Talk:Cornell realism

Latest comment: 5 years ago by Jess Riedel in topic Non-encyclopedic tone

Link to David Brink article

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The link to David Brink is to an article about retired South African businessman David Charles Brink, not to an article about MIT philosopher David O. Brink, proponent of Cornell realism and author of Moral Realism The Foundations of Ethics (1989, Cambridge University Press). A disambiguation page should be created, along with an article about D. O. Brink--and, in any case, the link on this page needs to be changed. SCPhilosopher 22:19, 9 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

I have changed the link so that it links to the non-existent article David O. Brink. SCPhilosopher 22:20, 9 November 2007 (UTC)Reply


This article is terrible! It currently even contradicts itself on whether cornell realists are metaphysical reductionists. 143.167.76.215 (talk) 14:08, 7 October 2015 (UTC)Reply


The article should be deleted!

- I think the article needs to be rewritten. Cornell Realism is both a philosophy of science and a moral philosophy, so it's scope and lineage needs to be made clear. It reflects and informs the dominant school of scientific realism in philosophy today. As a temporary measure, I added Richard Boyd's seminal "How To Be A Moral Realist" to the references. Qphilo (talk) 04:26, 27 June 2017 (UTC)Reply

Non-encyclopedic tone

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There are some template warnings on this article complaining of the non-encyclopedic and argumentative tone. I believe this is a bad characterization of a largely well-written article. This is an article *about* a philisophical school of thought, and a school of thought is little more than a collection of arguments. Describing that school of thought clearly *necessarily* involves listing those arguments. The article does not endorse any of the arguments, in accordance with NPOV.

Of course, if this was an article about, say, a political issue, it would be non-NPOV to list arguments, which is probably responsible for the knee-jerk reaction that led to these template warnings being added.

One could criticize this article perhaps on the basis that it's too technical (not accessible to wide audience), but I don't think it's any more technical than the uncountable esoteric math and science articles that make Wikipedia great. It would be a gross mistake to remove the technical aspects (i.e. the arguments) from the article and only leave non-technical facts like the geographic location of the philosohers. At worst, a more accessible introduction needs to be written.

The template requesting additional citations is fine, although this is a complaint that can be made about the large majority of Wikipedia articles.

(I've never contributed content to this article and do not subscribe to Cornell Realism. I just wrote this comment because I am frustrated by the amount of good, pedagogical, and encyclopedic knowledge on technical topics that is driven out of Wikipedia by editors who think they can apply their wiki-law knowledge without understanding the technical aspects of the topic.) Jess_Riedel (talk) 14:03, 6 January 2019 (UTC)Reply