Talk:Contemporary philosophy

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Contents

[edit] circa

why are all the dates of birth 'c.' ? Surely they're all or mostly known for sure? Saccerzd 13:06, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is this article necessary?

I firmly believe that in such shape this article is not necessary at all. I mean, there are tons of useful information on 20th Century Philosophy article, and on a top of that including for example Sartre in Structuralist/Poststructuralist philosopher list is proof that author of this list don't really know what is going on in continental philosophy.

Well, now it's being fixed. It's already in much better shape. Postmodern Beatnik 16:43, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I found this article useful in the sense that I don't need to know the lingo through out in order to be able to get some general idea who are the relevant guys and what are the topics they're concerned with. Needless to say it is important that Current Philosophical debate should be out in the open and not practised only by some molded faceless folk, who smell like old people in some stuffy cabinet. More Philosophical Debate to the Media! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.221.8.34 (talk) 04:49, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

Though Charles Krauthammer, Scott Adams, Jared Diamond, Howard Zinn are all interesting, intelligent people, they are not philosophers.


I currently think its disenfranchising to not include contemporary Eastern Philosophy! Contemporary philosophy should consider a wide horizon of geographical locations.

[edit] New Additions

I nominate John Searle, Thomas Nagel and Peter Singer for inclusion. They each have a large body of work and are recognized as authorities in their respective fields. --17:11, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

I wonder if Noam Chomsky could be added to the Political Phil section, Umberto Eco and Jean Baudrilliard to some other section? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.221.8.34 (talk) 04:40, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Current Thought (Western, Eastern, certain geographies, Global)

May 2005- Aren't we in an age where we are seeking a spiritual postmodernism? A theory that accepts choas and absolute order at the same time.

Could spiritual philosophy be the next wave?

What of postpostmodernism? archola 00:41, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Analytical School

Clearly whoever chose the names on this list has very little grasp of analytic philosophy. Unless, of course, "Analytical School" is just a name created so that quacks can have their names alongside deserving people. KSchutte 07:10, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Thinking on this a little longer, this whole article seems to be a waste of space. If anybody wants to put it up for VfD, I'd be delighted to vote it down. KSchutte 07:19, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Integral theory

What about integral theorists? Ken Wilber? Ervin László? (Unsigned)

Please keep your crackpot fetishes out of my philosophy articles. KSchutte 20:47, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Please don't be arrogant (or ignorant?). I didn't say that I'm a "Wilber-believer" or stg. I've just wanted to ask your opinion.

[edit] Unacceptable

Personally, I think this article is rubbish. Not only is it complete overlap with the 19th and 20th Century Philosophy articles, but it is much worse and contains little to no information. This should probably be deleted. Mrmlekoday 07:38, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dead contemporary philosophers

I wonder whether dead philosohers qualify as contemporary philosophers. Some were, to be sure, important in the 20th century, but most of them hardly published anything in the 21st and some have even been dead for more than a decade. Examples: Quine, Rawls, David Lewis, Bernard Williams, Davidson, Kuhn, Sellars, Isiah Berlin, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, Gadamer and Ricoeur. --D. Webb 03:48, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] rand? and a standard for inclusion.

given that rand's status as a philosopher is disputed, both on wikipedia and in philosophy, i think it is unwise to promote her to the status of philosopher. her inclusion on this page should be footnoted minimally, or should be removed until philosophers recognize her as member of the discipline as demonstrated by some objective standard such as '50 articles dealing with her work in philosopher's index'. --Buridan 12:34, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] how about adding some hierarhy and classification?

"Contemporary philosophy" is way too big theme to fit in one wikipage frame..

[edit] Proposed merger

Anybody against merging this article with 20th-century philosophy? I can't imagine we would need an article on the recent developments of 21st-century philosophy for at least another decade. KSchutte 22:50, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

While perhaps you may be to a large extent correct in believing this, there still should be an article here. Something may still be said in regards to the direction it is heading, etc. Something may definitely be said. The "contemporary era" is distinct from the "20th-century", we are well into the 21st-century -- it seems quite unfair to regard them as one and the same. Besides, do you not see that the foreign language Wikipedias have found enough to write an article on contemporary philosophy? Then why shouldn't the English one be able to do the same (why doesn't somebody translate the content)? I agree, though, that this article should not be merely a list. But doesn't justify removing it -- somebody just may come along and touch it up quite nicely.

[edit] What is the point?

What is the point of this article? A list of names is hardly appropriate for an article titled Contemporary Philosophy.

Perhaps it would be best to turn it into a re-direct to analytic philosophy since most analytic philosophy is contemporary, and all contemporary philosophy is analytic.

