Talk:Ontology

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"Types of theories" redundant?

It seems to mostly restate stuff from the previous section, the individual terms are important but it seems like the article would flow better with all of it in one section, yay or nay? Orchastrattor (talk) 16:32, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Hello Orchastrattor and thanks for bring up this issue. Correct me if I'm wrong but I can't find most of the claims in the section "Types of ontologies" in the section "Overview". The overview section provides an overview of many of the different concepts used by ontologists. The types section explains what ontological theories there are. Some theories employ the concepts explained earlier but do not just repeat their definition. Another factor would be that both sections are already quite long. so merging them into one even longer section might not be a good idea Phlsph7 (talk) 08:31, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Some of the "types" are mentioned by name, like categoricalism or bundle theories. It's redundant in the sense that splitting them up creates this effect where reading through section by section it brings up all of the basic concepts for one field of ontology or another under "overview", then moves on to different field, only to have to bring it up again for the "types" a section later. Merging could actually make the overall length shorter by working the actual discourse and history into the main topics. Orchastrattor (talk) 21:51, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

If you are concerned about redundancy, I think the better approach would be to make some changes the other way round. For example, you could take the short passage on bundle theory in the subsection "Properties and relations" and use it to expand the subsection "Constituent ontologies vs blob theories". I'm not sure that there are other cases like this. As I see it, categoricalism is a theory of the nature of properties rather than a full-blown ontology. I would suggest to keep it in the subsection "Properties and relations". Phlsph7 (talk) 08:43, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Native American Ontologies

@Phlsph7 Hi there, I added the Native American Ontology section under history because I found that if sections like Greek or Hindu could be included under the page then it would also apply to Native Americans. The anthropology subpage was not correctly sourced and didn't properly represent Native American ontologies. Most of the scholars that I have sourced are not anthropologists, and source 115 comes from Glen Coulthard who is in fact a philosopher. Barkiechaser (talk) 22:25, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello! This is a very high-level article, and representation of topics should reflect their representation in the whole body of reliable sources. This does not rule out additional material relating to Native American ontologies, but one would have to demonstrate a change in proportionality. There is certainly room for improvement on the subpage like you describe, and it would be very much appreciate if the improvements could be made there. Remsense诉 00:47, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello Barkiechaser and thanks for the work you have put into writing these paragraphs. The problem is not that they lack sources but that the sources fail to establish the importance of this topic to the wide field of ontology in general. For example, I had a look at two overview sources of ontology (The entries "Ontology" in the MacMillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Oxford Companion of Philosophy) and they don't even mention them while they include a detailed discussion of the ancient Greeks. This indicates that a detailed discussion of Native American ontologies does not fit into this article. I added a sentence to the subsection "Anthropology" to at least mention Native American ontologies and give the reader a high-level impression. You might consider adding more detailed information to articles more closely associated with this particular tradition, like Native American religions or Native American studies. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:47, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Good morning, thank you guys both for the quick and clear responses. I understand the issues with proportionality and the weight given to Native Americans under this section, especially since the other sections aren't given the same amount of detail on a page meant for a wider overview of ontology. I think it would be fair to still include Native American Ontologies within the history section, but limit the information included and summarize it better. With that being said, I don't think an encyclopedia from 60 years ago should indicate or be a justification for what should or should not be included within this page. I don't want to imply that the encyclopedia is invalid simply because it's slightly dated, also considering that the Oxford Encyclopedia is from the 90s. But by the same logic, Hindu ontologies should also be removed from the page as neither Encyclopedia mentions them in any detail.

It is not surprising to me that both Encyclopedias go into extensive detail about Greek philosophies, seeing as they have been very influential to European/Western ideas of thinking. My biggest motivation to create this section is to express that ontology should not be limited to Western thought and represent Native American thought, which has been historically silenced and not properly represented anywhere else on Wikipedia. I think removing all information on Native American ontologies, and placing them under pages which are centered around Native Americans, would exacerbate these silences.

