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Just to clarify --as with the "Brothers, we are not Christians" post --the point is not that none of us are philosophers (which would be false), it is that we are not here in our capacity as philosophers, but in our capacity as subject matter experts about the field of philosophy. Our task is to answer questions about philosophy, not philosophy questions ...
12
No
The stack exchange system is not designed to provide anything like "peer review."
First off, reputation is not a formal system for vetting who is an expert in a subject area like philosophy. Reputation comes from getting upvotes, asking questions, and a variety of other tasks. None of these provide the same sort of basis for considering someone ...
10
Proselytizing is definitely inappropriate — but my first thought is just applying SE guidelines. If a comment isn’t helpful in clarifying the question, then flag it for removal.
Just in general, content in Q+A should be as neutral point-of-view as possible. For comments this is less important. But bounds of reason apply and “be nice” ethos is in effect ...
9
What that user told you is basically correct. This site is for Q&A about philosophy, and not for discussion.
The site is modeled on stackoverflow (and owned by the same company). There, users post specific technical questions about programming and get answers that fit their needs. You might analogously say that stackoverflow is not for learning ...
8
Just gut reactions:
On-topic, probably.
Almost certainly off-topic.
Borderline non-constructive; definitely off topic without more context.
Off-topic; Seems like a politics question almost. "Would it make sense to enact some particular policy" in general doesn't seem like a constructive question-type for this community, anyway.
Off-topic.
Potentially on-...
6
The way your question is posed is fine as it seems you are looking for the logical flaw (if any) in an argument, rather than arguing the existence of auras which I think few people actually believe in. I didn't downvote, but I didn't upvote either because I think the question is really way too broad and a bit convoluted the way it's asked (your last ...
6
I can't speak as intelligently about eastern religions, but as far as Christianity goes:
the Bible is hard to interpret. It is hard to know what framework to use, and within a particular framework it can still be hard. The process of interpreting the Bible is called exegesis. Just as we are not philosophers on this site, we also should not be exegetes - it ...
6
In a comment to Eliran's answer, you write
"it's not a very good idea to learn philosophy under such absurd restrictions."
But these restrictions are on this site, not on on learning philosophy - there are other resources for learning philosophy! At no point is a user of this site restricting themselves to this site and nothing else. Yes, this site ...
5
Questions that are basically "What does X mean?", even if X is a philosophical term/concept frequently fall into a mix of too broad and insufficient research. If a viable answer is "read the SEP article on it", then it's not a good question.
Limiting the scope of the question (as in the linked example), e.g. "What does Kant mean by X?", or better yet "What ...
5
I am not quite sure why that question was closed myself. It doesn't strike me as too broad, but I can imagine why the question would seem too broad given a certain background. And I can imagine how an exhaustive answer would be too broad.
I would guess one origin is the ambiguity that haunts the term "philosophy" (with myriad definitions in multiple ...
5
Note: See this as a perspective from a relatively active user at the Biology-SE site
Several science-oriented SE-sites has some sort of "homework" close reason, for instance Bio-SE, Chemistry-SE and Physics-SE. At Bio-SE (where I'm most active) it is controversial within the community (see e.g. this meta post), and some feel that different users read ...
5
I think one should not try to develop a kind of commentary for the whole book. But what seems fine to me and in fact a very good idea is trying to ask questions based on the text that adress all points you consider in any sense problematic.
What seems hard to do otherwise would be finding the amount of text necessary to make the question comprehendable, ...
5
My response in the most general terms is: while there are philosophical questions about "philosophy" (quoted to demark it as the term rather than the subject), this does not make every question about "philosophy" a question about philosophy.
Here's an analogy, the heart is a part of the bodies of reptiles, birds, and mammals. But this does not make every ...
5
There are a number of (not closed!) questions regarding the best translation/edition, including on Kant, Hegel, Chinese philosophy or several dialogues of Plato. Just search for "translation" or "edition" on the main site.
The crucial thing to do is to specify your needs in a way so that there can be a more or less "correct" advice. Otherwise, I see no ...
