I just now took a look at the Wikipedia article, Definitions of Philosophy. Here is one of the definitions:
"To grasp the limits of reason – only this is truly philosophy."
— [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], The Antichrist (book), §55
I thought to myself: could Nietzsche have said this? So I pulled The Antichrist from the shelf, turned to section 55, and came to a place where Nietzsche is fulminating against Kant as he is wont to do:
Kant too, with his categorical imperative, was on the same path: in this respect, his reason became practical. There are questions in which man is not entitled to a decision about truth and untruth; all the highest questions, all the highest value problems, lie beyond human reason. To comprehend the limits of reason -- that alone is truly philosophy. (tr. Walter Kaufmann).
It is instantly clear to anyone who knows both Kant and Nietzsche that the quotation above, read and understood in the context in which it occurs, gives Kant's view of philosophy, not Nietzsche's. But the 'Wikiquote' misleadingly suggests that it is Nietzsche's view. Curiously, right before the quotation in question there is another quotation from Nietzsche in which he is giving his view of philosophy.
Near the top of the page we read:
" [Philosophy is a]n interpretation of the world in order to change it."
— [[ Karl Marx]], Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (quoted by Jonathan Wolff)
Anyone who has bothered to read Karl Marx's very brief Theses on Feuerbach knows that this 'Wikiquote' does not accurately convey Marx's view of philosophy, nor is it a quotation from Marx. In the 11th thesis, Marx writes, Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kömmt drauf an, sie zu verändern. "The philosophers have variously interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it." Marx is not out to define 'philosophy' with his talk of changing the world; his aim is to oppose all hitherto existing philosophy.
Furthermore, the 'Wikiquote' is not a quotation from Jonathan Wolff either. Here is Wolff's SEP article; read section 2.4 Theses on Feuerbach. The Wikipedia author is obviously incompetent. Had he been competent, he would simply have provided the Marx quotation I just cited, and he would not have misrepresented a competent scholar as writing something he did not write.
The difference between the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Wikipedia philosophy entries is that SEP can be trusted: the authors are invited to contribute on the basis of their reputations by experts in the discipline, and the contributions are approved before they are allowed to appear. And of course no one but the authors and the editors can alter them once they do appear.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Examples of What is Wrong with Wikipedia
- The Reliability of Wikipedia
"At the moment the project is like an assembly line where the finished product keeps on getting put back onto the conveyor belt."
Thanks for the comments. Would you explain your first comment a bit? At the top of the page it says 'article.' There is some distinction I am missing; please explain.
We know what 'puerile' and 'inane' mean. And of course you are right. They need a separate site, Wikitrivia, to give it a name, for all the puerile and inane stuff some of which, of course, can be interesting even to serious people like me. I'be been known to watch Seinfeld reruns, and so this Festivus article is interesting to me. But does such ephemera belong in an encyclopedia?
Who has the power to ban you? Any jerkoff can tamper with any article, but someone has the power to ban you?
It astonishes me how readily people will cite Wikipedia articles as authoritative sources in online debates. This is frightening.
On the 'article', what you linked to was 'Wikiquotes', which is a sister site. I have since removed that link.
Google "entities should not be multiplied without necessity" without quotation marks. The first thing that comes up is the Wikipedia article on Occam's razor (which I did not write), which explains correctly that the principle that is frequently called "Ockham's razor" did not originate with him at all, but is earlier, and that the exact wording Googled is much later. The citation is a paper written in 1918 by William Thorburn, who exhaustively researched the origins of the principle.
The second thing that comes up, I am glad to say, is the Logic Museum article on Thorburn's paper. This contains Thorburn's paper itself (worth a read).
That shows you can sometimes trust Wikipedia, and can sometimes trust the Internet. Now if you consult most standard reference works (I checked quite a few) you find that 'Ockham's Razor' is incorrectly attributed, and Thorburn's paper not mentioned. As is practically every other article else you find on the internet with that search. However, Darwinian principles still apply. Suppose there are 100 articles containing the same myth. Then you find 1 article that cites primary sources, and also explains why the other sources are a myth (for example, it traces the source of the myth in some remark – Thorburn traces 'Ockham's Razor' to Hamilton. The 1 article beats a 100, despite the apparent numerical advantage.
Wikipedia is also the only encyclopedia I could find which correctly explains how Scotus died.
Your first point is excellent, and as I have said more than once, Wikipedia is a very interesting and worthwhile experiment. Your other points are also good.
The problem (or one problem) with Wikipedia is that one must already know the subject matter to be in a position to judge whether a particular entry is reliable. Not so with a reputable source like SEP: one can be pretty sure that everything one reads there is at least competent.
