Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Philosophy of Accounting


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   no consensus. The article has been rewritten during the discussion, leaving much of this AfD moot, but the general feeling is that this topic can likely be covered in a non-OR fashion.  Sandstein  06:30, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Philosophy of Accounting

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

A huge original essay. Laudak (talk) 16:29, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete, weakly. Mostly because I am sceptical of the notion that accounting can have a philosophical dimension that wouldn't be better treated under more conventional titles like philosophy of economics or philosophy of law. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 16:46, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Regardless the possibility of the notion, one must start from reliabkle sources which discuss it, not from the table of contents of the whole philosophy. Laudak (talk) 16:57, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. There do indeed appear to be authorities who have sought a philosophical dimension to this field, and its ethical and representational problems.  This article is a start, and there's no hurry. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 01:06, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep - the page contains several sources and it seems to be a valid concept -here. The way forward is to rewrite the page not to delete it. TerriersFan (talk) 17:48, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * If you looked carefully inside the refs you cite, the term is used in an informal, rather than scholar sense. Laudak (talk) 17:54, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. Consistency, we're told, is the hobgoblin of little minds.  Informally, there probably are "philosophies" of accounting just as there are "philosophies" of computer programming, skiing, or washing laundry.  The real question is whether philosophers will perceive any actual philosophy in these philosophies that isn't already handled under a more familiar rubric.  I agree, this is original research.  It fishes philosophical terms out of the ether and uses them capriciously; the section on "epistemology" actually appears to deal with the semiology of statements produced by accountants.  The real question is, does accounting pose any philosophical issues that aren't already part of some other and better established branch of philosophy? - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 19:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. I'll withhold judgment pending possible additional sourcing, but it clearly violates WP:SYNTH at present. I do agree with Laudak's comment regarding Ihcoyc's vote. Votes should be based on policy rather than gut instinct. Provide sources that directly address this topic and you may have something. Recognizance (talk) 18:47, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Weak keep Although my first impression was that this was purely the original synthesis of an editor who wanted to combine Arthur Andersen and Plato, the author is not the first to talk about the ontological and epistemological aspects of financial reporting . I haven't checked to see if there's a copyvio; I hope not. Mandsford (talk) 20:48, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Weak keep My first impression on looking at this article is WTF?? I'm married to a CPA, so I can speak with some knowledge when I say that no accountant would talk this way. However, there are vital philosophical ideas at work in accounting -- the primary one being ethics, which amazingly is not mentioned in this article -- so the article is worth keeping but only after severe stubifying. -- llywrch (talk) 22:32, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: we already have an article on business ethics that could use expansion. Would an article about ethics in the philosophy of accounting cover anything that shouldn't already be covered there?  - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 14:55, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * No. This is not just an ethical issue.  There are considerable epistemological problems in accounting because of the difficulty of valuation and these are not resolved.  Colonel Warden (talk) 15:33, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Neither of you seem to grasp what I am saying. Unlike MBAs -- & to the best of my knowledge, any other professional certification -- to receive a CPA candidates required to pass a written test on ethics, in addition to that notably difficult standardized test. One of the areas they are required to take classes in to keep their certification is ethics. As for "epistemological problems", out of the many accountants I have met none have ever showed the slightest inclination to theorize on the meaning of "debit", "credit", or any of the other terminology they use. In that sense, they are more like engineers, who concentrate on the application of their tools to problem solving, rather than architects, who are interested in the theories they use to solve their problems, how these theories work, & how they affect the wider world. -- llywrch (talk) 16:56, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Please see Truth in accounting for an example of such philosophical theorising. Colonel Warden (talk) 17:26, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I did look, & thought long about that section of the book. My conclusion was that concern over correctly valuing debits & assets (which is the point of the passage quoted) is not the same thing as exploring the difference between "objective reality" & "normative reality"; to make that comparison is, to quote several people above, original research & not appropriate for Wikipedia -- whether or not it is a valid comparison. To repeat myself, this article needs some severe pruning. -- llywrch (talk) 06:19, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Keep -- A substantial start for a new article. Has references. Notable enough for Wikipedia. A topic in philosophy, a department that could use a few good articles. Weak rationale for deletion. Why waste our time with this process? This article is obviously just fine. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 18:18, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep A good start on a notable topic. Colonel Warden (talk) 15:33, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep per two above, but needs work tying it together. -65.246.126.130 (talk) 21:52, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete.  Per Mandsford, above, the topic appears to be sufficiently noteworthy to rate an article; but this article is not it.  It's entirely an unreferenced essay and an unholy conglomerate of opinion, synthesis and original research.  Yes, the article contains references, but they're not references to the "Philosophy of Accounting," which is the subject of the article.  Delete, or stub down to the lede and rebuild with actual references that have something to do with the subject matter. TJRC (talk) 22:28, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - I agree but the state of the article is no basis for deletion -rather it is a reason to fix it. TerriersFan (talk) 01:09, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I know that's the theory, but does that mean as long as an article has a title of a worthy subject it's retained? In this case, the entire article is a compendium of policy violations.  Take out all the unsourced material that has anything to do with the subject, everything that's OR, and you have a blanked page. TJRC (talk) 19:28, 1 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Weak keep. Although it reads like original research, there actually are sources that could be drummed up (in philosophy of business/business ethics).  Give the author some time to improve this by adding genuine sources, I do not believe any of this is original research by one person, it's used more broadly than that.--Levalley (talk) 00:30, 2 April 2009 (UTC)LeValley

