Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy/Archive 9

Participants -

Now that I've messed up the participants section, someone might like to fix it. I guess the easiest thing to do would be to cut it to a sub-page - any problems with doing that? Banno 21:26, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

Barnstar

I'd like to set up a barnstar (see Wikipedia:Barnstars on Wikipedia) specifically for excellence in writing or editing of a philosophy-related article. I thought about using this picture of Sophia surrounded by the Arts, but... now I'm hoping that someone with a bent to graphic design might come up with something better.

If others think it worthwhile, I'll propose it at Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals. Banno 21:02, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

File:Septem-artes-liberales Herrad-von-Landsberg Hortus-delicarium 1180.jpg

Hi, cool idea. When I was putting together the Philosopher template (below), I found this alternate graphic - if you download it you can get it in quite good quality. FranksValli 03:06, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Alternately, we could just commandeer the Barnstar of High Culture:

Star of Sophia

What about this?

(hey, I'm no graphic artist - you are welcome to have a go yourself)

I suggest we use this to acknowledge good work in the area of philosophy. Perhaps:

• Set up a page for nominations and voting.
• Only participants in WikiProject Philosophy are eligible to vote (ie, those who have their names listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy/participants
• Those who get over some minimum (say, 5?) number of votes receive the award, and will have the star placed on their user page, and their names recorded for eternity on the Project page.

Comments? Banno 02:38, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

I think the idea is wonderful, and the several symbols shown are fine. I myself wish there were something with a good representation of Socrates, since I would imagine admiration for him as the archetypical philosopher is widespread. Really, Banno, I think you're providing some much needed leadership here, and you are to be congratulated. icut4u

Global Justice

Hey there folks, I've just put my name on the board to help out with the WikiProject and I've been looking for an area where I could help out. I suppose the main area would be the area of my thesis, being global justice. If search for Global Justice you'll be taken to a stub which claims that global justice is an anti-capitalism thing. Anyone with much contact with political philosophy will know that that's not completely accurate. I'm thinking it would be good to perhaps set up a disambiguation page of some sort and create a Global Justice (Political Philosophy) article. There are a number of philosophers that have written on the topic in the wikipedia, and a few of them are stubs. It would be good to create a project to expand on them as well (I mean, the article on Thomas Pogge is a stub!).

I haven't posted this on the Open Tasks, as I wanted to get some feedback on approaching it first and to see if anyone else was interested in pursuing it with me.

--S.P.Daly 21:28, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Welcome, Shanon. You are certainly right about global justice having inadequate cover. Just jump in and start writing, I'm sure you will find folk to discuss this issue. Banno 21:37, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

Philosopher Template

Western Philosophers Medieval Philosophy
Basic Information
Name	Thomas Aquinas
Dates	c.1225 – March 7, 1274
Place of Birth	Castle of Roccasecca, near Aquino, Italy
Place of Death	Monastery of Fossanova, Sonnino, Italy
Major Works	Summa Theologica, Summa contra Gentiles
Main Interests	Metaphysics (incl. Theology), Logic, Mind, Epistemology, Ethics, Politics
Influences	Aristotle, Boethius, Eriguena, Anselm, ibn Rushd, ben Maimom
Influenced	Giles of Rome, Godfrey of Fontaines, Jacques Maritain, G. E. M. Anscombe
Most Known Ideas	Five Proofs For God's Existence
Summary	There are not two truths, one of reason and one of religion. There is one truth, so if they disagree with each other, one must be wrong. We can determine which is wrong by reason alone.
Philosophers By Era
Pre-Socratic, Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s Postmodern philosophy, Contemporary philosophy

Hi all - I propose a Philosopher Template to be added to all Philosophers. This will GREATLY improve our organization of the philosophy pages as a whole.
Please note that I have seen a "Philosophy" template floating around somewhere that didn't specifically address philosophers. If someone could point me in the direction of this I'd appraciate it.
If you are unsure of what a template is, take a look at this page: AEG_B.I. The idea is that a general template is made, which resides at Template:Infobox_WWIAircraft_Standard. If you take a look at the source code of the AEG_B.I page, you will notice that all of the values are nicely organized, so the only thing the user has to do is fill in variables (i.e. role = reconnaisance, first_flight = 1914).
I would like to make a template for all the philosophers, and it would have this basic information (all of which is free to debate, of course!):
Name, Date (born, died), Philosophical Era (see below), Famous Works, Directly Influenced by (philosophers who contributed to their thinking), Directly influenced (philosophers that were influenced by this philosopher), Most Known Ideas.
The data most in question are the last three, but most notably "Most known for". My idea is to have some major features of their thought here. It could be a quote, a book, or an idea. For instance, Descartes could have "I think, therefore I am" AND/OR Cartesianism.
The areas for "Directly Influenced by" and "Directly Influenced" are less controversial, but still more controversial to include than things like Name or Date. Just for quick reference, it would be very useful to be able to see which thinkers influenced a particular philosopher, and which philosophers were influenced by them. Here's a little example:
Name = Socrates
Directly Influenced by = Pre-Socratics, Sophists
Directly Influenced = Plato

