, or do they belong in the general "Philosophy" heading? What should the category tree for Philosophy look like? Lucidish 14:56, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I think that if we don't use subcategories the list of philosophy articles will get really, really big and difficult to manage pretty quickly. If we do, on the other hand, there's no reason an article couldn't (or shouldn't) belong to multiple categories, and it should make it easier for editors with specific areas of interest to focus on that area. Maybe we should use, once we get it more structured, agreed upon, and comprehensive, Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy/Hierarchy Draft as our guide. -Seth Mahoney 18:35, Jun 30, 2004 (UTC)
Awesome, thanks. Lucidish 05:21, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Category: Enlightenment Philosophers

Could someone who has been more active on this project have a look at my questions recently asked at Category_talk:Enlightenment_Philosophers#Stretching "Enlightenment"? Thanks. -- Jmabel 08:49, Jul 5, 2004 (UTC)

Fiddling while Rome burns

Hey, I've been trying to slightly disentangle the mess someone made of some categories under "Philosophy" (like extending the Enlightenment down to 1920). I'm very busy on other stuff, though (backed into this via work on the French Revolution). I urge the people who have been doing excellent work on this WikiProject to please work sooner rather than later on a category scheme, before one is built by someone on the basis of vague memories of Philosophy 101. -- Jmabel 07:39, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)

My bad. Should be fixed now, for the most part.
Link to the blueprint for a category tree is at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Philosophy/Hierarchy_Draft. I implemented most of it the other day. Lucidish 16:51, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Category:Philosophers

I've added some articles to this category. I found them using search, so I didn't categorise many of them specifically. (Un?)fortunately, others have started adding other articles to the list, some of questionable elegibility (e.g. Karl Marx; a political theorist rather than a philosopher, I would have thought). Should I continue to find and tag uncategorised articles about philosophers? Mr. Jones 03:26, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Individuals do work in many fields. And anyway the distinction between a "theorist" and a "philosopher" is remarkably tenuous, especially in relation to most subjects. Lucidish 22:36, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Is Marx a philosopher?

  • Sure. And I would not rule out Marx as a philosopher. It is certainly not all he was, but certainly dialectical materialism deserves to be counted in the history of philosophy. -- Jmabel 05:27, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)
That is reasonable, but in danger of setting the barrier a bit low. Where would you stop? Popular artists, politicians, etc who have articulated novel (or at least little known) philosophical concepts could end up being added; ultimately anyone who has made any assertion about thought. Could there be a distinction between professional philosophers, those who do it to put their work on a sound basis and those who happen to have made philosophical assertions of note (e.g. famously or influentially). Any suggestions for names of the categories? Mr. Jones 17:24, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
(Also I should mention that "dialectical materialism" was coined retrospectively by the Soviets, though you may know that already).
  • It seems best to consider any significant theorist to be a philosopher, especially if they had interests to a related domain of philosophy. Marx clearly had ethical points, for example. Lucidish 18:04, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • Marx is also a special case (along with Freud, Hobbes, More, Skinner, and maybe major feminists and queer thinkers who have challenged our concepts of identity, etc.), as even though he may not have been much of a philosopher himself (worth noting: he often had unfavorable comments to make about philosophy and philosophers), he has at least had a strong influence on philosophy and critical theory, especially in the 20th century. Maybe his relationship to philosophy through Marxism and Marxist theory would be worth noting in his article, justifying his presence in the list. -Seth Mahoney 17:41, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)
    • Of course, though, all sorts of folks have been philosophers and also critical of traditional philosophy. In Marx's case there's no doubt in my mind that he's a philosopher, and I don't think he would have resisted the title. Freud on the other hand, as you mention, was not at all happy with being labelled as a philosopher, but it's more or less common judgment that that's what he is, simply because of his reliance on theory. This doesn't trouble me too much, but I'm sure Sigmund is spinning in his zombie grave. Lucidish 18:41, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
      • Zombie Freuds. That's too much... "So hungry for braaaaaiinns... How was your relationship with your mother?" -Seth Mahoney 18:50, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

More about criticisms

I want to reopen the discussion of criticisms with a specific question, but I'm moving the discussion to Wikipedia_talk:Wikiproject_Philosophy/Proposal_for_criticisms. Just make note of it here so that everyone who is interested will be altered. — Adam Conover † 21:52, Jul 10, 2004 (UTC)

WikiReader Philosophy?

