Talk:Philosophy

Article Checklist for "Philosophy"

Workgroup category or categories	Philosophy Workgroup [Categories OK]
Article status	Developing article: beyond a stub, but incomplete
Underlinked article?	No
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	Larry Sanger 10:48, 12 March 2007 (CDT)

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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)

Philosophical theories

- altruism -- anti-realism -- Buddhist philosophy -- coherentism -- Confucianism -- consequentialism -- constructivism -- deconstructionism -- egoism -- eudaimonism -- foundationalism -- hedonism -- historical materialism -- irrealism -- justified true belief -- nominalism -- Objectivism -- psychological egoism -- Platonism -- realism -- reliabilism -- Taoism -- Transcendentalism utilitarianism -- Populism and Nationalism -- Irrationalism and Aestheticism -- Stoicism -- [etc. continue the list please]

List now seems pointless. --Larry Sanger 13:16, 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'? …]

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This isn't a bad narrative either, but it isn't the one that I started with, or at least, it isn't the one I had in mind. The exercise as I see it is to pick a few strands that we can follow through the history of philosophy. These would be the nature of knowledge, universals, virtue, God, and adding a few more as we get into the 19th and 20th centuries.

--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)

Of course, although I think you have put a little too much emphasis on Plato and not enough on Aristotle, particularly if, as the bullet points suggest, you intend to pick up medieval philosophy in the 12th century (with the meeting of secular methods & theology). And I still think an understanding of Aristotle's 'substance' is 'essential' to appreciating medieval philosophy. Was it secular methods or secular ideas that met up in the 12th century? Let me think about this again. The problem, as I suggested above, is 'granularity'. I think, as I said above, that we are approaching the article like one of those long things written by Eminent Person in an old-fashioned encyclopedia, or an online thing like the SEP or IEP, with which I don't think we are equipped to compete. The Wiki idea, by contrast, is to sidestep all that and have lots of separate articles with a parent article that threads them together. This article is looking too much like a grand old thing written by Eminent Person. Just a thought. Edward buckner 03:37, 12 March 2007 (CDT)

"with which I don't think we are equipped to compete". Why not? --Peter J. King  Talk  07:29, 12 March 2007 (CDT)

Well, the SEP has hundreds of contributors, and we appear to have two. In addition, why copy something that's already been done? I think there has to be careful thought about what the whole philosophy section looks like. How long is each article going to be (I suggest similar to the Wikipedia limit which is about 4 pages of a4). What the format should be. What the main articles would be. All that sort of thing. Edward buckner 07:38, 12 March 2007 (CDT)

Well, first, it only has one contributor (sometimes two) per article. Secondly, it started small and grew. Thirdly, in a sense every encylopædia copies something that's been done, in that it's an encyclopædia...

Fourthly, though — coincidentally I'd been thinking about article lengths, but more generally. Whenever I've been involved in writing for print encyclopædias (and Encarta), articles have been assigned word lengths according to their importance. Now, of course that's in part the result of space constraints, but there's also a good theoretical basis for it. After all, one of Wikipedia's many faults is that there's no proportionality: an article on some tenth-rate pop artist, a village school in Hertfordshire, or a character in a video game can be four times the size of an article on time, physics, ethics, etc. I wonder if there's a role for editors here at Citizendium in fixing certain (flexible) maximum size limits for articles? --Peter J. King  Talk  08:35, 12 March 2007 (CDT)

That's exactly what should be done. Being the train-spotter that I am, I recently went through every entry in the Cambridge companion to medieval philosophy and calculated the approximate number of lines allocated to each medieval philosopher. Unsurprisingly Scotus, Ockham and Aquinas are top 3, with Augustine and (surprisingly) Maimonides close behind. I have a list of the top ten somewhere, indeed a list of the whole 100-odd philosophers. That was a deliberate decision by the editors, and, as you say, you desperately need something rather like that, maybe not quite so inflexible, given that a paper encyclopedia has a fixed constraint on size.

That doesn't mean the guidelines can't be reviewed. Just that there would be some kind of pressure or process to ensure (1) that there was enough material on Aquinas, Scotus &c, but (2) that the articles on the Garland the computist or Frigidius of Tours (say) were not the size of those covered in (1).

