[Textop-en-phil] Top level outline headings

[Larry Sanger]

All,

On this page

http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=Outlining_rules

I've proposed a rule that generalizes something I said yesterday on this
list: "Outline headings should not be names of disciplines or of studies,
except in the relatively rare case where the discussion is explicitly about
the discipline itself, rather than about what it studies."

It seems I can proceed to try to make the outline fit this rule, but if I
want to do so, I'm going to have to rewrite the top-level headings.  Right
now the list is:

Things in general 
Human being 
[and here I need to start editing...]
Philosophy of Language
Epistemology 
Methodology 
Ethics 
Political Philosophy 
Philosophy of Education

Now, let's suppose I rename the last six nodes according to the main
subjects of those disciplines, so that the whole list looks like this:

Things in general 
Human being 
Language
Knowledge
Inquiry
Right and Wrong (?)
Governance
Education

This change would require, or make possible, some other changes:

(1) What are now some subtopics become the top-level topics: since there is
a "knowledge" subtopic under "epistemology," the former simply takes over
the place of the latter in the outline.

(2) Certain of Philippe's labels for relationships between nodes become
incorrect.  The labels would have to be either changed or deleted, I think,
or risk becoming "metadata cruft."

(3) I've said that all of the top-level headings after the first (so, "human
being" on down) should be locatable in the outline for one of the
higher-level headings.  To illustrate, you may see now that, now that I have
re-labeled the "human nature" node to "human being," I could put make "human
being" a subnode of "life," which I have done here:

http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Outline#Life

If you click on the "human being" subnode, it drops you down to the "human
being" top-level heading.  In a similar way, then, "right and wrong" (or
whatever should replace "ethics") has to find its place within the "human
being" part of the outline.  The whole thing could, in this way, be
collapsed/transcluded so as to be all underneath one top-level heading,
"Things in general."  I hope that makes sense...so anyway, that's another
tentative rule I'll add to the rules page.

Now to answer some of my other questions from a few days ago:

> 2. Bear in mind that the outline is meant eventually to serve
> *all* disciplines, not just philosophy.  Where do you see 
> physical principles, like theorems from Newton's *Principia*, 
> fitting in this outline?  Is another top-level node 
> necessary, or what?

I think the short answer is: yes, more top-level nodes will be necessary.
I'm just not sure what they will be, precisely; maybe "motion" and "energy"
(for physics).  "Life" obviously will be a top node.  In the end, when many
different disciplines are represented in the outline, probably there will be
several dozen top nodes.  But again, my proposal is that each of them
(except the first) elaborates a part of the outline that occurs underneath
some other top node found higher up in the list of top nodes.

> 3. Any ideas on more interesting internal structure, given
> the list of metaphysical subtopics?  To wit: nature, fiction, 
> motion, time, causality, divinity, and life.  Feel free to 
> propose a few chunkless nodes just to make a little sense of 
> it all.  I just haven't even tried to do this!

I now think I made the right decision to leave aside any attempt at making
any more internal structure to metaphysics.  It will be easier to think
about, and easier to "test theories" of how metaphysical concepts should be
structured in the outline, when we have more metaphysical texts to work
with.  The Leviathan was pretty light on metaphysics.

> 4. The material re religion I put there only
> because...nevermind, it's a long story.  Question: where 
> should the stuff about religion, its explanation and the 
> argument against it, be moved?  Look at the chunks before 
> answering this please.

I am distinguishing between God and things divine, on the one hand, and
religion as a phenomenon, on the other.  Hobbes, for example, spoke about
both.  *Qua* social group phenomenon in general, it clearly belongs to the
study of society.  *Qua* the details of the specific tenets/theologies of
individual religions, I suppose religion belongs wherever we put the topics
of metaphysics, ethics, and history.  *Qua* history of religion, under
history again.  *Qua* academic subject in its own right ("religious
studies") the topic of religion belongs under "inquiry" (or whatever I
substitute for "methodology").

--Larry (happily babbling away to myself)