Talk:Paul Churchland

Untitled
I've added an image from the Book Cover of "Paul Churchland." Both author and subject have given permission for this to appear in correspondence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aedan Kane (talk • contribs) 21:54, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I am going to remove the warning about references, unless there is disagreement. The article cites independent references now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.120.101.47 (talk) 17:51, 3 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Removal was premature. Very much of the material was unsourced, and remained so, through 2017. Careful examination of the state of this is necessary before removing tags. The impulse to cosmetically improve is intense, we understand. But in the hurry to tidy appearance, the date of birth, for instance, and most of the Career section, and all of the Philosophical views section—these remained unsourced. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 05:33, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

LUCK??
What is meant by "Just as modern science has discarded such notions as luck or witchcraft." The term luck here does not rationalize. Science has not abandon probability last time I check. Tormine (talk) 10:47, 5 March 2012 (UTC)


 * This issue has not been resolved by changing it to "legends." The entire sentence is problematic and unfounded, which is perhaps why it lacks a credible citation. Western science has not "discarded" things such as witchcraft in favor of some objective "truth." The author forgets that those very concepts which are treated as folk medicine, magic, witchcraft, etc., were at various times the premier scientific facts of the day. The entire paragraph on Churchland's philosophical views is devoid of a necessary critical lens. Reporting and summarizing the subject's position does not necessarily entail parroting the subject's views or unproven assertions in our own summary. Take for example the following from the article: "where by folk psychology is meant everyday mental concepts such as beliefs, feelings, and desires, which are viewed as theoretical constructs without coherent definition, and thus destined to be obviated by a scientific understanding of human nature." This sentence is circular. It states that "theoretical constructs without coherent definition" will be eliminated by way of a "scientific understanding" of... a theoretical construct without coherent definition ("human nature"). This entire section needs rewriting with proper sources and an unbiased tone which differentiates between Churchland's positions and the veracity of the premises/presumptions on which they rest. That doesn't mean writing the article to argue against his positions, per se, but simply that we don't assume the truthfulness/irrefutability of his arguments in our narrative. 2600:8805:3809:2F00:1CF:BD39:4C90:1190 (talk) 14:43, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

List of Canadian philosophers??
Why is there a link at the bottom of the page to a "List of American philosophers" if Churchland is not American (as indicated in the very first sentence of his bio)? The US-centricism of Wikipedia is getting out of control. [unsigned entry]

Edits of this date—need to independently source views and biographical content
Major work was done to check, complete, and improve sourcing. All citations are now complete and traceable, and to the extent possible, appear to this former academic, but non-philosopher, to support the information to which the inline citation is attached.

Three notes:


 * First, the entire Philosophical views section was, at start of this editing, either plagiarised published material, or was an essay amounting to WP:OR. I introduced a quotation similar to some of the early content, and so could add one source, and in transferring unsourced infobox content into the article (so that this article component was not introducing novel, unreferenced material) the portion regarding his influences was readily connected, with slight edit to an appearing source (all but one infobox-listed influence found in the source, plus one extra), and so this allowed a second source to be added to the section. This said, the Philosophical views section remains problematic, for its being, in largest part, an unsourced, unpublished novel editor's analysis/synthesis of this individual's views. It is, in my opinion, clearly still WP:OR, on this WP:BLP subject. Only the title subject and experts can say if this represntation of his work is contentious. Better to figure out if anyone has said all of this, and source it.


 * Second, while the cited sources are complete, the bibliographic entries in the Written works section are not yet complete. The single popular work is done, and the first book and the first essay (journal) entry are done. The rest remains to be done, as I have time, or as other editors can commit to complete this long overdue addition of location/publishers, page numbers, ISBNs, URLs and access-dates (for books) and volumes, issues, page numbers, URLs and access-dates (for journals). They do not need to be immediately perfect. All entries have all the necessary fields, and any contributions to missing fields will move matters forward. The completed first entry will show where I was able to find material—in short, from Google books for books, and from jstor and the journal publisher's page for the journal articles.


 * Third and finally, while there will be a temptation to go through and remove inline tags calling for citations (to improve the appearance of the article), please do not—they currently are accurate to the citations and content that appear. By this I mean, that if a sentence is tagged, it is not covered by the end of sentence, or end of paragraph citation appearing (if one indeed appears). And as far as the end around of thinking that there is no need that all content to be sourced herein, four simple reminders/points—(a) this is a BLP article; (b) per WP:VERIFY, wikilinks do not constitute sources; (c) none of this philosophical content, absolutely none of it, is sky-is-blue content (Eliminative materialism and neurophilosophy/philosophy of mind, for goodness sake); and (d) if the excuse is lack of contentiousness, I contend, based on this work, and the experience of finding inaccurately placed sources, and content inaccurate to the sources earlier appearing, that the material is likely to still contain inaccuracies, such that it requires checking and sourcing. In short, unsourced material in such a sophisticated article, with a history of problems of accuracy of content to appearing sources, is by its nature, contentious.

Hence, if unattributable material remains, I will eventually try to remove it, and then it becomes the responsibility of the person returning it only to do so if sourced (per WP:VER and WP:BLP). The easiest thing to do, is figure out who said most of the things in the Philosophical views section, and to find sources for his date and place of birth, his Manitoba years, etc., and so to substantiate this purported accurate synthetic/analytical and biographical content.

I will do what I can, but turn this matter over to interested, longstanding editors. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 06:01, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

While it goes without saying that a large amount of this entire page is... problematic, at best, many of the statements in the Philosophical Views section are basically quotes/close paraphrases from his (in)famous paper here: https://www.danielwharris.com/teaching/201/Churchland.pdf. I was not the person who made any of the edits on this page, and as I am pretty wet-behind-the-ears as a Wikipedia editor, I don't feel comfortable making any direct citations to the paper itself without first asking those of y'all who are more experienced for assistance. Alaserdolphin — Preceding undated comment added 16:20, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Lack of images
In doing the work described above, I also took a look at Wikimedia Commons, and while there are a fair number of pictures for Patricia Churchland, there appear to be none that have been uploaded for Paul. If someone is in touch with them, you might suggest that a picture with clear location and date that is representative and to their liking be uploaded to the commons. It is not absilutely necessary, but it will make the article more appealing to general readers. The same can be said with regard to uploading an image of the book cover or covers of seminal works, and any other illustrations form his lectures that might be used to explain important correspondences and concepts. Cheers, Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 06:18, 12 February 2017 (UTC)