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Talk:Problem of universals

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some of my views
universals are nature exsplained by humans. Time for instants, we took something that we can feel and know called the past, thanks to memeroy muscles, and put a symbol on certail similar lengths to make things easier, and you know how the easy ways in life make the real things darker or simplafied, or even forgotten. Well we took qulitys in events that are similar and put a name or (symbol)on them called personalities. personalities are just the spirit shown threw the body. Person-ality, or ,human-spirituallity, or, duelality. a easy human way to look at universals is to thinks about it like this. there are a million different traits and we all exsperience them, but what make us our own independent soul is how long we choose to recide in certain ones. becoming a higher being means to relize the ones that cause ulitment good and that serve youself, others, and your desions.

Yikes
Yikes! As a Nominalist, I take offense to the way the Nominalism section was written - it actually attacks it, saying that Nominalism "just seems insane"! Perhaps I'll tone it down a bit, switching some of those oddly first-person sentences to more unbiased thirds. - Flammicidia
 * As a nominalist, how can you even talk about "a bit" :P AnarchyElmo 05:43, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Any objective analysis of Nominalism can only expose its incoherency :O) - MWAK--217.122.44.226 09:30, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not a forum. Talk pages exist for the purpose of discussing how to improve articles. Talk pages are not mere general discussion pages about the subject of the article...
 * Surely the section on Nominalism in this article diverges greatly from the NPOV? Turns of phrase like "This sound right to me." should also probably not be included in an encylopedia, to say nothing of "spooky never never lands". As a (Platonic) realist I find it all mildly jarring, although somewhat amusing. - J.M.
 * Indeed. This section is POV both in terms of unique (individual) point of view and the universalist vs. nominalist dichotomy.  As a mere dabbler in formal philosophy, I am not in a position to fix this error myself.  Who wants a crack at it?  -- Erik Carson 05:22, 2004 May 16 (UTC)
 * I fixed the Nominalism section. Almost all of it more belongs on either the nominalism page or an a 'talk' page on nominalism not in the problem of universals page. Well, actually it's not fixed, just pruned and NPOV is attempted to be restored. The last sentence I put in about reliance on base assumptions for any philosophical answer to the problem of universals, is what should be expanded upon for this article. Examples of different beliefs one may assume to get around this problem belong on separate pages.
 * A one-line summary of nominalism and a clearer explaination of Berkeley's position would be very helpful anyway.

3 Facts or Constraints about Universals
The text is indicative of uncertainty, e.g.
 * "Three facts about universals, or constraints ... (if these constraints have been correctly stated) ... In other words, we can (if they are correctly stated) take these three facts as background assumptions. Definitely, we have to have some background assumptions, or else we would not have any tools to evaluate any theory of universals.

Are these three facts, or constraints, generally accepted as the criteria for evaluating how well a theory resolves the Problem of Universals?

 * - Universals can be multiply instantiated

 * - Universals are abstract

 * - Universals are referents of general terms - rparker@patmedia.net
 * In philosophy, there is no consensus on anything. However you have to start from something (no, there's no consensus on that either) and as far as these things go, these criteria are pretty useful and indeed often used. I use them myself :o) - MWAK--217.122.44.226 09:30, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Universals are at least the first---i.e. multiply instantiated. There is then room to have different views about whether they are always abstract or the referents of general terms. One can still hold that some universals are concrete (e.g. Aristotle). And it's not a primarily semantic issue, so it shouldn't be formulated in terms of the referents of terms. - Jaymay (talk) 22:50, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * And there is consensus in philosophy about many things. Philosophy is not as different from other disciplines in that respect. I understand many people think otherwise, but it's a misconception. Not all scientists agree about everything in their field. Maybe there is more consensus in the empirical sciences than in philosophy, but that's compatible with there being some consensus on some things in philosophy. - Jaymay (talk) 21:22, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Heraclitus and Eurocentric bias
Heraclitus' ideas were predated by Gautama Buddha - for which there are many examples in which, over the period of 40 years, Buddha set the groundwork for the exposition of nominalism far more extensive and profound than that of Heraclitus. As most Greek nominalists postdate Buddha, it is quite possible that they were substantially influenced by the ideas arising from his lectures. Certainly, by the Ashokan cultural dispersion around 250 BCE, Buddhist philosophy spread as far as Rome and the Levant. The Buddhist views centre on anatman - non-essentialism, but extend to 'subtle impermanence' - the basis of Heraclitus' famous assertion. In general, for Buddhism, there is no problem of universals - universals are samvrti - existing only within those conventions that accept them. (20040302 11:24, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC))
 * Feel free to edit, amend, overturn, and scramble the article appropriately to include the material you wish included. This is wikipedia, after all. --Christofurio 13:16, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)
 * I would like to add that the Buddha section is 'Asiocentric', 'Eastcentric' or 'Buddhacentric' (please use a more appropriate definition if possible), and is very speculative. It assumes that Buddha is the beginning of nominalism, and I think it is not useful to try and state such terms. Philosophy should be at the very least useful, and not to promote the foundations of a thing (for surely this means that some form of nominalism came before Buddha, and in any case it becomes an uneconomical discussion), rather than to portray the similarities between two things to avoid such prejudice and bias. This sections needs to pay serious attention to this matter or should just quite simple be removed until its neutrality can be attended to

Immanent/Scientific/A Posteriori Realism?
I'm surprised at the lack of mention of the Australian philosopher David Armstrongs extensive thought on universals, his Immanent Realism about universals is particularly satisfying in dissolving concerns about uninstantiated universals and in removing the need for an abstract realm of them. Craig Wood - boneyboy@gmail.com

Summary/Intro
I think this page needs better introductory material that sums up what the general problem of universals IS before going into the details of its philosophical history.
 * Agreed - I went here expecting a good summary of the problem to get me started on a philosophy assignment, but it jumped from saying it is a problem (not what the problem is) in several areas to discussing Buddha's lectures on nominalism. 141.218.136.102 16:53, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I tried to improve the intro along these lines. Hopefully it's better. - Jaymay (talk) 22:53, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Needs to be completely rewritten
Much of the information on this page is incorrect and displays a gross bias in its philosophical position. antirealist and pragmatist answers to the problem of universals are not mentioned, nor are russell's linguistic analysis or wittgenstein's "family resemblence" solution. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by JFQ (talk • contribs) 23:27, 23 March 2006 (UTC1)
 * I agree. Even to the details like "As the middle ages waned and the Renaissance approached..." assumes a POV.  I was under the impression that the Renaissance was a culmination of processes begun in the middle ages and far from 'waning', exploded like a firework in various directions. - Anon
 * Added expert tag as a consequence of the above requests. Lucidish 22:20, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I wrote the bulk of this article as it now stands, including that phrase about the waning of the middle ages. It is a traditional metaphor. http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/history/historian/Johan_Huizinga.html
 * You could still say that, traditional or not, it implies a POV. Possible, but then doesn't the "explosion like a firework" image? Would the latter be more encyclopedia than the former? --Christofurio 04:28, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
 * There's an entire separate page floating around somewhere linked from Abelard which tackles the Mediaeval situation much better than here (thinks: could be in French Wiki). This is a page full of waffle, imho: get specific, folks, please. The restructuring should be from the ontological into subjective viewpoints, which are by definition POV. Another problem is that there are as many classifications as there are philosophers, and then some, eg Paris 1180 has Realists vs Nominalist with Conceptualism in between, now we appear to have Scientific String Theoreticians headed towards Philosophic Existentialists somewhere on territory defined by Godel and Oppenheimer, under the original inspiration of Einstein - and there are links between them (see Godel). Can someone contact me to draft a better section?Jel 13:57, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree, this is one of the poorest articles I have read on Wikipedia and actually would significantly impede anyone's understanding of the subject of nominalism —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kantsghost (talk • contribs) 14:42, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed. This article needs major changes. I've tried to make some. It needs less history and more explanation of the main positions on the problem and arguments for and against each position. - Jaymay (talk) 22:52, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Include Ayn Rand's solution
Ayn Rand, the philosopher and creator of Objectivist philosophy has solved this problem.

Basic summary is here: http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_pobs2

Has there been any updates on this? Shall I being writing a summary for this wikipage? -- Oleksandr 22:50, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I don't see anything new or different in this summary that hasn't been covered by earlier philosophers. Therefore, I would not be in favor of including Ayn Rand in this page. - Aldrichio 22:08, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Wot, no Kant?
Nt. - 1Z 20:15, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Relationship with Qualia?
Does this topic have anything to do with the concept of qualia? There seems to be at least some similarity between it, quality (philosophy), and qualia, but IANAP, so don't quote me. Mmortal03 12:09, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I read the other article, and yes, I also think there are similarities. However, I believe these these similarities to be coincidental:  Take any object, and the vast majority of other objects will share some relationship with it. 68.144.80.168 (talk) 13:07, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
 * No, there is no need to mention qualia in this article. - Jaymay (talk) 22:51, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Conceptualism
In the article, Conceptualism is grouped in as a type of nominalism. However, I think this is incorrect. Conceptionalism is better seen as a middle ground between nominalism and realism and, therefore, should probably have its own distinct heading/section.