How would you guys feel about starting a WikiReader Philosophy? — Adam Conover † 22:14, Jul 17, 2004 (UTC)

That would be cool, maybe at first to do a basic philosophy one, but I think that a more important concern is getting the major philosophy articles up to par. -Seth Mahoney 01:30, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)
That's true. Why don't we hold off on it for a bit, then. — Adam Conover † 02:02, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)
I saw this go past on recent changes, and I thought I'd add a quick comment: if you can work out which articles you'd want in a WikiReader Philosophy, and just listed a proposed "Table of Contents", it would provide a lot of motivation to bring those articles up to par; there might be an advantage doing it that way round. (WikiReader Cryptography is working on selecting something on the order of 60 or so articles (out of a possible 500+), and then polishing them up over a period of three months.) — Matt 02:09, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Fantastic plan! Let's pick! -Seth Mahoney 20:32, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)
I agree. Why don't we start with a WikiReader on the most influential Western philosophers? (We could, of course, include Eastern as well -- it all depends on what works best for creating a consistent volume.) — Adam Conover † 23:37, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)
The only problem I have with a reader on the most influential Western philosophers, as I noted in the debate on that particular list, is that a list of "most influential philosophers" isn't going to ever be NPOV. Maybe we could get the article on Western philosophy spruced up and then pick a few major topics in philosophy, like the usual list: epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, logic, aesthetics, and meta-philosophy, with a related article or two on each one, and an article on critical thinking. That would give us a pretty big list of articles to edit (something like 20, more if we add more articles for each discipline), would cover a pretty wide array of philosophical topics (giving most of us a chance to contribute in an area of interest), wouldn't give the usual intro to philosophy explored through a history of major thinkers, and would be fairly NPOV. -Seth Mahoney 17:49, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

Article series bloat

As most Project participants have probably noticed, the Influential Western Philosophers series has gotten so bloated that it's nigh useless, IMHO. I'm trying to work out a new mechanism to manage the series. Weigh in at Template talk:Influential western philosophers. — Adam Conover † 23:37, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)

People to Add

Joel Feinberg is a contempory philosopher esp. with regards to the law, civil disobedience, capital punishment etc. Please edit the template to include him as I have yet to figure it out :). I will add to his article soon. --ShaunMacPherson 08:53, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)


Larry's text revisited

This has been discussed before [1]. Two requests:

  • First, it is hard to find the original version of the texts, now they have gone through the editors grinder. I'm looking, in particular, for the original text cited in sense and reference, before I begin work on that page;
  • In general, Larry's original texts should be archived at Wikisource (formerly Wikiberg).

Help with finding the sense and reference text mcuh appreciated. ---- Charles Stewart 11:02, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've also been thinking a bit about Larry's text, and I had the comment that, per Wikipedia: Cite your sources, we should really explain where each article came from in a references section, preferably with a link to the original lecture it was based on. How much of an undertaking would this be? Deco 03:35, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Depends on who does it. If I were to go about it, it would possibly take ages: I would email Larry, google for en.wikipedia.org pages with "Larry's text" in them, etc, to find the pages, and then laboriously upload the pages to wikisource. Someone who was editing in the early days might no just where to find a complete list of them, and someone with shell access might be able to upload the texts in a few minutes... ---- Charles Stewart 20:43, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Request for help

Hey folks; I'm impressed by your work, though I haven't participated myself since my primary base of expertise is in eastern philosophy and you guys are mostly western, but I just started a stub for anti-foundationalism, and I was wondering if you guys could keep it in mind for later expansion and revision. Thanks. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 19:14, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  • I prefer culturally eurocentric, since Western has such misleading and damaging connotations, but anyway:
    1. I think WP:WPP wopuld benefit from some serious cultural de-euro-centralisation!
    2. I think anti-foundationalism is an excellent place to start, and your choice of four starting philosophers to get the ball rolling (namely, William James, W.V.O. Quine, Friedrich Nietzsche, Nagarjuna) is a good place to start. We could add, and I will add, the Islamic philosopher/theologian Al-Ghazali, and I know that folks like Lao Tse are usually regarded as anti-foundationalist. Quine is tricky: he started out as an anti-foundationalist, but I understand his later work (ie. post Variant Logics) to be foundationalist.
    3. We can, I think, separate degrees of failure to be a foundationalist: there are anti-foundationalists who believe:
      1. Philosophy is worthwhile, and benefits from systematic attempts to formalise it (maybe Donald Davidson);
      2. Philosophy is worthwhile, and benefits from attempts to be systematic, but not formal (I put Michael Dummett in this category);
      3. Philosophy is worthwhile, unless it attempts to be systematic in which case it is worthless (eg. Richard Rorty);
      4. Philosophy is a pointless distraction from more worthwhile activities (eg. Callicles from the Gorgias, theologians like Al-Ghazali doing reductio-ad-absurdum's of non-mystical theology)
  • The above breakdown might be a good place to start restructuring the article. I guess we should continue the discussion on the relevant Talk page ---- Charles Stewart 21:04, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)