Author's Comment

It appears that some of the objections to this page were founded on a question over whether a discrete philosophy of accounting actually exists. I would suggests it depends on your perspective / philosophical perspective perhaps. One debater has suggested that it is might be in the realm of philosophy of washing machines. Another claimed to have a wife who was a CPA and said that philosophy wasnt something that accountants thought about.

There is a philophy of accounting - it is embedded in the Frameworks issues by the IASB and FASB. Accountants, being mainly procedural people, are not inclined to debate their philophies much - most appear to prefer to apply the accounting standards almost as though they were handed down by the gods, rather than taking a step back and really questioining whether what they produce is fair, true, ethical etc. There are some in academic circles who do question them though :-).

The issue of ethics was also raised I would add that one of the causes attributed to the Enron scandal was that accountants applied the letter of the standards, rather than taking a step back and applying the principles of "fair presentation". Whether this is a fair judgement or not is subject to debate and is part of the somewhat "exciting" debate between the US standards setters and their international counterparts as to whose standards should prevail and how they should be applied.

It should also be understood that the ethics issues are not about doing right and wrong - they are about what constitutes a fair presentation of reality. At the top end of the profession, there are many contractual arrangements that could be presented in a number of different ways which could dramatically change the presented results. So the debate has the some elements of "black and white" ethics - but in truth its much more than that.

Forgive me, but I believe that there is philosophical debate raging at the moment within the profession and the reason I created this page was to try to get some real academic input on the subject. Perhaps I have made a poor start, but then I understood that the whole purpose of Wikipedia was collaboration. I invite you to help and make this a worthwhile page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pkearney (talk • contribs) 02:05, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep It has references and is a perfectly valid article. The article was nominated because of original research, but since it is now referenced, that reason seems defeated.   D r e a m Focus  08:50, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It has no references about the "Philosophy of Accounting," however. In its current form, it has nine references.  references 1 and 3-9 have nothing to do with philosophy; reference 2 has nothing to do with accounting.  It remains completely unreferenced with respect to the subject, Philosophy of Accounting.   All the material about the Philosophy of Accounting, the subject of the article, is OR. It is an error to treat an article that has no references about its subject matter as being referenced.  These references are fig leaves, nominal only. This is exactly the sort of referencing that would be appropriate for a college essay; and that's the type of piece that is inappropriate for Wikipedia.  I would back down from my delete stance if the article backed away from its OR status, adding real references about the Philosophy of Accounting (which, as discussed above, apparently exist).  But right now, this is just an essay of OR, with footnotes to support the author's opinions. TJRC (talk) 15:04, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * FWIW, I asked my wife the CPA what the term "Philosophy of Accounting" meant to her. She thought for a moment, then answered, "Isn't that what economics is supposed to be?" -- llywrch (talk) 17:32, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, I think I get it now. It seems talk's point is that the I need to reference academic articles that provide evidence that Philosophy of Accounting actually exists. Hmmm - it sounds like a philosophical question in itself :-)


 * Funny thing is that I have searched numerous academic databases and found that the word accounting and the word philosophy very seldom occur in the same article. I know talk would say, that that it exactly his point. My counter-argument is that that just because the word philosophy does not exist in this context does not mean that the dimensions or philosophy are not at incredibly relevant and very much a part of the profession. I would say it does exist - its just not explicitly acknowledged. You have not commented on my post above - so I wont try to make the point again.


