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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 keep and rewrite. Using Uncle G's draft. T. Canens (talk) 16:28, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Non-physical entity

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Non-physical entity (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • Stats)
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OR. None of the sources given describe "non-physical entity" as a coherent topic that includes both abstract concepts such as numbers, emotions, urges, ghosts, spirits, deities and morals. There are some sources using the phrase "non-physical entity" but none of them use it in the synthesised sense used by the article. It is basically the same case as the recent "ethereal being" AfD. The article should perhaps be a redirect to the different concepts as several editorsd have argued on the talkpage. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:25, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment: While I agree that the ideas shouldn't be "synthesized" per se, the term needs its own definition. However, see my comments under "Keep (but consider other titles, improve, and expand)". Cheers. Misty MH (talk) 18:35, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - The concept is used in multiple fields and is completely unrelated to each other. However, the page as whole I believe could be cleaned up to be a disambiguation page - which makes more sense than outright deleting it. As written, the opening paragraph is horrible - and completely unreferenced. However, cleanup being needed is not grounds for deletion. Turlo Lomon (talk) 17:00, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Poorly sourced original research. The page is a mish-mash of unconnected concepts. There is nothing on the page worth keeping. I don't even see the need for a disambiguation page. CodeTheorist (talk) 21:13, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:47, 11 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Paranormal-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:47, 11 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:47, 11 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Gene93k, Cool. How did someone get this included in each of these? :) Misty MH (talk) 08:50, 25 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment: While I agree that this article should not try to "synthesize", per se, note that the article on Being is also quite broad, and necessary, just as an article on non-physical being or intelligence is needed, for the purposes of discussion, since there are in truth many different concepts (spirits, angels, etc.) that refer to just that. The unfortunate part is that many discussions already probably-presumptuously "identify" these beings, based on concepts familiar to the people discussing them; when the reality is that they probably don't really know what the being was. Not to get long-winded, LOL, but a book such as the Bible says that even "satan can transform himself into an angel of light"; if true, then someone encountering such a being might be confused as to what exactly they are encountering. In such a situation, one might be safe to say that it seemed like a non-physical being or entity; but it would be hard to say which kind it was. Therefore, a term such as "non-physical entity" (I am open to a better term!) is needed. :) Misty MH (talk) 18:29, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • At the risk of flattening any philosophical insights here, the problematic of the contradiction/paradox (depending of where you stand, I reckon) is undercut by the opening line of--DON'T USE WIKIPEDIA TO CITE WIKIPEDIA--Entity: it doesn't have to be material (which I, being the simple Calvinist that I am, take to mean the same as "physical"). As such, if you'll pardon the late-night silliness, we're dealing with a non-entity when we're talking about a non-physical entity. Qualia are great but there is no suggestion that this phenomenon would in any way qualify as an entity, and unexisting gods, well, I don't see why we would want to apply the term "entity" to them unless we're discussing American Gods, which is really not a bad book. In mathematics, well, concepts are entities in many ways, but again--entities don't have to be material in the first place. Or, delete, at least Uncle G rewrites the thing from top to bottom. Drmies (talk) 03:44, 13 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • There is, quite clearly, an article or a family of articles to be written about incorporeal creatures. This article that we're considering doesn't seem very good to me, but it's a plausible search term and Wikipedia clearly should have an article, redirect or disambiguation page with this title—so unless there's a copyvio or something, this material is fixable. Therefore I don't see how there's any scope to delete within our normal rules.