The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

May 15, 2008 12:42 PM

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an excellent resource for matters philosophical. There you can be enlightened on such diverse subjects as paradoxes existential or logical, Greek or American philosophers obscure to the wider world, philosophers whose names have resounded through the ages, both well-attested and possibly mythical, Buddhist thought and Western mysticism and definitions of thorny and difficult concepts. And that's just a small sampling of the letter P section. All articles are written by specialists on the subject and the editors of the IEP are all academic philosophers. The encyclopedia is far from complete, so if you think you can help out, they have a list of their 100 most desired articles.
posted by Kattullus (31 comments total)

The IEP has been around since 1995 and I was slightly mystified that I had never heard of it, since I find it much more accessible than the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
posted by Kattullus at 12:48 PM on May 15, 2008 [2 favorites]

Whoa, that's awesome.
posted by khaibit at 12:49 PM on May 15, 2008

I'd like to see an Encyclopedia of Internet Philosophy.

"whut is the sound of 1 fag lollin???"

"Top 10 Chuck Norris conjectures"

"lolrus living: the search for the bucket inside us all"

"longcat is long. life is not"

"why is babby formed?"
posted by Rhaomi at 12:55 PM on May 15, 2008 [6 favorites]

Doesn't Wikipedia make these sorts of efforts redundant? I understand that the point is to have experts write the articles, but if they posted the same articles on Wikipedia, wouldn't they likely remain in-tact anyway, with some minor improvements even?
posted by decoherence at 1:07 PM on May 15, 2008

Doesn't Wikipedia make these sorts of efforts redundant?

There wouldn't be a lot of incentive for the authors to post these on wikipedia since it would be awkward to credit. Here they get reputation points for being the author of a peer-reviewed article that they can put on their cv.
posted by norabarnacl3 at 1:13 PM on May 15, 2008

Doesn't Wikipedia make these sorts of efforts redundant? I understand that the point is to have experts write the articles, but if they posted the same articles on Wikipedia, wouldn't they likely remain in-tact anyway, with some minor improvements even?

You have a good point, but there is something attractive about a separate, specifically philosophical encyclopedia. It's a matter of audience: if I want to learn about Kant's work in short, and get nice overview of his arguments, wikipedia is great, but I might also want something a bit more in-depth, more academic, written in that dry analytic way that makes me nostalgic for undergraduate frustration.

Thanks for this.
posted by farishta at 1:15 PM on May 15, 2008

very, very cool. thank you.
posted by rooftop secrets at 1:16 PM on May 15, 2008

I'd like to see more specialist/expert wiki's. I don't think wikipedia needs to be the only wiki in the world.
posted by empath at 1:17 PM on May 15, 2008

There's at least thing the authors can do in these articles that's explicitly forbidden on Wikipedia: draw conclusions. If nobody's pointed out a trend before, or suggested a connection between two ideas, or analysed an argument in a certain way, then it's "original research."

A lot of the other things the authors do here — stay coherent through an extended argument, use consistent terminology, resist beginning the article on Plato with HEH HEH HEH PLATO WAS A FAG!!1! — are technically allowed on Wikipedia, but often you wouldn't know it to read the articles there.
posted by nebulawindphone at 1:20 PM on May 15, 2008

Google's Knol project might see more success with the academic types, seeing as it's so author-centric. Of course, the whole site is apparently squirreled away in some super-secret Goog-hole and there's no sign it will be released anytime soon.

I wonder who will write the best Metafilter knol...
posted by Rhaomi at 1:23 PM on May 15, 2008

Oh my God, I have a paper on Kierkegaard due tomorrow and I have three more pages to write, this is friggin awesome. Thank you a million times.
posted by hellojed at 1:30 PM on May 15, 2008 [2 favorites]

He won't come in here and self-link, but I'll crow that MeFite el_lupino wrote the Philosophy of Language article.
posted by jocelmeow at 1:44 PM on May 15, 2008

Cool! That site is hosted by the university I attended as an undergrad (The University of Tennessee at Martin) and was founded by one of my first philosophy professors and friends, Dr. Jim Fieser. I'm one of very few philosophy students who have actually gone on from there to do a substantial amount of graduate work. Despite the great work done on this site, I rarely use it as a resource. But I do have to give it up for Jim. He's quite the man and probably way too smart to be working at such a small, rural college.
posted by inconsequentialist at 1:47 PM on May 15, 2008

I've been using this since around 2002, and that hideous web design hasn't changed a bit.
posted by PM at 1:52 PM on May 15, 2008

I actually quite like the minimal design of the website, PM.
posted by Kattullus at 1:53 PM on May 15, 2008

One hopes the philosophers on this site were already aware of this resource. But thanks Katt for the update.

