Category talk:Dichotomies

What is dichotomy anyway?

Origin of discussion: User talk:KYPark#Dichotomies

Hi Johnuniq,

Do you like me to have chosen this talk page? Perhaps you could have explained to me why you falsified and nullified some of my assignments to Category:Dichotomies as "not appropriate." May I ask you why Creation-evolution controversy in particular is not worth the category, even though it may have so long and so seriously divided the United States, for example, into two very hostile camps?

I roughly agree with the notion of dichotomy as:

1. mutually exclusive, and
2. jointly exhaustive.

Yet, the attribute (1) in particular looks very problematic in practice. The attribute (2) alone may be good enough for a given question, say, "Whether the world has been created by God or evolved by natural selection." Meanwhile, perhaps few would dare to answer how exactly creation and evolution are "mutually exclusive."

The famous and notorious mind-body dichotomy sounds nonsensical to many, if not most, current mainstream philosophers and scientists who believe that the mind is not "The Ghost in the Machine" but the body viewed from a certain perspective, hence, so to speak, the collapse of mind-body dichotomy. Also very instructive is the title The Collapse of Fact/Value Dichotomy of Hilary Putnam's 2004 book. Most well-known dichotomies would better survive to witness the past, right or wrong, even after they have collapsed, degenerating into a nonsense. --KYPark (talk) 12:49, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply; yes, this is a good place for a discussion.

A short definition of "dichotomy" can be given (as you've done, and as at Dichotomy), but the trick is to know when it is appropriate to use the word. I don't claim to always know the answer to that latter question, but I am prepared to say that it's stretching the word beyond normal usage to apply it to the creation–evolution issue. The fundamental point, I think, is that "dichotomy" is used in philosophical discussions such as Mind-body dichotomy.

It's true, particularly in the US, that many people could be categorized as believers in either "creation" or in "evolution", however the issue is not a fundamental matter of logic. For example, there could be people who believe all life was transported to Earth from Xenu, or who hold other wacky views that aren't exactly a belief in creation or evolution. Therefore, I think, "dichotomy" does not apply.

The fact that Category:Dichotomies is a subcategory of Category:Dualism and Category:Logic supports my view that the category is for the fundamental issues debated in philosophy.

I noticed on pages that I watch that I was not the only editor to revert some of the recent category additions. For example, in Genotype-phenotype distinction history, we see that two other editors (Crusio and Pete.Hurd) removed the category. Also, at Creation–evolution controversy history], it was Hrafn who removed the category.

When I look at page changes, I tend to ignore changes to categories as being relatively unimportant. However, pages related to evolution get more scrutiny due to the many attempts to subvert their message, so perhaps your category change was noticed more readily. I think the new categories on some other pages should also be investigated. For example, in Category:Dichotomies: Wave–particle duality • What Is Life? and in Category:Cognitive science literature: Conceptual metaphor • Heaven and Hell (essay) • The Mind of God (I might start a discussion about this latter category on its talk page). Johnuniq (talk) 04:47, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Let me move to the leftmost.--KYPark (talk) 07:14, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

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The mind-body dualism used to be focally attributed to Descartes alone instead of the formidable church that insists on the immortality of the soul. That is, the mind-body as well as creation-evolution issue is deeply rooted in the relationship between religion and science, respectively, that ought to be a vital philosophical debate as a whole. As such, all those factors may well sum up into a single agenda, say, mind(soul)-creation-religion vs. body-evolution-science(biology), where evolutionary biologists actually play the overriding role, as if on behalf of evading or irrelevant philosophers. They include Edward O. Wilson, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, John Maynard Smith, William Donald Hamilton, John Carew Eccles, and Francis Crick (who shifted from DNA to consciousness), just to name a few.

The old mind-body issue looks like being shifted or added up to the new enlarged creation-evolution agenda, as suggested as follows:

Consciousness#Evolutionary biology Consciousness can be viewed from the evolutionary biology approach as an adaptation because it is a trait that increases fitness.[22] Consciousness also adheres to John Alcock's theory of animal behavioral adaptations because it possesses both proximate and ultimate causes.[23] The proximate causes for consciousness, i.e. how consciousness evolved in animals, is a subject considered by Sir John C. Eccles in his paper "Evolution of consciousness." He argues that special anatomical and physical properties of the mammalian cerebral cortex gave rise to consciousness.[24] See also: Evolutionary psychology

It would be wise to take seriously the first things first and the last things last. The Occam's razor is well used to shave off such fine hairs as Xenu and the like.

As to my use of dichotomy, you said:

"I am prepared to say that it's stretching the word beyond normal usage to apply it to the creation-evolution issue. The fundamental point, I think, is that "dichotomy" is used in philosophical discussions such as Mind-body dichotomy."

