Talk:Philosophy

Got to get to work on other things now. This article obviously needs to be greatly expanded. In keeping with other CZ articles under development, this needs to be completely reworked as a readable introduction to the topic, for people who actually might need an introduction to it. This means that it needs to be not mainly a big, long list of names, theories, and concepts, and subdisciplines (some such lists are obviously appropriate), but instead mainly an introduction to the subject itself. The effect of reading the article, for someone who didn't have the first clue about what philosophy really is, should be an improved understanding (preferably through some choice examples) of what philosophical problems are like, and how philosophers generally approach them. --Larry Sanger 14:16, 28 January 2007 (CST)

It's interesting that this elderly version of a Wikipedia is better than what's there now. --Peter J. King 05:54, 11 February 2007 (CST)

How to get started in philosophy

I'm not certain that a "how to" section is a good idea in the first place, but this version starts rather oddly. Most introductions to philosophy that I've seen mention the usage of "philosophy" in "everyone has a philosophy" only to point out that that's not what the introduction is concerned with. A perfect example is the introduction to A Dictionary of Philosophy by Flew & Priest:

"'My philosophy is...' [...] It is with philosophy in a second sense that this Dictionary deals."

I'm not certain how bold "be bold" means in this new venture; I'm tempted to remove the section as inappropriate for an encyclopaedia, but it's actions like that which tend to lead to silly editing wars at Wikipedia, so I thought that I'd ask here first. --Peter J. King 17:11, 11 February 2007 (CST)

Feel free to remove it--it most definitely needs to be rewritten, at the very least. I think the sense in which "everybody has a philosophy" here is not the one mentioned in those dictionaries of philosophy. It is that there is such a thing as "folk philosophy" in about the same sense as "folk psychology": people have all sorts of views about the nature of reality (it's all relative!), the standards of knowledge (if I feel very sure, I know it!), what things are most valuable in life, and so forth. These beliefs could be "my philosophy," in a sense different from what you see in "my philosophy about fly-fishing," because they really do concern the same questions that philosophers study. The notion then is that one can view a study of philosophy as the refinement of one's own "folk (or personal) philosophy." --Larry Sanger 17:27, 11 February 2007 (CST)

I see what you mean — in which case it needs more explanation rather than removal (though the "how to" aspect is still a bit unenyclopædic).

I've tried to get some of the editors from Wikipedia to join in here; the main Philosophy article there is a mess (as are many of the other philosophy articles), and the better and more knowledgeable editors were fighting a losing battle against some indefatigable oddballs. I've just seen that one of the former has placed a copy of your PHILOS-L recuitment message (which was how I came here) at his Wikipedia User page. I don't know if that's something that you'd either foreseen or wanted; it might bring in some of the good people, but I suppose it might attract the loonies.

The main problem there probably wan't so much expertise versus non-expertise (though that played a part) as a system that fails to deal adequately with people who have no interest in co-operation or any sort of community spirit of working together on a project. I see that Citizendium hasn't entirely escaped that, but I hope that it has more success than Wikipedia. --Peter J. King 08:30, 12 February 2007 (CST)

I'm afraid we will have to deal with a few loonies in any case--you have to take bad with the good (and then eject the irremediably bad). If someone feels moved to put the note on his user page, I wouldn't stop him.

One way in which I see CZ being different from a traditional encyclopedia (on the recent conception--not on the conception encoded in, for example, Diderot's Encyclopedie) is that it does contain "how to" material. Isn't procedural knowledge just as much knowledge as declarative knowledge? That's what I always thought, anyway. Cf. choosing a dog! --Larry Sanger 10:33, 12 February 2007 (CST)

So this means, in theory, Ludvikus can join Citizendium? Larry, you don't know about Ludvikus, but you can find out by visiting the other Philosophy page. -- Edward buckner 13:50, 12 February 2007}}

Ah, OK, fair enough — I'm too infected by Wikipedia perhaps. I'll recover in time. --Peter J. King 11:58, 12 February 2007 (CST)