Name = Plato
Directly Influenced by = Socrates
Directly Influenced = Aristotle

Name = Aristotle
Directly Influenced by = Plato
Directly Influenced = Thomas Aquinas

In the end, the completed template would look something like this (remember, it appears to the right of the philosopher article):
There are definitely problems with the terminologies here, please especially focus on the titles for "Philosophers By Era" and make corrections.
Also a little note - there needs to be a separate section for Modernist Philosophy. As it is now, the page for Modernism is focused mainly on the art and culture aspect. However, there is NO mention of Descartes, who was the start of the Modernist philosophical movement.
It would also be cool to have each philosophical era have their own template background!
Sorry this post is so long! FranksValli 03:00, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea, time to replace the generic infoboxes with philosophical infoboxes. Could also include Date and Place of Birth and Death for easy reference. -Yorick, Jester of Elsinore 03:08, 2005 September 7 (UTC)

Ah yes, good idea. I knew I was forgetting something  :). I just added Place of Birth and Death. Date was already on there, but it can be expanded into "Date of Birth" and "Date of Death" if that looks better. Feel free to play around with that template. -FranksValli 03:17, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

This is a quite excellent idea - my only change would be to match the eras used with "Category:Philosophy by era", which itself needs work. Banno 20:38, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

I have to agree that this is a great idea. Does anyone know if there is a list of different philosophical 'schools' anywhere--perhaps this information could be included in the box if it is available? Not academic schools, but groups of like-minded philosophers, such as empiricists, existentialists, sophists, etc. I have seen category breakdowns into metaphysics, logic, etc.. but not so much information on this sort of a split. WhiteC 04:06, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if there's one document that has them all as a list, but if one looks through almost any good history of philosophy or dictionary of philosophy, one can find the main ones listed there. Jeremy J. Shapiro 08:03, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I meant is there such a list anywhere in Wikipedia? To me, this seems to be an important way to categorize philosophy, or at least the history of philosophy. WhiteC 03:47, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Category:Philosophical schools and Category:Philosophy by tradition, although both are scratchy. Banno 09:12, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments everyone - I hope we can use this. The philosophical schools and traditions aren't really well-defined sometimes. I think we should just have an area in the box that says "Philosphical tradition/school" so it will be easier to decide what goes in that box and what doesn't. I've started a list, but it probably has things that shouldn't be there. Anyhow, hopefully this will be useful:

Agnosticism, African philosophy, Alexandrian school, Analytic philosophy, Anarchism, Atheism, Coherentism, Contextualism, Continental philosophy, Continental rationalism, Communism, Critical theory, Deconstructionism, Deism, Eastern philosophy, Egoism, Empiricism, Epicurianism, Ethical egoism, Existentialism, Frankfurt School, Hermeneutics, Humanism, Integral theory (philosophy), Kyoto School, Marxist philosophy, Modernism, Neoplatonism, Mysticism, Objectivism, Phenomenalism, Postmodernism, Pragmatism, psychological egoism, Rationalism, Relativism, Reliabilism, Religious philosophy and doctrine, Scholasticism, School of Brentano, Scotism, Situated ethics, Situational ethics, Skepticism, Solipsism, Sophism, Stoicism, Transcendentalism, Young Hegelians, Vienna Circle, Western philosophy

-FranksValli 03:27, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I just picked up this very cool book - "One Hundred Philosophers: The Life and Work of the World's Greatest Thinkers". It is perfect to use for this new template - it has the usual name, birthdate/deathdate, birthplace/deathplace, major works, in addition to "main interests" and "influences/influenced", and a short summary of their philosophy. Some thinkers even have an "in a nutshell" section. I've edited the template again based on these ideas, plus some of the good criticism that you guys offered above (i.e. modifying Philosophers by Era). This is gonna be fun to implement. FranksValli 04:54, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

In regard to influences, would it be worthwhile splitting it up into positive and negative influences? For example, the difference between Newton and Hume in their influence on Kant. Also listing the influenced as "all who came after" isn't of much help. I've made a small edit in that regard. Aquinas' work on theology should be highlighted. --- Skubicki 05:34, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and perhaps "Summary" should be retitled as "Quote" or something like that? So examples could be things like "I think, therefore I am", and "There is no such thing as a language". --- Skubicki 05:43, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Science pearls

Hello, Please notice this project. I hope that the List of publications in philosophy will be adopted by the philosophy porject. Thanks,APH 06:18, 13 September 2005 (UTC)