This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Epistemology article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7Auto-archiving period: 31 days |
Daily page views
|
Epistemology was one of the good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
Current status: Delisted good article |
This
level-3 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This page has archives. Sections older than 31 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III. |
In the list of links to articles in other languages German seems to be missing even though there is an article called "Erkenntnistheorie" that links to this English article ( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erkenntnistheorie). I could not figure out how to add German to the list myself or I am lacking the necessary admin privileges. Maybe anybody who has the necessary privileges to edit that list could help out? Greetings Sidonius ( talk) 10:40, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
Some arguments used in the contemporary externalist/internalist debate in philosophy of mind refer to the relation between mind and body that Descartes introduced in the early modern period. [note 1] Descartes' answers to epistemological questions are not so easily related to contemporary justificatory views in naturalized epistemology and in the epistemological counterpart of this debate in particular, [note 2] but both debates have been related [1] [2] [3] [4] and constitute together a fundamental part of contemporary epistemology and of key contemporary epistemological concepts such as virtue epistemology. [note 3] Descartes is well known for his dualism, but he is mostly known for his skeptical approach. He used this approach, not to deny that the objects of sensory experiences follow precise laws that can be known, but to gain certainty in the mind side, in the cogito, and he used this as a platform to get to other truths. [note 4] In that respect, Descartes was influenced by Plato. [note 5] However, Descartes argued for a different kind of dualism. The new aspect of Cartesian dualism, with no counterpart in Plato's dualism, is the existence of a real physical world behind the sensory experiences with its own laws and a real mental substance behind our mental experiences and a causal relation between these two worlds. The part of this view, which says that "the external world is real but known to us only indirectly, is called indirect realism". [5] In that sense, Descartes was the father of modern realism and, for realists, of modern philosophy as well. Descartes's interactionism (interaction between the physical reality and the substance of the mind) was abandoned in the nineteenth century because of the growing popularity of philosophical mechanism. Realism itself was not abandoned, only the coexistence of an independent substance behind the mind was abandoned. [note 6]
Cite error: A
list-defined reference named "MajorsSawyer2007" is not used in the content (see the
help page).
Cite error: A
list-defined reference named "Plantinga1993" is not used in the content (see the
help page).
Dominic Mayers ( talk) 18:36, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
@ Dominic Mayers: The time and effort you have invested in this section are inspiring and your recent adjustments solve the problem of the initial version. As the text in the paragraph suggests, the way the topic of the paragraph is related to epistemology seems to be rather complicated and indirect. Let's see if I can get it straight:
It seems that this chain of connection is not made in a single source that is cited but several sources need to be combined to sketch out this path. Are you sure that this rather distant relation justifies adding a full paragraph to a wide overview article like this one (see WP:PROPORTION)? This issue could be avoided by instead adding this discussion to an article that has the internal-external debate in philosophy of mind as a main topic. Phlsph7 ( talk) 08:56, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
Notes
The context that was moved at the end might not be what people in the contemporary epistemological bubble expect, but Wikipedia is not the place to reproduce bubbles that occur in academic circles. I mean, one might feel that the section on central concepts is self sufficient and does not need context, but that is because it is presented as a bubble that stands on its own. It presents a view of analytic philosophy on knowledge, in particular, the justified true belief view, as if it was the only view. This is not what Wikipedia must do. The whole point of having a context is to change that. But, we can start with the central concepts and try to present them in a way that acknowledges the specific place contemporary epistemology has within its context. Will see how it goes. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 12:38, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
to protect our readers from the dominant views in the subject—I am not even sure what you mean by this and that makes it even more annoying. The natural interpretation of "protect against a content" would be not to present that content, but that leads to a ridiculous concern: my entire goal is to present the dominant and contemporary view in epistemology within its context. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 19:10, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
A B-class article that gets as much traffic as this one ought to have an image in the lead so that it is appealingly decorated in search results. I am adding Mind in Cave by David S. Soriano. If this is too flashy, a couple other options would be [1] or [2]. I don't have strong views on what the image should be, just that the article ought to have one.
Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh ( talk) 18:48, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
I was thinking about implementing changes to this article with the hope of moving it in the direction of GA status. The article has 12 unreferenced paragraphs and the following maintenance tags: 1x More citations needed, 3x clarification needed, 1x page needed, 1x citation needed, 1x dead link.
The article has an odd structure. It has a section dedicated to schools of thought but many schools of thought have their own subsections elsewhere, like internalism, virtue epistemology, and foundationalism. Knowledge is defined first in the subsection "Knowledge" and later in the section "Defining knowledge". Redundancies are also a problem in the two separate subsections dedicated to the apriori-aposteriori distinction and the discussion of skepticism first in the subsection "Skepticism" and later the section "Epistemological concepts in past philosophies". The section "Schools of thought" has too many subsections, some of which are quite short. It would probably be better to only use separate subsections for the most important traditions and merge the remaining subsections. The definition of epistemology should be discussed somewhere in the body of the article so that the lead can summarize it rather than present information not found in the body of the article.