Also, the way that Berkeley's nominalism is described is a bit misleading. Berkeley did not deny the existence of general ideas. Instead, he denied that general ideas can be developed in the way that Lockean abstraction develops them. This could probably be made more clear in the section (not that Berkeley was exactly clear about it himself). I can probably go ahead and make these changes myself, but I was curious about others opinions on this and/or if this has already been suggested in the past.Diehl1am (talk) 00:54, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

 * Nominalism is the doctrine that universal properties do not exist in things, or more generally that they do not exist in the world. Realism, in this context, is the doctrine that particulars do have universals in them (e.g., 'blackness' inheres in some fashion in particular black marbles, which is what makes the marbles identifiable as being alike black). These two options exhaust all possibilities: either (at least some) universals are real (realism), or they are not real (nominalism). Conceptualism agrees with nominalism on this one relevant issue (and therefore is a form of nominalism): there is no 'blackness' of any sort in black objects. (Indeed, there isn't even a 'blackness' out there in the world like a Form. It simply does not exist in external reality, in any sense.) The only thing distinguishing conceptualism from other nominalist philosophies is that it tries to provide a certain sort of psychological explanation for the epistemological fact that we do identify different instances of blackness as 'the same blackness'—by saying that 'universals' are in fact mental. But clearly nominalism does not entail 'there are no mental entities which account for our recognizing similarities in objects', which is the only way conceptualism could be extracted from nominalism. -Silence (talk) 18:11, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Realise this is a reply to something from 2009, but I would like to reignite this question. There is some conceptual (ironically) confusion between nominalism and conceptualism. Their difference isn't adequately explained in the article, and what's more is that some individuals are frequently included under both headings (eg. Hume and Abelard). Some clarity I think would be helpful. Yr Enw (talk) 11:30, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Bertrand Russell& Realism
At the beginning section of realism, the claim that Bertrand Russell as a Realist has an original research flag. This should be changed to a citation to (Russell, Bertrand (1912). "The World of Universals," in The Problems of Philosophy, Oxford University Press.) which is in fact listed in the further reading, and contained within (Loux 2001) which has been cited. Sorry I can't fix this myself(Lucas(CA) (talk) 19:30, 22 July 2010 (UTC))

Ideas towards a rewrite
Okay, this article is still a mess. I've made a few changes, but I reckon it might be easier to rewrite it completely.

I think the primary problem is that it is organised historically rather than synoptically. May I suggest something like this instead:

 * Lede
 * Realism
 * Platonic realism
 * Aristotelian realism
 * Contemporary realisms
 * Armstrong
 * Arguments
 * Third-man
 * (etc.)
 * Nominalism
 * Medieval nominalists
 * Contemporary nominalists
 * Arguments
 * Other views
 * Trope theory
 * Conceptualism
 * Pragmatism
 * Idealism (maybe?)

This may not be such a good layout if you simply want to understand the historical origin of the problem of universals. It's a synoptic/philosophical layout rather than a chronological one. But I think it would provide a better overview for someone trying to understand the dialectical back-and-forth between the two views and most importantly the philosophical reasons for why people have adopted certain views. Shall I just be bold and rewrite it? 'Cos it really is a bit rubbish at the moment. Heh. —Tom Morris 14:52, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

 * You have my support, you may proceed. la gaie (talk) 03:35, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Why no modern philosophy?
This page has an abundance of views from medieval philosophers (which is understandable, considering it was one of the most widely discussed problems in philosophy at the time), but Berkeley is the only modern philosopher on this page. I'd like to see Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Hume, and Kant listed on here. --75.154.246.100 (talk) 14:32, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

TBD

 * Add moderate realism
 * Add conceptualism (two varieties?)
 * Grealy reduce Kant (I sure got what I asked for)
 * Add exemplar theory
 * Add trope theory
 * Expand Penrose
 * Add Katz

1Z (talk) 15:23, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

 * I didn't reduce Kant but did move Kant. Wrote a new "Idealism" lead, too. The Kant stuff still needs to be re-written though. (Also, and most importantly, I re-wrote that junky, wonky opening paragraph.) Check it out! CircularReason (talk) 12:19, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Interesting but ....
Despite its length, and the interesting quality of the contributions, this article seems like an intellectual trompe l'oeil to me. The first line of the introduction states:

"In metaphysics, the problem of universals refers to the question of whether properties exist".

While defining the concept: "properties", even though in my opinion somewhat vaguely, it does not define the concept: "existance". How can there be a debate about a question whose terms are undefined? The question: "Does a thought exist?" can only be answered if one is clear about the terms. If a thought is considered to be a chemical message in a human brain then the answer would be probably be yes, assuming we consider chimical and brains and the like exist, which in normal parlance we do. Other definitions of thought though would require greater precision than normal about the term "existance", as clearly being hit by a thought is not the same as being hit by a brain (or a 2x4)!

Perhaps it is possible to deduce the debate from the commentaries in the article, but imo it would be helpful to set the issue out more plainly, proceeding from definitions and predicates to theory / evidence. At present the article seems to be strenuously nailing fog to the wall.

LookingGlass (talk) 17:05, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
 * You may want to fix the typographical errors which cast a shadow on your contribution. __Ancheta Wis   (talk  | contribs) 20:26, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Addendum to Interesting but ....
The opening statement misstates the issue; it would be better stated "In metaphysics, the problem of universals refers to the issue of how concepts or terms in language can be universal, while everything to which they purport to refer are individuals." (my phraseology).

As Gyula Klima put it, "Indeed, one may safely assert that as long as there is interest in the questions of how a human language obviously abounding in universal terms can be meaningfully mapped onto a world of singulars, there is a problem of universals, regardless of the details of the particular conceptual framework in which the relevant questions are articulated. Clearly, in this sense, the problem of universals is itself a universal, the universal problem of accounting for the relationships between mind, language, and reality." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.174.113.20 (talk) 00:42, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

hint to the german lemma on this subject as source
Gentelmen,

I'm used to compare the same lemmas in different languages (really necessary in many cases). Usually the english versions are great and have more detail and erudition. In this case however the german lemma on the subject seems to be much more detailed and firmly grounded in current research. Since I'm not from the the philosophy field, please allow me to leave just this remark here and not to act on it, since in this case event trying to translate seems to be futile for a non-expert.

CommonsRooke (talk) 07:03, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

The introduction
In metaphysics, the problem of universals is the problem of explaining how individuals which differ in number (such as Socrates and Plato) can have properties in common, such as being a man or being white. Peter Damian (talk) 18:15, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

See. Peter Damian (talk) 18:16, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

 * That paper is unavailable Mr Damien and if I have grasped the concept, your statement refers only to an individual aspect. Would you please respond to my query below which I posted oblivious to this post. There is almost certainly an obvious error going on with the section unless I am totally off base, and the article proper is so meandering and referring and not really descriptive at all. I'm sure there is a simple leading explanation to be had here... ~ R.T.G 21:58, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Addition
Within the introduction I added a bit more depth to the explanation of the "problem of universals" and also included, what I believe to be a clearer example of the problem referenced from the sources added to the bibliography. These sources include: I would appreciate any feedback on not only my edit, but on my references as well.Preciousg11 (talk) 04:56, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Properties are not...
There seems to be an obvious error in the lead section here in that it describes a property as a universal, by claiming that a property is a property which is shared, obvious error. However, rewriting it is not straightforward in the sense of ensuring a description in practical laymans terms. Would I be correct thusly:-

 * The problem of universals arises when attempting to describe a universal property as separate from the entities which share it.

Also I am finding the example of cup holders to be problematic:-

This concept seems to relate to nature in the sense of asking the question, does the shape of a flower form uniquely in each circumstance, or do the flowers parts attempt to exemplify a separately existing flower shape.

Whereas the idea of a cup holder referencing or being tied to a metaphysical circle, does not strike in me with same mode of enquiry...

I haven't studied deeply into it. I am not prepared to rewrite the section. But it needs a rewrite. Can anyone be a little more succinct before I attempt to discern it for myself? ~ R.T.G 21:50, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
 * All I can say is that the article is a bit of a mess, and always has been. Peter Damian (talk) 06:25, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Wisdom flows from your words. A reduction so simple as my proposal will never be accepted, but perhaps if I read the whole article over the weekend, and try to describe that thereafter, that it then falls between the guides too... And whoever is watchful of the thing might be encouraged to water it a bit... ~ R.T.G 13:49, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Okay so, the concept does indeed seem to fairly close to what I tried to describe, so that much is fairly simple.

I like my example of the flower, however, better would be a discussion on published and historical resources to decide which are depended upon to explain the concept in the wider world. (Personally, all the way down this article I await to find something which ties the concept in with DNA, as DNA is, a sort of form through reference, but nevermind that...)

The significant content of the article seems to be the resultant paths of nominalism, conceptualism, and realism.

