Well, but just thinking about it in terms of the academic disciplines involved... There is a stupid amount of expertise available in very specific areas.
The main problem I'm focusing on is the fact that the SE moderators don't seem to understand philosophy either, and they expect this to be a Q&A site with truth
Does this community intend to support potentially original philosophical inquiry, or only discussion of previously published philosophies and philosophers? In short, are we going to do philosophy, or discuss philosophy?
As an example, some philosophers have made reference to what may be consider...
There are four non-duplication related reasons to suggest closure of a question:
off topic
subjective and argumentative
not a real question
too localized
Should questions ever be closed for any of these reasons on a site about philosophy, wherein argument is seemingly inherent and everything ...
Particularly the latter, in which there was a long discussion in the comments of the answer provided by the SE thing
I mean, I personally had the discussion :-p
I personally don't really care, I just want a decision to be made that satisfies the community, and I don't think heavy-handed moderation is going to do it
If this site is intended for discussion of philosophy, then perhaps it would be appropriate to strive for academic answers to questions, even when the questions are not academic themselves. However, as an autodidact whose understanding of philosophy comes from reading and thinking, with a lack of...
Though I've no idea what the answer should be. I suppose it's only consequential to at least tolerate amateurish answers, since the target audience is the "general audience of the internet"
In a perfect world, It'd be answers written by experts, but in such a way that amateurs can understand them
@JosephSpiros that wasn't my intention. I was thinking of someone well versed in one specific field, and recognized by their peers to be a good source of explanation.
(No, I am not saying academia NEVER implies persuasive, and I really wish notes like this weren't required in philosophy-related forums, but woah people can be crazy. Not you necessarily, but you know.)
@StefanoPalazzo Well, even in that case... I find it difficult given that you said "specific field", and I'm wondering about the entire Philosophy SE.
@StefanoPalazzo Unless you think philosophy, or whatever subset of it addressed by the Philosophy SE, is specific? :)
Certainly, there seems to be a good subset of the burgeoning community interested in making this a History of Philosophy site.
I'm very interested to see what happens, either way.
And I am an amateur if there ever was one :-) The only book I read is the one my old philosophy teacher wrote, that's all. I don't know Hegel from Nagel ;-)
And that is why I am hell-bent on defining what the hell we're talking about, both because, well, I like metaphysics, and because I like metaphysics. :)
What evidence would you even begin to look at if you were trying to prove or disprove an invisible entity as God?
I often ask atheists what kind of evidence that they would need in order to accept it as evidence of God. I have yet to get an answer.
Metaphysics is like the quantum mechanics of physics. It's where everything falls apart and everyone starts to fight. But it's also where all the interesting stuff (in my opinion) happens.
I participated in the beta of atheism.se (which got shut down because nobody was using it in the end). When ever a topic came up that was hard to answer (like the question above), it descended into anarchy and argumentation. I'm guessing there's a real possibility the same thing is going to happen here
@StefanoPalazzo I don't care if people vote questions down, but closing them annoys me. How exactly is an open difficult question going to hurt the community? It's a database record, nothing more!
@StefanoPalazzo I don't really think Ubuntu and Philosophy, as topics of discussion, are really all that similar, unless you go into the Philosophy of Ubuntu, of course. And anyway, it's kind of obvious what AskUbuntu is intended for. A Q&A site about philosophy, not entirely.
While I do think that Q&A about philosophy COULD be clear, in that we only allow discussion on already-published/recognized/accepted philosophies and philosophers, I think a lot of the people sponsoring the site in the first place saw the potential for this platform to support new, interesting discussions.
@StefanoPalazzo I agree that closure has its uses, I'm not arguing that it shouldn't be allowed. I just want some consensus on what we're about in the beta period before everything falls apart, and some questions that should be closed aren't, and questions that shouldn't are, seemingly haphazardly and based on whoever happens to be on the site at the moment, without any real consensus.
The core use case of a stack exchange is people asking real questions they need answered, and other experts helping them with their question. Anything else gets short shrift from me... (Says @mxyzplk)
It's a bit less meaningful, on a philosophy SE, to talk about "questions based on real problems that you've encountered", and "questions that have one correct answer"
If this site is intended for discussion of philosophy, then perhaps it would be appropriate to strive for academic answers to questions, even when the questions are not academic themselves. However, as an autodidact whose understanding of philosophy comes from reading and thinking, with a lack of...
I personally find it... well, I'm not sure if it's annoying or amusing... that all you academics, you upstarts, with a few hundred years of your system, are assuming ownership of all of human knowledge and wisdom. :-p
What evidence would you even begin to look at if you were trying to prove or disprove an invisible entity as God?
I often ask atheists what kind of evidence that they would need in order to accept it as evidence of God. I have yet to get an answer.
