[HN Gopher] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
___________________________________________________________________
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Author : Tomte
Score : 134 points
Date : 2021-03-21 08:54 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (plato.stanford.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (plato.stanford.edu)
| keiferski wrote:
| Excellent resource, however do be aware that it is very analytic-
| centric, reflecting most Anglo-American philosophy departments.
|
| An example:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/eqh13j/where...
|
| https://philosophynow.org/issues/74/Analytic_versus_Continen...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy
| polytely wrote:
| Is there a continental equivalent of SEP?
| keiferski wrote:
| Not that I am aware of, probably because most centers of
| continental thought are in continental Europe (hence the
| name) and so are in French or German. I don't speak those
| languages well enough to know if an equivalent encyclopedia
| exists, but I'd imagine a French encyclopedia of philosophy
| probably is quite continental in flavor.
|
| I have the Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy
| but it's just a book, not an online encyclopedia.
|
| Otherwise, Wikipedia is actually not bad on most important
| continental thinkers.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| That's interesting - has philosophy not settled on English
| as a working lingua franca like other fields?
| a_humean wrote:
| In western philosophy there was a divergence in both in
| style, lexicon, and method in the early 20th century that
| was exasperated by the two world wars. They share common
| ancestors (Kant basically), but to a certain extent are
| mutually incomprehensible (an exaggeration, but not
| exactly untrue). The philosophical world basically
| divides into Anglophone philosophy (the dominant flavour
| worldwide) vs everything else which cannot be neatly
| categorized into a single brand.
|
| Also, while there are non-western traditions none of them
| have the same degree of professionalisation and size (in
| terms of practitioners) as western philosophy. Some
| western philosophers would question whether all that many
| that do exist are doing the same activity - a
| curator/historian of philosophy or culture, vs actual
| philosophers trying to produce original work (again,
| broad strokes and exaggeration).
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Even the idea of "settling on English as a working lingua
| franca" has issues that display how deep this schism
| goes. When one of the questions you're exploring is "how
| exactly does language shape our thinking," for example,
| picking one language may be limiting what can be
| expressed, and therefore, thought. Some terms
| specifically have relationships to their meanings in the
| language they're written in, and so even English
| translations leave them in the original language and
| treat them as jargon.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Okay, after writing this, I'm still drinking my morning
| coffee, let's pick a specific example of this to show you
| what I'm talking about.
|
| Derrida is someone who is often criticized by folks
| outside of the continental spheres for his writing. But
| there's specific reasons why the writing is this way, and
| it relates to what I'm talking about here. For example,
| take his term "differance." This is specifically a bit of
| wordplay in French that illuminates the concepts he's
| talking about in a deeper way. The regular spelling in
| French would be "difference", but there's also the verb
| "differer", and "differance" is "difference" spelled like
| "differer." My French is very poor (though I've always
| wanted to learn it, just haven't found a good way to do
| so...), but two things:
|
| * One of the things Derrida is concerned with is the
| relationship between speech and writing. That you cannot
| hear the difference (get it?) between these two words in
| speech, but you can when written, is interesting. Derrida
| is responding to the phonocentrism of Ferdinand de
| Saussure, arguing that the idea that speech and writing
| are in binary opposition is incorrect.
|
| * One of the things Derrida is interested in is how we
| come to understand meaning. "differer" means "to defer"
| as well as "to differ," and one of the things he talks
| about is how words always refer to other words. You
| cannot understand a word in vacuum, you can only
| understand them in relation to other words, and you learn
| them by understanding how they differ from other words.
| The difference is deferred, in other words.
|
| Anyway, the point is, you cannot really get at what he's
| talking about without understanding at least the surface-
| level French. It doesn't really work as well without it.
| If Derrida had been forced to write in English, his point
| wouldn't be as well made.
|
| And, if you find the above interesting, you may like
| continental philosophy in general. If you find it
| insufferable... you may not. Personally, I am very into
| it, though I'm more of a Deleuze guy than a Derrida guy.