If my comments here are agreeable or undisputed, and I'm not overlooking something significant (there are many facets going on here), I'm prepared to rewrite the heading as suggested, simplify the examples, and swap out the cup example for the flower example (or a really significant commonly posed more stimulating example (breathe) than a cup holder, from literature would be better...) ~ R.T.G 20:31, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I've tried an edit, Peter. Apologies for the delay. I can see issues with it already, but I believe it is on the right track now. Previously it was not strictly following the sources. What do you think? ~ R.T.G 02:17, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Medieval matters
Hello, I saw that this page was on the Philosophy project template and so I thought I would have a go at adding some meat to the various bones here. I have added a little on Duns Scotus (though I simultaneously wonder if he can be subsumed under the medieval realism section?) I have added to Boethius's entry, as he is an important figure in this field. I read a few articles on the matter and have mainly taken a lead from the Stanford Encyclopaedia page. My explanation is probably utterly dreadful, so any thoughts are welcome. Knucmo2 (talk) 21:23, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I think it would be good to split the medieval section properly into: 1) Boethius 2) Realists (following either Plato or Aristotle, broadly speaking) 3) Nominalists and 4) All of the rest. --Knucmo2 (talk) 00:53, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I am working away at the medievalists, but it is going to take a lot of reading to get their thoughts in encyclopaedic form. Please feel free to fine-tune what I have written. Knucmo2 (talk) 16:04, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Problem of universals


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Isospectral

In mathematics, two linear operators are called isospectral or cospectral if they have the same spectrum. Roughly speaking, they are supposed to have the same sets of eigenvalues, when those are counted with multiplicity.

The theory of isospectral operators is markedly different depending on whether the space is finite or infinite dimensional. In finite-dimensions, one essentially deals with square matrices.

In infinite dimensions, the spectrum need not consist solely of isolated eigenvalues. However, the case of a compact operator on a Hilbert space (or Banach space) is still tractable, since the eigenvalues are at most countable with at most a single limit point λ = 0. The most studied isospectral problem in infinite dimensions is that of the Laplace operator on a domain in R2. Two such domains are called isospectral if their Laplacians are isospectral. The problem of inferring the geometrical properties of a domain from the spectrum of its Laplacian is often known as hearing the shape of a drum.

Finite dimensional spaces
In the case of operators on finite-dimensional vector spaces, for complex square matrices, the relation of being isospectral for two diagonalizable matrices is just similarity. This doesn't however reduce completely the interest of the concept, since we can have an isospectral family of matrices of shape A(t) = M(t)−1AM(t) depending on a parameter t in a complicated way. This is an evolution of a matrix that happens inside one similarity class.

A fundamental insight in soliton theory was that the infinitesimal analogue of that equation, namely

 * A = [A, M] = AM − MA

was behind the conservation laws that were responsible for keeping solitons from dissipating. That is, the preservation of spectrum was an interpretation of the conservation mechanism. The identification of so-called Lax pairs (P,L) giving rise to analogous equations, by Peter Lax, showed how linear machinery could explain the non-linear behaviour.

Isospectral manifolds
Two closed Riemannian manifolds are said to be isospectral if the eigenvalues of their Laplace–Beltrami operator (Laplacians), counted multiplicities, coincide. One of fundamental problems in spectral geometry is to ask to what extent the eigenvalues determine the geometry of a given manifold.

There are many examples of isospectral manifolds which are not isometric. The first example was given in 1964 by John Milnor. He constructed a pair of flat tori of 16 dimension, using arithmetic lattices first studied by Ernst Witt. After this example, many isospectral pairs in dimension two and higher were constructed (for instance, by M. F. Vignéras, A. Ikeda, H. Urakawa, C. Gordon). In particular, based on the Selberg trace formula for PSL(2,R) and PSL(2,C), constructed examples of isospectral, non-isometric closed hyperbolic 2-manifolds and 3-manifolds as quotients of hyperbolic 2-space and 3-space by arithmetic subgroups, constructed using quaternion algebras associated with quadratic extensions of the rationals by class field theory. In this case Selberg's trace formula shows that the spectrum of the Laplacian fully determines the length spectrum, the set of lengths of closed geodesics in each free homotopy class, along with the twist along the geodesic in the 3-dimensional case.

In 1985 Toshikazu Sunada found a general method of construction based on a covering space technique, which, either in its original or certain generalized versions, came to be known as the Sunada method or Sunada construction. Like the previous methods it is based on the trace formula, via the Selberg zeta function. Sunada noticed that the method of constructing number fields with the same Dedekind zeta function could be adapted to compact manifolds. His method relies on the fact that if M is a finite covering of a compact Riemannian manifold M0 with G the finite group of deck transformations and H1, H2 are subgroups of G meeting each conjugacy class of G in the same number of elements, then the manifolds H1 \ M and H2 \ M are isospectral but not necessarily isometric. Although this does not recapture the arithmetic examples of Milnor and Vignéras, Sunada's method yields many known examples of isospectral manifolds. It led C. Gordon, D. Webb and S. Wolpert to the discovery in 1991 of a counter example to Mark Kac's problem "Can one hear the shape of a drum?" An elementary treatment, based on Sunada's method, was later given in.

Sunada's idea also stimulated the attempt to find isospectral examples which could not be obtained by his technique. Among many examples, the most striking one is a simply connected example of. On the other hand, Alan Reid proved that certain isospectral arithmetic hyperbolic manifolds in are commensurable.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Isospectral


text:
New World oriole

New World orioles are a group of birds in the genus Icterus of the blackbird family. Unrelated to Old World orioles of the family Oriolidae, they are strikingly similar in size, diet, behavior, and strongly contrasting plumage. As a result, the two have been given the same vernacular name.

Males are typically black and vibrant yellow or orange with white markings, females and immature birds duller. They molt annually. New World orioles are generally slender with long tails and a pointed bill. They mainly eat insects, but also enjoy nectar and fruit. The nest is a woven, elongated pouch. Species nesting in areas with cold winters are strongly migratory, while subtropical and tropical species are more sedentary.

The name "oriole" was first recorded (in the Latin form oriolus) by the German Dominican friar Albertus Magnus in about 1250, which he stated to be onomatopoeic, from the song of the European golden oriole.

One of the species in the genus, Bahama oriole, is critically endangered.

The genus Icterus was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 with the Venezuelan troupial as the type species. The name is the Latin word for a yellow bird, probably the Eurasian golden oriole.

The genus name Icterus, as used by classical authors, referred to a bird with yellow or green plumage. Icterus is from Greek ἴκτερος (íkteros, “jaundice”); the ictērus was a bird the sight of which was believed to cure jaundice, perhaps the Eurasian golden oriole. Brisson re-applied the name to the New World birds because of their similarity in appearance.

Species list
The genus contains 32 extant species. One extinct species, the Talara troupial (Icterus turmalis), is known from fossil remains recovered from the Talara Tar Seeps of northwestern Peru, and likely went extinct during the late Quaternary. It may have been a close associate of Pleistocene megafauna communities, and may have gone extinct following their collapse in populations.

title: New World oriole


text:
1689 in music

The year 1689 in music involved some significant events.

Events

 * September 1 – Johann Joseph Vilsmayr begins work at the Hofkapelle in Salzburg.
 * Nicolaus Bruhns is appointed town organist at Husum.

Published popular music

 * Henry Purcell – Musick's Handmaid

Classical music

 * Jean-Henri d'Anglebert – Pièces de clavecin
 * Giovanni Battista Bassani – Giona (oratorio)
 * Giovanni Paolo Colonna – Sacre lamentationi della Settimana santa a voce sola
 * Arcangelo Corelli – Op. 3, 12 trio sonatas
 * Michel Richard Delalande
 * Audite caeli, S.7
 * Quam dilecta S.12
 * De Profundis S.23
 * Domenico Gabrielli
 * Seven ricercari for solo cello
 * Cello Sonata No. 1 and No. 2
 * Johann Caspar Kerll – Missae sex, cum instrumentis concertantibus, a collection of concertato masses
 * Johann Kuhnau – Neuer Clavier-Übung, erster Theil
 * Michel Lambert
 * Airs de cour
 * Airs à une, II. III. et IV. parties avec la basse-continue
 * Giovanni Battista Vitali – Artificii musicali (Op. 13)

Opera

 * Antonio Caldara – L'Argene
 * Henri Desmarest – La Diane de Fontainebleau
 * Henry Purcell – Dido and Aeneas (libretto by Nahum Tate, first performed in London)
 * Poul Christian Schindler – Der vereinigte Götterstreit
 * Agostino Steffani – La Lotta d'Ercole con Acheloo

Births

 * February 27 – Pietro Gnocchi, composer (died 1775)
 * September 30 – Jacques Aubert, composer (died 1753)
 * November 3 – Johann Joseph Ignaz Brentner, composer (died 1742)
 * December 23 – Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, composer (died 1755)
 * date unknown – Edward Purcell, organist and co-founder of the Royal Society of Musicians (died 1740)

Deaths

 * November 13 – Philipp von Zesen, hymn-writer (born 1619)

title: 1689 in music


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Renoir (surname)

Renoir is a surname, a phonetic corruption of the French surname, "Renouard."

People with the surname Renoir

 * Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), French Impressionist painter
 * Pierre Renoir (1885–1952), French actor and son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir
 * Jean Renoir (1894–1979), French film director and son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir
 * Claude Renoir (1901–1969), French film producer and son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir
 * Claude Renoir (1913 (or 1914)–1993), French cinematographer and son of Pierre Renoir, grandson of Pierre-Auguste Renoir
 * Sophie Renoir, French actress, daughter of the younger Claude

title: Renoir (surname)


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Talk:James Whale (radio presenter)

Untitled
I believe that James Whale is a quality radio presenter who makes late night radio a lot more interesting. It does seem a little silly to create an encyclopedia and put opinionated views on it.

