Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names

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Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names

-A-
proposition

In the traditional notation for categorical logic, a proposition that is both universal in quantity and affirmative in quality.

Example: "All dogs are mammals."

Such a proposition affirms of each and every dog that it is also a mammal. Its contradictory is an "O" proposition with the same subject and predicate terms.


abandonment

In the ethical thought of such existentialist writers as Sartre and Heidegger, abandonment is the awareness that there are no external sources of moral authority. No deity, for example, provides us with guidance or direction; we achieve an authentic life by depending only on ourselves.


abduction

A heuristic procedure that reasons inductively from available empirical evidence to the discovery of the probable hypotheses that would best explain its occurrence. Both Peirce and Reichenbach developed detailed theories about the invention of such hypotheses in what is sometimes called "the logic of discovery." The success of this enterprise may founder on the underdetermination of incompatible hypotheses. When each of several alternative accounts explains the facts with equal success, there is no ground for choosing among them.


Abelard, Peter (1079-1142)
Abelard

French scholastic logician whose sexual relationship with his teen-aged student Héloïse provoked the vengeful anger of her uncle, Fulbert, in 1118. Despite the many distractions of the turbulent personal life he described in Historia Calamitatum Mearum (The History of my Misfortunes), Abelard embarked on a monastic career of detached contemplation marked by intellectual independence from both traditional authorities and contemporaneous fashions. In commentaries on the logic of Aristotle and his own Dialectica, Abelard invented a novel solution to the problem of universals that rejected both realism and nominalism in their most extreme forms. Only individual things exist for Abelard, but general terms have universal applicability to things whose common features are known by a process of mental abstraction. In his Scito te Ipsum (Know Thyself) Abelard defended a theological ethics according to which only the intention of respecting the good—rather than actions or their consequences—is morally valuable. Abelard also wrote on the difficulties involved in scriptural interpretation in Sic et Non (For and Against) (1122)




Absolute, the

The solitary, uniquely unconditioned, utterly independent, and ultimately all-encompassing spiritual being that comprises all of reality according to such Romantic idealists as Schelling, and Hegel. British philosopher F.H. Bradley emphasized that the Absolute must transcend all of the contradictory appearances of ordinary experience, while American Josiah Royce took the Absolute to be a spiritual entity whose self-consciousness is reflected (though only imperfectly) in the totality of human thought.



absolutism

In general, the view that there are no exceptions to a rule. In moral philosophy, such a position maintains that actions of a specific sort are always right (or wrong) independently of any further considerations, thus rejecting the consequentialist effort to evaluate them by their outcomes. In political theory, absolutism is the view that a legitimate sovereign is unrestrained by the rule of law.


Absorption (Abs.)

A rule of inference of the form:

p É q
______________

p É ( p · q )

Example: "If Mary comes to the party, then so will George. Therefore, if Mary comes to the party, then both Mary and George will."

As a simple truth-table shows, any argument of this form is valid.


abstraction

The process of forming a general concept by omitting every distinguishing feature from our notions of some collection of particular things; thus, substantively, an abstraction is the concept or idea that results from this process. Introduced by Peter Abelard as part of his solution to the problem of universals, abstraction became crucial for other nominalistic explanations, including Locke's account of our use of general terms. Thus, for example, the idea of "green" could in principle be derived by abstracting from one's specific experiences of a summer lawn, the leaves of trees, and emeralds. Berkeley, on the other hand, argued that abstract ideas in this sense are impossible because every sensible idea has only particular *******. In the more recent work of Frege, Quine, and Kripke, efforts to understand the status of abstract ideas focus on the proper analysis of general terms in language.


absurd

Contrary to reason or beyond the limits of rational thought; paradoxical, nonsensical, or meaningless. According to Camus, Sartre, and other existentialists, absurdity is an inescapable consequence of any sensitive effort to live in the face of an indifferent reality. The all-too-human inclination to yearn most passionately for those things which we can never possess, for example, is absurd in this sense.



Abunaser

Latinized form of the name of Persian philosopher al-Farabi.


Academy

School founded in Athens by the philosopher Plato in the fourth century B.C.E. Maintained by his nephew Speucippus after Plato's death, the Academy eventually became fertile ground for the rise of ancient skepticism.



accent, fallacy of

An informal fallacy that arises from the ambiguity produced by a shift of emphasis in spoken or written language.

Example: "Joan said that she never wants to see another Demi Moore movie, so we won't show her another one; we'll just play this same one over and over again."

In such instances, an uninflected reading of the premise often provides no reason at all for believing the conclusion.



accident

A feature that something happens to have but that it might not have had. The thing could exist without having this feature, since it is not part of the very nature of the thing, unlike the essence without which the thing could not be at all.


accident, fallacy of {Lat. a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid}

The informal fallacy of applying a generally reliable rule to a particular case without considering the qualifying features that might make it an exception to the rule.

Example: "Since authors of best-selling books usually appear on television talk shows, and the Pope is in fact the author of a best-selling book, it follows that the Pope must soon appear on a television talk show."