Pardon the interruption--and this is but a small matter--but after consulting (out of curiosity) Wikipedia's entry on Scotus, all I find concerning his death is this statement: "He died in Cologne and is buried in the Church of the Minorites in Cologne..... According to an old tradition, Scotus was buried alive following his lapse into a coma, for he was believed to be dead." One wonders, if Wikipedia is really the darling resource you'd have us believe, why no mention of the date of his death, 8 November 1308, is made (cf. Luke Wadding, Annales Minorum seu trium Ordinum a S. Francisco institutuorum, vol. 6 Ed. by Joseph Marie Fonseca ab Ebora. Ad Claras Aquas, 1931: "Deinde in eadem tabula post trigesimum quintum sequitur Reverendus Pater frater Joannes Scotus sacrae Theologiae professor, Doctor Subtilis nominatus, quondam Lector Coloniae, qui obiit anno MCCCVIII, VI Idus Novembris"). At any rate, Wikipedia's mention that "According to an old tradition, Scotus was buried alive..." hardly claims to correctly explain just how Scotus died; in fact, it seems to do little more than simply acknowledge a once popular myth. Perhaps your zealous defense of Wikipedia has you led to endorse (dogmatically?) a story that enjoys no historical evidence and is widely (and wisely) rejected by Scotus scholars and authorities (which ties back to Professor Vallicella's posts above...).
That is how it is meant to work. If people spot errors, they can correct them, and Darwinian forces of the type I mentioned work in one direction only. (But the Wiki is correct, isn't it, in mentioning that it is a tradition only?)
I am one of the most strident critics of WP on the inside. Outside, I try to point out that it has areas of strength, as well as weaknesses.
You write:'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished! But the forces seem to me to work in two directions. People who have a strong misconception are often zealously willing to come in and spread their mistaken ideas in a forum that gives the last word to the latest editor. My own spot-checking of articles in areas of my expertise has not left me with a great deal of confidence in the self-correcting nature of the Wikipedia experiment.
Caveat lector.
(b) There are two problems with the Darwinian theory. One is when there isn't a large enough critical mass of experts. This is what happened in Philosophy, in particular. Maths I believe is better. Star Trek episodes is excellent. The second is when a large mass of cranks descends. Even then a small number of experts can beat the cranks - this is because experts easily recognise other experts, and defend each other. Cranks hate experts, but even more they hate other cranks.
There are terrible problems with cranks, nonetheless. Check out the talk page of Albert Einstein, e.g. Pages like 'Hitler' are now permanently locked down.
A great shame. A good job no one ever questioned my PhD :-)
Thanks for the link. I had mentioned this Essjay dude in the first post in this series.
Ockham,
I am afraid you are mistaken about Essjay. He did "pass of credentials to the outside world" as one can see from this New Yorker piece wherein we read:
Two of my specialties are epistemology and HPS. I checked out the articles on foundationalism, Copernicus, and Galileo and immediately spotted errors (not to mention less clear-cut problems like omissions and injudicious emphasis) in all three. This dampened any enthusiasm I might have had for the experiment; the Ryan Jordan affair has dampened it still further. Still, from my browsing I think you're right that the mathematics pages are on the whole of a higher standard than the philosophy pages.
Thorburn's paper is wonderful. Thank you for making it available online. There's a minor typo in your introduction: for "can says" put "can say."
Well then, we should all have a problem with Wales and with Wikipedia.
And now has a whole book about it, Imaginary Futures. Goodness. What is interesting is that at school, he was the conservative (defended the Vietnam War), and I wasn't (opposed it of course). Then it switched round some time in the university years. I'm not sure what he is now. The very frequent references to Chomsky suggest, but only suggest, left leanings. But then again, he was always of a libertarian turn of mind, and I wasn't.
The book is worth a read, I must say. It's not written in that dreadful style beloved of the Marxist school, and it has some interesting bits. But it's also 380 pages long.
"One of the weirdest things about the rightwards drift of the Californian Ideology is that the West Coast itself is a creation of the mixed economy. Government dollars were used to build the irrigation systems, highways, schools, universities and other infrastructural projects which makes the good life possible in California. On top of these public subsidies, the West Coast hi-tech industrial complex has been feasting off the fattest pork barrel in history for decades. The US government has poured billions of tax dollars into buying planes, missiles, electronics and nuclear bombs from Californian companies. For those not blinded by 'free market' dogmas, it was obvious that the Americans have always had state planning: only they call it the defence budget [27]. At the same time, key elements of the West Coast's lifestyle come from its long tradition of cultural bohemianism. Although they were later commercialised, community media, 'new age' spiritualism, surfing, health food, recreational drugs, pop music and many other forms of cultural heterodoxy all emerged from the decidedly non-commercial scenes based around university campuses, artists' communities and rural communes. Without its d.i.y. culture, California's myths wouldn't have the global resonance which they have today."
2. Disallowing comments from a particular person, or deleting an offensive, off-topic, or otherwise substandard comment, has nothing to do with censorship. People who think otherwise confuse censorship with lack of sponsorship. I am under an obligation not to interfere with anyone's exercise of legitimate free speech rights. But I am not under any obligation to aid and abet anyone's exercise of free speech rights, legitimate or illegitimate.
3. The Comments area is not an open forum for anyone to say anything about any topic. As the name implies, it is primarily for commenting on the author(s)' posts. But to comment on them, one must have read them. And if I have spent three hours on a post, a reader will not understand it in thirty seconds. Secondarily, the Comments area is to facilitate civil discussion between and among commenters as long as the discussion remains on-topic.
4. Some undesirables: The skimmers, those who cannot read but only read-in. The sophists who, abusing argument, argue for the sake of argument. The ideologues, those who are out for power, not truth. The uncivil. The illogical. The politically correct. Worst of all, perhaps, are those who exemplify the anti-Socratic property: those who think they know what they don't know. If Socrates was famous for his learned ignorance, these types are marked by their ignorant unlearnededness.