Two things: (a) what do you mean by "opinionated views"? How you can you a view on something unless you have an opinion? (b) Haven't you just made the very same sort of opionionated comment by saying that James Whale is a "quality radio presenter"? You're using Wikipedia to say you LIKE Whale, the person who wrote the article is using Wikipedia to say he DOESN'T like Whale....why is one wrong, and not the other? OK...stand back for predictable rebukes.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.198.33.252 (talk) 14:48, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Why

___

That's very nice, but isn't Tommy Boyd much better? The Jewel ___

So much better, that man should be back on air, against his will if necessary!

Well....compared to Whale, anyone's better! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.198.33.252 (talk) 16:04, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Entry Mentioned on the James Whale Show
I just thoguht I'd mention that this entry was mentioned on the James Whale Show last night (18th January 2006). Whale said he had not seen the page, but that (in an admittedly humourous and flippant style) if it contained libelous material, he would take legal action. Lucky the pagge is not in too bad shape at the minute. McGonicle 15:20, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

No mention of the affair?
I vaguely recall (and correct me if I am wrong) that Whale admitted to having an affair on air and got his wife in the studio to discuss it with her. True? Magic Pickle 00:44, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

=> Sounds like a camp James Whale stunt (even for James Whale)...

Born in Wales?
According to Ian Collins, James Whale was born in Wales. (if you taped tonights Ian Collins and Chessy show, you can hear him talk about the birthplaces of various talkSPORT presenters.) MrD 03:18, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, the page lists his birth year as 1978 which can't be correct... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.100.100.5 (talk) 18:55, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

James Whale Website/Blog
Got a temporary website url for James new website/blog - soon to be uploaded onto new server should i add to to links? Click Here to Preview NEW URL: Whale World Homepage

Sony Awards
It has been cited that James Whale has won three sony awards but i do not think he has, but Jon Gaunt has. could anyone confirm or reject this?

James Whale MySpace
This is not actually James Whale but someone else pretending to be James.

Whale + Leykis
Curious as to why the info about him merging his show with Tom Leykis' show was removed. Granted it was technically unsourced, but anyone who has archives of either show could easliy source it. Being an American, I'd have never heard of Whale if not for the Leykis simulcasts. Just thoght I'd put my 2¢ in. - EmiOfBrie 07:23, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Its also worth mentioning his strong animal welfare beliefs which he does mention alot on his show

Regular Guests
What about Dill the cabby driver, who James pretends he is scared of!

Tone
I've removed a lot of hyperbolic gush, presumably written by someone who's a big fan (maybe the man himself) but there's still a lot there that should probably go. Bienfuxia (talk) 17:14, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes: the words! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.198.33.252 (talk) 14:06, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

LW Atlantic 252
Didn't he present a show on Atlantic 252 during the 1990s? I remember it well but maybe it was another DJ with the same name.--Xania talk 20:43, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Nationality
Nationality changed from English to British. A. Because there is no English nationality, B. His ancestry is at least half Welsh. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.104.98.114 (talk) 22:43, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Press TV?
Did he? Rothorpe (talk) 23:34, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Married to Winnie Mandela??
This looks like vandalism... — Preceding unsigned comment added by SJM978 (talk • contribs) 13:45, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I believe he was engaged to her but they did not marry (source - TalkSport). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.196.165.60 (talk) 10:03, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 1 January 2019

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved to presenter. (closed by non-admin page mover)  SITH   (talk)   22:19, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

James Whale (radio) → ??? – I am not familiar enough with this topic or the naming conventions for people to know the best destination, but I am fairly confident he isn't a "radio". The (radio) disambiguator - much like the (television) one - is only for topics related to radio technology and related concepts. -- Netoholic @ 22:15, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment: James Whale (radio personality) would seem like the best proposal here. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 04:28, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Support James Whale (radio presenter) is my 1st preference in consistency with TV presenters, not opposed to similar suggestions.  Iffy★Chat -- 17:15, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Support a move to James Whale (radio presenter). Lard Almighty (talk) 17:22, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * James Whale (radio presenter) sounds good. power~enwiki ( π, ν ) 22:29, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Support James Whale (radio presenter). We used to have a bad habit of dabbing anything or anyone related to radio as just "(radio)", rather than specifying "radio show" or "radio station" or "radio presenter" or whatever like we should have — but that's been getting cleaned up in a lot of cases, and it should here as well. Bearcat (talk) 15:00, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Dubious: Actor - Doctor Who
Not listed iMDB - https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0923450/?ref_=fn_al_nm_2#actor

Source given is the subject being interviewed - Unable to find any reference to the subject being in Dr Who other than themselves being interviewed. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=james+whale%2Bdoctor+who&dcr=0&ei=DsWYYKznLI2agQaJ97rwCw&oq=james+whale%2Bdoctor+who&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMyBQghEKABUODoAljJ6QJg9-oCaABwAHgAgAFaiAHQAZIBATOYAQCgAQGqAQdnd3Mtd2l6wAEB&sclient=gws-wiz&ved=0ahUKEwispvCmsb7wAhUNTcAKHYm7Dr4Q4dUDCA4&uact=5

Contested by Nicholas Pegg, who has himself 'played' a Dalek on numerous occasions and has extensive Who knowledge. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Pegg#Doctor_Who_credits - https://twitter.com/nicholaspegg/status/758775367582842880?lang=en

title: Talk:James Whale (radio presenter)


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Holiness Baptist Association

The Holiness Baptist Association is a Holiness Pentecostal body of Christians with Baptist historical roots.

Holiness movement
In 19th century America, the Holiness movement developed out of the Methodist emphasis of the Wesleyan teachings of holiness. John Wesley taught that holiness (also known as entire sanctification or Christian perfection), was a definite and instantaneous second work of grace received by faith. Methodists, inclusive of the holiness movement, equated entire sanctification with baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Early in the 20th century, some in the Holiness movement also embraced Pentecostalism, which taught a third work of grace, whose outward sign was speaking in tongues. Holiness Pentecostals taught that it was the third work of grace, not the second work of grace, that was the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Those in the holiness movement (such as the Free Methodist Church and Church of the Nazarene) were critical of the Holiness Pentecostals for this reason and rejected the Parhamian-Seymourian doctrine of speaking in tongues. The following bodies have primary roots in the Holiness movement and secondary roots in Pentecostalism.

Holiness Baptists in Georgia
The holiness movement among Baptists in south Georgia began late in the 19th century in Wilcox County among ministers in the Little River Baptist Association. At the annual session of the association in 1893, fellowship was withdrawn from two churches "because of their doctrine of holiness or carnal perfection".¹ The two excluded churches and two newly formed churches met in 1894 to organize the Holiness Baptist Association. The association was organized upon the same articles of faith and rules of decorum as the Little River Association. In 1905, the association adopted new articles of faith and decorum, bringing their statements in line with their holiness beliefs. More changes were made to the articles and decorum in 1916. They have since remained relatively the same. In 1916, the Holiness Baptists agreed to form two separate associations, and continued in that manner until they consolidated in 1925. A periodical called The Gospel Standard was started in 1918 by J. N. Salter, and has continued as the Holiness Baptist Association publication to the present. Over the years the Holiness Baptists of Georgia moved away from Baptist polity, proceeding through a Presbyterian form to a Methodist form of government, while gradually including Pentecostal distinctives, such as speaking in tongues, within their services. Their greatest period of growth was from 1905 to 1945, after which they began to decline. In 1949, the association built a camp ground and tabernacle in Coffee County near Douglas, Georgia. Annual meetings of the association are held at the tabernacle. There is one member church in Florida.

In 1934, the Baptist Purity Association was formed by members excluded from the Holiness Baptist Association for teaching and practicing the substitution of water for grape juice in the Lord's supper.

In 1977, discontented members withdrew and formed the Calvary Holiness Association.

According to historian Robert G. Gardner of Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, these three Holiness Baptist bodies currently have about 50 churches with about 1,582 members. Like many other Holiness groups, they maintain strict standards of dress, require long hair for women and short hair for men, and abstain from tobacco, intoxicating beverages, dancing provocatively, gambling, television, etc.

Holiness Baptist Churches of Southwestern Arkansas
William Jethro Walthall (1858–1931) was ordained as a Missionary Baptist preacher on May 29, 1887. In 1895 he became familiar with the holiness revival, and felt it spoke to what he believed he had already experienced. These teachings were at odds with the local Baptist teachings. Walthall was excluded from his church in 1896 and ostracized by the Red River Baptist Association. In 1899, minister J. C. Kelly and his church were excluded from the Red River Association. Walthall and Kelly continued to preach and formed new churches, mostly in southwestern Arkansas, but a few in Oklahoma Territory and Texas. By 1903 these churches had founded the Holiness Baptist Churches of Southwestern Arkansas. The first annual session was held November 6–8, 1903 at Sutton, Arkansas. This Holiness Baptist group continued until 1917. In that year, Walthall joined the Assemblies of God and brought all 36 congregations of the Holiness Baptist Churches of Southwestern Arkansas into the Assemblies of God.

North Carolina and South Carolina
Early in the 19th century, Holiness Baptist churches at Greenville, South Carolina and Hendersonville, North Carolina corresponded with the Holiness Baptist Association of Georgia. A church at Burlington, North Carolina was a member of the Georgia association for a few years. The status of these churches is unknown, though they likely were absorbed into other holiness or Pentecostal bodies.

Kentucky and Tennessee
The Church of God Mountain Assembly, though not named Holiness Baptist, began as a holiness movement among Baptists. It was formed in 1907 by ministers and churches excluded from the South Union Association of United Baptists for preaching holiness and the danger of apostasy. The Church of God Mountain Assembly corresponded with the Holiness Baptist Association of Georgia early in the 20th century.

title: Holiness Baptist Association


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User:Paul G

Based in London in the UK.

