Talk:Pseudophilosophy

Does the term Psuedophilosophy beg a demarcation problem?

The term psuedophilosophy begs the question, 'How can you tell legitimate philosophy from illegitimate philosophy?' And if you can't tell the difference does it matter if you can't? Should you care about any philosophical pronouncement?

If someone presents a philosophy for ulterior motives why would this automatically turn it into pseudophilosophy? Wouldn’t the actual philosophy have to succeed or fail on its own merits independent of the motivations of the philosopher? How exactly do philosophers separate philosophy from psuedophilosophy? Is there a "philosophical method?" If so then what is it? Do recogonized philosophers agree on a "philosophical method"? If not then what does this say about philosophy? And why should anyone care about philosophy or pseudophilosophy? Gkochanowsky 14:05, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

How do you tell real whipped cream from coolwhip? People with good taste can tell the difference. Similarly, people with good sense can tell philosophy from pseudophilosophy.

So you are saying that philosophy like coolwhip is just a matter of taste? Some people prefer coolwhip over whipped cream. Gkochanowsky (talk) 16:51, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

In part, it is the existence of a canon. Because it is impossible to read what everybody wants to write and call philosophy, people turn to textbooks or encyclopedias to find out which philosophers have made the cut. Most people don't make the cut. It isn't fair, but nobody has come up with a workable alternative.

Cannonical bodies of knowledge should be automatically suspect. It presumes some sort of corner on "TRUTH". As if there is nothing more of importance to be learned or discovered. Like fuzzy logic. (Philosophy was blindsided by that one.) Gkochanowsky (talk) 16:51, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

In part, it is showing a knowledge of what other people have written down through the ages. Most pseudophilosophers put forth ideas that they think are new when in fact they are old, ideas which they think are profound when in fact they are trivial.

So rediscovering previous philosophy is pseudophilosophy? If that were the case then most of the philosophers that ever existed would be pseudophilosophers. Gkochanowsky (talk) 16:51, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

In part, it is writing well. Most pseudophilosophy is drivel.

I fail to see how writing has anything to do with it other than how well the point gets across. Perhaps good writing is essential to argue a point but so what? There are libraries full of well presented arguments for points that people would now recognize were just flat out wrong. Gkochanowsky (talk) 16:51, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Motive does not usually play a part. In fact, for all the glib talk about motive, it takes a person years of psychotherapy just to understand his own motives. Other people's motives are almost always a mystery.

I only bring up motive because IIRC somewhere in the article motive was claimed to be a consideration for the classification of purported philosophy into the pseudophilosophy category. Gkochanowsky (talk) 16:51, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Why do people care about philosophy? Why do people pick scabs? The fact is that many people do care deeply.

I understand that, but why should people care about philosophy? Does it build strong bodies eight ways? Better than say mathematics, art or plumbing? Gkochanowsky (talk) 16:51, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Rick Norwood (talk) 16:03, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I also bring up a philosophical demarcation problem because philosophy appears to think that it is important for science. If they think that then why hasn't philosophy applied the same standards to itself? And what better place to bring it up than in an article that purports to be about pseudophilosophy. Gkochanowsky (talk) 16:57, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

