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Comment by hoopd | Hacker News Reader

> Speaking of holes, the SEP has a rather detailed entry on the topic of holes, and it rather nicely illustrates one of Wikipedia’s key shortcomings. Holes present a tricky philosophical problem, the SEP entry explains: A hole is nothing, but we refer to it as if it were something......If you ask Wikipedia for holes it gives you the young-adult novel Holes and the band Hole.

This is plain dishonest. Wikipedia has dozens of pages on holes, some of which are cultural items and the author cherry-picked two in order to make his point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holes

Moreover, the SEP's description of a hole is so arrogant and condescending it's painful:

> Naive, untutored descriptions of the world treat holes as objects of reference, on a par with ordinary material objects....

Spare me.

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Well, "naive" is a term of the trade. So "holes" are a potential problem for nominalists, philosophers who want to claim that only specific objects - that chair - exist. Calling a position that is not influenced by the last three thousand years of meta-physics 'naive' seems to be entirely justified, just as there are naive accounts of physics and computer science.

How exactly is naive a term of the trade in philosophy? You, and the article in question, seem to be using it in a way that any grade-schooler would recognize.

I'm not aware of any "naive accounts" of physics or computer science. You might be thinking of "naive algorithms" and "naive approaches" but in those cases the word has a specific meaning which doesn't fit in the context of the above quote.

'naive' means unsophisticated, so in a certain way it is compatible with the meaning a grade-schooler would recognize. However philosophy often is concerned with the meaning of words and so the naive understanding can define the boundaries of an acceptable theories.

After re-reading your comments and the intro to the holes article multiple times I'm only convinced that the SEP has a horrid writing style.

The world has moved on from this type of grandiose intellectualism for a reason.

SEP articles are written by individual academics, who often have peculiar writing styles. I suppose the editors try to curb the most extreme of peculiarities, but all sorts of quirks inevitably leak through. Archaism and grandiosity are especially common, since a lot of philosophers spend a lot of time poring through old books.

Wikipedia articles, on the other hand, tend to have a rather bland writing style, the average of all the people who contributed to an article.

I don't understand why you think it's an improvement. If the grandiosity was just a quirk of the writing style I'd have more patience for it but the field produces an endless stream of condescension and disrespect.

To be fair, philosophers often talk to (or write about) one another in exactly the same way. They tolerate a lot of condescension and disrespect as long as it is directed towards ideas/theories/hypotheses and not people. Notice that the passage you quoted talks about "naive, untutored descriptions", not "naive, untutored people".

Philosophers are trained not to take such things personally, and to respond as rationally as possible even if they do take it personally. Since a lot of them also spend most their careers relatively isolated from the rest of the world, it's not surprising that they expect their audience to respond in the same way, especially if philosophy students are the intended audience.

No, it's not an improvement. I'm not trying to defend that writing style in any way. The above is just one explanation for why someone who doesn't actually mean to be condescending might nevertheless produce essays that sound condescending to contemporary readers.

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