Principal Wikipedia interests: language and mathematics.

I am a major contributor to Wiktionary.

title: User:Paul G


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Boreal owl

The boreal owl (Aegolius funereus) or Tengmalm's owl is a small owl in the "true owl" family Strigidae. It is known as the boreal owl in North America and as Tengmalm's owl in Europe after Swedish naturalist Peter Gustaf Tengmalm or, more rarely, Richardson's owl after Sir John Richardson.

Due to the boreal owl's shyness and evasive reaction to human activities, nocturnal habits and preferred inaccessible taiga forest habitat, it is rarely seen by humans.

Taxonomy
The boreal owl was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. Linnaeus placed it with all the other owls in the genus Strix and coined the binomial name Strix funerea. The Eurasian scops owl is now placed in the genus Aegolius that was introduced in 1829 by the German naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup with the boreal owl as the type species. The genus name is Latin for a screech owl, the word came from the Ancient Greek aigōlios meaning "a bird of ill omen". The specific epithet funereus is Latin meaning "funereal".

Seven subspecies are recognised:
 * A.f. richardsoni (Bonaparte, 1838) – Alaska, north Canada and north United States
 * A.f funereus (Linnaeus, 1758) – nominate subspecies, from Scandinavia down south to the Pyrenees and east to the Urals, but not the Caucasus Mountains
 * A.f. magnus (Buturlin, 1907) – northeast Siberia
 * A.f. sibiricus (Buturlin, 1910) – southeast and south Siberia
 * A.f. pallens (Schalow, 1908) – west and central Siberia
 * A.f. caucasicus (Buturlin, 1907) – Caucasus Mountains
 * A.f. beickianus Stresemann, 1928 – northwest India to southwest China

Description
The boreal owl is 22 – in length and has a wingspan of 50 –. A female is heavier than a male bird and weighs 131 - 179 g compared with an average of 107 g for a male bird. The plumage is brown above, with white flecking on the shoulders and whitish underparts with rust-colored streaks. The head is large with yellow eyes and a dull white facial disc that is sometimes described as giving the owl a "surprised" expression. The beak is a light yellow, rather than dark like its relative the northern saw-whet owl. The ears are asymmetrical in multiple bones, which affects their hunting success. The sexes are similar in appearance. The plumage of young birds is chocolate brown. The boreal owl's flight is relatively noiseless and straight.

Its call is similar in sound to the "winnowing" of the North American Wilson's snipe.

Distribution and habitat
The boreal owl breeds in dense coniferous forests across northern North America and the Palearctic, and in mountain ranges such as the Alps and the Rockies. This species is not normally migratory, but in some autumns significant numbers move further south. It is rarely any great distance south of its breeding range, although this is partly due to the problems of detecting this nocturnal owl outside the breeding season when it is not calling.

Breeding
They first breed when one year of age. The nest is usually a hole in a tree often that made by a woodpecker, but the birds also readily use nest-boxes. The clutch is usually 3–7 eggs which are laid at 2-day intervals. They are glossy white and measure 33 x and weigh around 12.5 g. The eggs are incubated only by the female beginning with the second egg. They hatch asynchronously after 25–32 days. The young are cared for by the female who broods the nestlings for an average of 21 days. The young fledge when aged around 28–33 days and become independent at 5 to 6 weeks.

Food and feeding
This small owl eats mainly voles and other mammals (such as mice, chipmunks, other squirrels, gophers, moles, shrews and bats), but also birds as well as small amphibians, insects (such as beetles) and other invertebrates. In North America, they have been observed preying on southern red-backed voles, western heather voles, jumping mice, northern pocket gophers and northern flying squirrels. Birds preyed upon include dark-eyed juncos, American robins and common redpolls. It is largely nocturnal, though in the northernmost parts of its range, it has to hunt during daylight because of the very short nights in summer.

Mortality
Banded boreal owls have been known to live up to 16 years. Due to the owl's small stature it is often eaten by other owls and large raptors thus decreasing its average lifespan.

title: Boreal owl


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Franklin's gull

Franklin's gull (Leucophaeus pipixcan) is a small (length 12.6–14.2 in, 32–36 cm) gull. The genus name Leucophaeus is from Ancient Greek leukos, "white", and phaios, "dusky". The specific pipixcan is a Nahuatl name for a type of gull.

Description
It breeds in central provinces of Canada and adjacent states of the northern United States. It is a migratory bird, wintering in Argentina, the Caribbean, Chile, and Peru.

The summer adult's body is white and its back and wings are much darker grey than all other gulls of similar size except the larger laughing gull. The wings have black tips with an adjacent white band. The bill and legs are red. The black hood of the breeding adult is mostly lost in winter.

Young birds are similar to the adult but have less developed hoods and lack the white wing band. They take three years to reach maturity.

Measurements:

 * Length: 12.6-14.2 in (32-36 cm)
 * Weight: 8.1-10.6 oz (230-300 g)
 * Wingspan: 33.5-37.4 in (85-95 cm)

Distribution
Although the bird is uncommon on the coasts of North America, it occurs as a rare vagrant to northwest Europe, south and west Africa, Australia and Japan, with a single record from Eilat, Israel, in 2011 (Smith 2011), and a single record from Larnaca, Cyprus, July 2006. At the beginning of 2017 has been observed also in Southern Romania, southeast Europe.

Behaviour
They are omnivores like most gulls, and they will scavenge as well as seeking suitable small prey. In the spring, on rivers such as the Bow River large groups will float with the current, sipping the emerging insect hatch. The behaviour includes floating through a particular stretch and returning repeatedly to the same section.

Reproduction
The birds breed in colonies near prairie lakes with the nest constructed on the ground, or sometimes floating. The two or three eggs are incubated for about three weeks.

Naming
The bird was named after the Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, who led an 1823 expedition in which the first specimen of Franklin's gull was taken.

title: Franklin's gull


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Wishful thinking

Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs based on what might be pleasing to imagine, rather than on evidence, rationality, or reality. It is a product of resolving conflicts between belief and desire. Methodologies to examine wishful thinking are diverse. Various disciplines and schools of thought examine related mechanisms such as neural circuitry, human cognition and emotion, types of bias, procrastination, motivation, optimism, attention and environment. This concept has been examined as a fallacy. It is related to the concept of wishful seeing.

Some psychologists believe that positive thinking is able to positively influence behavior and so bring about better results. This is called the "Pygmalion effect". Christopher Booker discussed wishful thinking in terms of "the fantasy cycle", which he described as "a pattern that recurs in personal lives, in politics, in history – and in storytelling." He added: "When we embark on a course of action which is unconsciously driven by wishful thinking, all may seem to go well for a time, in what may be called the 'dream stage'. But because this make-believe can never be reconciled with reality, it leads to a 'frustration stage' as things start to go wrong, prompting a more determined effort to keep the fantasy in being. As reality presses in, it leads to a 'nightmare stage' as everything goes wrong, culminating in an 'explosion into reality', when the fantasy finally falls apart."

Studies have consistently shown that holding all else equal, subjects will have unrealistic optimism and predict positive outcomes to be more likely than negative outcomes. Research also suggests that under certain circumstances, such as when threat increases, a reverse phenomenon occurs.

As a fallacy
In addition to being a cognitive bias and a poor way of making decisions, wishful thinking is commonly held to be a specific informal fallacy in an argument when it is assumed that because we wish something to be true or false, it is actually true or false. This fallacy has the form "I wish that P were true/false; therefore, P is true/false." Wishful thinking, if this were true, would rely upon appeals to emotion, and would also be a red herring.

Wishful thinking may cause blindness to unintended consequences.

Wishful seeing
Wishful seeing is the phenomenon in which a person's internal state influences their visual perception. People have the tendency to believe that they perceive the world for what it is, but research suggests otherwise. Currently, there are two main types of wishful seeing based on where wishful seeing occurs—in categorization of objects or in representations of an environment.

The concept of wishful seeing was first introduced by the New Look approach to psychology. The New Look approach was popularized in the 1950s through the work of Jerome Bruner and Cecile Goodman. In their classic 1947 study, they asked children to demonstrate their perception of the size of coins by manipulating the diameter of a circular aperture on a wooden box. Each child held the coin in their left hand at the same height and distance from the aperture and operated the knob to change the size of the aperture with their right hand. The children were divided into three groups, two experimental and one control, with ten children in each group. The control group was asked to estimate the size of coin-sized cardboard discs instead of actual coins. On average, the children of the experimental groups overestimated the size of the coins by thirty percent. In a second iteration of the experiment, Bruner and Goodman divided the children into groups based on economic status. Again, both the "poor" and "rich" groups were asked to estimate the size of real coins by manipulating the diameter of the aperture. As was expected, both groups overestimated the size of the coins, but the "poor" group overestimated the size by as much as fifty percent, which was up to thirty percent more than the "rich" group. From these results Bruner and Goodman concluded that poorer children felt a greater desire for money and thus perceived the coins as larger. This hypothesis formed the basis of the New Look psychological approach which suggests that the subjective experience of an object influences the visual perception of that object. Some psychodynamic psychologists adopted the views of the New Look approach in order to explain how individuals might protect themselves from disturbing visual stimuli. The psychodynamic perspective lost support because it lacked a sufficient model to account for how the unconscious could influence perception.

