Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of philosophical theories

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to List of philosophies. MBisanz ^talk 08:37, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

List of philosophical theories

This is an inappropriate cut/paste merge of List of philosophies (which has been around since 2004) and List of belief systems. Rather than rename one and then merge the other into it, the editor merged (cut and pasted) them both into a new (this) article, stranding the edit histories of both merged articles on their respective redirect pages. Separately from this debate, I have challenged (reverted) the merges by restoring the original pages from their redirects. Any rename or merge debate of those two articles can take place on their respective talk pages. This deletion debate pertains to this new page and its damaged edit history. The Transhumanist 03:54, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy delete? - this seems like a speedy, but I couldn't find it in any of the reasons listed at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion. The Transhumanist 04:14, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment G6 could apply if your position that the merge should be done properly is 'non-controversial', which I suspect it may. If Gregbard or someone else objects and it becomes controversial then my vote is Delete for that reason, without prejudice as to the desirability of a merge. Olaf Davis (talk) 12:11, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to List of philosophies, as this is a common search term. Cheers. I'^mperator 12:29, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep -- This had been deleted before as list of isms a long time ago. Perhaps its time has come but I will miss it. I have preserved it in my userspace for my own uses. Basically, I have come around to the idea that organizing around the suffix "ism" is not the best way to organize things. However, I found that particular list very valuable, and I preserved it as List of belief systems for a while, and then moved it to List_of_philosophical_theories which is now under consideration for deletion.

I have always been very interested in this area. I have made many edits in the area of isms, theories, belief systems, movements, schools of thought, etcetera. I have been trying to develop the philosophy department in general. My idea is to make sure that every article which should be; is A) covered under the appropriate category in the Philosophy category tree, and B) has the philosophy banner on its talk page with the appropriate parameters. I have been organizing mainly on the talk side, with the banner parameters, with the idea that it will be very easy to use awb to work on categories in the main space after we make sure that things are best categorized on the talk side. Ideally, every philosophy article should have at least one a) field, b) tradition and c) era.

In the area of these "isms" I have found that they are all invariably describable as "theories." This is to say they all can be expressed in the form described in the article theory (mathematical logic) such that each one is a group of sentences {t1, t2,t3,t4,t5,...}, each one of which is believed to be true, and which explains something, etcetera. I find this is excellent in that it is the least that we can say for absolute sure (i.e. whether or not it is a "movement" involves a social judgment, whether or not it is a "belief system" depends on there being believers, etcetera). To identify something as a theory is to make an intellectual identification, not a social one. This permits for all kinds of things very generally, and this is good for the philosophy department.

I have further developed a few subcategories which I hope will allow us to tighten things up over time naturally and conveniently such as "metaphysical theories", "epistemological theories", "ethical theories", etcetera. Many articles are in more than one, but usually not more than three. The result has been a great tightening up and organizing of these articles. I would like to continue to tighten things up.

There is also a major division between "scientific" and "philosophical" theories. I thought this kind of distinction is important to make so as to make things clear as to what is considered a scientific theory and what is not. Invariably, theories which are not scientific, in that some of the "elementary theorems" are statements which cannot be empirically tested, can be thought of as "philosophical" in that those particular theorems, while not empirical statements are still statements, and therefore also ideas. In retrospect, perhaps "non-empirical theories" would be better. I would support a move from "philosophical theories" to "non-empirical theories."

I invite your correspondence on these issues. There are a few things I would like to do, for instance, to delete "Schools of thought" as a way to also help tighten things up in this area. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 19:17, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, let me emphasize that we are not trying to get rid of the list! The content is safe (you can also copy it to your user space). The same list exists in a slightly different form right now (the 2 pages that you "merged" have been reverted from redirects).

All of the issues you presented above should be debated in talk pages, not here. The only thing that we are concerned about is the way this page was created. You see, you combined merging and renaming into one step, making it impossible to revert without an AfD, and disrupting an edit history in the process. Instead, you should have renamed List of philosophies, and then merged List of belief systems into it. Then reverts and discussion could have been conducted on those pages' talk pages. That's where the discussions of the merge belongs.

You stated that "this had been deleted before as list of isms a long time ago" (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of isms). Did you go through Deletion review to revive the material? If not, it is subject to speedy deletion (G4).

The reason the List of isms article was deleted was because its scope was too vast (see the various definitions at -ism). But this is an easy problem to solve. The entire set of isms that exist can be narrowed down into more focused areas. (For example, one such subset of isms is philosophical isms.) Then the focused areas (lists) can be listed on another list. :)

I am interested in helping you find a solution to the missing "all-encompassing components of philosophy term" that encompasses traditions, movements, schools, philosophies, theories, positions, arguments, approaches, etc. I've been looking for the general name for these things for years, and I understand your frustration (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of philosophy component types).

I suggest we get rid of this list for now, wrap up the discussion that is at talk:Philosophical theory, and then start a new discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy and see if anybody knows the (most common) word for this.

The Transhumanist 00:18, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The merge was an attempt to deal with the proliferation of these lists. Three is too many just like each other. I think we are re-inventing the wheel here as edit histories are preserved if anyone really cares to look into it.

I really wish you would reconsider "isms". I think one of the points that is lost is that I used to believe as you do that isms was a good title for classifying things, and I have now come around to realize that it is not. I have described theories as having an advantage because it is an intellectual construct rather than a social one. I have already made great progress in tightening up the "theories" category tree. What we need to do now is bring all the movements, isms, belief systems, etcetera into the fold. This is not to say that "philosophical movements" for instance needs to be deleted, no; "schools of thought" perhaps. What I am thinking is that we organize primarily around theories and move things out from there to other categories like movements, etcetera. Whether or not something is considered a movement is likely to be a topic of debate, whereas I think it is far less controversial to merely say we have a theory. (At least I thought so, until you claimed that it was "erroneous" and may be "misleading" to call these theories, I hope you do not still think so, with this formal definition available. You will have to give a counter example.) Everyone in the glossary is, in fact, a theory and "theory" is an actual term used in logic to classify a type of thing whereas "ism" is not. Be well, Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 00:49, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't the place for this debate. We've already ascertained that the material is subject to being speedy deleted. The ism issue should be discussed at Talk:Glossary of philosophical isms. I've copied the above paragraph, and have replied to it there. The Transhumanist 23:30, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not speedy I've compared the deleted article, and read the afd. I don't think this qualifies for speed G5. The content is not identical, and the justification is different. The deleted article has the explanation "Below are words ending with the suffix –ism. Words like prism, schism, and jism are not included, because in them -ism is not a suffix, and therefore they have no etymological connection with -ism words." which was objected to and was transwikified, reasonably enough. The present article has a different justification. DGG (talk) 01:55, 13 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I assume you mean G4, not G5? I still think G6 applies since no-one has actually disputed the point that this copy-paste merge needs to be cleaned up irrespective of whether a proper merge is desirable. Olaf Davis (talk) 12:33, 13 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.