In metaphilosophy, what should I call a foundational document?

Question

I am planning the structure of a blog to write some pieces on metaphilosophy, but each post will base its topics on entire paradigms of interpreting various aspects of the universe, uncommon enough that 95% of visitors will not immediately understand what I’m talking about.

Thus, I need to have a collection of separate posts solely to describe these paradigms that I can link to, so that I don’t have to keep explaining complex ideas in the middle of each new post whenever something is brought up.

It would serve a purpose like an extremely detailed glossary.

What should this collection of foundational writings be called? At first I thought of using theses.

Obviously, given the subject matter, everything is theoretical, so then I thought of saying:

thesis: a hypothetical proposition, especially one put forth without proof.

This might be a good definition from thesis. However, they won’t be nearly so long as we would normally imagine a thesis to be.

Then I thought about saying:

suppositions: a fact, theory, etc, that is supposed.

Anyone have anything more flavorful?

Just after posting this, in unrelated research, I stumbled upon the phrase "theoretical framework" in a study, which sounds great. I just wonder if there's anything more concise. — , Jan 28 '24 at 07:19
If foundational, they are The Paradigm Core more than theses. — Yosef Baskin, Jan 28 '24 at 13:42
I don't get questions like this. It seems to me that if you had read the literature in this domain, you probably would not be asking this question. — Lambie, Jan 28 '24 at 17:02
Correct, I have not. I do a lot of thinking and not a lot of reading. Working on fixing that. — , Jan 28 '24 at 17:55
Finding a title would be more easy and precise if you give us some examples of the intended posts. — Jo Wehler, Jan 28 '24 at 18:19
I suppose there's no need to make it more complicated than assumptions, yeah. After all, I'm going to try to make it as approachable as possible. — Vesdii, Jan 29 '24 at 18:19

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 28 '24 at 16:57

Your second paragraph asks for a name of the collection but elsewhere you seem consistently to be asking about the items in the collection. I therefore assume that you need a word for those items similar to thesis or supposition.

I suggest that proposition may answer your need:

Wikipedia
Proposition: a central concept in the philosophy of language, semantics, logic, and related fields, often characterized as the primary bearer of truth or falsity.

Collins Dictionary
Proposition: a statement that affirms or denies something and is capable of being true or false

Both definitions and many usages (such as in mathematics and logic) reconise that a proposition may be false or true. Your items are concerned with "paradigms of interpreting ..." and therefore sound as if they may be true or false, certainly meriting discussion.

Proposition is therefore one of the words applicable to your work.

Asking about both, because the section of the site would use the plural, and on each of the posts I would reference one of these in the singular. — , Jan 28 '24 at 18:00

In metaphilosophy, what should I call a foundational document?

1 Answers1