Although some further research was able to replicate the results found by Bruner and Goodman, the New Look approach was mostly abandoned by the 1970s because the experiments were riddled with methodological errors that did not account for confounding factors such as reporter bias and context. Recent research has brought about a revival of New Look perspectives, but with methodological improvements to resolve the outstanding issues that plagued the original studies.

Reverse wishful thinking and seeing
This process occurs when threat increases. The Ebbinghaus illusion has been used to measure reverse wishful seeing, with participants observing negative flanker targets underestimated less than positive or neutral targets. Feelings of fear also lead to perception of the feared object as closer just as prior research suggests that desired objects are perceived as closer. Furthermore, some people are less inclined to wishful thinking/seeing based on their emotional states or personality.

Cognition
Concrete cognitive mechanisms underlying wishful thinking and wishful seeing are unknown. Since these concepts are still developing, research on the mechanisms contributing to this phenomenon is still in progress. However, some mechanisms have been proposed. Wishful thinking could be attributed to three mechanisms: attentional bias, interpretation bias or response bias. Therefore, there are three different stages in cognitive processing in which wishful thinking could arise. First, at the lowest stage of cognitive processing, individuals selectively attend to cues. Individuals can attend to evidence that supports their desires and neglect contradictory evidence. Second, wishful thinking could be generated by selective interpretation of cues. In this case, an individual is not changing their attention to the cue but the attribution of importance to the cue. Finally, wishful thinking can arise at a higher stage of cognitive processing, such as when forming a response to the cue and inserting bias.

Wishful seeing can be attributed to the same mechanisms as wishful thinking because it involves the processing of situational cues, including visual cues. However, with preconscious processing of visual cues and their associations with desirable outcomes, interpretation bias and response bias are not plausible since they occur in conscious cognitive processing stages. Therefore, a fourth mechanism called perceptual set can also explain this phenomenon. This mechanism proposes that mental states or associations activated before an object comes into view subtly guide the visual system during processing. Therefore, cues are readily recognized when they are related to such a mental state or association.

Some speculate that wishful seeing results from cognitive penetrability in that higher cognitive functions are able to directly influence perceptual experience instead of only influencing perception at higher levels of processing. Those that argue against cognitive penetrability feel that sensory systems operate in a modular fashion with cognitive states exerting their influence only after the stimuli has been perceived. The phenomenon of wishful seeing implicates cognitive penetrability in the perceptual experience.

Wishful seeing has been observed to occur in early stages of categorization. Research using ambiguous figures and binocular rivalry exhibit this tendency. Perception is influenced by both top-down and bottom-up processing. In visual processing, bottom-up processing is a rigid route compared to flexible top-down processing. Within bottom-up processing, the stimuli are recognized by fixation points, proximity and focal areas to build objects, while top-down processing is more context sensitive. This effect can be observed via priming as well as with emotional states. The traditional hierarchical models of information processing describe early visual processing as a one-way street: early visual processing goes into conceptual systems, but conceptual systems do not affect visual processes. Currently, research rejects this model and suggests conceptual information can penetrate early visual processing rather than just biasing the perceptual systems. This occurrence is called conceptual or cognitive penetrability. Research on conceptual penetrability utilize stimuli of conceptual-category pairs and measure the reaction time to determine if the category effect influenced visual processing, The category effect is the difference in reaction times within the pairs such as Bb to Bp. To test conceptual penetrability, there were simultaneous and sequential judgments of pairs. The reaction times decreased as the stimulus onset asynchrony increased, supporting categories affect visual representations and conceptual penetrability. Research with richer stimuli such as figures of cats and dogs allow for greater perceptual variability and analysis of stimulus typicality (cats and dogs were arranged in various positions, some more or less typical for recognition). Differentiating the pictures took longer when they were within the same category (doga-dogb) compared between categories (dog-cat) supporting category knowledge influences categorization. Therefore, visual processing measured by physical differential judgments is affected by non-visual processing supporting conceptual penetrability.

Neural circuitry
The areas of the brain that motivate wishful seeing and thinking are associated with the same regions that underlie social identification and reward. A study looked at these structures using MRI while participants estimated the winning probabilities for a series of football teams. Prior to this estimation, the individuals specified their favorite, neutral and least favorite NFL teams. Wishful thinking has been associated with social identity theory where individual seem to prefer in-group members over out-group members. In this case, these individuals preferred the football team they most identified.

During wishful thinking tasks, differential activity was found in three areas of the brain: dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, the parietal lobe, and the fusiform gyrus in the occipital lobe. Differential activity in the occipital and parietal areas suggests a mode of selective attention to the cues presented; therefore, supporting a lower-level cognitive processing or attention bias. However, differential activity in the prefrontal cortex also suggests higher-cognitive processing. The prefrontal cortex activity is related to preferences involved in social identification. As a result, when cues are relevant to an individual, such as a favorite football team, the prefrontal cortex is activated. This identification of self carries hedonic value which in turn stimulates the reward system. Differential activation of the reward system areas was only seen in conjunction with the activation of occipital lobe. Thus, the activation of the reward system with an identification of self could lead to guidance of visual attention.

Magnocellular (M) and parvocellular (P) pathways, which feed into the orbitofrontal cortex, play important roles in top-down processes that are susceptible to cognitive penetrability. Magnocellular processing biased stimuli deferentially activates the orbitofrontal cortex; fast magnocellular projections link early visual and inferotemporal object recognition and work with the orbitofrontal cortex by helping generate early object predictions based on perceptual sets. Stimuli were M-biased with low-luminance, achromatic line drawings or P-biased with isoluminate, chromatic line drawings and participants were asked if the drawing was larger or smaller than a shoebox. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to monitor brain activity in the orbitofrontal cortex and ventrotemporal regions to determine which pathway aided faster object recognition. The results supported that magnocellular neurons play a vital role in low-resolution object recognition as the neurons aid in quickly triggering top-down processes that provide initial guesses that lead to faster object recognition.

Attention
Humans have a physiologically limited visual field that must be selectively directed to certain stimuli. Attention is the cognitive process that allows this task to be accomplished and it might be responsible for the phenomenon of wishful seeing. Expectations, desires and fears are among the various factors that help direct attention. Consequently, these cognitive experiences have the opportunity to influence the perceptual experience. In turn, attention can organize planned movement, providing a mechanism through which visual stimuli can influence behavior.

Attentional deficits can also lead to altered perceptual experiences. Inattentional blindness, where unexpected events go by undetected, is one such deficit. Using an inattentional blindness paradigm, researchers, White and Davies, had participants fixate on a cross in the center of the screen. First, a number cue denoting the number of letters that would appear on the arms of the cross appeared in the center of the cross. Following the cue, the actual letters would appear on the arms of the cross. Over four trials, the number of letters matched the number that was cued. On the fifth trial, half of the participants were cued to expect a smaller number of letters and half were cued to expect the correct number of letters. The letters then appeared on the screen accompanied by an unexpected stimulus. Participants were asked which letters appeared and whether they had seen any additional object. Participants cued to expect fewer letters were more susceptible to inattentional blindness as they failed to detect the unexpected stimulus more often than participants who had been cued to expect the correct number of stimuli. These results indicate that attentional capacity is affected by expectations. This provides further evidence that cognitive processes converge in order to help construct the perceptual experience.

Although attention can lead to enhanced perceptual processing, the lack of attention to stimuli can also lead to a perceived enhanced perception of the stimuli. Participants were pre-cued that indicated the diagonal to which they should be attending. They were then presented with stimuli (gratings with different textures) and then a response cue that indicated the diagonal for which the participants had to judge their perception. 70% of the time the response cue matched the pre-cue and 30% of the time did not match the pre-cue. The participants were asked to report the texture of the gratings that appeared in the response-cue and discriminate its visibility. This set-up allowed them to compare the perception of attended (cued) and non-attended stimuli (uncued). Higher visibility was reported for stimuli that was unattended. Therefore, inattention lead to an overestimation of perception sensitivity. This study suggests attention bias, a mechanism of wishful thinking, does not only rely on what individuals fixate upon, but the unattended stimuli as well.

Interpretation of emotion
Emotion is often interpreted through visual cues on the face, body language and context. However, context and cultural backgrounds have been shown to influence the visual perception and interpretation of emotion. Cross-cultural differences in change blindness have been associated with perceptual set, or a tendency to attend to visual scenes in a particular way. For example, eastern cultures tend to emphasize the background of an object, while western cultures focus on the central objects in a scene. Perceptual sets are also the result of cultural aesthetic preferences. Therefore, cultural context can influence how people sample information from a face, just like they would do in a situational context. For example, Caucasians generally fixate around eyes, nose and mouth, while Asians fixate on eyes. Individuals from different cultural backgrounds who were shown a series of faces and asked to sort them into piles in which every face showed the same emotion. Fixation on different features of the face leads to disparate reading of emotions. Asians' focus on the eyes lead to the perception of startled faces as surprise rather than fear. As a result, previous associations or customs of an individual can lead to different categorization or recognition of emotion. This particular difference in visual perception of emotion seems to suggest an attention bias mechanism for wishful seeing, since certain visual cues were attended to (e.g. nose, eyes) and the others were ignored (e.g. mouth).