As to your use of logic in the next passage as follows:

"It's true, particularly in the US, that many people could be categorized as believers in either "creation" or in "evolution", however the issue is not a fundamental matter of logic."

I could exactly say the former quotation back to you, because the creation-evolution controversy is not the right logical but hottest philosophical agenda, because logic is not philosophy but everybody's way of reasoning ill or well.

You seem to confuse logic with philosophy. This is not too surprising, since a number of famous logicians have also happened to be (perhaps more precisely speaking, called) philosophers in effect. The two founding fathers of Anglo-American analytic philosophy, Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead, argued for logicism that subordinates math to logic. These top philosophers also happened to be mathematicians (who co-authored Principia Mathematica), hence logicans (who essentially aims to improve the system of logic).

However, to say logic is philosophy is to say math is philosophy, I fear. Logic and math are nothing but a tool useful for some reasoning. Their use is everybody's must. Philosophers simply use them, just as scientists and others do. And, their state of the art may or may not help solve philosophical as well as other enigmas, including the ageold creation-evolution controversy that has greatly endangered the US. Logic and math are essentially built on such a stringent kind of dichotomy or binary opposition as the Boolean logic of true and false, and the binary number system of 1 and 0. Hence, both are necessarily helplessly doomed by the fallacy of the excluded middle.

In addition to logicism, the said philosophers argued for logical atomism (whence analytic philosophy and deductive reasoning) in parallel to logical positivism. all these have turned out to be something good and bad indeed. In brief, these are essentially and fatally biased, one-sided or cripled, lacking the synoptic philosophy, failing to see the due dichotomy or yin and yang of everything, the two sides of the coin. This may not be a good place for further discussion of their dysfunction.

Dichotomies are everywhere. The world of objects, the mind of subjects, and the meaning of projects, all begin with them, prior to philosophy, formal logic, and the like. Nevertheless, would you insist that philosophy and logic has monopolized the Category:Dichotomies within Wikipedia? For what? How responsible are they to solve the world problem? How successful are they to resolve the creation-evolution controversy in agony, for example? The likely answers seem to be quite negative. The poor awareness of widespread conflicts, hostilities, antagonisms, or whatever dichotomies of an evil kind may leave the world problem unsolved and the world peace endangered.

--KYPark (talk) 07:14, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

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It looks like we agree on a number of points (perhaps mind-body, for example), but they don't seem relevant to whether it is appropriate to tag a particular article with the Dichotomies category.

I mentioned philosophy partly because that's the sense I think was intended for Dichotomies, but mainly because this category is a subcategory of Category:Dualism and Category:Logic. It would be major change to alter that arrangement (one that should require extended discussion by many people). Given the current arrangement, perhaps all we need is to find a reliable source using "dichotomy" (in the sense of dualism or logic) to describe the creation-evolution issue; if we find a good source, then the Dichotomies category applies, otherwise it doesn't. A tremendous amount of material, of very varied quality, has been written on this particular issue, so I believe we would need more than the odd mention to justify the category.

You stated that "Dichotomies are everywhere". If that is so, we have to face the consequence that the Dichotomies category may be unhelpful because it would encompass too many disparate articles, with no coherent message. To illustrate, here are some of the articles that you assigned to Dichotomies (which has subsequently been removed): Coevolution • Creation–evolution controversy • Even and odd functions • Genotype-phenotype distinction • Unweaving the Rainbow. If it were true that the category applies to those articles, I don't think the category would be very helpful.

I would like a wider discussion because there were three other editors who removed the Dichotomies tag; I'll think about what might be done. Johnuniq (talk) 09:07, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

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Yes, go ahead. And, I hope you come back more open-minded. Yet, I wish you not to miss some crucial points:

1. Dualism
   ``Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The word's origin is the Latin duo, "two" . The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general usage.``[my red types]
2. Whether preserved or diluted, dualism is everywhere in all serious discourses. Put otherwise, dualism (tending to be extending to pluralism like binary trees) makes discourse serious. So it should be taken seriously. Any ism is serious. Perhaps it begins with duality, polarity, or a wide gap, say, of views between you and me discussing seriously.
3. Dualism sounds more serious, more formal, more definitive, more preserved, less diluted than duality, binary, dichotomy, polarity, complementarity, contrast, versus, disparity, distinction, separation, split, divide, and so on. (For this reason, I personally prefer dichotomy to dualism.)
4. Category:Dichotomies is simply below Category:Dualism with its hierarchical and lateral roles unspecified. This is only a loose kind of classification system. The former could be made higher than the latter not without reason.
5. The most complex hierarchy, say, the world begins with dichotomy, as dramatized as the virtual reality by the computer simply beginning with the 0-1 dichotomy. In this general sense, "dichotomies are everywhere" indeed. But we should not and could not take all seriously. The Occam's razor works here again. Recently when I began to assign tens of pages to the category, it counted about thirty, which, I thought, was too small and too neglected for the most popular encyclopaedia! To my great dismay, I feel like a vandal, don't I?