5
Thinking is allowed here, but the format is a question and answer site, not a discussion forum. Posts should be brief and clear and an exercise in rhetorical persuasion. You want to convince people that your question is worth spending time on and your answer is reasonably correct.
This is not as easy as it sounds.
When I write an answer I am only ...
5
My current opinion is the following:
While there is definitely some crossover between math and philosophy and some mathematics (especially mathematical logic) is relevant to philosophy, that doesn't mean that every mathematical question arising in a philosophy class is on-topic for this site.
In particular, while I don't know exactly where to draw the ...
5
Stack Exchange sites are rarely an appropriate place to "try out" new or eclectic theories. Like Wikipedia, Stack Exchange sites are only meant to be secondary sources, quoting and linking to the primary sources of knowledge. Maybe on occasion people will in the process of answering a question give some new novel insight or pose a question that leads to a ...
4
By my count, only 3 are certainly off-topic, 1 might need a bit of tweaking depending on what the OP is asking for with the question, and the rest are on-topic.
1. What is the difference between weak atheism and agnosticism?
On-topic
2. Was Einstein considered an atheist?
This will be up for debate. Some people wouldn't like that it doesn't touch "...
4
I agree with most of Joseph's responses, but I have a few comments:
#2. We actually have a Was Einstein a philosopher? question that's pretty controversial. I don't think asking whether he's an atheist is on-topic here, but honestly I'm doubtful that it's on topic anywhere. Otherwise you'd spawn hundreds of questions asking whether every major figure on ...
4
I mentioned this in passing in chat the other week. Not sure what people's feelings are about these questions (a handful of people seem to like them, as a number of those questions that I would consider off-topic are getting upvotes), but to me if they are about practicing Buddhism, they are off-topic. If they are about some philosophical notion of Buddhism, ...
4
Welcome to the site. :) First of all, thanks for taking an honest effort to try to improve your question-asking here, that's a kind of "meta" cognition we don't see very often in newcomers. :)
Before I address your questions, you should note that we have a steadily growing but still fairly small community of people here; even pretty good questions will max ...
4
Let's leave aside the meta-ness of the simple tag. The other problem with it is that every question and every good answer to every question should be "simple" - it should not contain superfluous details. It should get to the point. It should use technical terms when necessary (and provide references to more obscure technical terms or references).
The end ...
4
Mi Yodeya does this with their purim-torah-in-jest tag for a few days each year. Not being Jewish, I cannot say how well said tag is accepted, but as someone who wanders past their SE every now and then, I enjoy their efforts.
One reason I think Purim Torah works so well is that the answers appear to take the questions dead seriously, so the satire comes ...
4
It seems to me that the question, as worded, is about Socrates's influence on Jesus's life, as opposed to, say, his thought. As such, it doesn't have much to do with philosophy. I do agree that a slightly different version, perhaps with emphasis on teachings, thought, etc., could be on topic. (Here's an example for a similar question that I think is on topic....
4
I have not closed the question myself, even if I probably would have done so if I had handled a flag.
The reason is not that it is about Christianity, certainly not.
The reasons, for me, would be that
it is a very naive and uninformed question about concepts. For
example, comments rightfully pointed out that neither is God limited
to empirical knowledge, ...
4
Just as we are not here to do philosophy, StackExchange, in general, and Philosophy.SE, in particular, is not a good place to learn a subject.
StackExchange has a very concisely defined purpose: Developing a database that gives objectively "correct" answers to a given question in a given subject. Correct should here be understood as appropriate according to ...
4
The reason your question attracted downvotes is already explained here on meta and in the comments:
The title question has nothing to do with the body of the question
The body of the question mixes a quote by Curry, something about mere points of views and something about truth and provability. The three have nothing inherently to do with each other, yet ...
4
Phil SE exists because the "work from first principles only" paradigm DOES NOT WORK! It is the nature of humans to be blind to their own unexplored pre-conceptions. We NEED other humans to help us identify, and critique, the assumptions we hide from ourselves. This is a process of dialog, with others both interactively, and by research into prior ...
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