 * You are welcome to delete the page if you feel strongly that it does not exist because there are no academic articles on it. However - if I manage to get a paper published in a respectable academic journal that says that it does exist, then I guess you will be happy to reinstate it. I acknowledge that I will have to have some better verbage to put on the page in that case. Agreed?

Pkearney (talk) 17:38, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * In response to llywrch with the CPA wife.. Okay mate, you have been brutally direct so, if you dont mind, Ill be brutal back. Context: I'm a Chartered Accountant and I have a Masters in Applied Finance - so I'm not coming from a zero base okay.


 * You may or may not know that there are two accounting professions in the English speaking world: CPA and CA's CPA's are American and CA's are the rest of the English speaking world. CA's (generally) have clubbed together and formed the International Accounting Standards Board - The US is now the only country that has not brought itself to harmonise with the international standards. There is a little professional rivalry at stake here..:-) The CA dominated international community argue that it is exactly because the CPA dominated accounting standards of the US do not embrace a higher philosophical ideal - that we have accounting debacles like Enron... Its not because they are morally deficient - its because they are following a procedure rather than taking a step back from what they have done asked themselves... "Do these financial statements fairly present the results of the business.


 * The whole concept of fair presentation in accounting is, in itself a philosopical issue!! What is fair presentation? Do me a favour... Ask your wife then whether she thinks that goodwill should be written off immediately or retained in the balance sheet. If she says it shoud be retained, then ask her how it leads to comparability with other companies that only have internally generated goodwill. Ask her what fair presentation means in this context. Then ask her how this issue is not a philosophical issue!!

