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Brain in a vat

Rating: N/A

The article above is an article on the famous philosophical thought experiment called "Brain in a Vat", as the title suggests. I am slightly puzzled by this article for a number of reasons. Firstly, I see that it has not received any attention on the talk page since 2008. This is odd when I consider that the article is somewhat lacking. I must say, what is there, is good, to my knowledge. The lead section is especially good, as it is written in a value-neutral fashion, and it is clearly intelligible to someone with little or no background in the subject. It even includes a brief note on similar historical thought experiments from which this thought experiment was derived. For instance, it writes how this was adapted from Descartes' evil demon, and then helpfully links to the Wikipedia page on that should the reader want to delve more into the origins of this experiment. The pictures included are helpful and aesthetically pleasing. The article even includes a rather lengthy section on the fictional explorations of this thought experiment or similar ones, which is interesting too. However, where I believe that this is somewhat lacking is the the counter-arguments section. As I touched upon in my last discussion post, one of the most fascinating and controversial objections within contemporary scholarship on the issue is Hilary Putnam's argument that the thought experiment is necessarily self-refuting, which derives from his theory of reference. Not only is it fascinating, but I think it has been discussed enough to warrant inclusion within an article about the topic. There are other objections that could be good potential candidates as well, I think, but I fear that included them too would turn this section into something too lengthy and may inadvertently suggest to the reader that this thought experiment is bad, invalid, debunked, etc.

The principle source I will use (among others) comes from Putnam himself, that is, pages 1-21 of his 1981 book Reason, Truth and History.

https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/Brains%20in%20a%20Vat%20-%20Hilary%20Putnam.pdf

Paul Churchland

Rating: Start-Class

The above article is about the philosopher and professor Paul Churchland. Like everything here, I became interested him after reading some of his work in a philosophy class and noticing the lack of information on Wikipedia. As the rating suggests, this article is riddled with issues. Most of them are listed right at the top, but among the most glaring are the lack of citations, stress in the lead section on his academic achievements rather than intellectual influence, and a lack of enough biographical information. Like most articles, though, it does have a few things going for it. It seems somewhat organized and the prose is decent. But that's about it. There's not a single picture or graph that I could use to say this even looks aesthetically pleasing. That said, I have a lot of ways that I could go with this. I could add some proper citations for the biographical information and perhaps use the same sources to add some new information. I could find a picture of him to add that would, of course, not violate any copyright laws or policies. I could stress his intellectual contributions more in the lead section. Finally, also the main reason my interest in him arose in the first place, I wanted to add some information on his views of the self, which I found rather interesting. It seems to be pretty significant in the field, too, as the book the argument comes from has been called highly influential in the philosophy of mind and has been translated several times. That said, similarly to the above article, the principle source I will use comes straight from him, as this is, of course, where his views on the self are contained.

Churchland, Paul. Matter and Consciousness, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1985, pp. 73–80.

(I could not find a link to this section, but I have a pdf of it.)

John Austin (legal philosopher)

Rating: Start-Class

This article is about John Austin, a somewhat well known legal philosopher of the 1800s. Despite the rating, I think this article is decent; better than the last one, at least, despite having the same rating. It's nicely organized, clearly written, there's a good picture of him, and all of the sections are balanced. That said, there's still a good bit that could be done to it. Considered in it's entirety, it's pretty short. It is true that his work revolved around his theory of legal positivism and criticism of natural law, which is already covered. But they're not covered in as great of depth as it could be. If you take a look at the article, there's words thrown around like "duty", "command", etc., that are given one or two sentence explanations. Not to mention that these are absolutely crucial to his theory, or in other words, the whole reason he's notable in the first place. The lack of content is most clearly noticeable in the "criticisms" section. The criticisms are limited to those of one philosopher, which are further limited by the use of bullet points. Finally, there's a lack of citations throughout. That said, the main source I would use, just like the last three, will come from Austin himself. This will be useful not only for adding citations, but for developing the aforementioned important concepts. I'd like to add, though, that there's an entire "criticisms" section on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) page for Austin, which could certainly be used more fruitfully for that section in particular.

Readings in the Philosophy of Law, by Keith Charles Culver and Michael Giudice, Broadview Press, 2017, pp. 63–83.

(Once more, I have a physical copy of this book.)