—S Marshall T/C 15:07, 13 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Currently, this is a quasi-dab page. Perhaps a redirect to Ontology (information science) may be more useful? Bearian (talk) 17:37, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep (but improve and expand) - There is absolutely a need for some term to attach to a being or entity whose identity, type, species, etc. cannot as of yet be determined, and may be or seem to be non-physical. While in many religions and spiritualities, people believe that what they are connecting with or discussing is this thing or that thing (such as a spirit or angel or demon or ?, etc.), the fact is, they often do not know what it is exactly. Terms for an objective discussion of the unidentified entity, being, or intelligence are absolutely needed. What terms ought to be used is another matter, but all substantive terms need to be included, for the purposes of study and discussions. Additional topics that include such an idea are: Artificial Intelligence, Other Dimensions, Parallel Universe, UFOlogy, and of course the usual: Religion, Spiritism/Spirituality/Spiritualism, Theology, Philosophy, the Paranormal/Supernatural, Metaphysics, Ontology, etc., etc. The article needs to be expanded to include these sorts of things. I think that the opening/intro could or should be kept short and inclusive, like a basic definition, with the details and various fields in which such are discussed moved down below. Rather than delete, let's list all of the related terms for this in current (and past) usage. (If someone believes it's not well-sourced, please state why.) Anyone have a favorite article form that we could base changes on? I'd also like to see an article based on the idea of an Unidentified Intelligence, which may be/is what many people encounter when they have an experience with something or someone non-visible/invisible. Misty MH (talk) 18:13, 16 July 2012 (UTC) Misty MH (talk) 10:25, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I suppose that it could be renamed Non-physical being and then made into a quasi dab for ghosts, spirits, energy beings and the like, with all the other stuff relating to mathematics and ontology removed. However it would be better to just delete this page and for someone to go ahead and create a completely new page. CodeTheorist (talk) 20:18, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I substantially rewrote the article, and expanded it, which is a near-equivalent of a completely new page. At this point, it's now worthy of a keeper, though more work needs to be done. I added comments explaining, at the article's Talk page. While I agree that "non-physical being" could be added elsewhere as a "quasi dab", the phrase "non-physical entity" deserves its consideration in this separate article. Misty MH (talk) 21:58, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Maybe there's someplace to go with the page on incorporeality but what I'm getting out of the renaming and repurposing is that the set of things that aren't physical in any sense doesn't define a single kind of thing. Mangoe (talk) 12:28, 17 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - This is synth in my mind... is there any indication in any of the sources provided that they define, let alone cover this topic as it's described in the article? I don't see it if there is. Shadowjams (talk) 21:27, 17 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  — Crisco 1492 (talk) 02:56, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Violates WP:SYNTH. Obviously there are many more non-physical things than material things. Yet lumping them all together doesn't seem helpful. Borock (talk) 05:33, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. The word "spirit" has several different meanings – from a noncorporeal being (or part of a being) to "team spirit" to attitude – but we don't delete that just because it has several disparate meanings that have nothing to do with one another. A term for non-physical beings is absolutely necessary for discussion of such things; but using a word like "spirit" or "soul" confuses the matter by assigning it to a type (when one might not know its type). "Non-physical being" is pertinent when one does not know what type of being it is, and when it seems that the being is not physical in nature. The phrase allows one to discuss the concept while keeping it at the level of specificity that it needs to be, without being too specific. I think it's a great term for that. The spelling "nonphysical" is also found; for example, at wordnik.com. :) Misty MH (talk) 09:57, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I think this could be quite a useful entry in Wikipedia. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 10:23, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Article rewritten. I've rewritten the article over the past couple of days. Before that, it sounded conflated, reading similar to a synth. It is now an expansion of a definition, as an encyclopedia should be. A few improvements could be added, and maybe a couple of things removed, but it's almost there! Reread to Keep! Misty MH (talk) 10:32, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Drmies is referring above to what I said when he had the munchies. I've done what I said that I might do. The draft stub article is at User:Uncle G/Non-physical entity. Misty MH, the basic error that you're making is the same error that would be made by putting every person in the encyclopaedia in the human being article. Approaching this by making a grab-bag of everything that one could possibly think of as potentially being a non-physical entity, and hoping that it becomes encyclopaedic once some unspecified critical mass accrues, is the wrong approach.

