List of important publications in philosophy • Hacker News Board

Re: List of important publications in philosophy

#21

Post by triplesec » Sat, Nov 30, 2013, 4:47 AM UTC

You're all right: this is a terrible article where a main descriptor is by definition subjective (important: to whom, for what, and for what reasons?). But why is it hacker news?

While we're at it, yes it needs a continental section, among many other improvements. This is a problem with tree taxonomy in fields of ideas. Anyone really feel like they really care about fixing this? Is that why someone posted it here?

Re: List of important publications in philosophy

#22

Post by brownbat » Sat, Nov 30, 2013, 5:21 AM UTC

derleth wrote: post #18

_bfhp wrote: post #3

The irony: a page about philosophy displaying unabashed human subjectivity. Feminist philosophy has one entry, wonder why

Find some reliable sources and fix it, if it bothers you.

It's gotten harder to do so over the years. I used to lodge several edits, people would build on what was written. Now it seems like everything gets an automatic revert. I'd dismiss it as the mediocre quality of my contributions, but I don't think I'm alone:

> "Wikipedia has changed from the encyclopedia that anyone can edit to the encyclopedia that anyone who understands the norms, socializes himself or herself, dodges the impersonal wall of semi-automated rejection, and still wants to voluntarily contribute his or her time and energy can edit," Halfaker said.

http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2013/UR_CONTENT_42836...

Re: List of important publications in philosophy

#23

Post by Bluestrike2 » Sat, Nov 30, 2013, 6:31 AM UTC

aquaroris wrote: post #20

seliopou wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree on the pre-Socratic point. Where's my man Parmenides? But in fairness, many pre-Socratic works are so fragmentary that it's difficult to even consider them works, nevermind philosophical works. Thus they typically fall under the purview of Classics departments. It's unfortunate that they're not taught more broadly and in a context that's more appropriate to their subject, but Classicists are probab…

I'm not entirely sure about this, but don't most of what we know about pre-Socratic philosophers come from secondary texts reporting on these philosophers' views? If so, then it will be difficult to consider these texts that have informed us about these authors as philosophical texts themselves.

For the most part, yes. Some fragments survived, but the majority of what we know about the pre-Socratics has been filtered through later doxographical works. While it certainly isn't optimal, together there's certainly enough of an understanding of the majority of the pre-Socratics to discuss them in a philosophical context without relegating them to Classics departments. Particularly given their relation to later thinkers. If you're interested, this article is an interesting place to start:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/doxography-ancient/

Re: List of important publications in philosophy

#24

Post by jessriedel » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 1:04 AM UTC

alex-g wrote: post #13

jessriedel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think there is a second article on feminist philosophy that is more notable than the average article on this short list?

"A Vindication of the Rights of Women" by Mary Wollstonecraft is already listed under "modern philosophy", as is "The Subjection of Women" by Mill, and Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" is under "bioethics". I would think that such works as "A Cyborg Manifesto" by Donna Haraway, "Anarchism" by Emma Goldman, or "Gyn/Ecology" by Mary Daly are at least as worthy of being listed here as "The Book of Five Rings" or Russel…

> ...are at least as worthy of being listed here as "The Book of Five Rings" or Russell's "The Problems of Philosophy".

I said "average article" precisely because I didn't want people to just cherry pick a weak entry here and there. Any list of the top 100 whatever will be open to dispute. Saying "I think X was unfairly excluded because it's clearly more important than entry 97" is not good evidence of bias.

"A defense of abortion" is moral philosophy. If you classify it as feminism, the term is overly broad (and, of course, only weakens the case for bias).