| jfengel wrote:
| Thank you for elaborating on that.
|
| I will say I don't think that wordplay is a very good way
| to do philosophy. Of course that's a very Anglophone
| opinion, including the notion that there is a good or bad
| way to do philosophy.
|
| But it means that I will be forever cut off from Derrida.
| Which is fine; there is more than enough philosophy
| produced to keep me busy. But it means that the praise
| for him will forever baffle me, and if that bothers his
| fans, that is not a problem for either me or for
| philosophy as a whole.
|
| And if I privately think that depending on conscious
| wordplay means muddled thinking, I'm entitled to that.
| It's not an opinion worth discussing since I'm not an
| expert in his thought. But when people want me to engage
| with his work, that private opinion is likely to come out
| if they won't settle for s polite "no thank you".
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Yeah, you wouldn't be alone there. I think it's the
| opposite of muddled, it is being precise; the words are
| chosen very carefully! They're chosen to try and convey
| very specific meanings. And everyone does this, my own
| choice of "wordplay" is meant to evoke meaning for
| specific reasons to convey what I was trying to, to
| specifically acknowledge that some folks feel the way you
| do. Heck, the parent chose "lingua franca," which is not
| from English, to convey the specific meaning evoked from
| that phrase's time and space!
|
| In the end, talking about talking is hard (oh no there I
| go accidentally elevating speech above writing again),
| but not everyone is interested in everything or every
| methodology. We're all trying to figure it out in our own
| ways.
| jfengel wrote:
| It's part of the reason I went into philosophy via
| linguistics, and feel like I came out the other side. I
| feel like philosophy has been too influenced by talking
| about talking. It's the most accessible way to address
| thought, but the most misleading.
|
| I'm pouring more energy into the thinking that occurs
| without talking. I hope it can capture some of the things
| that we hope to capture with shades of meaning, but
| without the disagreements about dictionaries.
|
| Unfortunately it's leading me through some of the paths
| trodden by behaviorists, and that's a minefield of its
| own.
| WalterGR wrote:
| _It 's part of the reason I went into philosophy via
| linguistics..._
|
| Have you read any George Lakoff? I took a course from him
| at Berkeley. That's the closest I've personally gotten to
| philosophy. Just curious if you have any thoughts about
| his approach.
| spindle wrote:
| IMO (and I am a professional philosopher), you're right,
| it doesn't make very good philosophy ... except that
| (unlike most fields) it's not at all clear what counts as
| philosophy and what doesn't. I think Derrida makes very
| good _something_ (I 'm not sure what).
| dalbasal wrote:
| >>* you cannot really get at what he's talking about
| without understanding at least the surface-level French?*
|
| Can't we? The specific example is certainly worse
| translated, like translating a song... Can't we get at
| the same idea using different words, wordplays, parabbles
| and such? Is the point that you cannot have the same
| thoughts or make the same points points in another
| language?
| steveklabnik wrote:
| I am saying that words are hard, and some things are more
| easily expressed in different languages.
|
| Any Turing-complete programming language can implement
| anything from any other Turing-complete programming
| language, but that doesn't mean that a web application is
| just as easy to write in assembly as it is in Ruby, even
| if you could do it. And if we said "all serious
| programming must be done in assembly," it would make
| discussing web applications more tedious than allowing
| folks interested in stuff Ruby is good at to write Ruby.
| More generically, this is the argument for DSLs.
|
| And, while _theoretically possible_ to do so, practically
| speaking, a lot less people would do it, and so we 'd
| probably wouldn't have as advanced web applications.
| dalbasal wrote:
| If that is the intended meaning, I agree. Philosophy
| isn't science. At least in 2021, it is rarely about
| "solving the X problem." It's definitely worth using your
| best language for philosophy, rather than a standard
| language you can't use as well.
|
| That said, if someone does come along with a definitive
| solution to the other minds problem or whatnot, I'm
| confident that the concepts will traverse language just
| fine.