As for Wiki, well, wouldn't one want a site moderated by experts? Why not have both? Plenty of my professors feel Wiki is inaccurate at times....The Stanford site is what my dept considers ideal...
posted by Dantien at 2:00 PM on May 15, 2008

I like how they used the word 'desired' to describe the most popular articles, makes me think they are little chocolates.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 2:02 PM on May 15, 2008

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an excellent resource for matters philosophical. There you can be enlightened on such diverse subjects as paradoxes existential or logical

I beat back metaphysics (having read the page on Heidegger);
It's a very handy resource for the modern bibliographer!
posted by JohnFredra at 2:04 PM on May 15, 2008

I like how they used the word 'desired' to describe the most popular articles, makes me think they are little chocolates.

I desire both little chocolates and informative articles on Buddhist philosophy, applied ethics and pragmatism.
posted by WalterMitty at 3:35 PM on May 15, 2008

The IEP is good, was the original as far as I know. I find it's a bit of a mixed bag, but yes, much more accessible to the layperson than the SEP. SEP gets mentioned here a lot because it's a more technical, thoroughly vetted, reasonably state of the art, pro analytic philosophers kind of thing. Often it's not the best tool for the job (if the job is "roughly what did so-and-so think?").
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:42 PM on May 15, 2008

Why couldn't you have posted this last week, before my philosophy of language final?
posted by sophist at 3:43 PM on May 15, 2008

This is just so awesome.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 3:52 PM on May 15, 2008

I see a big difference between wikipedia and a site with a call for submissions, i.e. one that offers information from what somebody somewhere has considered an expert. I think there's room for both. Reading a topic that has been written by someone who has devoted a lot of time thinking about it and also supposedly had to defend their arguments obviously builds confidence in what is read. Sometimes though, it is nice to have ideas from non-experts thrown into the mix. There are people out there that read and understand philosophy that have not worked at getting a degree in it. They may have ideas that shed light in a way that hasn't before been presented. Their ideas find purchase in Wikipedia.

I know little of philosophy, but am willing to learn. I see myself using both tools when researching. Here's a question for the experts on this thread:

Why is Robert Pirsig not considered a philosopher?
posted by suelange at 3:52 PM on May 15, 2008

kind of compendious for something titularly encyclopedic.
posted by jeremy b at 5:00 PM on May 15, 2008

This is great. I'm always on the lookout for accessible resources for philosophy for my high school debaters. Hopefully this will help next year. Thanks!
posted by lilac girl at 5:19 PM on May 15, 2008

Doesn't Wikipedia make these sorts of efforts redundant? I understand that the point is to have experts write the articles, but if they posted the same articles on Wikipedia, wouldn't they likely remain in-tact anyway, with some minor improvements even?

It's a matter of primary and secondary sources, versus a tertiary source.
posted by Brian B. at 5:27 PM on May 15, 2008

I'm not sure how the Panpsychists and Pan-Experientialists feel about being called Western Mystics but maybe they are getting closer to bridging the gap. Speaking for the mystics, they haven't come to full realization.

As long as we're talking Philosophy encyclopedias, we should mention the Meta-Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the WikiPedia Philosophy Portal.
posted by psyche7 at 6:34 PM on May 15, 2008

The article on Madhyamika is excellent. Thanks!
posted by everichon at 6:55 PM on May 15, 2008

The SEP is differently useful to the IEP. I personally find the SEP more useful, probably because I have a glossary---the Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy---on my bookshelf. What the SEP has that (in my experience) the IEP and the Penguin Dictionary don't is good coverage of contemporary open questions in philosophy and various responses to them. This has made it, at times, an indispensable resource.

They're both very different sorts of "encyclopedias", though, which is worth noting. The IEP definitely is of the "glossary" model, and the SEP definitely isn't (for instance, it has no entry for Gettier, event though Gettier comes up in about a dozen existing epistemology articles). The SEP is really more of a collection of textbook chapters: its articles are very thorough, and will teach you a lot, but if your goal is definition rather than understanding, you're out of luck. Its goal allows it to be broader and deeper than the IEP without actually being more comprehensive.
posted by goingonit at 8:42 PM on May 15, 2008

SEP and IEP are both cool, and both have dug me out of essay shaped holes, but Routledge could kick both their arses even if they were carrying knives. It's a shame about the having to pay for it part, but it gives me a reason to keep doing tech support at universities that goes beyond just being deeply lazy.
posted by vbfg at 11:48 PM on May 15, 2008

Cool! That site is hosted by the university I attended as an undergrad (The University of Tennessee at Martin) and was founded by one of my first philosophy professors and friends, Dr. Jim Fieser. I ... But I do have to give it up for Jim. He's quite the man and probably way too smart to be working at such a small, rural college.

Hey, small world. I knew Dr. Fieser as professor when he was teaching at an even SMALLER rural college, before he became a rock star in the world of philosophy. Like most philosophy types, he gave off a very peculiar odor.
posted by Otis at 7:07 AM on May 16, 2008 [1 favorite]