Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Definist fallacy

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete‎. I will move the existing disambiguation page to this title. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:08, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Definist fallacy

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Current topic is not independently notable and should just be discussed (if at all) in a paragraph or section of the Naturalistic fallacy article. ExplodingCabbage (talk) 16:04, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some further elaboration:

The article right now is solely about a hypothetical fallacy discussed in one journal article by Frankena, whose sole point is to critique Moore's account of the naturalistic fallacy, and does so by inventing a broader "fallacy" called the "definist fallacy" and then arguing that it is not a fallacy at all.

Most sources that use the term "definist fallacy" do so in an entirely different sense to Frankena's. If you look at the first page of Google results for "definist fallacy", then, besides Wikipedia and pages that copied from Wikipedia, you will mostly see pages that use the term to describe a fallacy that involves either:

unfairly defining a term in such a manner as to favour your side of an argument, or
arguing that a term must be rigorously defined before it can be used

neither of which relate to the current article topic.

Note also that the existing redirect from Socratic fallacy is incorrect. The Socratic Fallacy is synonymous with yet another entirely different and unrelated "definist fallacy", not Frankena's that our article is currently about nor either of the other two that I mention above.

Thus even though the term is fairly popular, usage of it is overwhelmingly not related to the current article topic, which I suspect is probably better thought of as a minor subtopic for the Naturalistic fallacy article.

(And in any case, the article as it currently exists is awful, so even if a case exists for the "fallacy" from Frankena's 1939 argument against Moore having its own dedicated article, nothing would really be lost by starting again from scratch.) ExplodingCabbage (talk) 16:12, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 17:05, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - This should be converted to a disambiguation page, not deleted. as outlined in the nom, this term is fairly popular (and therefore notable, and shouldn't be deleted), and consistently used in multiple different ways by different reliable sources (and therefore needs to be disambiguated). Psychastes (talk) 18:24, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

also i checked in scholar and Frankena's paper introducing his "definist fallacy" has nearly 700 citations, so while it's certainly not necessary to have a standalone article, it's clearly notable enough in its own right as a standalone concept that's widely discussed in the literature. Psychastes (talk) 18:38, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's already a disambig page at Definist fallacy (disambiguation); I guess we'd want to move that to Definist_fallacy, then make Definist fallacy (disambiguation) a redirect to it. ExplodingCabbage (talk) 08:50, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ah! i missed that. yeah, i agree, that sounds good to me. I've also added a modified version of the page content to Naturalistic fallacy#Non-synonymous properties already so it would just require pointing the dab link there and adding an anchor. Psychastes (talk) 16:18, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguate proposed above. It seems that there are layers of this term that need to be disentangled. Ramos1990 (talk) 05:14, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question: the consensus thus far seems to be that the existing disambig page should move to Definist fallacy. Should this be done...

1. ... by deleting Definist fallacy and then moving Definist fallacy (disambiguation), or

2. ... by copying and pasting the content of Definist fallacy (disambiguation) over Definist fallacy and then editing Definist fallacy (disambiguation) to be a redirect

? I am inclined to favour 2 since it keeps the old content & revision history of Definist fallacy more publicly accessible, but I don't know if there's guidance about these situations that directs otherwise. ExplodingCabbage (talk) 08:47, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

number 2 seems to make sense to me as well. if that works for you, you can always withdraw the AFD nomination and just do that since no one else has voted delete yet (if you want, no pressure if you want to wait to see if other people disagree or have other ideas). just make sure to attribute the content you copy from the current disambiguation page per WP:Copying within wikipedia and update any double-redirects Psychastes (talk) 15:54, 20 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure it's proper for me to do that without waiting for the AfD to run its course? It seems like what we're proposing amounts to a deletion (or a merge) on a practical/editorial level, even if it isn't on a software level, since the article that currently exists will still cease to be.

(On a similar procedural note, I wonder if copying to the Naturalistic Fallacy article was naughty given Participants in deletion discussions should not circumvent consensus by merging or copying material to another page unilaterally before the debate closes. per WP:EDITATAFD.)

I am entirely on board with the proposed resolution here, and purely as a matter of my own personal judgement I think your earlier edit was fine and also feel comfortable there's enough consensus here already for us to just go ahead, but I'm not sure how strict AfD folk are about the rules of the process or whether we'll upset people! ExplodingCabbage (talk) 20:46, 20 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

RE: I wonder if copying to the Naturalistic Fallacy article was naughty, from a strictly procedural perspective it might have been slightly naughty, yeah. I'd justify doing it on the basis that the content also still belongs there independent of any outcome of the deletion discussion, since it is a criticism of Moore. If this discussion seemed like it could potentially get heated or contentious it would have likely been poor judgment though. Psychastes (talk) 16:41, 22 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, asilvering (talk) 06:07, 20 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the information of this article is better to be moved to the same section of fallacies of definition points redirects to that article and then this article can be deleted. 188.39.53.201 (talk) 10:55, 22 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

hm, if that's so, wouldn't all of the various fallacies called "definist" potentially belong there? at any rate I'm not seeing a good case for deletion though; redirecting would be more appropriate Psychastes (talk) 16:31, 22 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguate. There is already a disambiguation page noted above, so there's no new page to create. Any valuable content in this article can be merged to Fallacies of definition, and that page/section linked from the disambiguation page. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 02:03, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree with moving the currently-existing content to Fallacies of definition. The remaining content in the Definist fallacy article as it currently stands is not really about the "Definist fallacy" itself (it doesn't even define it, and only mentions it at all to state that Frankena used the term) so much as it is about Frankena's critique of Moore's writing, and it is so badly written that it is unclear how the purported "Definist fallacy" is even meant to relate to that critique. Moving that stuff to Naturalistic fallacy, as @Psychastes did, was defensible, since it's definitely at least relevant there and maybe someone will polish it up into something more understandable. But on the Fallacies of definition page it would be largely irrelevant to the article topic on top of being near-gibberish.

Better to just change "Main article: Definist fallacy" to "Main article: Naturalistic fallacy". Clarifying the definition of the fallacy given at Fallacies of definition would also be good, but pasting the existing content there will not help with that. ExplodingCabbage (talk) 19:37, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.