Optimism
Wishful seeing is also linked to optimism bias through which individuals tend to expect positive outcomes from events despite such expectations having little basis in reality. In order to determine the neural correlates underlying optimism bias, one functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study imaged the brains of individuals as they recalled autobiographical moments related to life events and then rated their memories on several scales. These ratings revealed that participants viewed future positive events as more positive than past positive events and negative events as more temporally distant. The active brain regions, compared to a fixation point, were the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) and the right amygdala. Both of these areas became less active when imagining negative future events. The rACC is implicated in assessing emotional content and has strong connections to the amygdala. It is suggested that the rACC regulates activation in brain regions associated with emotion and autobiographical memory, thus allowing for the projection of positivity onto images of future events.

It is important to consider physical aspects such as eye movement and brain activity and their relationship to wishful thinking, wishful seeing, and optimism. Isaacowitz (2006) investigated the motivational role of gaze, which he claims is highly correlated to an individual's interests and personality. In his study, participants who embodied varying levels of self-reported optimism were directed to look at images of skin cancer, line drawings that were similar to the cancer pictures, and neutral faces. Using a remote eye tracking system that measured the movement of the participants gaze, Isaacowitz found that more optimistically minded young adults gazed less on the skin cancer images when compared to the less optimistically minded participants. This data was replicated in a follow-up study in which participants were screened for their genetically based risk for contracting skin cancer (even though some participants were more at risk than others, higher levels of optimism were correlated with a less fixated gaze on the skin cancer images despite the fact that the images were relevant to some participants).

Methodology
Wishful thinking is often studied in the context of psychology through the application of ambiguous figure studies, the hypothesis being that when presented with an ambiguous stimuli, the participant will interpret the stimuli in a certain way depending on the conditions or priming the participant experiences.

Balcetis and Dunning (2013) investigated wishful seeing by conducting two experiments, one involving two ambiguous stimuli that could be perceived as "B" or "13", and the other either a horse or a seal. The second experiment was a binocular rivalry test in which the participants were presented simultaneously with the letter "H" or number "4" (one stimuli in each eye). In each experiment, the experimenters associated one of the stimuli with desirable outcomes, and the other with a negative outcome (i.e. the "B" was associated with freshly squeezed orange juice while the "13" was associated with an undesirable health food smoothie, and in the binocular rivalry experiment, letters were associated with economic gain while numbers were associated with economic loss). The results of the experiment demonstrated that participants were more likely to perceive the stimulus that was associated with a positive situation or outcome than the stimulus associated with negative situations. This strong correlation between perception and positive versus negative stimuli demonstrates that we tend to see the world based on our own desires. The concept of wishful seeing hints towards a motivation-based perception process.

Balcetis and Dale (2007) further considered that we view the world in biased ways in their four-prong study, one part of which addressed motivated object interpretation using a situation involving the interpretation of an ambiguous object (i.e. a Necker cube) that lacks the language based labels that the priming information may suggest to the participants. Many studies claim that what humans perceive or see is based on our internal motivation and goals, but it is important to consider that some priming situations in certain studies, or even the internal views of the participant, can affect the interpretation of a stimulus. With these considerations in mind, Balcetis and Dale (2007), divided 124 Cornell University undergraduates into three groups which were each asked to imagine one of three detailed conditions: an upward-looking condition (participants were asked to imagine looking up at a large building), a downward-looking position (looking into a deep canyon), and a neutral/flat condition (standing in a flat field). The participants were then shown an ambiguous Necker cube on a computer screen and were told to click one of the two blue lines that seemed the closest to them. The line the participants chose depended on whether they determined the cube to be facing upwards or downwards. The results of the study demonstrated that the majority of participants in the upward-looking condition saw the cube as facing upwards, the majority of downwards-looking conditioned patients saw the cube as facing downwards, and the participants in the neutral condition were evenly divided. These results show that the priming stimulus language influenced object identification. Motivation-affected object identification was observed in each condition.

Similar results were seen in a study conducted by Changizi and Hall (2001), which addressed wishful thinking and goal-oriented object identification by investigating levels of thirst among participants in relation to their tendency to identify an ambiguously transparent stimulus as transparent (the study states that transparency is a natural yet unobvious quality directly related to water, a typically clear substance). The results of the study showed a clear tendency for the thirsty participants (who were directed to eat a bag of potato chips immediately preceding the study) to interpret the ambiguous stimuli as transparent. Furthermore, the participants who were not thirsty (they were directed to drink water before the study until they reported themselves as not thirsty) were less likely to interpret the ambiguous stimuli as transparent. The study concludes that an alteration of a biological state, in this case the participants' level of thirstiness, that inspires wishful thinking, can directly affect the perception of visual stimuli.

Bastardi, Uhlmann, and Ross (2011), showed the effects of wishful thinking when they presented parents with two fictional studies involving day care versus home care for their children. The parents who were conflicted (planned to use day care despite believing home care to be superior) more positively rated the "study" that claimed day care as superior and more negatively rated the study that claimed home care was better. The unconflicted parents (those that thought home care was superior to day care and planned to use only home care) rated the study that claimed home care was better more positively. The parents rated the studies that claimed what they actually planned for their children was the superior action, even though (in the case of the conflicted parents) the study may have been in opposition to their original beliefs. In a post-experiment evaluation, the conflicted parents changed their initial beliefs and claimed to believe that home care was no better than day care, and the unconflicted parents continued to claim home care to be superior, though to a lesser degree.

Balcetis and Dunning (2012) used the natural ambiguity found in judging distances to measure the effects of wishful seeing. During the study participants judged the distance to various stimuli while the experimenters manipulated the desirability of the stimuli. In one study, participants had their thirst intensified by consuming a large portion of their daily sodium intake or quenched by drinking to satiety. They were then asked to estimate the distance to a bottle of water. Those participants who were thirstier ranked the bottle of water as more desirable and viewed it as closer than less thirsty participants. Another study performed by Balcetis and Dunning had participants estimate the distance to test results that contained either positive or negative feedback and to $100 gift cards that they had the possibility of either winning or not. Participants viewed the forms as closer when they contained positive feedback and the $100 gift cards as closer when there was a possibility that they might win them. Balcetis and Dunning took into account the possible influence of positive mood by measuring creativity through a word creation task, and arousal by physiological markers. The experimenters also eliminated reporter bias in one of their studies by having participants throw a beanbag toward a gift card adhered to the floor. Underthrowing the beanbag indicated that the participant perceived the gift card as closer, while overthrowing the beanbag indicated that the participant perceived the gift card as further away. Their results suggest that there is a positivity bias in the perception of distance.

The relationship between distance perception and positivity may be more complicated than originally thought because context can also influence the distortion of perception. In fact, in threatening situations, positivity bias may be put aside to enable an appropriate response. In turn, the perceptual exaggerations brought on by threatening stimuli can be negated by psychosocial resources. Psychosocial resources are defined by the Resources and Perception Model (RPM) as social support, self-worth, self- esteem, self-efficacy, hope, optimism, perceived control and self-disclosure. The participants reported distance measures while the experimenters manipulated the self-worth of the participants through mental imagery exercises, as well as their exposure to threatening (a tarantula) or non-threatening (a cat toy) stimuli. An effect of self-worth was only observed upon exposure to the threatening stimuli, when increased self-worth was correlated with a more realistic estimate of the distance to the threatening stimuli.

Representations of environment
Another common area in which wishful seeing can be observed is through environmental representations. Many studies have supported that desire or motivations affect estimates of size, distance, speed, length and slope of environments or targets. For example, people will perceive desired objects as closer. Wishful seeing also affects athletes' perception of balls and other equipment. For example, softball players who see the ball as bigger, hit better; tennis players who return better, see the net as lower and the ball as moving slower.

Distance and slope perception is affected by energy levels. Subjects with a heavier load see hills as steeper and distances as farther. Targets placed uphill seem farther away than those on flat ground. Fit people perceive hills as shallower while fatigued runners see hills as steeper. This perception is modulated by what has been coined as "efficient energy expenditure." In other words, perceived increase in effort (a steeper slope) when physically exhausted, might prompt individuals to rest rather than expend more energy.

Distance perception is also affected by cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance was manipulated by high choice groups which were led to believe they chose to wear a Carmen Miranda outfit to walk across campus versus a low choice group which was told they had to wear the outfit. To reduce cognitive dissonance in high choice groups the subjects changed their attitude to match the situation. Thus, they perceived their environment in a less extreme way (shorter distance) than low choice groups. Similar results followed with a perception of slope test, in which participants were in high and low choice groups to push themselves up a slope on skateboard with only their arms. Again, the high choice group perceived the slope as shallower than the low choice in order to reduce cognitive dissonance. Both of these studies suggest that intrapsychic motives play a role in perception of environments in order to encourage the perceiver to engage in behaviors that lead them either to acquire a desired object or be able to complete a desired task.

