Template talk:Spirituality sidebar

Swedenborg
I've added Swedenborg, but I'm not sure about that one. Yet, he seems to have had a huge impact; Hanegraaf mentions him separately. Joshua Jonathan  -  Let's talk!   11:24, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Error?
I've added a link, which seemed toscrew up the template. Undid my addition; template works fine now at Mindfulness, nut not here. What's wrong? Joshua Jonathan  -  Let's talk!   20:21, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I am so non-techy I can't get it to display the relevant section unpacked, but I readded Mindfulness with 2 ]]s; you had only one; so unless it's something fancy, that should have fixed it. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:10, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Great! Thanks!  Joshua Jonathan   -  Let's talk!   22:54, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Replacing panpsychism with panentheism
I just wanted to post here before making changes to the template in case anyone has any objections. Apologies as this post probably got way longer than necessary. Under "Influences" --> "Western" --> "General" I'd like to replace panpsychism with panentheism (distinct from pantheism, which is already there). (I recently made a similar post on the "God" template talk page, and what follows is an edited version of my thoughts from there.)

Panpsychism is a view discussed in philosophy of mind and to a small extent cognitive science, not a standard term in spirituality or theology. While some of panpsychism's historical adherents were indeed theists and thus connected panpsychism to their theistic views, few contemporary proponents are. Leading proponents who have endorsed panpsychism as the or a possible solution to the mind-body problem, such as David Chalmers, Thomas Nagel, and Galen Strawson are atheists. One of the main inspirations for contemporary panpsychism is the ideas of Bertrand Russell, perhaps the most important atheist of the early 20th century.

Panpsychism is being argued for largely as a solution to the hard problem of consciousness and based on arguments from analytic metaphysics, not on the basis of mystical experience—and indeed, only a couple obscure philosophers have connected contemporary panpsychism to mysticism (even though I'm personally sympathetic to this). I've seen a few signs that members of the New Age movement have started citing panpsychism (rather sloppily at times), but they have invoked other things like quantum physics in support of their views too and we wouldn't list those on the Spirituality template; what matters for Wikipedia is how panpsychism is discussed in reliable sources. Panpsychism is also not the normal term used to describe views about universal consciousness in Eastern religions (idealism and Buddha nature are examples of terms that are used in that context).

On the other hand, panentheism is closely connected to religion and spirituality, as is abundantly clear on its page, and it is a term that is used in religious studies and theology to describe such views. It is a major view that appears across a range of religious/spiritual traditions. Insofar as any forms of panpsychism are relevant to spirituality, it is generally those forms that could also be called forms of pantheism (already included) or panentheism. Lastly, I should add that I have been working on the panpsychism page's section on relationship to other metaphysical views, and I plan on fixing up the discussion of pantheism there, so the pages still wouldn't be totally disconnected.

For these reasons I'd like to remove panpsychism from the template and add panentheism. I believe the current situation may lead to confusion among readers not familiar with panpsychism, especially at the panpsychism article where the template is prominently visible. I've even heard it claimed that popular misrepresentations of consciousness studies adversely affect funding for serious consciousness research. I will wait a while for other editors' thoughts, though. Gazelle55 (talk) 17:42, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure about Orientalist
On the sidebar, the Orientalist section seems kind of haphazardly grouped together. These traditions seem to be very different from each other, and the movement of Orientalism itself is included, which I don't think fits the idea of the sidebar. What should I do to edit this right? GoutComplex (talk) 17:30, 14 February 2023 (UTC)