Pkearney (talk) 17:58, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The nay-sayers' comments are not true and fair and so should be discounted. For example, source 3 clearly does have something to do with philosophy as its abstract indicates: "The method of such enquiries is explained using the work in the philosophy of language of Wittgenstein.".  Anyway, my impression is that they have failed to convince and the article is here to stay.  Please continue to develop it. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:06, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Let me clarify my comment, then. The work cited as source 3 may, taken as a whole, have something to do with philosophy, but the content of that work having to do with philosophy is not being used as a source.  It's being cited for the proposition Questioning by the US Congress led to a study on "the adoption by the United States financial reporting system of a principles-based accounting system".  No philosophy in sight, there. Again, this entire work is OR that is not citing anything about Philosophy of Accounting.  Could an article theoretically be written about Philosophy of Accounting?  Sure.  Is this such an article?  No, it's not. It is, in all aspects that discuss the subject matter of the article, essay, opinion and OR. TJRC (talk) 18:38, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Suggestion The objection to this article is that it's all an original-research essay, without drawing from any reliable secondary sources on the subject. Some have made the observation that it is at least theoretically possible that this article could be rewritten in a way that actually sourced from reliable sources on the topic.  I propose that we close this discussion as no consensus without prejudice to renominaton, and allow Pkearney and some of the other proponents 30 days or so to turn this into a non-OR piece of work.  If it's still a mess, it can be relisted.  I'd rather the proponents devote their energies to improving the article than to defending it in its present form.  TJRC (talk) 19:11, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Counter-Suggestion: Naah, in spite of talk's encouraging words - I think its not worth the effort. The fun of doing it collaboratively vanished and I would rather pursue my interest privately. The criticism is pretty aggressibe though - I see a lot of very mediocre and badly written pages out there - do they all get this level of roasting? Anyway - kill the page. I think you are right it is OR. Pkearney (talk) 09:59, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * You can see a day's worth of nominations at WP:AFD/Y. It is not unusual for many of these to be impetuous, not having considered the article properly per the deletion process.  Our editing policy encourages us to assist and the article rescue squadron tries to help in this way. Colonel Warden (talk) 16:37, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete original research amounting to an essay and a content fork to boot from Accounting.Bali ultimate (talk) 22:18, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete I'm happy to agree that there are philosophical presuppositions behind accounting--and the article's observations on ontology and ethics are the right places to start--but that the article is not about "philosophical presuppositions behind accounting" but about "philosophy of accounting." Notice the reference at the end to Philosophy of Law, Philosophy of Mathematics, and Philosophy of Economics: these are actual fields of scholarship with such things as university curriculums, journals, and so forth.  There is no "philosophy of accounting" in the academic curriculum, nor are the journals which address this topic.  Perhaps there should be!  But there are not.  This is a field which doesn't exist--though, again, perhaps it should!  But when it comes to fields of scholarship, Wikipedia covers fields that actually exist, not just ones that should.  Now perhaps it should be renamed "philosophical presuppositions behind accounting" (which the article's author seems to really mean). But then we need some secondary literature on that topic.  Here the reference to accounting standards and the like is a reference only to primary sources.  In other words, for the article to stay, there needs to be someone somewhere making the same kinds of arguments the article makes.  And that, I'm afraid, doesn't seem to exist.  (Or, if it does, no claim has been made for it.)  Another way to put it: can we find please, just one philosophical source?  Have any professional philosophers written on the topic?!  Speaking as an actual academic in philosophy, I might suggest that the answer just might be "no". Tb (talk) 22:44, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Please see Philosophical perspectives on accounting. Several of the authors have studied academic philosophy and one of them is a professional philosopher. Q.E.D. Colonel Warden (talk) 23:16, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * And that is one "Colin Lyas", whose work seems principally to be in aesthetics, and is not even listed on the faculty at Lancaster where the book you refer to has him. And which isn't even cited in the article!  If we got rid of the O.R. in the article, what would remain?  The boilerplate silliness on fields of philosophy reads like a primer, and the O.R. of the article's reflections on accounting standards is no good.  So let's hear what Lyas has to say.  Is there a second person who has written about this field from a philosophical perspective?  And why doesn't the article cite them?  Here's what I would like to see, to change my vote to a "keep": change the article to actually base its text on actual secondary texts on the field it describes, and drop all the primary and OR references, and see what remains.  If the result is a real article, then great.  Otherwise, bzzt.  Tb (talk) 23:46, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Having found a source of the type which you requested, I have already started rewriting the article to make good use of it. But your demands seem excesssive in the context of AFD and moving the goalposts is hardly sporting.  The notability of the topic seems well-established and so work upon the article should not be subject to an arbitrary and capricious deadline. Colonel Warden (talk) 00:04, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I remain unconvinced that the field actually exists as an academic field of study, which is exactly how the article presents it, with its comparisons to Philosophy of Law, Philosophy of Mathematics, and Philosophy of Economics. It's no trouble at all to remove the OR bits right away--I can even do it for you, if you like.  Then, if there's enough now for an article confined to what the secondary sources actually say, well and good.  If not, then it's no harm to delete the article now, without prejudice to re-creating it once there are sufficient secondary sources to base an article on.  Right now, the article is based on zero secondary sources. Tb (talk) 00:21, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The article makes no claims that the topic is an academic field of study. The main context for the topic is the establishment of accounting principles and standards and these are commonly discussed in the journals and textbooks of the accounting profession.  The article currently emphasises this context and so there is no distortion.  My impression is that you are viewing the matter from the perspective of an academic philosopher but this is too narrow.  Wikipedia is not an academic work - it is a general encyclopaedia.  The philosophical thoughts of accountants may be beneath your notice but they are of some immediate significance in the real world  - see Mark to market, for a practical example.
 * The cited discussion of Mark-to-Market shows that accounting is extremely important, and its rules matter. It does not show any philosophical discussion of that.  (There is no subject called "Philosophy of firearms", despite the fact that firearms are very important and can kill people.)  But it's pointless to debate here.  Better is to fix the article, and then see whether the fixed article is satisfactory.  I'll do my half: removing the OR and the boilerplate not really relevant to the topic, and then you can provide sources for the rest.  Tb (talk) 00:41, 5 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment. I've taken the initiave to clean up the article considerably, removing the (often incorrect) philosophical biolerplate, the empty citations of standards documents without connection to the philosophical issues announced in the lead, and so forth.  I've placed some key citation-needed tags to request citation of the key claims which go to the root of the question of this article's suitability for the encyclopedia.  Especially, we need a citation for the claim that the substance-over-form question is of philosohical import, and the claim that the rules for reporting raise epistemological concerns.  What is needed here--let me be perfectly clear--is not an argument that they are connected (that would be original research, but rather, a citation to a secondary verifiable source which asserts the connections in question.  Tb (talk) 01:09, 5 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.