[Textop-en-phil] Top level outline headings

[Larry Sanger]

Clea Rees wrote (in response to me):

> > 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
> 
> What is the intended audience for this?

Well, researchers and students, ultimately, I guess.

> Would it make sense 
> to include both these labels and the discipline labels? (e.g. 
> Language (Philosophy of)).

Makes perfect sense, but I'm not sure that it's the best solution any
longer, as I said last time.  My main reason for saying so is that we want
the outline we're developing ultimately to be an interdisciplinary one, not
just about philosophy.  As anyone who has studied philosophy of language
knows, there are many areas where its topics shade off into semantics (a
branch of linguistics) and into cognitive psychology.  Furthermore, I can
see *philosophical* discussions of "communication" (which is how I've
relabeled the node in question) taking a place right alongside more
empirical/scientific questions.  It's philosophers, for instance, who will
examine what 'sign' means; but it's linguists who examine patterns of sign
processing (?).  I can see part of the outline devoted to the definition,
and a "nearby" part devoted to empirical generalizations about signs.  If
the top-level label is "Language (philosophy of)," the result is that we end
up sorting chunks based on academic departments...which is not only
unnecessary, I think such a move would prove ultimately, after many texts
had been collated, to be conceptually incoherent.

> If Language will contain more than 
> this, maybe the discipline name should be included in a 
> sub-heading. I personally would find it annoyingly difficult 
> to navigate given the proposed outline. Of course, I'm a 
> philosophy. I realise the discipline names are not obvious to 
> everyone, though, which is why I think a combination might work well.

I see...so the discipline names call clearer ideas to mind.  I can't
disagree with that.

But consider, as I worked through *Leviathan*, one thing I discovered was
that, without having done any reading in an area, I wouldn't have the
slightest clue what some headings meant.  (Example: "Neutrality, or
Hobbesian 'contempt'": might need a better heading.)  Furthermore, in some
areas I felt I really wasn't the right person to produce headings, such as
all the stuff about the passions; sometimes, I think it's going to take a
specialist to choose just the right heading for a node.  The point, then, is
that you *can't* expect to look over the outline and have instant
recognition.

As a result, for many months now I've been thinking that students will
eventually actually *study* some mature version of the outline, because they
will find such study to unravel the structure of various topics, and because
it will make their research easier.  The people who work on the outline will
eventually be "experts" on the outline because they'll know right away
"where" something can be found (or placed).  I don't think there is any way
to avoid this sort of initial confusion.

I invite you to look over http://www.thegreatideas.org/hap.html and
http://www.hti.umich.edu/d/did/tree.html and consider that, on the one hand,
neither the structure and nor the content is apt to be obvious to any
student on first glance; while, on the other hand, particularly if you have
studied enough of the right subjects, some careful perusal of these outlines
will make their intent clear enough.

Now if a philosopher, after more than cursory examination of my outline,
does not know what I'm going on about at all, then clearly that's my fault.
But I don't think that's a reflection on the viability of the enterprise.
We just have to accept that interpreting outlines is not as obvious as one
might think at first.

> I don't think "Ethics" can become "Right and Wrong" unless 
> this is meant to deal with only a part of ethics and the rest 
> is going to go somewhere else. You might try "Value" which 
> should capture both ethics and aesthetics. "Right and Wrong" 
> leaves out virtue ethics, much of feminist ethics and, 
> possibly, meta-ethics.

Yes, I was just throwing something out.  After *a little* more thought I
went with "human conduct" for the time being but we can change that, too,
particularly considering that "goodness or value" applies to many more
things than human conduct...

I suppose the real question is whether we are really justified in putting
all of what philosophers now put under the heading "Ethics" really is a
unified subject.  Perhaps it really deserves to be divided up.  After all,
metaethical topics that go deeply into value theory often have no more to do
with "right and wrong" than they have to do with beauty and aesthetic
value...  We'll have to think more about this.

> Where will feminist philosophy fit? I don't think that the 
> various subjects discussed in this discipline can be properly 
> subsumed under the other headings.

Feminist philosophy is obviously an interdisciplinary area, and so feminist
approaches are going to be spread throughout the outline.

> Where does mind fit? Is "Human Being" intended to cover this?

Yes--I haven't made a "mind" subcategory but I probably will.  Here we have
a bit of a problem in that we don't want to prejudice the question whether
nonhumans have minds, but most discussions of "the mind" are about the human
mind, after all.

> What about continental philosophy? I know the distinction is 
> controversial and don't intend to take endorse either 
> position. Nonetheless, the work involved (including discussions of the
> controversy) cannot really be ignored.

Well, as you can see, I'm not very interested in dividing things up
according to academic specializations, traditions, movements, and
ideological affiliations.  The loveliness I see in the idea of the Collation
Project is that it has the potential to put *all* the texts that concern,
say, the notion of knowledge (or purported knowledge) as power in one place.
This will help put people from different fields, different approaches, and
different languages, who are really talking about the same thing (e.g.,
knowledge as power) in better touch with each other.  I don't know much
about continental philosophy.  I think it would be fascinating to see how
the approaches Habermas and Gadamer (OK, once we get the right to put their
works into the outline) take to questions of method and language etc. look
alongside texts on very similar questions from philosophers, linguists,
scientists, etc.

> Where will discussions of game theory etc. fit in? I thought 
> of this because I couldn't see Pascal's wager fitting into 
> the religion outline. This seems right because that is meant 
> to be under metaphysics, I think. I'm not sure where it fits 
> in the renamed version. Clearly there is not a 1-1 mapping 
> here and I take it this is intentional. (6 becomes 7 for a start.)

Well, remember that we are filing *chunks* into the outline, not whole
topics.  That's one reason that I am optimistic about the viability of this
project.  That relatively fine-grained focus allows us to distinguish parts
of Pascal's text into (...quickly picking Pascal off the shelf...) the
epistemology of religion, truth, epistemology more generally (the limits of
reason), human action ("...but you must wager.  There is no choice, you are
already committed."), and probably more.  This one short text (on the Wager)
is actually quite rich.  And then the various *topics* discussed in this
text are "naturally" (so to speak) placed in different parts of the outline.
You can talk about God, period, without talking about religious
epistemology; but you need to talk about epistemology before you talk about
*religious* epistemology.  The point is that even this one brief text is
scattered around different parts of the outline.

I think that once you actually give this whirl yourselves, much will become
clearer. 

> Is logic/phil of maths intended to fall under "Enquiry"?

That I don't know.  Yes, for now, but in the long run I'm not sure where to
put it.

> > 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").
> 
> Why? Why not under "Knowledge"? I'm not much less certain 
> about the distinction between knowledge and enquiry, on the 
> one hand, than i am about that between epistemology and 
> methodology, on the other.

I see.  Perhaps there's something wrong with those labels, then.

Obviously, in the same way that there is such a thing as religious
epistemology, you can put "religious knowledge" or "spiritual knowledge" or
some such thing somewhere under "knowledge."

But when you're talking about *chunks that talk about the study of
religion*, a.k.a. religious studies, those belong, I think, under a part of
the outline that talks about studies, or inquiries, or disciplines, or what
have you.

Thanks Clea, keep up the "babbling" ;-), I think we're getting started on
some really important, basic issues here.

--Larry