Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Philosophy/geographic divisions

This came about as a result of comments and work done by in Epistemology. I support the underlying concept that the philosophy articles generally are biased towards Western thought. But I think that creating a series of articles on Eastern Epistemology], Eastern ontology, Eastern Logic and so on would be quite counterproductive. It would serve only to sideline these important traditions rather than to bring new insight to the reader.

Instead, I would like to see a policy that commends placing reference to the Eastern traditions at the same level as Western schools of thought. I'd like to see Hindu and Jain Epistemology treated in much the same way as Realism and Relativism. Banno 21:29, 5 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I know little about eastern philosophy and less about western philosophy, but here are my 2 cents anyway. I think there are obstacles in merging the two. Western philosophy, the terms it uses, it's concepts and the way it's study flows, the parts emphasised etc, has evolved eurocentrically. Unless we completely relook at it and redo it, if we treat eastern philosophy along with western philosophy we will end up speaking to eastern concepts from a western context and using western terminology. So it'll be like nudging western to be able to squeeze eastern in in an unfamiliar background. It will continue to be sidelined. I don't know if I have articulated it well - but I hope you get my point. I think it's a worthy cause to marry the two but needs to be done carefully. All the more difficult since you have very few people that can speak comfortably in both settings. Of course, again, I don't much about the topic so I may be completely off.. I would love to see them treated well and not sidelined as they have been so far.. I wish you all the best! --Pranathi 17:01, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I entirely agree that the discussion needs to be done with great care. I do not think we should advocate merging the two, rather that we should not force the distinction, especially where it is not needed. "Marriage" is a much better term than "merge" - thanks. Banno 19:35, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Another possibility is to make the generic philosophy articles, philosophy, epistemology, and somesuch, truly generic overviews of global methods which link to more developed articles on specific approaches. For example, epistemology, if it mentions the analytic/continental (or Eastern/Western) "split" at all, could just mention it as one way of looking at the way philosophy has developed, and rather than focus on either tradition as such, focus on specific philosophers and specific approaches.  -Seth Mahoney 04:05, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I was looking at epistemology, and this is a bigger problem than I thought. Have a peek at that article and notice all the prominent 'p' nonsense (along with all the "justified true belief" nonsense), something particular to one very specific approach to epistemology. -Seth Mahoney 04:13, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
 * In my opinion that is entirely appropriate. Analytic and continental philosophy are entirely different disciplines sharing a name and little else. It is a bit like trying to merge the article on evolution by natural selection with the article on Social Darwinism. I think we should categorise continental philosophy by philosopher, and analytic philosophy by topic. It doesn't really make much sense to mix them together.
 * As for eastern "philosophy." I am sure this opinion won't be popular, but I think it should treated as a religion rather than as part of philosophy. It is only really philosophy in the pop culture definition of philosophy. If we count it as philosophy on Wikipedia, we might as well include an article on Arsene Wenger's "philosophy." Misodoctakleidist 21:39, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Classical approaches
Another analogous problem is the apparent division between classical Greek ideas and contemporary ideas (something decreasingly appropriate, especially in ethics), and the scarcity of info in the main articles about Greek approaches. -Seth Mahoney 04:13, 3 December 2005 (UTC)