Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Wikipedia

There’s no such thing as objectivity. Everybody with any philosophical sophistication knows that. So, how can we take the Neutral Point of View (NPOV) policy seriously?
This most common objection to the neutrality policy also reflects the most common misunderstanding of the policy. The NPOV policy says nothing about objectivity. In particular, the policy does not say that there is such a thing as objectivity in a philosophical sense—a “view from nowhere” (to use Thomas Nagel’s phrase), such that articles written from that viewpoint are consequently objectively true. That is not the policy, and it is not our aim! Rather, to be neutral is to describe debates rather than engage in them. In other words, when discussing a subject, we should report what people have said about it rather than what is so. This is not to say anything philosophically contentious; indeed, philosophers describe debates all the time. Even sophisticated relativists will immediately recognize that “neutrality”, in this sense, is perfectly consistent with their philosophy.

1 comment:

  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/FAQ

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