Talk:Philosophy

I'm just trying to make a dent in the Special:Wantedpages, any help on this article would be greatly appreciated. Thanks -ColinR 04:44, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

I'm working on improving this page and the other pages in the philosophy category. Is anybody a Continental, by chance? NosnhoJE 02:22, 14 May 2008 (EDT)

Notability?

I don't think Niebuhr and Hartshorne are really notable figures in American philosophy, and Mills was a sociologist, not a philosopher. If you want American philosophers of religion in there, the obvious choices should be Plantinga and Hick. But - on that note - "American philosophy" is really limited to Pragmatism (or Peirce's 'pragmaticism', since he hated James), in the 20th century most famously championed by Rorty. Other than that, the meaningful distinction is (as I noted in the top section) the divide between Analytic and "Continental" philosophy. Rawls, for example, is squarely in the Analytic camp, not the American (read: Pragmatic) camp.

May be my source is not as good as yours, please improve it as it should be. --User:Joaquín Martínez, talk 19:31, 23 May 2008 (EDT)

I'm working on it. For reference, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is probably the best overall web resource, but it's more specialist articles and less general information. Most of what I'm adding right is common-knowledge (for professional philosophers, I suppose) but probably needs sourcing for an encyclopedia. Unfortunately, most of my library is still packed from a recent move. I'll improve that as I unpack. Cheers! NosnhoJE 19:48, 23 May 2008 (EDT)

Great work. I just recovered some valuable material. --User:Joaquín Martínez, talk 23:41, 23 May 2008 (EDT)

Nice. My area of expertise is in Analytic philosophy and to a lesser extent German phenomenology, so I'm a bit in the dark with the others. If you concentrate your efforts there, we can probably avoid unnecessary duplication of effort. NosnhoJE 00:06, 24 May 2008 (EDT)

Fine I will try. --User:Joaquín Martínez, talk 02:10, 24 May 2008 (EDT)

"Philosophizing" addition

Joaquin, got something up. I really don't know if this is OK for the article and would not be surprised or offended if it is taken down. But it was good for me to think throughBert Schlossberg 06:04, 24 May 2008 (EDT)

Excellent. --User:Joaquín Martínez, talk 07:56, 24 May 2008 (EDT)

It's certainly an interesting claim, but it looks to me more like a start on an argument than something encyclopedic about philosophy - especially since, even if it's true (which we should talk about sometime), it only applies to some of philosophy's sub-disciplines. It would be exceptionally difficult, for example, to show that the study of ontology arises from pain or disaffectedness... NosnhoJE 14:26, 24 May 2008 (EDT)

I think it works something like this - ontology, the study of being. One, and I think all of us, becomes aware of the meaning of the subject by its approaching absence. We experience other people dying, ourselves beginning the process, other living things. We wonder what it is like to not be aware, ever, to not exist. We experience angst, some sort of horror perhaps, wishing it were not so, etc. We are aware of other life forms likewise ceasing, At each instance of this we pass further into the contemplation of all things, even things never having had life, in their existence and coming non existence. All the while as we press futher in the commonality and generality of beingness, we seek for the reason for it all commensurate with the multiplicity of the instances seeking the principle of point of commonality to all. We contemplate the ramifications such as the concept of time, all "change" and being into non being is in time. We wonder, can there be change at all if there were no time? We consider time in relation to God. Is He out of time? Is time also a creation of His? Is He related to time or is time itself relative to Him. Is that what it means, at least in part. for God to be eternal? Is this what in means for God to be "o ontos", the Being One? We consider other facets that point to the solution of our original angst or whatever that has brought us (others, the thinking world, the philosophers, theologions) to possible solutions. Is our being not only derivative, but dependently so, capable of being withdrawn but also reestablished, reintroduced? Did the Son of God, becoming incarnate, become subject to the time of his own creating etc? The ramifications we consider help us further in the understanding of our original ontological quest.

And so with other sub-disciplines of philosophy, I think, though I haven't thought them all through.Bert Schlossberg 00:07, 25 May 2008 (EDT)

OK. Why do you think that we become aware of the meaning of being by its approaching absence? It seems to me that we become aware of the meaning of being rather by its overwhelming presence; we find ourselves in a world filled with things, and begin to make distinctions between them that have nothing to do with an understanding (even a protounderstanding) of death, or cessation, or anything of the sort.

I also fail to see how the properties of God are relevant to the philosophical investigation of ontology; that belongs squarely in philosophy of religion. The ontology of artifacts, for example, will turn out to be the same whether God exists or not.

Finally, I fail to see why this argument is appropriate for an encyclopedia. It has nothing to do with the demonstrable history of philosophical inquiry. Unless you'd like to re-frame it as, say, a Kierkegaardian claim, or something similar. NosnhoJE 16:37, 4 June 2008 (EDT)

History of Philosophy

The only person I know who divides the history of philosophy into those four periods is Deely, and his Thomist buddies, who are certainly non-representative of philosophy as a whole. Is there another source here that I should know about? NosnhoJE 18:19, 4 June 2008 (EDT)