The article has some historical information but it lacks a structured discussion of the history of epistemology regarding the main positions in ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary philosophy. The pieces that are already there could probably be included in a more organized presentation as parts. Various important topics are also missing from the rest of the article or are only alluded to, such as applied epistemology, evidentialism, fallibilism, contrastivism, epistemology of religion, and moral epistemology. It also wouldn't hurt to mention the problem of knowledge of other minds and the problem of induction somewhere. The article is already quite long so some of the current contents would need to be summarize to keep the length managable. There is a lengthy paragraph on words for knowledge in other languages that could probably be removed and getting rid of some redundancies would also help reduce length.
Various smaller adjustments are needed but they can be addressed later since the ones mentioned so far will already involve a lot of work to implement. I was hoping to get some feedback on these ideas and possibly other suggestions. I still have to do some research to work out the details. After that, I would start implementing them one at a time but it will probably take a while to address all the points. Phlsph7 ( talk) 07:57, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
Notes
This illustrates the general issue discussed in the previous section. Indirectly, through an etymological statement, the article presents a specific view on today's epistemology and on ancient Greek knowledge as being a universal view. The French version fr:Épistémologie uses a similar approach, but with their own adapted etymological view in which "episteme" refers to science:
L'épistémologie (du grec ancien ἐπιστήμη / epistếmê, « connaissance vraie, science » et λόγος / lógos / « discours ») est d'abord l'étude de la connaissance scientifique.
which translates as
Epistemology (from ancient Greek ἐπιστήμη / epistếmê, “true knowledge, science” and λόγος / lógos / “discourse”) is first and foremost the study of scientific knowledge.
The etymological statement in the article, as does the above statement in the French version, misrepresents ancient Greek knowledge to give a false impression that the article is universal and cover a general topic. To my knowledge, there is no universal view on the ancient Greek meaning of "episteme", but the most accepted view among scholars is that it is a knowledge accompanied with a techne, a skill. It is not useful to enter into the details. The point is that the etymological statement in the article (and also in the French version, but to support their own different approach) serves only the purpose of claiming that the article is a general article, but in doing so it relies on a simplistic view of the knowledge in ancient Greek: the skill could be a skill to govern a country, a skill in discourse or a craft. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 12:31, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Epistemology article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7Auto-archiving period: 31 days |
Daily page views
|
Epistemology was one of the good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
Current status: Delisted good article |
This
level-3 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This page has archives. Sections older than 31 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III. |
In the list of links to articles in other languages German seems to be missing even though there is an article called "Erkenntnistheorie" that links to this English article ( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erkenntnistheorie). I could not figure out how to add German to the list myself or I am lacking the necessary admin privileges. Maybe anybody who has the necessary privileges to edit that list could help out? Greetings Sidonius ( talk) 10:40, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
Some arguments used in the contemporary externalist/internalist debate in philosophy of mind refer to the relation between mind and body that Descartes introduced in the early modern period. [note 1] Descartes' answers to epistemological questions are not so easily related to contemporary justificatory views in naturalized epistemology and in the epistemological counterpart of this debate in particular, [note 2] but both debates have been related [1] [2] [3] [4] and constitute together a fundamental part of contemporary epistemology and of key contemporary epistemological concepts such as virtue epistemology. [note 3] Descartes is well known for his dualism, but he is mostly known for his skeptical approach. He used this approach, not to deny that the objects of sensory experiences follow precise laws that can be known, but to gain certainty in the mind side, in the cogito, and he used this as a platform to get to other truths. [note 4] In that respect, Descartes was influenced by Plato. [note 5] However, Descartes argued for a different kind of dualism. The new aspect of Cartesian dualism, with no counterpart in Plato's dualism, is the existence of a real physical world behind the sensory experiences with its own laws and a real mental substance behind our mental experiences and a causal relation between these two worlds. The part of this view, which says that "the external world is real but known to us only indirectly, is called indirect realism". [5] In that sense, Descartes was the father of modern realism and, for realists, of modern philosophy as well. Descartes's interactionism (interaction between the physical reality and the substance of the mind) was abandoned in the nineteenth century because of the growing popularity of philosophical mechanism. Realism itself was not abandoned, only the coexistence of an independent substance behind the mind was abandoned. [note 6]
Cite error: A
list-defined reference named "MajorsSawyer2007" is not used in the content (see the
help page).
Cite error: A
list-defined reference named "Plantinga1993" is not used in the content (see the
help page).