Questions: I'll assume Ludvikus represents the prototypical "difficult" person. Is he a potential editor? If not, bear in mind that, well, you are--and you can settle content controversies here (in consultation with other philosophy editors, of course), without constantly having to justify yourself to authors. Then, how long do you think it will take before he is banned here for his difficult behavior? Because, surely, there is no reasonable way that we can simply transfer decisions from the dysfunctional management and community into this new community. That really wouldn't be due process. --Larry Sanger 15:17, 12 February 2007 (CST)

Ludvikus is uniquely difficult. He got banned twice in the month he joined, but has now realised that if he avoids obvious infringements, he can continue with constant low level disruption. No, he would not ever be an editor. Note I have not enrolled as an editor though, glancing at the other editors in the philosophy section, I would probably qualify (I have a lot of publications, although none recent). Is that necessary? I assume that so long as there are a bunch of people who reasonably understand the project, then people who specialise in the constant low-level disruption like Ludvikus can get evicted. Edward buckner 15:32, 12 February 2007 (CST)

Greetings philosophers

Hello Peter, and hello Larry. I'm off in a minute, but just to say I decided to join here. I did manage to prevail over the lunacy regarding the introduction to the Philosophy article at Wikipedia. I am chatting to some of the other (some of them quite good) editors at Wiki to see if they are interested in coming over. Best Edward buckner 13:47, 12 February 2007 (CST)

First impressions

Interesting that the introduction does not mention 'rational enquiry', which we were so determined to get into the WP version!

There is a long list further down which is reminiscent of Wikipedia. I had a plan for the Wiki article to take it thematically, rather than historically, i.e. pull out the central bits of the Western tradition and deal with the history on the way, with a separate purely historical article as a sub-article. Thus, start with Rationalism, Empiricism, Scepticism. Anti-metaphysical cross-currents, that sort of thing.

The family calls. See you tomorrow. Edward buckner 13:58, 12 February 2007 (CST)

This morning

I started off by editing the priority article list by theme, rather than a lot of bullet points. Some odd exclusions in the bio's (William James) and some odd exclusions (William Ockham). I've deleted some I thought really weren't philosophers, though left in Goethe (does he really belong there), and added ones like Abelard, Anselm, a few others.

I think we should encourage a bit more planning in article construction, also in the organisation of the 'philosophy department'. E.g. use links wherever possible in the more general articles, and restrict text in the general article as a mere thread to the more specific ones. We probably won't have the 'personal essay' problem so much here, but need to keep some discipline from the start. Edward buckner 03:27, 13 February 2007 (CST)

The problems of philosophy

I like the idea of kicking off with the big problems. But what should these be? How about a selection of questions that were prominent in each of the main periods of philosophy. This would be a way of introducing the main problems and giving a sense of the history of philosophy via the questions that were perceived as important in each era. (The current history section is very 'listy').

Ancient philosophy: The problem of change, the problem of what things really exist, the problem of whether human beings can ever have comprehension of the things that really exist. The problem of defining 'the good'. (some of these problems are still around in a big way of course)

Medieval philosophy: The problem of Free Will, reconciling Faith and Reason, the problem of individuation (and implications for questions such as damnation of unbaptised infants), universals vs particulars &c

Early Modern philosophy: the problem of the external world, Hume's fork

Modern philosophy: explaining a world without God, logical puzzles (Russell's paradox, the Liar, Godel's proof)

Contemporary philosophy: explaining a world with God back (i.e. resurgence of fundamentalism, naturalism vs supernaturalism), presentism, the problem of consciousness.

Just some ideas. Edward buckner 03:46, 13 February 2007 (CST)

Feel I should apologise for having a tinker with the history section - I am myself guilty of listiness. Felt I should see if this editing malarkey worked (Have never edited on WP or others before).