Furthermore, I don't think the anthropology subsection does an adequate job of representing Native American thought. Even with the addition you made, reducing Native American thought to simply "animism" paints a skewed picture of complex and long-existing ontologies. Including Native American thought under anthropology feels demeaning especially considering its location within the page. Source [199] only mentions the word “indigenous” 4 times, all of them have specifically to do with animism and the way it relates to cartesian dualism. “Native” or “Native American” isn’t mentioned, and all references to “Indigenous” aren’t specific to one specific indigenous community. Source [200] doesn’t mention the term “indigenous” or “native” once. It only serves as a reference to the ontological turn, which is mentioned but doesn’t go any further into indigenous or Native American perspectives on ontology.

Sorry for the long message, I wanted to make sure I was clear about my intentions and justifications with these edits, and why I think they're important to mention within the page. I suggest a middle ground where the anthropology subsection is removed for the reasons listed above, and the Native American Ontology section is condensed with regard to Wikipedia's rules on proportionality. Barkiechaser (talk) 17:55, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm a little confused about what you mean with 60 years ago and the 90s. The works I was referring to were published in 2006 and 2005, as cited in the article. Apologies if that was not clear. The corresponding ISBNs are 0-02-865787-X and 0-19-926479-1 in case that helps. Which "Oxford Encyclopedia" are you referring to? Given that we now have 2 high-quality overview sources that speak against a substantial inclusion of Native American ontologies, are there any high-quality overview sources that speak in its favor? There are many indigenous ontologies besides Native American ontologies and even more non-indigenous ontologies. This means we have to be picky and follow reliable sources rather than original research in deciding what to include. On a short look, the sources [199] (Heywood 2012) and [200] (Ludwig & Weiskopf 2019) seem to support the claims they are used for. I'll look into them in more detail when I get the time. I don't understand why you regard it as "demeaning" for Native American thought to be discussed in the section "Anthropology". Phlsph7 (talk) 07:03, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Changes to the article

I was thinking about implementing changes to this article with the hope of moving it in the direction of GA status. The article has 6 unreferenced paragraphs and the following maintenance tags: 1x More citations needed, 1x Cleanup, 1x page needed, 6x citation needed. I think it needs more information on various topics that are either not discussed or only in passing. The overview section should have a subsection on the concept of being itself, including the contrast with non-being. The different branches of ontology should also be explained somewhere, like applied ontology, formal ontology, social ontology, and metaontology. The discussion of different ontological theories in the section "Types of ontologies" should probably be expanded to include ontological deflationism, monism vs dualism, materialism vs idealism, platonism vs nominalism, en- vs perdurantism, and modal realism.

There have been various ontological turns in different fields that should be mentioned somewhere, like science and technology studies, geography, and sociology. The methods of ontologists should also be discussed somewhere, not just philosophical methods but also ontological engineering in computer/information science. Other topics to be considered include the connections between ontology and logic, theology, and the natural sciences.

The article is already long as it is so these new topics can't be explained in much detail and some of the current contents would need to be shortened by summarizing. This pertains specifically to the section "Other ontological topics", which contains an assorted collection of subsections, many of which focus on minor topics. The history section is quite long; it could be split into its own article "History of ontology" while retaining a shorter summary here.

Various smaller adjustments are needed but they can be addressed later since the ones mentioned so far will already involve a lot of work to implement. I was hoping to get some feedback on these ideas and possibly other suggestions. I still have to do some research to work out the details. After that, I would start implementing them one at a time but it will probably take a while to address all the points. Phlsph7 (talk) 11:55, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Ontology/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Phlsph7 (talk · contribs) 12:40, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Lisha2037 (talk · contribs) 22:46, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello. I will be reviewing this page as a good article nominee. Give me a day or two to go through the whole article and get back to you with my feedback. Yours.