|
| Any thoughts on translatable vs untranslatable concepts?
| Does being translatable or untranslatable tell us
| anything about the concept itself?
| steveklabnik wrote:
| > Any thoughts
|
| I mean, I can't say for sure, but if we take Derrida's
| ideas I'm talking about in this thread as a guide, the
| question kind of doesn't make sense. There is no such
| thing as an "untranslatable" concept, because words don't
| have specific meanings that come from outside of their
| historical (and other) contingencies. You are always
| translating, in some sense.
|
| That is, it's not even clear that the unit of "x
| language" is the right unit to consider for translating.
| "differance" is not a standard French word, so even
| someone who does natively speak French wouldn't
| immediately understand it, though it might be easier for
| them since they know things that are closer to its
| understanding. Jargons form sub-languages. To take it
| back to programming for a moment, the sentence "I built
| this web application in Python" is an English sentence,
| using only English words, that even many children could
| understand in a grammar and vocabulary sense. But it may
| not make any sense to them unless they understand that
| "Python" in this context means a programming language and
| not a snake, and even if they do understand that it's a
| programming language, they may not understand the
| implications of that as well as someone who is a
| developer.
|
| Like, even if we did say "sorry philosophy must be done
| in English," if I said "oh you know how D&G said
| 'Multiplicities are rhizomatic, and expose arborescent
| pseudomultiplicities for what they are'? Well, I was
| thinking about that, and..." you would still likely need
| 'translation' for, I'm guessing, four of those eleven
| words. It's pretty much halfway to "Les multiplicites
| sont rhizomatiques, et denoncent les pseudomultiplicites
| arborescentes" and is unique enough of a sentence that
| even though I haven't read Mille Plateaux in French
| (because again my French is basically non-existent), I
| was able to grab the original quote pretty quickly. You'd
| also maybe not recognize "D&G" and may need expansion on
| that, even if grammatically you would understand it as
| some sort of subject of the sentence that produced the
| quote.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I guess at this point I turn into a cliche and find
| french philosophy not that interesting.
|
| It seems to me that (those damned barrel-dwelling
| philosophers) ask all the questions backwards, as if
| their goal is to eventually gain an adequate non-
| understanding of something.
|
| Besides ambiguity and context dependence " _I built this
| web application using Python_ " also has a translatable
| meaning. You might need to translate "python" to "my
| computer" or "built" to "construit." You will have a hard
| time without pre-existing notions of computers or web
| applications. The sentence _is_ translatable though.
|
| A lot of things don't exist if you look too closely, but
| appear as you zoom out. There is no such thing as
| "species" in nature. It's a classification created by
| people. Language. Yet, it does describe _something_ that
| nature abides by sometimes. It exists, even if it isn 't
| discrete.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| To each their own :) I don't find the analytic project
| compelling, generally. Good thing there's lots of room!
|
| > also has a translatable meaning
|
| Yes. My point is that everything is "translatable." There
| is nothing that cannot be translated.
|
| > There is no such thing as "species" in nature. It's a
| classification created by people.
|
| Yes, this is a fantastic example, and actually pretty
| close to my favorite French guy's heart. Maybe you've got
| some continental in you after all. ;) (I think you're
| arguing that a continental person would argue that
| species don't exist, but many at least wouldn't. They
| would exactly argue that it's a system created by people,
| that is sometimes useful, and sometimes not.)
| dalbasal wrote:
| >> Good thing there's lots of room!
|
| I think you might be misunderestimating. The terms are
| loser leaves the internet. No quarter.
|
| I didn't mean to imply either position by continentals. I
| don't really know enough about this stuff to have such a
| specific stereotyping. Also, as an irishman I fart in a
| specific general direction on anglo-french disputes.
|
| I picked species naively. It's just a good example of
| "exists yet doesn't." I assumed we can all agree that it
| exists, yet doesn't. I don't see what the problem is,
| philosophically. Both the word species and the phenomenon
| are approximations. That kind of "problem" is abundant.