--KYPark (talk) 02:33, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I have just left a request for two users (Gregbard and Funandtrvl, who have previously contributed on this talk page) to join the discussion, and I'll wait before adding any more. However, I must assure you that there is no suggestion of vandalism in this issue (as shown by the fact that your addition of the category was reverted with no "minor edit" tag). This is a simple difference of opinion about whether this category is appropriate for certain articles. Johnuniq (talk) 03:20, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Hello, I haven't had a chance to look over any of the articles that were added/removed from this category, but I have to agree with Johnuniq's definition of dichotomy. I do agree, however, that this category's name is pretty vague and will be confusing to most! Let me know how I can be of help. Thanks --Funandtrvl (talk) 05:41, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

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The structure around Category:Dualism and Category:Dichotomies is quite puzzling. It is far from a well-done hierarchy, looking like a messy labyrinth. The former has 19 pages including 5 likely irrelevant, and 3 "subcategories" including not only the latter, but also Category:Spiritualism and Category:Vitalism which appear barely relevant.

And, the former belongs to:

Among them, Category:Metaphysical theories would be the proper generic category, while others the improper.

The former and the latter would better merge together to avoid ambiguity, unless their generic-specific roles could be specified and disambiguated.

Such a merged category would go beyond Category:Metaphysical theories or Category:Philosophical theories, maybe including hundreds of highly relevant pages. Note the category theory where relevance is graded.

To be precise, the section headline above should be taken as short for What ought to be dichotomy anyway? It is because of the is-ought problem, also relating to fact-value distinction and subject-object based metaphysics at least, as borrowed from the Examples below. That is to say, this category ought to be defined or prescribed (as opposed to described) unambiguous or clearcut enough to avoid category wars.

--KYPark (talk) 06:21, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Examples

To clarify my concerns, following are some articles which I think should not be in Category:Dichotomies (currently, they are in the category). Comments on these specific cases would be welcome. Johnuniq (talk) 05:19, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

1. A priori and a posteriori
2. Bodymind
3. Complementarity (physics)
4. De dicto and de re
5. Demarcation problem
6. Denying the antecedent
7. Dualism (philosophy of mind)
8. Extraversion and introversion
9. Fact-value distinction
10. Fight-or-flight response
11. Genus-differentia definition
12. Implicate and Explicate Order according to David Bohm
13. Is-ought problem
14. Literal and figurative language
15. Manifest and latent functions and dysfunctions
16. Modus tollens
17. Necessary and sufficient condition
18. Part-whole theory
19. Sense and reference
20. Subject-object based metaphysics
21. The Two Cultures
22. Topic-comment
23. Wave–particle duality
24. What Is Life?

Individual articles

Do me as you like me to do you. This reciprocity must be the best moral principle, East and West, past and future, hence the name Golden Rule. And, this must apply to this unprecedented project, Wikipedia, where anonymous world wide workers collaborate and collide, looking like waging science wars or the like! These should better be avoided as much as possible.

To this end, any serious counter-edit should be reasonably discussed in advance. You are welcome to have any diametric opinion, while not dictating but discussing them prior to authoritatively putting them into counter-action. Don't you feel like being offended by whoever dictates anything?

May I ask you to recover first whatever you have removed of my categorizations, say, creation-evolution controversy, before you talk your diametric opinion to me? And then, it is your turn to talk why each item of the above list should be removed from this category. Then, I will reply.

In the following, I split the list into subsections for each easy edit by anyone anytime. --KYPark (talk) 03:33, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I haven't had any success getting interest in our discussion, so I just invited Funandtrvl again. I wonder if a post at WP:Village pump (miscellaneous) would be helpful because I don't think two people (you and me) are likely to work this out on our own (for one thing, it's a wide range of articles). Another possibility (more likely to get involvement?) would be if you were to report the issue at WP:RFC. It looks as if the matter has to be presented as a dispute, so if you like, please say that your editing has been interrupted by me, and you want a wider discussion to resolve the matter.

Re Creation–evolution controversy, it was this edit that reverted the addition of Dichotomies (not me). Please add the category again if you like, and we'll see what other editors think (I won't get involved in that article at the moment).

I hope you don't mind, but I introduced another heading (Individual articles) for easier editing. Johnuniq (talk) 08:19, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

You are supposed to have not read my last comment at the end of #What is dichotomy anyway?.

Anyway, what I'm saying is quite simple. I'm just asking you to talk why you think the pages you listed in the #Examples "should not be in Category:Dichotomies." None of your negative reason for each, none of my positive reason.

I think it's not yet to bring this question elsewhere. Sorry to have mistaken you for the one responsible for removing Creation-evolution controversy. --KYPark (talk) 09:35, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

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