Hello Lisha2037 and thanks for reviewing this article! Phlsph7 (talk) 07:37, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

@Phlsph7 Thanks for your work on this. Just one more further comment in the review section. I also wanted to suggest, but it’s not part of the GA criteria, it’s the balance in the History The section seems to give disproportionate emphasis to Western philosophy, while non-Western philosophies (such as Chinese and Indian) are mentioned briefly. For balance, the contributions of non-Western philosophers could be explored in more depth to match the treatment given to their Western counterparts. I can see in the History page there’s mention of Native American approaches, which is briefly mentioned previously in the article. Lisha2037 (talk) 18:38, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

I added a short expansion to the history section. Indigenous ontologies have their own paragraph in the section "Related fields" in relation to anthropology, including Native American ontologies. If there are other specific theories you have in mind, I can try to include them. However, we should be careful about this type of expansion: most overview sources, like the article "Ontology, History of" in the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy, have little to no coverage of this, see WP:PROPORTION. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:16, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Looks like it’s ready for a pass. Lisha2037 (talk) 12:22, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Review

Table

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	Many readers will not have a background in philosophy, so simplifying some of the dense academic language is essential. If the language can’t be modified, I find providing examples helps in explaining the concept, which is seen done in several instances throughout the article. Such as "Ontology examines what all entities have in common and how they are divided into fundamental classes, known as categories," simplify it to: “Ontology studies what all things have in common and how they can be grouped into basic types, such as living things, objects, and ideas.”
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.
2. Verifiable with no original research, as shown by a source spot-check:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).	Great work on the sources.
	2c. it contains no original research.
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.	There’s two high possibility checks returned and both sources look to have copied information from the Wikipedia article itself and not the other way around. The first is a LinkedIn post and the second is a lawyer’s blog.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.	My only comment to work on before passing is the readability of the article.
	7. Overall assessment.

Notes

1. Overall Structure:

• I can see you have done substantial work across several FA and GA, especially in the Philosophy department. I was wondering why some articles are structured in different ways compared to others. Do you take a different approach to specific topics? Biographies, which I tend to do, almost always follow the same sections with customizations here and there to the subjects life and work.

  That's a good question. There are some commonalities for this type of article, like sections to define the field of inquiry and to discuss its branches, history, methods, and applications to other fields. Unlike biographies, there is no one standard format for how to structure them and different reliable overview sources often use different approaches. I usually try to follow the sources on the subject in question while aiming to find a logical and accessible way to arranged the different subtopics into a coherent article. For example, sometimes it makes sense to discuss concepts and schools of thought separately while such a division would artificial in other cases. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:15, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

• Based of the Featured Article Philosophy, it would be preferable to have the History section earlier in the article for the sake of readability and flow of the content; either as 2 or 3. This isn’t necessary, as you can see that Metaphysics also has its History later on, but for this article I felt a lot of the information would be more in context if the History section came first.

  The logical place for the history is usually either the beginning or the end. There are advantages and disadvantages to having history last but I think either way would be possible possible. One advantage of having it at the end is that all the main concepts have already been introduced, like being, universals, and dualism. This way, the reader has already some familiarity with them and it's possible to avoid lengthy explanations inside the history section. Many overview sources, like the articles "Ontology" in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy, also start with the definition and the basic concepts and do not give much weight to the history. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:15, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for explaining. Since there is no Specialized layout for Philosophy articles in Wikipedia, this is not grounds for a fail. Lisha2037 (talk) 13:35, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

2. Lead

• It would help to add that’s it’s a sub-discipline of metaphysics.

  Done. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:15, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

• Since it’s a summary of the article itself, a sentence or two should be added about the Branches section. I only see applied ontology mentioned.

  Done. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:15, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

3.Definition

• The word etymology should be used somewhere in this section. Either as Definition and Etymology or in the body when discussing the root of the word.

  Done. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:51, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

• The phrase “It can also mean a conceptual scheme or inventory of a particular domain" might be explained in simpler terms for broader readability. I wouldn’t assume what an inventory of a particular domain would mean.