Procrastination and motivation
Sigall, Kruglanski, and Fyock (2000) found that people who were assessed to be high wishful thinkers were more likely to procrastinate when motivated to do so (by being told that the task they were about to do was unpleasant). When told the task was going to be pleasant, there was little difference in the amount of procrastination, showing that when motivated, wishful thinkers may consider themselves more capable of doing the task in a lesser amount of time, therefore exhibiting wishful thinking and considering themselves more capable than they are, and as a result, put off working on the unpleasant task.

title: Wishful thinking


text:
Talk:Labrador

Border dispute
This bit about the border dispute is quite unclear. I would very much appreciate some clarification, and would like to know whether anyone lives in the area claimed by Quebec and what they think about it. A comparative map would be cool, too. - Montréalais 12:17, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * I have started to work on a map showing the current boundary, Canada's claim from the 1920s, and one of Quebec's current claims. However, it looks like I will not have much time to work on it in the next few weeks.  I hope to get it done and incorporated into the article sometime in January.--Indefatigable 17:19, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * I have no sources, but I believe no one actually lives in the area. If there were anyone there, there would have been a need for a formal resolution long before today. Since there is no one and no resource exploitation at all, a formal recognition by either party would have no noticeable effect, therefore both parties agree to disagree. UnHoly 22:52, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * There may be no people, but there are plenty of mineral claims staked, or have been at times in the past.

 * The area disputed by Quebec contains Wabush/Labrador City, which account for about half the population of Labrador. The huge iron ore mines of western Labrador and the Churchill Falls hydroelectric project would also be in this area. It is not a matter of the two parties "agreeing to diasgree". The original dispute was between two separate countries, Canada and Newfoundland, although both were Dominions within the British Empire. As a province of Canada, Quebec had no special representation at the when the dispute was settled and ratified by Canada and Newfoundland.Silverchemist 03:01, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

 * It's arguable that Quebec even "disputes" anything to begin with, but there is no serious claim at all on the part of Quebec to Wabush and Labrador City. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.240.148.14 (talk) 05:09, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

 * The Quebec claim isn't anywhere near Wabush and Labrador city, despite the fact that they were part of Quebec's claimed borders before the 20th century. 199.180.98.152 (talk) 03:40, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

 * The original southern border of Labrador followed a watershed. The Privy Council of the United Kingdom dictated a straight east west border. The maps that I added show this. Quebec still resents it. When did the Privy Council make the ruling? Peter Horn User talk 21:50, 16 October 2020 (UTC) Peter Horn User talk 22:26, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The map gives the answer. March 11 1927 Boundary wth Newfoundland adjusted Peter Horn User talk 00:08, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

The Labrador Retriever
Is this region somehow related to the etymology of this dog breed?

 * See Labrador_Retriever 99.245.230.105 (talk) 17:43, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Largest City
In the infobox at the top of the page, Labrador City is claimed as the largest city, with aproxiamtely 10,000 people. Later in the page, the 2001 census says Goose Bay is slightly larger, but that they are both under 8,000. Combined Lab City/Wabush make around 10,000, but this is not clear to those who do not know the geography. Should the infobox be changed to say 'Lab West'? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 199.71.183.2 (talk) 14:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC).

Changed the infobox to "Lab West", I might revise that after looking at the 2006 census.Sandwedge 03:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Went to the census site, Lab West is not considered a region. Also, Happy Valley-Goose Bay is larger than Labrador City, and any other comunity in Labrador. Will be changing the article to reflect that.Sandwedge 03:48, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

According to 2011 census data accessed in 2014, Labrador City has larger population. Population tables have been updated in accordance with this data. Gierszep (talk) 22:18, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Losing Population?
It appears that Labrador is losing population. Someone who knows more needs to add if this is true and why —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.206.165.16 (talk) 03:58, 28 January 2007 (UTC).

 * Most regions of Newfoundland and Labrador outside of the Northeast Avalon are losing population. The province as a whole has gone from approximately 568,000 to 508,000 in the last 15 years, so Labrador's population loss is in correlation with that. The reasons are very simple and no mystery --- economics, plus demographic trends. Rural areas that aren't near larger centres are shrinking across Canada, unless they have a specific reason (resource extraction or, possibly, tourism) to keep them stable or make them grow. While this is very sad, I don't see that it should be in the article, as it's not a phenomenon that's special or specific to Labrador. Trollcollins 21:57, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

==Area of Labrador

Although the name might suggest Labrador Retrievers came from Labrador, Canada, the breed actually originated in Newfoundland in the 1500s. At the time, small water dogs were bred with Newfoundlands to create a breed called the St. John's Water Dog or Lesser Newfoundland.

to do
The timeline section of the article currently states:
 * 1498: Sighted by João Fernandes Lavrador
 * 1498: Visited by John Cabot
 * 1500: Visited by Gaspar Corte-Real
 * 1534: Visited by Jacques Cartier
 * 1763: Labrador is transferred from the French colony Canada to the British colony Newfoundland as per the Treaty of Paris.

So, in the 230 years between Cartier's visit and the Treaty of Paris, some French settlement was implied. When and how much? Geo Swan (talk) 19:16, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Innuit vs. Innu vs. Métis
I think, we need an expert's hand here. When I was in Labrador, I was told that Innu, Innuit and Métis were different first nations; also, each of them has an own article. Could soméone with more knowledge in this area clarify the issue in this article? Thanks, Lost Boy (talk) 09:27, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Easy: Innu, Inuit (spelling) and Métis. All is clear now, no expert needed. Peter Horn User talk 22:38, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Central Labrador - Description
The text talks about there being an alternate landing site for "the" space shuttle. Is it being referenced to some one and only space shuttle? Also, the Happy Valley-Goose Bay link has no such mention. So, I understand this statement is: (1) grammatically incorrect and (2) either (a) false or (b) information missing on the dedicated page. If the fact is true, citing sources would be in order. --ElectroKid (☮ • ✍) 18:48, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

"semi-triangular shape"
What's that supposed to mean? Half of a triangle is usually also a triangle. Did you mean "roughly triangular"? --BjKa (talk) 13:17, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Smallwood Reservoir and the Churchill (Grand) River
Re: "During the 1960s, the Churchill River (Labrador name: Grand River) was diverted at Churchill Falls, resulting in the flooding of an enormous area – today named the Smallwood Reservoir ..."

I don't think this is quite right. I recently read (in Dear Everybody by Anne Budgell) that the reservoir was created by damming up the streams that drain(ed) the Labrador Plateau (which is a high basin, now filled by the reservoir). This did indeed leave greatly reduced flows for the Churchill River, but it's still there, including the Falls. There is a current project to dam the river at Muskrat Falls (not far inland from Goose Bay) and later at Churchill Falls.

AlStonyBridger (talk) 11:14, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Demographic Features
In the demographics table that contrasts adherents of various religions in Labrador vs. the rest of Canada, the percentages add to roughly 105% for Labrador and only abut 80% for the rest of Canada. I don't know the true numbers but the ones shown here make no sense: both columns should add up to very close to 100% given the presence of "no religion" and "other religion" as options. 184.175.48.100 (talk) 19:45, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

The Demographics table is not consistent with the reference - the 2001 Statscan census data. The Labrador differences are numerous and significant (eg unemployment of 7% vs 19%). Furthermore, I looked for equivalent 2011 census data but could not find it. Unless someone has a better reference, I will update the 2001 values to the 2001 Statscan values. Gierszep (talk) 22:32, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Also the population and population density in the summary box are odd. Population is listed as "2014" but the reference is the 2011 census and the number is different. And the density is not correct given the area (which is correct). I will change to align with 2011 numbers that are referencable. Gierszep (talk) 00:00, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
 * An excellent idea. I've tried to work out the discrepancies between statistical information a couple of times, but have given up. As per your observation, the 2011 census data was not sortable in the same manner as the previous data. Dated information is preferable to misleading (or, basically, WP:OR) stats. Cheers! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 03:40, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
 * OK. Updated to 2006 census data.  I have changed some items to correspond to those that are directly reported in the census data and are available for Labrador. (E.g. "Religion" was not available this way so I have dropped it from this table.)  As of 2006, Labrador is tracked as two Census Divisions; I have combined these two into a single Labrador value where the math is direct but reported them separately otherwise (ie. for median values).  Comments?  I think this is better than before but there may be ways to improve it further. Gierszep (talk) 19:09, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Definitely a better approach. This article gets little attention, and creating comprehensive data that requires the collation of stats that are difficult to verify and keep updated is a disservice to the readers. In the second instance, I don't see why such comprehensive demographic are necessary for a region in Canada. In other words, the statistics you removed were WP:UNDUE in light of the subject of the article. Thanks for your good work. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:53, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Ethnic composition
Pleas add Ethnic and language composition--Kaiyr (talk) 16:53, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Etymology
I am removing the alternative theory of Joseph Pope about slaves who made good manual workers for the Portuguese, since the word would be lavrador in Portuguese (labrador is Spanish). – Fayenatic  L ondon 21:50, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

No need for the title to be in italics
There is no need for Labrador to appear in italics in our title. werldwayd (talk) 21:40, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * You're right and I tried to fix it, but saw no Italic title or anything in the infobox that italicizes it.  Mini  apolis  21:30, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Finally figured it out; I set the blank italic-title parameter in Infobox court case to no.  Mini  apolis  21:40, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Pushpin map doesn't work
The current push pin map does a bad job of explaining what Labrador is. It looks like Labrador is a specific point on that map, like a village or a city in the centre of Labrador. An image like this would be more effective. - 129.242.129.238 (talk) 12:07, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Need for edit
The History, 20th Century section has this incomprehensible statement: "the site was previously operated by Cleveland cliffs Canada who even rly became the owners from the original mine founders pickers & matthers". Eemstewart (talk) 19:45, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

 * Thank you for pointing this out. I have undone the edit that added the virtually random sequence of words. 00:59, 19 May 2022 (UTC) Indefatigable (talk) 00:59, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Labrador