A barebone thematic approach to the history here may be good, but would possibly have to be careful to avoid obscuring continuities between periods - similar problems reoccur in various forms - and giving the appearance of completeness ('perceived as important' is an important qualifier, but it would have to be emphasised that any such account would miss more peripheral aspects of a period's thought)

Just a wee thought. Look forward to more discussion. --Drew Johnson 10:11, 15 February 2007 (CST)

Actually, you've got an excellent idea, there, Edward. In other words, don't simply list some leading philosophical ideas, but both introduce the history of philosophy and introduce some important ideas at the same time. Have at it, please! The current history of philosophy section is useless, I think, and needs to be scrapped. It doesn't really do anything more than catalog names surrounded by pretty uninformative (and unreadably dull) sentences. --Larry Sanger 10:20, 15 February 2007 (CST)

New introduction

Not entirely sure about the new introduction. It very much sets the tone for what the rest of the article is going to be. It is leisurely compared to what would be acceptable in the Wiki (nothing wrong with that), but we need to think how it would look with everything else completed. And not sure of the wisdom of introductions which say that the subject introduced is basically very difficult and virtually impossible to define, &c. Particularly the second paragraph which mentions the branches without saying what the branches actually are (e.g. that metaphysics is the reasoned investigation of what things can ultimately be said to exist, or whatever).

What should the plan for this article be? The Wiki plan was for a link to all the main articles on the subject, rather than something self-contained. Best Edward buckner 02:26, 27 February 2007 (CST)

Afterthought: I've changed the intro to avoid repeating the key idea, then setting out the paragraphs possible solutions to the definition, which are then rejected. But that leaves the fourth solution (the 'historical' one) hanging unconnected. If we really prefer the third solution (that is it a method) then the third solution should come fourth, and the historical approach third. Edward buckner 02:37, 27 February 2007 (CST)

I've now solved that problem by changing the paragraphs round. There's still a difficulty though: the para on history ends on a positive note: we can after all define philosophy as abstract intellectual endeavour. Oh dear. Now I really must go to work. Edward buckner 02:41, 27 February 2007 (CST)

I'm not sure about the claim that philosophers are unusual in disagreeoing over the nature of their subject. First, that's a disagreement to be found in many fields, buts econdly, I'm not sure that philosophers do disagree very much on this.

This claim was already there, I simply moved it up to the logical place. I would say that philosophers, excluding the variety found in WP, are pretty much agreed on the basics, i.e. it's clear, critical, logical thinking about the 'big questions'. But they are not so much agreed on questions like, are there uniquely philosophical claims, propositions &c that philosophy tries to prove? Some philosophers will say there are. Aristotle, e.g., thinks that there are special sorts of truths, that are truer than other truths in that they explain why the other truths are true. Among this group there are the extreme or moderate realists e.g. Aristotle and Plato, who think these philosophical claims are about reality. Then there are those, Ockham, Wittgenstein, who think these claims are really claims about language, the mind, second intentions or what have you, that masquerade as claims about reality, but are really something else. Another group, the naturalists, hold that there are no uniquely philosophical truths at all. Philosophy is just a set technique for getting to certain truths that the special sciences can use also. Edward buckner 05:55, 28 February 2007 (CST)

The list of branches is a fairly standard approach; it's not possible (or desirable)to explain each of them, partly because that's inappropriate for an introduction to philosophy (it would bog things down unnecessarily), partly because they're all linked to the relevant articles. --Peter J. King  Talk  09:26, 27 February 2007 (CST)

Cut from History of philosophy

Philosophy has a long history. Generally, philosophers divide the history of Western philosophy into ancient philosophy, medieval philosophy, modern philosophy, and contemporary philosophy.

Canonically, histories of western philosophy trace the origins of philosophical problems, ideas and practice to roots in ancient Greece Template:Citation needed. Our sources for these roots are largely fragmented, and in most cases mediated throught the works of the later, better preserved Greek thinkers (see below). These pre-socratic philosophers are grouped in a timeline running from Thales (fl. c.585 BC) through to Protagoras(b. c.500 BC) and the thinkers of the Sophist schools . This classification is possibly misleading - various schools and movements can be distinguished across this period, and some were contemporaneous with Socrates and his successors.

Ancient philosophy was dominated by the trio of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. In medieval philosophy, topics in metaphysics and philosophy of religion held sway, and the most important names included Augustine, Peter Abelard and Aquinas. Modern philosophy, generally means philosophy from 1600 until about 1900, and which includes many distinguished early modern philosophers, such as René Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. Nineteenth-century philosophy is often treated as its own period, as it was dominated by post-Kantian German and idealist philosophers like Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, and F. H. Bradley; two other important thinkers were John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Nietzsche.

