Talk:Sophistry

Hello there. I seriously think this article needs to be under Sophism, and NOT Sophistry. I am going to figure out how to change it and change it; if there are any objections, please voice them. Possibly also merge it as below comments say, but under the title Sophism.--ArcticFrog 15:57, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I suggest that this page needs a quite radical edit, or perhaps to be merged with the article on Sophists, which it mostly repeats.

Perhaps this article should be merged with Sophists. where we already have material on what sophists were originally, and how the term came to be derogatory. What is new in this (sophistry) article is the idea that sophists might win by conciously pandering to the prejudices of "the judges" - but I think this is just one sophistical trick (my dictionary prefers to define a sophist as "a person who reasons with clever but fallacious arguments" (New Oxford Dictionary of English, 1998 edition).

The author then moves on to peer review. By inference, the author is saying that peer review of academic literature is flawed because the right strategy is for authors to concentrate on getting the right response from peer review, rather than by rigorously seeking after the truth. This assertion is (briefly) covered in the article aboutPeer review "Some sociologists of science argue that peer review makes the ability to publish susceptible to control by elites. Reviewers tend to be especially critical of conclusions that contradict their own views, and be llenient towards those that accord with them". Perhaps the link to the Sokal affair belongs somewhere around there in the Peer review article?

The sentence (in the sophistry article) about the "problem of academia" is not helpful - the article on Academia is a stub, and the "problem of academia" is nowhere defined. So I have moved this sentrence here in case it needs restoring: "Sophistry is central to the problem of modern Academia, as illustrated by the Sokal Affair."

I have not carried out my other suggestions - this is my first contribution to Wikipedia, and it seems over the top to so radically alter another's work without discussion - discuss please!

Chris B 29/3/04


 * I agree - this should be merged with sophist. By the way, if you make an account here, you can set up a watchlist of articles to keep an eye on - useful for both preventing vandalism and also for learning new things about topics you're interested in. And if you sign your discussion page comments with four tildes (~), you get a nice time/date stamp with a link to your user page. Welcome aboard, and edit boldly! If you think something should be radically altered, then feel free to alter it. Kwertii 20:32, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Sophistry (rhetoric) is a perfect example of a disease meme. It is successful because its core insight is literally true: if truth is determined by the rulings of corruptible humans, then truth can be changed by corrupting them. Any society or individual that searches for truth must be on guard against the influence of flattery, comfortable assumptions, and pretty phrases. It is a disease meme because once it has achieved dominance in an organization the organization can no longer function effectively, and fails.

There is no sense in which phrasing an argument well makes it more true; therefore there is no sense in which rhetoric brings us closer to truth. Instead the purpose of rhetoric is to make things appear to be more true (acceptable) than they actually are: and so it leads inexorably to the acceptance of falsehood.

The last two paragraphs are blatantly POV. How can we rework them to be NPOV? Kwertii 16:45, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Moved paragraphs here from the article (above). Kwertii 02:45, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Merge
I merged sophist with this page. I'll leave the text on sophist for a few days for review, then change it to a redirect if no one objects. Other than that, I made very few changes, and those I did make were small. The only paragraph I deleted outright was:


 * The modern peer-reviewed journal is exactly reflective of the traditional model of argumentation. Alan Sokal demonstrated both with the Sokal Affair and at length in his book Fashionable Nonsense that peer-review is not necessarily protection against falsehood entering the canon of accepted truths.

I feel that this paragraph is more or less POV; at the very least, it is not directly relevant to this article, since it is simply accusing a particular sphere of academia of being sophistry. (At least, I think that's what it's saying.) As such, it belongs in an article about peer-reviewed journals, not this one. Of course, if anyone disagrees, feel free to reinstate it. Adam Conover 07:24, Apr 1, 2004 (UTC)