Here's my list (10 = maximum) of how the philosophers score relative to each other. These do not reflect my estimate of their merit, but of where the average professional philosopher would rate them, or how much column inches they would be, relative to one another, in the average encyclopedia (excl. Wikipedia)

Plato 8 Aristotle 10 Aquinas 8 Scotus 7 Ockham 7 Locke 8 Berkeley 6 Hume 8 Kant 8 Hobbes 4 Leibniz 7 Descartes 8 Russell 9 Wittgenstein 8 Heidegger 8 Edward buckner 10:15, 12 March 2007 (CDT)

Edward, I agree that there is not enough emphasis on Aristotle. We could add a fair bit to that paragraph; I was thinking of adding his definition of 'virtue'. Of course Aristotle's concept of substance is essential to appreciating medieval philosophy, but this article can't hope to convey an appreciation of medieval philosophy in just a few paragraphs. The best it can do is, as I said, relate a narrative. If the narrative is focused enough, it will be possible for a beginner to follow it and get a tiny taste of something from many major philosophers.

What you call "the Wiki idea"--"have lots of separate articles with a parent article that threads them together"--I think of as the Wikipedia idea. Now, we can still have lots and lots of separate philosophy articles, more than Wikipedia, and a parent article that threads at least many of them together. What we might be disagreeing about is how to thread them together. I actually find the Wikipedia tendency simply to list information in a disconnected way to be less interesting and readable than what we're attempting with Philosophy and what seems well achieved with Biology. I can imagine reading one of these articles through; I can't imagine reading most Wikipedia articles all the way through, any more than I can imagine reading tables of statistics carefully all the way through.

Deciding which approach is best really comes down to what the purpose of an individual article is. Granted, an encyclopedia is generally used to look things up. Listed, disconnected, tabulated information seems well suited for that purpose. But isn't it also the purpose of an encyclopedia article to introduce the topic? We want some of both, but we definitely do want to introduce the topic to people who presumably need an introduction.

Think of it like this (if you will). Nobody is going to come to the "Philosophy" article expecting to find a coherent account of Aristotle's theory of substance. If someone wants that, he'll go to "Aristotle," "substance," or better yet, "Aristotle's theory of substance." Generally speaking, people will use a search engine to find the precise article that would seem to have the information they're looking for. And if they're looking for more than a definition, or for a statistic that will be easy to find in any case (certainly we'll tabulate information that it is appropriate to tabulate, such as population statistics), what will they be looking for? Presumably, a general narrative that will help them get a beginner's grasp on the topic: an introduction. Now, if topic T has several obvious subtopics, T1-Tn, then your suggestion (unless I'm greatly misunderstanding, which I might be) appears to be that a good article on T would consist of a string of very short articles about T1-Tn. But if I'm looking for an introduction to T, I think experience with Wikipedia's own articles shows that my curiosity will not be satisfied with the string of short articles on T1-Tn. Indeed, the string of short articles serves the purpose of introducing T very poorly.

You also describe a narrative introduction as "approaching the article like one of those long things written by Eminent Person in an old-fashioned encyclopedia, or an online thing like the SEP or IEP" and you say "I don't think we are equipped to compete" with them.

Here I must disagree, for reasons Peter gives, but also a few more. Most importantly, we're going to have a lot more philosophers arriving in the coming months and years. We can't expect to create a great encyclopedia of philosophy with the staff we have on hand right now (although I would say it wouldn't be too bad!), but bear in mind that we are constantly growing. Also, I think you may underestimate the power of collaboration, particularly when under the eye of experts. As much as we might decry the tendency of good Wikipedia articles to be degraded over time, it remains true that collaboration--given enough time--frequently results in prose that is of higher quality than, at least, what individuals working alone can produce. For instance, I am sure that I could write a passable "Philosophy" article. But I am also sure (because it's already started happening) that my prose can be greatly improved by edits and additions and deletions made by you and Peter and others yet to come. Now, I think SEP is a wonderful encyclopedia. But articles in it are, while authoritative, also sometimes rather idiosyncratic and heavy on the author's own views. These are precisely the problems that strong collaboration solves well.

So I actually maintain the opposite view, not strongly, but sincerely. If we get past the start-up phase and attract many more philosophers, then we will in relatively short order (compared to SEP) have a set of authoritative articles that are actually better than SEP's.

