Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Postanalytic philosophy

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 keep. Star Mississippi 02:01, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Postanalytic philosophy

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This school of thought does not appear to exist. The article has existed for 17 years and still we have seen no sources explicitly about a topic that we could summarize in a Wikipedia article. Ben Kovitz (talk) 16:11, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. Ben Kovitz (talk) 16:11, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Everything that Ben said matches my understanding and over many years, no one has come forth to offer contrary sources. JustinBlank (talk) 21:20, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep It has many sources in GSCholar, showing it does exist. Did we do a BEFORE? Oaktree b (talk) 23:17, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that's a better reason than anything in the actual article. The few search results I turned up, however, appeared to very possibility be using it more neutrally with a hyphen. That would make it more like, say, post-Kantian philosophy, which is a meaningful description, but does not denote an actual movement as does, e.g., German Idealism. (The former, accordingly, does not have a Wikipedia page; the latter does.)

Does anyone care about this enough to actually look through those search results to see if there are any supporting citations that could be added to meet the relevant notability criteria for the article? PatrickJWelsh (talk) 00:49, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Google Scholar turns up many uses of the term "postanalytic philosophy" but is there an actual school of thought here—a topic—that a Wikipedia page could summarize, or just an adjective that people apply to a variety of different things? A cursory look at search results suggested to me that people are largely coining the word anew each time, not describing a common topic. Someone more familiar with the field might know better, though. If I could see a distinct topic here, then I would support keeping the article. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 08:20, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Looking through Google Scholar, I managed to find a number of books that cover this topic [1][2][3][4], all of which use the term in the same way. Specifically, they use it to refer to a group of philosophers who started within the analytic tradition but came to question and deconstruct some of its central assumptions. Philosophers particularly associated with the movement seem to be Rorty, Davidson, Putnam, Quine, McDowell and Wittgenstein. There are also papers covering the idea, e.g. [5]. Alduin2000 (talk) 12:08, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Assuming that this article is to be retained, is there a way to transpose this discussion into the Talk page so that it is preserved for future editors?

Because the page needs some work, and the GoogleScholar references might be useful. PatrickJWelsh (talk) 13:52, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
After a deletion discussion is closed, {{Old XfD multi}} is generally added to the top of the talk page which links to the AfD discussion. I can also add {{refideas}} to the talk page with the sources I listed if that's useful. As to transposing the whole discussion, I'm not sure. Alduin2000 (talk) 14:17, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds good. I just want future editors to know that the page, in its present state, was so badly sourced as to have been nominated for deletion—and also to have some suggested resources for fixing it. PatrickJWelsh (talk) 14:45, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @Alduin2000. I am close to being convinced by what you said that there might actually be a distinct, definable topic here that could be summarized, not merely an adjective that hazily applies to a congeries of unrelated writings. Can you find a source with an authoritative definition of the topic? Your definition sounds really good, but is that really established in the literature? I looked at "Butler and Postanalytic Philosophy". It seems to quasi-define postanalytic philosophy as "a conception of philosophy as an amphibious humanistic discipline, at home with both the natural sciences and cultural theory", followed by an extremely vague and unclear quotation. I can't tell what that means, but it seems very different from the definition that you inferred. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 07:53, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi BenKovitz, the "Butler and Postanalytic Philosophy" paper states that these thinkers are "internal critics of the Anglo-American analytic tradition" (emphasis added) which I take to be broadly equivalent to the definition I provided. The paper then goes onto define some positive characteristics of some postanalytic philosophers (e.g. the quote you give). However, according to the paper "postanalytic thinkers are not clustered together because each of them contributes to a fully defined and articulated philosophical tradition" so I think these positive characteristics are not as relevant as a definition. Even more explicitly, the Postanalytic and Metacontinental book says that postanalytic is defined "by what it stands against" rather than what it stands for. I think a good definition is given in that book: "The term 'postanalytic' has been used to characterize the work of thinkers who, having started out in the mainstream analytic tradition, came to place in question some of its central presuppositions" (the book also later goes on to characterise postanalytic philosophy as a "deconstructive approach"). If you would like quotes from the other books which give a similar understanding of the term I can provide them if that's useful. Alduin2000 (talk) 08:58, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is looking good! Wow, I had read that whole paragraph from the Giladi paper but thought the point might have been that "postanalytic philosophy" is not really a thing, though that was far from clear. Now I think I see, though: postanalytic philosophy is a hodgepodge collection of thought by philosophers who started in analytic philosophy and turned against it, for a variety of reasons—i.e. internal critics of analytic philosophy. Is that about right? I can see how that could be a topic that Wikipedia could summarize. Could you go ahead and edit the article itself to include an appropriate definition, and maybe include some specific propositions about which postanalytic philosophy differs from analytic philosophy? Or, if they differ regarding methods or goals (or something else) rather than propositions, could you spell out the specific methods or goals (or something else)? Then our debate here will not just save from deletion a vague article that seems to have no topic, but make the article clearly have a topic. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 11:00, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also, what led you to infer that Wittgenstein is associated with postanalytic philosophy? I understand Wittgenstein to be one of the founders of analytic philosophy. I ask this only to verify whether there is an actual school of thought here, or just people using the word "postanalytic" to designate a variety of different, perhaps contradictory things—i.e. to see whether there is an actual topic here. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 08:08, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, this is what the sources I read said. To be clear, they seem to be talking about the later Wittgenstein rather than early Wittgenstein. Alduin2000 (talk) 09:00, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be fair, then, to say that "postanalytic" Wittgenstein is not the same as "postanalytic philosophy" in the sense used when calling Richard Rorty "postanalytic"? —Ben Kovitz (talk) 09:49, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think that later Wittgenstein is postanalytic in the same way. I think I read in one of the sources that postanalytic philosophy has some connection to ordinary language philosophy which obviously was opposed to at least some of the earlier philosophers in the analytic tradition and is very much associated with the later Wittgenstein. In this sense, Wittgenstein is a figure that starts to question the analytic tradition from within. Sure, there are differences, Rorty and Putnam seem to be associated with postanalytic philosophy through their neopragmatism rather than any commitment to ordinary language philosophy. I think Quine was actually opposed to ordinary language philosophy; his inclusion is due to his criticisms of logical positivism, particularly the analytic-synthetic distinction. This just highlights that postanalytic is really best defined by what it's opposed to than some kind of unified positive project. Exactly as you say above is my understanding:postanalytic philosophy is a hodgepodge collection of thought by philosophers who started in analytic philosophy and turned against it, for a variety of reasons. I am not an expert on this though, so I don't know how much I can spell this out in the article, although I'll add the Postanalytic and Metacontinental definition at least. [EDIT 16:14, 12 September 2022 (UTC): I have updated the lead using the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy to provide the definition instead.] Alduin2000 (talk) 14:44, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep "Article has no sources" is not a valid reason for deletion of non-BLPs; being unsourced for a long time does not mean that the subject does not exist. Also per Alduin's verification of the concept's existence. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 07:35, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It sounds like there is a misunderstanding: "Article has no sources" is not the reason for nominating Postanalytic philosophy for deletion. It's the apparent lack of a topic to summarize in an article. Please see my reply to User:Alduin2000 above. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 08:02, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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.