| Money is that. Language is that. Etc.
|
| The problem can be approached from a lot of ways
| philosophically. Geeky, information-centric
| understandings. Classical, plato-esque idealism. None of
| these are incompatible and I don't really see what
| problem we're trying we're trying to solve. Some stuff
| isn't stuff. When was this not known?
| canjobear wrote:
| That's a very analytical argument :)
| steveklabnik wrote:
| I know my audience :)
| dalbasal wrote:
| In fairness, I did have to ask twice.
| ducharmdev wrote:
| Deleuze was always my favorite too, it's been years since
| I read his works but I've been thinking of going back for
| the fun of it. I had stumbled upon DeLanda who helped
| clarify A Thousand Plateaus, but do you have any
| recommendations for reading and understanding Deleuze?
| Unfortunately I don't have a very extensive philosophical
| background beyond some undergrad courses and personal
| exploration on my own, which makes it a bit difficult
| when parsing references to Freud, Nietzsche, etc.
| Tomte wrote:
| An example I recently stumbled upon (not philosophy, but
| pedagogy): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildung
|
| It's a central term that you'll read very often in German
| newspapers and see in public discourse, yet, there is no
| satisfying English equivalent.
| slibhb wrote:
| The term "bildungsroman" is used in English. We also call
| it "coming of age"
| Tomte wrote:
| Exactly, you're using the German word. "Coming of age" is
| certainly not coming close to capturing the meaning of
| Bildung.
| slibhb wrote:
| I think you're wrong. I think "coming of age" (when used
| metaphorically) expresses part of the idea in that German
| word and other English words and phrases express other
| parts of it, including "education" ("In today's German
| language, Bildung very often refers to no more than
| 'normal' education").
|
| I think the assertion (made by the previous poster) that
| "picking one language may be limiting what can be
| expressed" is wrong. The fact that there's no 1:1
| translation for bildung in no way implies that the
| meaning behind that German word is inexpressible without
| taking it as a loanword. In fact, the article you linked
| explicitly translates the idea into English in various
| ways that are totally comprehensible to an English
| speaker: "self-cultivation," "maturation," "unification
| of selfhood and identity within the broader society," and
| so on.
| Tomte wrote:
| Of course English speakers can talk about the concept
| using circumlocutions or using a number of overlapping
| concepts.
|
| You can't really believe that I'd deny that!
|
| But the concept Bildung is not central to Anglo-Saxon
| pedagogy or education, that's why you don't have a real
| word for it.
|
| It is highly important to the German strain of pedagogy,
| though. There is a real difference in the German
| tradition and other traditions.
| slibhb wrote:
| > You can't really believe that I'd deny that!
|
| You didn't explicitly deny it but the previous poster
| raised the possibility: "picking one language may be
| limiting what can be expressed" (this is Sapir-Whorf). I
| thought you gave bildung as an example of something that
| cannot be expressed in English but I may have
| misinterpreted you.
|
| > Of course English speakers can talk about the concept
| using circumlocutions or using a number of overlapping
| concepts.
|
| I don't see any circumlocution here but that aside, you
| seem to agree that picking one language does not limit
| what can be expressed.
|
| > But the concept Bildung is not central to Anglo-Saxon
| pedagogy or education, that's why you don't have a real
| word for it.
|
| I understand there's no exact word:word translation.
| Anyway, I think the concept expressed in bildung is not
| specifically German, I think it's related to the concept
| of education in general, specifically to the idea of an
| education that produces an individual who is
| simultaneously part of a collective and fully himself, an
| integrated individual, someone who who can appear in
| public and take part in discourse and also contemplate on
| his own. That goes back to Plato and, I'm sure, earlier.
| Another English word we use to express this is "civics".
| keiferski wrote:
| Different situation than in say, natural science.
| Philosophy is much more diverse in terms of inputs and
| outputs.