In the twentieth century, philosophers in Europe and the United States took diverging paths. The so-called analytic philosophers (or Anglo-American philosophers), including Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, were centered on Oxford and Cambridge, and were joined by logical empiricists emigrating from Austria and Germany (e.g., Rudolph Carnap) and their students and others in the United States (e.g., W. V. Quine) and other English-speaking countries.

On the continent of Europe (especially Germany and France), the phenomenologist Germans Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger led the way, followed soon by Jean-Paul Sartre and other existentialists; this led via other "isms" to postmodernism, which dominates schools of Critical Theory as well as philosophy departments in France and Germany.

Please see our more exhaustive list of philosophers as well as the history of philosophy article, from which the above was taken.

--Larry Sanger 10:03, 27 February 2007 (CST)

Problems of philosophy

It is a good idea to approach the history of philosophy through the problems that preoccupied the different eras. But when I tried this approach I found that to do justice to each problem (i.e. to explain it in a way that is comprehensible to the average reasonably intelligent reader) took some time - say 2 paragraphs.

With the 15 problems currently on offer, that adds to possibly 15 pages of material. Either

1. Is that length acceptable (that's what I meant above by asking about the 'vision' for this section).

2. If not, do we cut down the number of problems, or do we figure out a way of explaining the problems in the clear and simple way as above? The latter is a challenge. The Thales one I think is OK, but that is relatively straightforward. Edward buckner 06:02, 28 February 2007 (CST)

I've added some notes about the problem of change. Edward buckner 06:17, 28 February 2007 (CST)

I've got a certain narrative in mind, actually, which will make it possible, I think, to introduce the topics approximately one paragraph per topic. By constructing a narrative--selectively presenting certain figures and problems as part of "the story of philosophy"--the result can be more lean and streamlined than if we simply list off a bunch of problems. I think it is actually quite important, for the sake of readability, that we not collect and stitch together a catalog of problems. Anyway, I'll write a few more paragraphs, and I think you'll see what I mean.

The problem is that, as good as they are, your paragraphs about the Problem of Change don't really fit neatly into the narrative I have in mind. (That's the problem with narratives, they don't lend themselves to piecemeal replacement of parts.)

--Larry Sanger 11:29, 11 March 2007 (CDT)

The Problem of Change

The ancient philosophers were greatly preoccupied with the problem of change. Parmenides thought that all change must be impossible, for it results in some thing coming into existence (for example, my becoming a musician) that did not exist before. But 'being cannot come from non-being'. His disciple Zeno went even further and denied the possibility of motion.

Plato and Aristotle gave quite different solutions to the problem. Plato followed Parmenides in arguing that knowledge was of eternal, unchangeable truths, embodied in universal concepts that he called the Forms. These forms are unchangeable and perfect, and are only comprehensible by the use of the intellect or understanding. Mere opinion was of ephemeral, contingent truths. This approach, which emphasises the role of reason in discovering the truth, was later called Rationalism.

Aristotle rejected the Parmenidean dilemma of something coming either from what exists, or what does not exist (191a30). We must not treat terms as as if they were simple: 'nonbeing' and 'being', for they are both compound. We start with an unmusical man, which is one way a being (a man) and in another way a non-being (since it is not a musical-man). This led Aristotle to the idea of substance. A substance (in this case the man who changes from not being a musician, to being a musician) is the subject of change: that which remains the same throughout the change, such as being a man. Accidental characteristics, by contrast, qualify a substance at one time, and not another. [something about 'essence'? …]

---

This isn't a bad narrative either, but it isn't the one that I started with.

--Larry Sanger 12:27, 11 March 2007 (CDT)

Well, I'm done for now. I expanded and almost finished the section about ancient philosophy. I suspect you, Edward, and Peter will be much better suited to write the medieval philosophy section. I hope what I've done so far makes sense, and if so, that you know "how to go on." --Larry Sanger 13:10, 11 March 2007 (CDT)