[Textop-en-phil] Top level outline headings

[Dr. Clea F. Rees]

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>> 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.
>
I just think there ought to be some way in via the labels - however
crude and misleading these may be. It may actually be more important
for non-philosophers than philosophers, for example. Suppose somebody
has come across the term 'metaphysics' and wants to know what that is
about. Whereas a specialist might be able to find the relevant sections
by studying the outline (and what is beneath the outline), somebody
whose question is of this kind will not be able to do that.

Maybe disciplinary maps could be included with brief explanations of
terms and relevant links. (Not all the links, obviously, but good
"starting places".)

I think it is important to think about "ways in" for both specialists
and non-specialists. If the outline really requires extensive study in
order to find anything, few people will take the trouble - at least on
the web. They will quickly move on to the next link Google threw up for
them (or whatever non-Google engine they use). This is partly why I
asked about the intended audience. How accessible is it supposed to be?
It could be accessible, I think, even if one needed to study the
outline a great deal to get the most out of it. I suspect it may also
matter in terms of recruiting specialists. I'm not quite sure how this
is meant to go with these nodes since it seems unlikely that it will be
possible to get people who are really specialists for a particular node
(or even sub-sub-sub-node). I'm not sure about this - it is more of a
question than anything. I'm trying to fit what you're saying here
together with your picture of how the editing may end up working.

> 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 think there has to be or (most) people just won't use it. But I do
think it might be provided via multiple "ways in". I'm thinking of some
sort of set of guides to the outline aimed at particular audiences.
Searching is good, but a decent guide would let people feel more
comfortable with the whole system, I think.

> 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.

At what level should this be true? Just looking at the top level nodes?
How many layers of nodes should enable a philosopher to make sense of
it? This is a real question and not rhetorical. I'm having trouble
understanding the standards by which the outline should be judged. (As
with the intended audience question.)

>> 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...

"Human conduct" sounds merely descriptive. In any case, it certainly
rules out virtue ethics and much of feminist ethics.

> 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.

This may well be the case, but I do not think the heading should
prejudge the action theory vs. virtue theory question. I think these
belong under the same top level node, even if other things (meta-ethics
etc.) should be split off. I actually dislike "human conduct" more than
"right and wrong" here. At least the latter captures much of Kant's
normative theory, for example. The former would mean putting the
"top-level" of Kant's view elsewhere since it is supposed to apply to
all rational beings. I don't think this is a problem only in the case
of Kant, but Kant springs to mind as an especially pertinent example.

"Human conduct" sound much more to me like
anthropology/psychology/social science/history/etc. I think any
replacement (or partial replacement) for "ethics" needs to capture the
normative aspect of the discipline.

I'm also wondering if it doesn't make sense to have a very general
heading such as "value" and then several very significant sub-nodes.
Right now, "several dozen" top level nodes does not sound anywhere near
enough to cover multiple disciplines.

>> 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.

I see this as both welcome and problematic. On the one hand, I agree
that feminist ethics, say, should fall under whatever "ethics" becomes.
(Another reason to reject "human conduct" - some feminist ethical
theories don't address (all) human conduct or (all) human virtue at all
e.g. some kinds of maternal, feminine and lesbian ethics.) On the other
hand, people often take this line as an easy way of ignoring the whole
thing or, else, as a route to tokenism. I think the same is true of
non-Western approaches. Moreover, it isn't obvious to me that these
approaches can fit neatly into the outline. If somebody working in a
very different tradition drew up the outline, would it look the same?
How static is the outline intended to be? What conditions will need to
be met in order for the top level nodes to be changed later? (Adding
nodes is one thing, but changing them will be much more complicated.)
This is one reason I think we need to think about as many fine-grained
details as possible ahead of time. Of course, there are limits to this,
but it still seems important.

>> 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.

If "mind" will include psychology, it better not be limited to humans.
In any case, it seems misconceived to put it under a human-only
category. Arguably, not all humans have minds and many non-humans have
minds.

>> 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.

Again, I'm wondering how well this will work. I know nothing whatsoever
about continental philosophy, though, so I cannot say much. I'd like to
know, though, how somebody trained primarily in this tradition would
think about the outline and how well texts from the analytical
tradition would fit into it. It isn't that I'm especially attached to
the distinction - indeed, it is arguably quite problematic. So one way
to get at my question would be to ask how somebody specialising in
Hegel/Habermas/etc. would think about the outline.

> 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.

But the wager is especially odd, since it is not an epistemological
argument at all. It is much more a pragmatic approach.

>> 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.

Then it seems to me that epistemic questions fall under "enquiry" too...

>>> 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.

There should not have been a 'not' in the third sentence. It should
read "I'm much less certain..." (I'm also not a 'philosophy' but at
least claim to be a philosopher, but that typo was, I hope less
misleadingly odd.)

I think of "enquiry" here in terms of investigating, trying to find
truth etc. So I'd include epistemology here (e.g. parts of Hume's
_Enquiry_). Especially since some parts of philosophy of mathematics
are epistemic (and some are metaphysical etc.). Presented with
"knowledge" vs. "enquiry", I'd go for the latter if interested in say,
what counts as 'knowledge' or how to obtain it. Presented with
"knowledge' vs. "methodology", I would probably go for the former,
though I'm not sure about this. "Knowledge" sounds as though it will
contain facts - things known. I would expect "enquiry" to lead me to
links about what standards govern knowledge, how the knowledge is
gathered etc. etc. (and more, but I'd think epistemic questions would
be here at least).

> 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.

But "enquiry" sounds more general than this. I expect it to be about
the nature, method and standards for enquiry - about what counts as
success and failure, about what might justify an enquiry's conclusion.
I think a different label is needed here. "Enquiries" is better, but
not much. "Disciplinary approaches"?

- - Clea

- -- 

Dr. Clea F. Rees
Visiting Assistant Professor

Department of Philosophy
Cowell College
University of California
Santa Cruz
CA 95064
U.S.A.

Tel:	+1-831-459-5045
 	+1-831-459-2609 (msg)
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cfrees at imapmail.org
http://people.ucsc.edu/~cfrees/

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