Dominic Mayers ( talk) 18:36, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
@ Dominic Mayers: The time and effort you have invested in this section are inspiring and your recent adjustments solve the problem of the initial version. As the text in the paragraph suggests, the way the topic of the paragraph is related to epistemology seems to be rather complicated and indirect. Let's see if I can get it straight:
It seems that this chain of connection is not made in a single source that is cited but several sources need to be combined to sketch out this path. Are you sure that this rather distant relation justifies adding a full paragraph to a wide overview article like this one (see WP:PROPORTION)? This issue could be avoided by instead adding this discussion to an article that has the internal-external debate in philosophy of mind as a main topic. Phlsph7 ( talk) 08:56, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
Notes
The context that was moved at the end might not be what people in the contemporary epistemological bubble expect, but Wikipedia is not the place to reproduce bubbles that occur in academic circles. I mean, one might feel that the section on central concepts is self sufficient and does not need context, but that is because it is presented as a bubble that stands on its own. It presents a view of analytic philosophy on knowledge, in particular, the justified true belief view, as if it was the only view. This is not what Wikipedia must do. The whole point of having a context is to change that. But, we can start with the central concepts and try to present them in a way that acknowledges the specific place contemporary epistemology has within its context. Will see how it goes. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 12:38, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
to protect our readers from the dominant views in the subject—I am not even sure what you mean by this and that makes it even more annoying. The natural interpretation of "protect against a content" would be not to present that content, but that leads to a ridiculous concern: my entire goal is to present the dominant and contemporary view in epistemology within its context. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 19:10, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
A B-class article that gets as much traffic as this one ought to have an image in the lead so that it is appealingly decorated in search results. I am adding Mind in Cave by David S. Soriano. If this is too flashy, a couple other options would be [1] or [2]. I don't have strong views on what the image should be, just that the article ought to have one.
Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh ( talk) 18:48, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
I was thinking about implementing changes to this article with the hope of moving it in the direction of GA status. The article has 12 unreferenced paragraphs and the following maintenance tags: 1x More citations needed, 3x clarification needed, 1x page needed, 1x citation needed, 1x dead link.
The article has an odd structure. It has a section dedicated to schools of thought but many schools of thought have their own subsections elsewhere, like internalism, virtue epistemology, and foundationalism. Knowledge is defined first in the subsection "Knowledge" and later in the section "Defining knowledge". Redundancies are also a problem in the two separate subsections dedicated to the apriori-aposteriori distinction and the discussion of skepticism first in the subsection "Skepticism" and later the section "Epistemological concepts in past philosophies". The section "Schools of thought" has too many subsections, some of which are quite short. It would probably be better to only use separate subsections for the most important traditions and merge the remaining subsections. The definition of epistemology should be discussed somewhere in the body of the article so that the lead can summarize it rather than present information not found in the body of the article.
The article has some historical information but it lacks a structured discussion of the history of epistemology regarding the main positions in ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary philosophy. The pieces that are already there could probably be included in a more organized presentation as parts. Various important topics are also missing from the rest of the article or are only alluded to, such as applied epistemology, evidentialism, fallibilism, contrastivism, epistemology of religion, and moral epistemology. It also wouldn't hurt to mention the problem of knowledge of other minds and the problem of induction somewhere. The article is already quite long so some of the current contents would need to be summarize to keep the length managable. There is a lengthy paragraph on words for knowledge in other languages that could probably be removed and getting rid of some redundancies would also help reduce length.
Various smaller adjustments are needed but they can be addressed later since the ones mentioned so far will already involve a lot of work to implement. I was hoping to get some feedback on these ideas and possibly other suggestions. I still have to do some research to work out the details. After that, I would start implementing them one at a time but it will probably take a while to address all the points. Phlsph7 ( talk) 07:57, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
Notes
This illustrates the general issue discussed in the previous section. Indirectly, through an etymological statement, the article presents a specific view on today's epistemology and on ancient Greek knowledge as being a universal view. The French version fr:Épistémologie uses a similar approach, but with their own adapted etymological view in which "episteme" refers to science:
L'épistémologie (du grec ancien ἐπιστήμη / epistếmê, « connaissance vraie, science » et λόγος / lógos / « discours ») est d'abord l'étude de la connaissance scientifique.
which translates as
Epistemology (from ancient Greek ἐπιστήμη / epistếmê, “true knowledge, science” and λόγος / lógos / “discourse”) is first and foremost the study of scientific knowledge.
The etymological statement in the article, as does the above statement in the French version, misrepresents ancient Greek knowledge to give a false impression that the article is universal and cover a general topic. To my knowledge, there is no universal view on the ancient Greek meaning of "episteme", but the most accepted view among scholars is that it is a knowledge accompanied with a techne, a skill. It is not useful to enter into the details. The point is that the etymological statement in the article (and also in the French version, but to support their own different approach) serves only the purpose of claiming that the article is a general article, but in doing so it relies on a simplistic view of the knowledge in ancient Greek: the skill could be a skill to govern a country, a skill in discourse or a craft. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 12:31, 20 July 2024 (UTC)