--Larry Sanger 10:30, 12 March 2007 (CDT)

Larry, you have convinced me on one point. I followed the link to the Biology article and I thought it was Very Good – all in 9 A4 pages too, which is quite an achievement (I didn't know anything about Biology before then but now I feel I know a little, and that is good as well). But remember I said talked about "a parent article that threads them together". This is where the expertise really comes in, and where Wikipedia falls down. The real expertise is in getting the right thread (my word – your word 'narrative' I think means the same). That means a comprehensive view of the whole subject, and understanding which things in this enormous subject need saying, and which can safely be left until later.

However, I still disagree with you on another point, namely 'substance'. It's not just important for medieval philosophy, it's central to Aristotle's Metaphysics, to metaphysics in general and (if we agree that metaphysics is the most important philosophical subject) to all philosophy. Think of all the philsophical subjects that it engages with – the problem of change, the dispute between rationalists and empiricists, the problem of, ultimately, what sorts of things there really are, the problem of individuation, reference and identity, the problem of universals, the 'categories', subject and predicate, connotation and denotation, sense and reference &c. I find it unbelievable that anyone would think of omitting it. Edward buckner 06:00, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

I do think, also, that the bullet points in the current version are roughly right, and also that a good philosophy article would be a very powerful argument for this way of doing things, as against the other way. No other online encyclopedia, to my knowledge, has an overview of all of philosophy. Well, except Wikipedia, ahem. Edward buckner 06:09, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

Another thought: one reason Wikipedia found it difficult to attract a critical mass of philosophers is the flagship article itself. Anyone with any knowledge of the subject, and any aversion to barbarous language, takes one look at that and goes away. A good flagship article is like an 'anchor' store in the High Street. So think of this article as like Waitrose. Edward buckner 06:12, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

Subdisciplines

The word "philosophical" was removed from many of these, without explanation. In many if not most cases it's important that this be retained, as without it there is genuine ambiguity or vagueness (one can study issues and questions philosophically or non-philosophically).

With regard to that word "study" — I haven't changed it, but it seems to me to be often inappropriate. Philosophers don't generally study things, they discuss, analyse, argue, defend, etc. "Study" strikes me as being both rather one-dimensional and misleading. --Peter J. King  Talk  15:58, 27 March 2007 (CDT)

Copyedits

I really can't agree with most of the recent copyedits to the article; the language has been systematically denatured, which is a bad thing. There is an interesting difference in tone and effect, for example, between merely "offering a definition" and "offering up a definition." Similarly, there is an important diffence between saying simply, "Aristotle wrote voluminously" and "It was Aristotle who wrote voluminously"--the idea is that many people know (or perhaps should know) that there was an ancient thinker who is famous for having written voluminously. That thinker was Aristotle: "it was Aristotle who..."

The principle in operation behind the recent copyedits is that if you can remove any words at all, remove them. I think that crafting good prose is quite a bit more complicated than following that injunction. --Larry Sanger 07:51, 30 March 2007 (CDT)

I was probably overzealous in changing "offered up" to "offered"; I've changed that back. I thought "it was Aristotle who..." suggested that Aristotle was the only person ever to do so which, if true, should be said explicitly; is my new wording better? I've changed "claim" back to "purport" in the interests of minimal interference, but left it as a verb; it's purport, not know, that's the key word.

I'm going on holiday tomorrow, so feel free to revert my edits without further discussion if you're still not convinced. Ben Plommer 12:44, 30 March 2007 (CDT)

"Claim" was much better, and "offered up" is (to be honest) peculiar and wrong here; "offered" is surely what was meant (one offers up a sacrifice, for example, and I don't see how that could have been meant). Also, I'm not sure that Aristotle is famous for having "written voluminously". He is supposed to have written a great deal, most of it having been lost; what's left is limited, and its status as (wholly) his own work is often in doubt. I'd have thought that the quantity of his writing is something for which he's not at all famous. --Peter J. King  Talk  13:20, 30 March 2007 (CDT)

As to "offer up," I think you are insisting on one meaning when, in fact, a derivative meaning is in fact more usual now, as this Google search makes clear. The phrase in most of the uses in the search result, and in my use, means "to offer, especially for consideration, as if to the gods." So it is not peculiar in the least, or wrong. We can change that Aristotle is famous for writing voluminously, which is a sloppy way of saying he's famous for having voluminous writings which are attributed to him. But the point is that it is Aristotle, of early Western thinkers, who developed systems of thought about a very wide range of subjects. --Larry Sanger 21:30, 2 April 2007 (CDT)