  I kept the terms since they are also used later in the article. I added a short explanation of each term instead. It's probably still a little abstract but I hope that makes it clearer. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:51, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for clarifying. Would you also be able to add what a particular domain would imply. To a lay person it may refer to variety of things like biological domain or geographical domain. Wikipedia has a few articles surrounding domains too. Lisha2037 (talk) 18:15, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  Done. I only added one example since this is discussed in more detail later in the article. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:17, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

• The Lowe definition states that ontology is a branch of metaphysics but it’s later stated in the section that ontology is related to metaphysics while also later saying that it’s also a sub discipline. Could we word it in a way that makes it clear that ontology is a subfield of metaphysics.

  This point is a little difficult since different philosophers characterize the relation between metaphysics and ontology differently. Some say that ontology is a subdiscipline of metaphysics. Others say that metaphysics and ontology are the same discipline or that they are two separate disciplines with distinct topics. I reformulated the text to make the the subdiscipline-characterization more explicit. It's probably more influential than the other characterizations. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:15, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for updating. Lisha2037 (talk) 18:22, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

4.Basic Concepts

• When stating that being contrasts with nothingness, is there a philosophical term for that, such as nihilism; it would help to add that to the article.

  None that I'm aware of. The point of this passage is primarly to give the reader an idea of how general the concept of being is. Nihilism is a related term. It usually means that a specific type of thing does not exist. For example, moral nihilism says that moral facts do not exist. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:15, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

• Simplifying the language and breaking down concepts into shorter, clearer sentences would enhance readability. For example, "Critics of this view argue that an entity without being cannot have any properties, meaning that being cannot be a property since properties presuppose being" is a bit convoluted. A more straightforward explanation would be helpful here.

  I implemented your suggestion and went through the section one more time to find simpler formulations. Please let me know if you encounter other passages that are difficult to understand. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:15, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for updating. Personally, as a journalist, I think many words could be simplified in the article but I don’t want that to be at the cost of not demonstrating the proper philosophical terms or theories. Lisha2037 (talk) 18:24, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

• Is Berkeley referring to immaterialism here, which is the philosophy he was known for? Would be helpful to add the name of the term here.

  Done. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:15, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

• I would take out merely when referring to phenomena.

  Done. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:15, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Ok thanks for clarifying. Lisha2037 (talk) 18:25, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Crisco 1492 talk 20:14, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that ontologists disagree on whether you have temporal parts?

• Source: Costa, Damiano. "Persistence in Time". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. § 1a. The Basics.

• ALT1: ... that in George Berkeley's ontology, "to be is to be perceived"? Source: Van Inwagen, Peter (2024). Metaphysics (5 ed.). Routledge. p. 280. ISBN 978-1-032-40916-0.
• ALT2: ... that according to some ontologists, everything is one? Source: Schaffer, Jonathan (2018). "Monism". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. § 2.1 Overview. Retrieved 9 June 2024.
• Reviewed: Template:Did_you_know_nominations/Gilbert_Wilson_(geologist)

Improved to Good Article status by Phlsph7 (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 24 past nominations.

Phlsph7 (talk) 16:24, 24 October 2024 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Looks good to me! I prefer ALT0 or ALT2. Nice work on getting it to GA, Phlsph7! paul2520 💬 17:22, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

• @Phlsph7 and Paul2520: Might I suggest?
  • ALT3: ... that ontologists disagree on whether abstract concepts like the color green are real?

theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 10:21, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

@Theleekycauldron: It could work. There is a slight terminological concern since the disagreements focus more on universals and abstract objects while ALT3 talks about abstract concepts. However, I think it should be possible to find sources on that expression as well. A different way to cover the realism-antirealism debate would be

ALT4: ... that ontologists disagree on whether numbers are real?

Phlsph7 (talk) 12:18, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

I like that a lot :) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 12:23, 8 November 2024 (UTC)