It would be original research for Wikipedia to define philosophy. What we need is some sort of criteria we can use to differentiate philosophy from pseudo-philosophy for the purposes of this article. I think a good test would be whether it is stocked in the philosophy section of university libraries. If something claims to be philosophy, but is not usually stocked in the philosophy section, then we could assume that it is pseudo-philosophy. Misodoctakleidist (talk) 03:27, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Misodoctakleidist regarding the test for what counts as philosophy being what major universities put in the philosophy section of their library. It is quite obvious that this article was written from a partisan point of view. Suggesting that anything that isn't classified as analytical or positivistic philosophy is somehow "pseudophilosophical" amounts to saying that every philosopher who died prior to the 20th century was a charlatan. All of Platonism, scholasticism, German Idealism and Romanticism, and Continental philosophy is pseudophilosophy? Really? I think this page should be deleted, or at least its "neutral point of view" status challenged. I am relatively new as an editor and am not sure how that process would work, but the very premise of this page is so clearly unphilosophical in spirit that I do not believe it has any place in a serious encyclopedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Footnotes2plato (talk • contribs) 00:01, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Misodoctakleidist's suggestion is the correct one, of course, and the only one possible for Wikipedia, because it is the only way to avoid original research. Gkochanowsky complains that canons are unfair. I noted that fact in my original comment. Just as democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others, a canon is the worst way to decide what constitutes philosophy except for all the others. There are many books. Nobody can read them all. If we read at random, we read mostly worthless trash. If we read best sellers, we read mostly worthless trash. And so we tend to read the books that, for whatever reason, people kept on reading and talking about one year, ten years, two thousand years after they were written. Plato made the canon simply because philosophers still read Plato. Why philosophers, who these days are mostly academics, though there are exceptions? Because people still read Mein Kampf, but philosophers have rejected it from the canon. Unfair? Of course. But instead of just complaining about the canon, suggest an alternative. Rick Norwood (talk) 13:39, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Gkochanowsky, I have to agree with Rick Norwood and Misodoctakleidist. Please remember that this article talk page is not for general discussion of the subject, but only for discussing improvements to the article. Secondly, it seems you are trying to argue against having an article on the concept. But, necessary improvements to the article notwithstanding, according to Wikipedia's notability criteria the concept warrants inclusion because it has been discussed extensively in reliable secondary sources.

Here's the result of only a bit of superficial googling:

• http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1368-0382(186507)3%3A10%3C185%3APAP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0
• http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&q=pseudophilosophy&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wp
• http://books.google.com/books?um=1&q=%22pseudo-philosophy%22&btnG=Search+Books

Whether or not philosophy can be seperated from pseudophilosophy is completely irrelevant for us. We are an encyclopedia project, not a publisher of original thought. Pseudophilosophy as a concept is notable and warrants inclusion. Beyond that, there's only the question of how best to improve the article. |dorftrottel |talk 13:50, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

You are quite right that wikipedia is not a place for original research. Be that as it may, any attempts by philosophers of the philosophical "cannon", such as it is, to demark philosophy from psuedophilosophy would be legitimate sources for the wikipedia article. Then perhaps some of the more notable non-canonical attempts. Not that I know all that much about philosophy, but from what little I know, demarking just about everything else has been more important to the canonical philosophers than demarking philosophy itself. As such this article may not be able to avoid some original research. Gkochanowsky (talk) 16:19, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

If reliable sources exist for such a "demarcation" between philosophy and pseudophilosophy, by all means, go ahead and include them. But if not, please keep in mind that we must only include what has already been published (in reliable sources, not e.g. blogs). If something hasn't been published, we simply cannot include it, i.e. if no one has written about any specific aspect of that dividing line, we cannot include it. Our articles are simply summaries of what has been published about a subject in reliable sources. They are organised into plausible aspects (i.e. means sections) and should give due weight to all relevant aspects. Fringe opinions e.g. are of decidedly lower importance. |dorftrottel |talk 16:52, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

As such most of the current article would not qualify. All I see are examples of claims of pseudophilosophy of one philosopher of another and what is most interesting is that the dispute as far as I can tell are between philosophers that are not considered to be pseudo philosophers. Shouldn’t the cites be of classifications of pseudophilosophy that are considered by at least the majority of canonical philosophers to be illegitimate? As such at best this article illustrates the use of the term pseudophilosophy as an act of name calling among philosophers and not a term to be taken seriously. And as such makes one wonder if the term philosophy should be taken seriously either.

If this were a discussion of science and pseudoscience there would be a wealth of well known examples of pseudoscience that are widely considered by legitimate scientists as pseudoscience and would not be obvious cases of mud throwing.

