RE 1: yes, but it’s a matter of degree. Technically every scientific theory is somewhat unfalsifiable (you can always invent saving hypotheses). But some are more falsifiable than others (some lend themselves to saving hypotheses, don’t make clear predictions in the first place, etc.) so falsifiability is still a useful criterion of theory choice. Likewise here with IB and needless jargon.
RE 2: This may just be my current writing style! I appreciate any constructive comments on how it might have been phrased better.
Hey Alex, thanks for your thoughts. My response would be as follows:
Analytic Philosophy is probably the preeminent field of philosophical enquiry in the developed world. So, even if Philosophy Web did prove constrained to Analytic Philosophy, it would still possess major epistemic value (the Hubble Telescope is only useful for astronomy, the Hadron Collider is only useful for particle physics, etc.; but that’s not really a problem given the importance of those fields).
Having said that, Philosophy Web ought to be able to capture a wide variety of schools of thought, going well beyond the Analytic:
As regards Classic Philosophy, overlapping concepts ought to be amenable to formalisation in a Philosophy Web type structure: they would simply share some relations of support and opposition (to the extent they overlapped), and not share others (to the extent they did not overlap). Now of course this could create presentational problems (how to show fifty slightly different versions of concept x), but those should also be superable: for instance through sensitivity filters which let you see more or less versions of very similar concepts.
As regards Continental Philosophy, perhaps continental philosophers would object to their ideas being characterised as “concepts” (I am not well read enough in Continental Philosophy to know). However they nevertheless have “theories” (or “ideas”, or however else they might want to characterise their units of thought); and those theories contradict, entail, support, oppose, or otherwise relate to other theories. But this is all that is necessary for those “theories” to be usefully displayed in a Philosophy Web style structure.
As regards Eastern Philosophies, Philosophy Web would indeed initially model Western Philosophy, as it would be easier to model a contiguous tradition, whose theorists are in open dialogue with one another, than to have to make a huge number of guesses at how the concepts of very different philosophical traditions relate. However I’m afraid I don’t quite understand how a negation based term would fail to be representable in a conceptual web—wouldn’t you just include more relations of negation and less relations of entailment?
A final, more general point, is that Philosophy Web would not be intended as a way to definitively prove a given theory, but rather as a tool to assist individuals in identifying fruitful paths for research, potential implications of their ideas, hidden contradictions to explore, etc. Thus Philosophy Web does not need to capture (the connections between) concepts in a manner that is logically irrefutable by detractors of any school; it only needs capture them with sufficient fidelity to materially assist the theorising of those who use it.