|
| When your source materials are in German (Marx, Adorno,
| Nietzsche, Hegel, Freud, Heidegger, etc.) or French
| (Deleuze, Badiou, Foucault, etc.) you end up needing to
| learn those languages to make any serious academic
| progress. Philosophy is much less fungible than physics,
| in other words. So while there are no doubt more papers
| in English, the tradition and institutions in German and
| French speaking countries are probably more influential.
| diegocg wrote:
| There is filosofia.org for an Spanish equivalent. The looks
| are not the most modern in some places (it was created in
| 1996) but it's actively updated. Managed by the Gustavo Bueno
| foundation.
| Schiphol wrote:
| It should be said that the SEP makes a bona fide effort to
| cover continental philosophy as well. There are entries on,
| e.g., Heidegger (two of them, actually), Gadamer, Ricoeur,
| Deleuze, existentialism, postmodernism, and many other key
| thinkers and topics.
| keiferski wrote:
| It's not so much that they ignore continental philosophy, but
| rather apply an analytic view to everything. Their articles
| on Nietzsche and Marx are like this.
| prionassembly wrote:
| Yeah, but analytic perspectives on continental philosophy
| are valuable (unless dismissive on petty grounds, like
| Searle's take on Deleuze.)
| keiferski wrote:
| I didn't say they weren't valuable? Just pointing out
| that it's a particular viewpoint and not indicative of
| the "only" interpretation.
| slibhb wrote:
| Isn't the idea of an "encyclopedia" an analytic idea? Can
| you really hope to "summarize" a philosophy without
| taking an analytic approach?
| dalbasal wrote:
| Listen you anti-continentalist... :)
| steveklabnik wrote:
| I am curious why you'd say that. As in, legitimately
| curious, it's unclear to me why.
|
| But maybe it's possible you're using the general word
| "analytic" and not the specific way it's being used here,
| to describe a particular tradition and approach?
| slibhb wrote:
| The idea of an encyclopedia is based on the idea that
| paragraphs and sentences express ideas which can be
| reduced to their logical essence and put very simply.
| This is exactly what "continental philosophers" reject
| and so I don't think it makes sense to summarize them in
| this way.
|
| With continental philosophy, most of the value is in how
| it makes you, the reader, feel, and not in the ideas that
| it expresses. This is not to say that there are no ideas
| (of course there are) but that, when those ideas are
| extracted and added to an entry in an encyclopedia, the
| result is a denaturing of the work. Some continental
| philosophy is very explicit in its hostility to being
| expressed analytically (particularly feminist philosophy
| like Kristeva and Irigaray).
|
| Downthread you summarized what Derrida meant by
| difference. But if that's what Derrida wanted to do
| (transmit the idea you posted), why wouldn't he just have
| written what you wrote? That's what _philosophers_ do.
| Plato, Hume, Kant, etc all write as clearly as possible.
| Derrida is explicitly rejecting this approach and
| therefore he is as much literature as he is philosophy
| (he was up for the Nobel in literature and is mainly
| influential in literary studies). This also means that,
| with Derrida, most of the point is _how_ he says things,
| and so you should not summarize his ideas in an
| encyclopedia entry. Summarizing Derrida would be like
| summarizing Shakespeare, the plot is only a small part of
| the value.
| voldacar wrote:
| > With continental philosophy, most of the value is in
| how it makes you, the reader, feel, and not in the ideas
| that it expresses.
|
| Look, I tend to think a lot of analytic philosophy is
| cringe, but this is basically the definition of sophistry
| here
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > With continental philosophy, most of the value is in
| how it makes you, the reader, feel, and not in the ideas
| that it expresses.
|
| That's a definition of mysticism, not philosophy.
| Reformulation of earlier ideas is key to any serious
| philosophical endevor, we can see this as far back as
| Plato/Aristotle and the early Chinese and Indian
| philosophers.