Closure stops anyone else from coming and saying, hey, maybe here's a way to think about it, or here's something more you could read about to try and find an answer.
so if people, even if they're not academics, just stick to the most basic principles of academic research, we should be absolutely fine. Back up assertions with evidence, cite, and don't claim original research unless there's extraordinarily good reason.
And I think some questions, particularly by non-academics, but perhaps by academics as well, might be so vague, and/or complex, so as to require a long description of a problem before an answer can be provided.
While that might be tedious to read, you don't have to read it, you can even downvote it, but don't close it as subjective just because the person is assuming a point of view.
We won't get those experts, and we certainly won't keep them if we treat this like a freshman seminar.
@JosephSpiros even if they don't do the reading? If they insult you by assuming they know the answers without even being willing to understand the question?
And I'll be sad if you're right in the end, but that's okay.
I HAVE tried to ask my meta questions such that we can have proper discussions on these things, I certainly don't want to dominate anything if I'm in the minority.
But, yes, I also personally have my own desires for the community.
Meta meta meta meta meta.
I will say that when I sponsored the site, I knew the chances of it falling apart were high, so, at least I'm in the position of being surprised in just about any other outcome.
So, I guess I won't be sad if you're right.
It just won't be as much fun for me. :)
@BrianBallsunStanton After some reading I'm seeing your point on the purpose of the private beta period.
I do think that we should try harder to be less snobby and try to edit our earliest questions to be a bit more clear and up-to-snuff. I do think the guy asking all the God-related questions was pushed away rather... uselessly.
We don't need to close them.
I guess my concern is that if a large enough proportion of the people in the private beta aren't going to ask the pro-level questions, that if the pros close rather than edit, we won't have an attractive site when we hit public beta.
And there really aren't very many questions, and a disturbing percentage of them are closed.
What evidence would you even begin to look at if you were trying to prove or disprove an invisible entity as God?
I often ask atheists what kind of evidence that they would need in order to accept it as evidence of God. I have yet to get an answer.
Include a definition of god as omnipotent and omniscient, and say that since an omnipotent god can do anything, is there any experiment that can lead us to say that god does not exist?
Well, the theological construction of the omni-* words changes
and the basis of "experiment" and interaction changes by theology
I'd respond with "your question is invalid because it doesn't present a falsifable statement, therefore we can make no statements about facts and your presupposed divinity"
but that's because you used the term experiment.
(And I'm a philosopher of science)
Theological questions are fine. Generic "god" questions are boring.
And at a certain point, the theological questions go off to their own site.
But asking about $God is not a useful nor a real question that is answerable by experts
Yes, I am well aware of the utility of a concept that fits what you're calling domain knowledge, but determining whether someone is domain aware is hard.
You are doing it intuitively.
And I expect well articulated arguments, not hand-wavey intuition.
But you ARE using your intuition, and not something that we can put in the FAQ (except perhaps, Brian knows best), about what made THAT a bad question. So am I.
This is giving me some nice thoughts on how to design software for handling these problems, though, so if this doesn't all work out I'll have a use for starkravingsane.com
I don't understand the meaning of this oft-quoted quotation of Hume's in On Reason, namely his saying that "reason is a slave to the passions." What exactly does he mean by that ? Is it simply that reason is antecedent to a deeper moral sense? Is it equivalent to the maxim today that "science c...
How precisely has it been pinned down what it is that humans possess that makes us concious which computers do not currently have?
Can we ever build a computer to have conciousness? Can it be a turing machine?
What are the requirements of a 'thing', such that it has the capacity to gain conciou...
I would love to discuss some Phil-AI, especially as I have some experts to call on. (A good friend of mine just finished their masters in a review of the neurological debate)
But A LOT of these questions are being deemed by you to be not private-beta material, and I'm worried... what if there just aren't enough people for those tricky/interesting questions to show up?
I mean, we have a few, but if there's only a few, it might make little difference?
(For posterity: I do not agree with you, because I think that basic ontological problems are extremely important and will be a major part of the reference material used in future well-written questions. And I don't see any problem with making that obvious during private beta.)
What evidence would you even begin to look at if you were trying to prove or disprove an invisible entity as God?
I often ask atheists what kind of evidence that they would need in order to accept it as evidence of God. I have yet to get an answer.
I don't understand the meaning of this oft-quoted quotation of Hume's in On Reason, namely his saying that "reason is a slave to the passions." What exactly does he mean by that ? Is it simply that reason is antecedent to a deeper moral sense? Is it equivalent to the maxim today that "science c...
How precisely has it been pinned down what it is that humans possess that makes us concious which computers do not currently have?
Can we ever build a computer to have conciousness? Can it be a turing machine?
What are the requirements of a 'thing', such that it has the capacity to gain conciou...
The Symposium
The Symposium