    The right approach is to go and see what scholars have made of the subject. This isn't a "New Age stub" at all. But it is properly a philosophy stub. Metaphysics has dealt with the non-physical, as User:Uncle G/Non-physical entity explains. Scholars have dealt with this subject, and they have connected the dots between mathematical concepts and ontology. (I didn't find any that made the connection to computer science, though.) They have brought ghosts, gods, and angels into the discussion; using ghosts both as explicit examples and as metaphors. Ironically, it is the mathematics and the ontology that one retains, and the vague and woolly "quasi-disambiguation" stuff that one throws out, here: exactly the opposite of what CodeTheorist suggests above.

    A taste of this scholarship can be obtained from User:Uncle G/Non-physical entity#Reference bibliography, which by no means exhausts the literature. (That's nine professors of philosophy, one professor of biology, and a couple of others. I leave it for now as an exercise for the reader to find which two authors themselves have Wikipedia articles. ☺) Notice that six of the sources explicitly say in their titles that they are about the philosophy of mind, whose umbrella is one of the two that this falls under, and nine of them explicitly position themselves as introductory works or broad overviews. You are encouraged to read them. I've given you the page numbers (although I recommend reading more than just those specific pages).

    Two thirds of the WikiProjects on the talk page are not in fact applicable, and are just vague handwavings in the hope that the encyclopaedic will arise of its own accord; this does not have to be a multi-stub or a disambiguation; and this article was wrongly stubbed in its creating edit. There is an actual article, to go in Category:Concepts in metaphysics and on a specific metaphysical concept without a Big List of Every Article In The Project in its "see also" section, that is possible, as the draft indicates.

    Uncle G (talk) 09:00, 20 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    • I think that is a very nice and well written article, and I think your participation would be very welcome at Mind where the kind of knowledge you have might facilitate coming up with a reasonable definition. I don't think it is about the topic of non-physical entities though, I think it is at best about the debate about whether such entities exist, and probably more accurately generally about the general question of physicalism/dualism which is already covered in those respective articles. None of the sources you use are about the tpoic of non-physical antities or even treats that as a specific and distinct topic, they are about a debate in philosophy. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 17:47, 20 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • On the contrary, they are talking about non-physical entities, quite specifically. Professor Barbara Gail Montero of CUNY, to pick one, is very much attempting to form a definition of what it is to be non-physical. You can see more of the same in doi:10.1111/0029-4624.00149, also written by her, and even her chapter "What is the Physical?" in the same book that Balog 2009 is from. This is the Barbara Montero that is cited by some others for the via negativa definition of the physical, note, so be aware that she does try to answer the the question by defining the non-physical. To quote her directly: "Now, perhaps these problems could be overlooked if we had clear intuitions regarding the nonphysical. However, it is not at all obvious that we do." Then she starts talking about ghosts. As I said, this is far from all of the literature on this subject, and the literature cited is addressing non-physicality quite directly. And, before you say it, the non-physical is more than Hempel's dilemma alone, and so isn't dealt with properly there. It covers abstract objects too, as has been pointed out. Uncle G (talk) 19:11, 20 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • At first glance, that looks like the start of an admirable article about non-physical entities in philosophy and cognitive science. I do just wonder, though: if someone types "non-physical entity" in the search box, what will they be least astonished to find? A philosophical article? Maybe. But my instinct says they might be looking for something more like spirit#metaphysical and metaphorical uses (only less confused and confusing), or energy being.—S Marshall T/C 23:10, 20 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I've made changes to incorporeality that may be of interest.—Machine Elf 1735 23:45, 20 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Convert to disambiguation page using standard format. Stuartyeates (talk) 00:47, 21 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Convert to disambiguation page: I'm not convinced non-physical "entity" conjures up anything but ghosts; mind always turns out quasi-physical some how... the mind-body problem is covered in Philosophy of Mind and a non-physical entity version exaggerates the relevance of Cartesian substance dualism.—Machine Elf 1735 15:40, 21 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep (but rewrite). Uncle G has shown that a decent article can be written on this topic. So the page should be kept, but completely rewritten along the lines of User:Uncle G/Non-physical entity. I still think that there would be some value in also having a quasi-dab page called Non-physical being. CodeTheorist (talk) 18:50, 24 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sold "non-physical being" in theology.Delete/dab Sorry, missed the first part, good idea for a different quasi-dab page.—Machine Elf 1735 20:50, 24 July 2012 (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.
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