| slibhb wrote:
| Yes, that's my point. That part of it (the way it makes
| you feel) is unphilosophical.
|
| I called it literature, you called mysticism. I like
| literature and mysticism though, I just don't think it's
| philosophy.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| I see, thanks. I am not sure I agree with your
| characterization of an encyclopedia, nor the continental
| approach to things, but I do at least grok your argument
| now.
|
| > why wouldn't he just have written what you wrote?
|
| For one, because it simply wouldn't have been as good at
| expressing the idea, but also, I'm writing for a very
| different audience than he was, so it's gonna come out a
| bit differently.
|
| > etc all write as clearly as possible.
|
| We'll have to agree to disagree :) Also, the "as
| possible" does a lot of work here, I would imagine that
| many people would say they're expressing themselves "as
| possible," and that's where a lot of the argument comes
| in.
|
| (And yes, what "clear" even means is like, one of the
| differences between these traditions, for anyone else
| reading this discussion.)
| TomatoDash wrote:
| SEP is the leading encyclopedia in professional philosophy. I
| wish the site had a basic diff view e.g. a toggle to highlight
| all new/modified words in a text since last revision.
| jbaber wrote:
| Download the archives at a politely slow rate, arrange them in
| a git repo as revisions, and there you go.
|
| I wonder if there's a tool that makes an html view of git
| history of a document.
| EllieEffingMae wrote:
| You can actually download all their articles as a PDF with a
| small yearly subscription. If that's not an option I've had
| good luck with pandoc in the past.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Internet Archive to the rescue:
|
| https://archive.org/web/docucomp.php
|
| Example:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/diff/20191125162042/202011112130...
| TomatoDash wrote:
| I wasn't aware Wayback Machine had a comparison tool, thank
| you. I like how its comparison picker view indicates degrees
| of change relative to a selected snapshot, e.g. https://web.a
| rchive.org/web/changes/https://plato.stanford.e...
|
| Worth mentioning: SEP hosts static quarterly snapshots at
| https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ , but with no diff
| feature.
| boldslogan wrote:
| And a cool thing, professors can get paid for the articles
| sometimes through their research grants and studying other
| things. High quality stuff here for students/professors/the
| curious.
|
| Favourite article currently:
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nonidentity-problem/
| tgibbster wrote:
| This was my go to reference during school (majored in
| philosophy).
| actsofthecla wrote:
| For those interested, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
| maintained by University of Tennessee at Martin, is also a very
| nice resource, similar to SEP.
|
| Here is their entry on Gettier cases, for example.
|
| https://iep.utm.edu/gettier/
| paulpauper wrote:
| This is going to become the next Wikipedia. There are so many
| articles unrelated or tangentially related to philosophy. Major
| mission creep. Once you get the good SEO rankings, you can turn
| it into anything you like. Good rankings creates an incentive to
| create more content even if the content is unrelated to the
| original mission of the site, because who wants to pass up on
| traffic.
| dalbasal wrote:
| FYI, this is often easier to read and better generally than
| wikipedia for a lot of articles.
|
| If you want to know more about a hairy or highly contested
| subject, this is a great starting point. Content, in philosophy,
| is usually best got from the source. Frame though... I think you
| need an outside frame.
|
| It's very hard to understand Marx, Rand, Popper, Kant or whatnot
| without a frame. First (eg Kant), a lot of philosophical work is
| overly complicated, so it's much easier approach once you have an
| approximate idea of where it's going. Second, a lot of modern
| philosophy is happens within an argument. Marx was writing in
| counter to Ricardo, political liberals and communists. Ayn Rand
| was writing a response to Trotsky, Kant and other rivals. It's
| hard to jump into the argument midway.
|
| That's where SEC shines. It gets you started. It gives you an
| understanding of how philosophies are structured, as well as the
| basic teams and rivalries dynamics that you need for context.