Perhaps the opening paragraph of the article should make plain that the term pseudophilosophy as used by philosophers is mostly an act of name calling. Gkochanowsky (talk) 18:24, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Indeed the article suffers from a great deal of borderline OR and missing references. One way to go about it would be to "stubbify" it, i.e. to throw out all doubtful material, so that it can be properly rewritten from there. |dorftrottel |talk 19:03, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

"Begs the question" does not mean "raises the question." It means "to assume what you are trying to prove."Lestrade (talk) 11:09, 12 September 2009 (UTC)Lestrade

"Pseudo-philosophy" sounds like something that somebody cooked up so they can dismiss anything that they don't particularly agree with. So convenient to label anything with a "pseudo". Kortoso (talk) 21:14, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Still an issue

This demarcation problem still seems to be a serious issue for this page. If we cannot define a boundary between Pseudophilosophy and Philosophy (or Pseudoscience, or Natural philosophy, or Occultism... ad nauseam) then we cannot use this term ourselves, and the article should only include cases where the source explictly uses the term. --Andrewaskew (talk) 03:53, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Philosophy#Pseudophilosophy. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 03:41, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

More references

This article needs more sources. As of this writing, there is only one and it is for a quote. An admitedly contentious topic needs a higher standard. While a quick Google search suggests that some people are using the term, I personally could not find a definition online other than our own. We really need more than that, epecially if this term is going to be used in other articles or in categorisation. Which also connects to the demarcation problem raised above. --Andrewaskew (talk) 03:53, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree. There is no source for the "definition" in the first line. And Rescher's "definition" is not a definition but a personal opinion. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 06:48, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Pseudophilosophy is the prefix pseudo attached to the word philosophy. There can be no general definition of pseudophilosophy, because conceptualization of the word requires adoption of some specific rhetorical dogmatism that tries to define "real" philosophy. Wikipedia, of course, shouldn't adhere to some school of thought which does this, though it may document such things. Thus the opening list should be excised and replaced with pretty much this point (e.g. "'Pseudophilosophy' is a term commonly used by certain schools of thought which seek to define philosophy to refer to systems of thought which they place outside those definitions."), and the definitions and examples should stress this point that these are all various ideological claims, which is not extremely apparent now (partially due to the regular form of Wikipedia, which is entirely appeals to authority). 69.122.244.46 (talk) 19:32, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

More "See also"

Two more articles which I believe should be cross-linked in the "See also" section: Pseudoscience and Cargo_cult_science. What do you think? --158.169.40.10 (talk) 11:44, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Definition

The current definition is:

Pseudophilosophy is a term applied to criticize philosophical ideas or systems which are claimed not to meet an expected set of standards.

Doesn't that exclude ideas/systems that are playfully – and therefore deliberately – created to be pseudophilosophical, as in the case of pataphysics [1] (a concept currently confined to #See also)? 86.174.48.45 (talk) 11:49, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes it does. But aren't those exclusions part of the definition? That is, those playful examples are not described as pseudophilosophies outside of wikipedia. If we consider definitions, it is overwhelmingly a pejorative term:

n. (chiefly pejorative) Any philosophical system that does not meet mainstream academic standards.

— Wiktionary

PseudoPhilosophy is any idea or system that masquerades itself as Philosophy while significantly failing to meet some suitable intellectual standards. The term is frequently pejorative, and most applications of it are quite contentious. The term bears the same relationship to Philosophy that PseudoScience bears to Science, or Anti-Matter to Matter. The term is often used more casually to express contempt, irritation, or just dislike toward some idea or system of ideas. It is not, for the most part, used technically within academic Philosophy, though it is likely to occur in philosophers' judgments on larger aspects of culture, their advice to new students, their assessments of other disciplines, and so forth.

— GetWiki

We would not normally include things within a definition, unless those things are already included outside Wikipedia. Unless you're aware of the term being used to describe such playful examples in this way? -- Andrewaskew (talk) 06:14, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

credibility

According to Christopher Heumann, an 18th-century scholar, pseudo-philosophy has six characteristics, the 6th of which has been considered to diminish the credibility of the first 5:

The last part of the sentence puzzles me. Does it mean that the sixth claim – that pseudophilosophy is characterized by immorality – discredits Heumann's claim that it has the other five features? If not that, what? One might think that "a preference for obscure and enigmatic language and symbolism," for example, has no credibility to lose. —Tamfang (talk) 02:27, 15 October 2023 (UTC)