If the pomo whingers don't like it then the article should either be deleted or completely re-written. Misodoctakleidist 23:07, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I found this article useful in the sense that I don't need to know the lingo through out in order to be able to get some general idea who are the relevant guys and what are the topics they're concerned with. Needless to say it is important that Current Philosophical debate should be out in the open and not practised only by molded folks who smell like old people in some stuffy cabinet without a face. More Philosophical Debate to the Media! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.221.8.34 (talk) 04:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Shaking the tree

I've deleted the lists - if you wish to replace them, I sugest you do so systematicaly, by linking to the categories. But note that it makes for boring reading.

I've deleted the non-encyclopaedic definitions, with references to the editors and so on, for obvious reasons.

I've pointed to a few of the areas of interest in contemporary philosophy. There are more, and each area needs a substantial amount of work.

I've also listed the article at Template:PhilosophyTasks. Banno 22:50, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Added more topics... still needs mucho work. Poor Yorick 20:42, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
I expanded several sections today with what I could add to off the top of my head and I added a few references. I'll probably be adding some more references soon. Let's get this article sourced, people! Postmodern Beatnik 16:46, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Hey, good job - this is starting to look like an article. Banno 07:47, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

it is a fair start, but most of the sections are missing the continental, which is a huge bias. --Buridan 11:52, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
The divide between "analytic" and "continental" doesn't exist in contemporary philosophy. See, for instance, Brian Leiter's statements on the issue: [1] and [2]. Obviously, I am very sympathetic to Lyotard, Derrida, and Foucault. However, Postmodernism has its own section in this article, and while their philosophy is heavily linguistic, it is not quite philosophy of language. If it were then we'd have to start counting most of metaethics, the quantifier debate between Eternalists and Presentists within the philosophy of time, the epistemological battle over Gettier examples, and any number of issues as "philosophy of language." But this would be to ignore the obvious. For while these debates are heavily influenced by the philosophy of language, they are still clearly located within the sub-disciplines that birthed them. Postmodern Beatnik 13:57, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Quite so. This should be reflected in the article. I read a quote the other day: "There is no analytic and continental philosophy, only good and bad philosophy". See if I can re-source it. The article is just a grab-bag a the moment. Some real contemporary debates would be good. Banno 23:14, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
The quote you mention sounds like the first of Brian Leiter's comments that I linked to above. As for some contemporary debates, I tried to put a little bit of that in by mentioning the battle between the Cornell realists and the Arizona anti-realists (under Ethics), the current focus on consciousness (under Philosophy of Mind), and citing a number of different perspectives under various headings. But I'm not sure how much further you want us to go with this. Should we really be getting into the specifics of these arguments, or should we continue writing in broad strokes? Postmodern Beatnik 14:11, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Guidelines for content are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy/readability#General and introductory articles. Breadth rather than depth, linking to the main article on each topic. But having said that, I see no problem with dealing in some way with specific current arguments, especialy if they are not mentioned elsewhere. Banno 21:46, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Got it. Thanks! Postmodern Beatnik 18:20, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clean-Up Tag and Sources

The clean-up tag was added to a version of this article that was virtually a list. And while improvements still need to be made, it seems that the current version is much cleaner than that of September 2006. If I don't see opposition by Monday (July 23, 2007), I'm removing the tag.

I'm not really considering removing the {{unreferenced}} tag at this time, however, because we still have some distance to go on that score. For one thing, I've been using the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy a bit more than I'd like. It's a great resource, it's written by professionals, and it has quite a bit of information that is directly on point. Still, I'd like greater numbers and diversity in our sources before removing the tag. Postmodern Beatnik 18:22, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nietzsche

This article should make it clear that, despite his influence on that school of thought, Nietzsche wasn't an existentialist as he was a determinist. --212.2.171.136 16:09, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Schools of Philosophy

As if this even needs to be said, the "sections" on neopragmatism and post-modernism are terrible. The blurb on neo-pragmatism is virtually one of James' definitions, and the facile understanding of Derrida, the metaphysics of presence, and post-modernism generally, is embarassing. As all of these subjects already have quite comprehensive articles, how about we just include the first paragraph or so of those articles and then link to them? Also, there's more contemporary schools of philosophy than two mere varieties of counter-Enlightenment thought. -Apophrenetic (talk) 23:45, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Time Period

Why does this entry define contemporary philosophy as the last four decades? The usage of the term indicates that this period of philosophy began at the tail end of the 19th-century. Usually, contemporary philosophy is dated as beginning with the rise of the analytic/continental split (with Frege on the analytic side and Husserl on the continental side). - Atfyfe (talk) 04:36, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Metaethics

Deleted line from Ethics Section:

However, the debate between the Cornell realists and irrealists such as Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons (both of the University of Arizona) continues to generate a great deal of new metaethical literature, even if the subject is not currently in the foreground of moral philosophy.[1]

While applied ethics has come to dominate contemporary ethics, it is flat untrue that there isn't a lot of important work being done in metaethics. Singling out the work of Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons as the only work being done in metaethics today is a very odd thing to say, and therefore I've placed the above line here on the talk page until a more comprehensive description of contemporary metaethics can be written. - Atfyfe (talk) 08:43, 10 May 2008 (UTC)