| Form there, it's much easier to approach philosophy.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" FYI, this is often easier to read and better generally than
| wikipedia for a lot of articles."_
|
| I reckon you are correct, but as I mentioned some weeks back in
| a reply to a question about what books would I recommend for a
| beginner in philosophy, SEP was one of my references in that it
| is an excellent resource but my recommendation came with a
| caveat which was that there is a huge amount of detail that's
| likely to overwhelm all but the most hardened.
|
| I refer regularly to SEP and when it's just a quick reference I
| often find myself getting bogged down in detail. There's
| nothing wrong with that so long as the student knows how to
| extract just what's needed, the trouble is at times that can be
| difficult (as there's essentially no delineation between the
| key points and details).
|
| Ideally we'd also have a precised, much shortened students'
| version.
| machawinka wrote:
| Having been educated 'continentally', I am surprised that Rand
| is taken seriously as a filosopher.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| That's an understandable view. I think you'll find that Rand
| is taken much more seriously as a philosopher in the US than
| in other Anglophone countries such as the UK, Australia, New
| Zealand etc. (it seems to me that these countries have a more
| nuanced view about her that's not that dissimilar to the
| Continental one).
|
| It's understandable that Rand holds greater sway and
| influence in the US given her libertarian right views and
| support for free markets, etc. (which hold high rank there
| among the conservative right).
|
| Rand seems to have had two peaks of popularity, in the 1950s
| after _Atlas Shrugged_ was published and again at the height
| of the Reagan-Thatcher years of the 1980s. That was also the
| time when the Austrian school--Hayek, Von Mises, and Chicago
| School--Friedman were in high favor with those politicians.
|
| It will be interesting to see how Rand's popularity holds up
| into the much longer future.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Wikipedia does great on philosophy, but you can't cite it. SEP is
| great as a secondary resource if you want to make sure you have a
| "handle" on a concept or author.
| mjburgess wrote:
| I find wikipedia articles extremely poor on philosophy.
|
| SEP is without a doubt the primary resource.
| igravious wrote:
| Wikidata (Wikipedia's younger structured data semantic web
| resource) has entries for _13,000+_ philosophers -- an order
| of magnitude more than the largest and most complete
| encyclopedia of philosophy which by my reckoning is not the
| SEP (as people seem to think here) but Macmillan 's
| Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_of_Philosophy
|
| Give that the "Print Edition is $1693 as of May 2017" the SEP
| is slightly cheaper.
|
| How did they achieve that enormous amount? Through the
| collaborative magic of the Wikipedia model.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Wikipedia is utterly _fantastic_ for discovering _about_
| philosophy -- for getting the lay of the land of the
| different strands, concepts and philosophers. There 's
| literally no better, unbiased, objective introduction than:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy
|
| (For comparison, every intro-to-philosophy book or textbook
| I've ever come across has omitted huge swathes of what's in
| Wikipedia's intro article -- not just not going into depth on
| them, but not even mentioning them once. But because
| Wikipedia is collaboratively edited, those kinds of lacunae
| are much less likely to exist.)
|
| Once you've identified the relevant topic/debate you're
| interested in and want to actually see what the "current"
| (within the past decade) state of debate is, _then_ you reach
| for the SEP for an overview on a very specific subject.
|
| _Then_ you look up the relevant references using Google
| Scholar and explore using "cited by" and "related" to survey
| the entire literature related to it.
|
| This model has worked very successfully for me. None of the
| three levels -- Wikipedia, SEP, Scholar -- is any better or
| worse than the others. They serve different purposes. Each is
| the best at its level.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Which articles do you find extremely poor?
|
| I love reading about classical philosophy on wikipedia, it's
| like reading with article-size foot notes.
| a_humean wrote:
| Genuinely the best online resource for academic philosophy.
| Primers on pretty much every sub discipline that might be of
| interest to any western philosopher written and edited by subject
| matter experts on the topic. All free, and with excellent support
| for things like BibTeX and other things useful for academic work.
|
| Another similarly useful resource is philpapers:
| https://philpapers.org/
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