Unlimited applicability to every instance would follow syllogistically only if the rule were a genuinely universal proposition, the truth of which is often difficult to defend in practical cases. Merely probable guidelines are easier to establish as "rules of thumb," but they do not deserve to be applied so indiscriminately.




act / rule utilitarianism

Distinction between ways of applying the greatest happiness principle for the moral evaluation of actions on utilitarian grounds. Act-utilitarianism supposes that each particular action should be evaluated solely by reference to the merit of its own consequences, while rule-utilitarianism considers the consequent value of widespread performance of similar actions.

The act-utilitarian asks, "How much pleasure or pain would result if I did this now?"

The rule-utilitarian asks, "How much pleasure or pain would result if everyone were to do this?"

Since the answers to these questions may be quite different, they may lead to distinct recommendations about moral conduct. Although Mill noted that reliance on moral rules may be of practical use in decision-making, he argued that their influence should remain defeasible in particular circumstances.


action theory

Branch of philosophy concerned with the analysis of what human beings do intentionally. This typically includes an effort to distinguish actions from mere events and some proposal concerning the ethical significance of actions. Understanding the relation between choice or volition and the performance of an action, for example, has been taken to be crucial for the ascription of moral responsibility to those who act.



actuality / potentiality {Gr. energeia [energeia] / dunamiV [dynamis]}

Aristotle's distinction between what really is the case and what merely has the power to change or to come to be the case. Thus, for example, the fresh acorn is actually a seed but potentially an oak tree.




Addams, Jane (1860-1935)
Addams

American pragmatist and social worker. Concerned by the dismal living conditions endured by women, minorities, and the working poor, Addams established Hull House in Chicago as a social settlement in 1889 and campaigned tirelessly for women's suffrage, world peace, and economic justice. Her address to the Chicago Liberty Meeting, Democracy or Militarism (1899) and the pamphlet Why Women Should Vote (1909) Hull House are representative expressions of her belief that women properly exert a pacifistic influence on American political life. Addams's writings on social issues include Democracy and Social Ethics (1902) , Newer Ideals of Peace (1907), A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (1911), Twenty Years at Hull House (1912) {at Amazon.com}, The Larger Aspects of the Women's Movement (1914), and Women, War, and Suffrage (1915). Addams shared the 1931 Nobel Prize for peace.


Addition (Add.)

A rule of inference of the form:

p
_____

p Ú q

Example: "It is raining. Therefore, either it is raining or the sun is shining."

Although its use in ordinary thought is notably rare, this pattern of reasoning serves a vital role in the construction of formal proofs in many systems of logic.


ad hominem argument (argument against the person)

The informal fallacy of supposing that a proposition should be denied because of some disqualifying feature of the person who affirms it. This fallacy is the mirror image of the appeal to authority. In its abusive form, ad hominem is a direct (and often inflammatory) attack on the appearance, character, or personality of the individual.

Example: "Jeremy claims that Susan was at the party, but since Jeremy is the kind of person who has to ride to work on the city bus, it must be false that she was there."

A circumstantial ad hominem accuses the person of having an alternative motive for defending the proposition or points out its inconsistency with the person's other views. Tu quoque (the "so do you" fallacy) uses a similar method in response to criticism of a position already held.


adiafora [adiaphora]

Greek term used by the classical Stoics to designate actions that are morally indifferent. On this view, we have no direct obligation either to perform or to avoid such actions, even when they might indirectly affect our general well-being. Thus, for example, although there is no duty to preserve one's own health, doing so is advisable, since it will probably feel good and improve one's capacity for doing what is right. Pyrrho, Carneades, and other Skeptics, on the other hand, argued that there can be no coherent reason for preferring beneficial acts unless they are themselves virtuous.




Adler, Alfred (1870-1937)
Adler

Austrian psychiatrist; author of such books as Studie über Minderwertigkeit von Organen (Study of Organ Inferiority and its Psychical Compensation) (1907), Praxis und Theorie der Individualpsychologie (Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology) (1918) , and Der Sinn des Lebens (What Life Should Mean to You) (1934) . Influenced by the philosophy of Hans Vaihinger, Adler's "individual psychology" focussed on the efforts people invariably make in order to compensate for their (self-perceived) inferiority to others, whether it originally arose from a specific physical defect, relative position in the family constellation, particular experiences of humiliation, or a general lack of social feeling (Gemeinschaftsgefühl) for others. Adlerian theory and practice have proven especially productive in application to the lives of children.





Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund (1903-1969)
Adorno

German musicologist, social critic, and political philosopher; author of Philosophie der neuen Musik (The Philosophy of Modern Music) (1949) and Noten zur Literatur (Notes to Literature) (1958-74). A leading member of the Frankfurt school, Adorno traced the development and failure of Western reliance on reason in his Dialektik der Aufklärung (Dialectic of Enlightenment) (1947) The abstract concepts of rationality, he argued, separate individual human beings from their sensuous nature as knowing subjects. Negative Dialektik (Negative Dialectics) (1966) openly defends the critical task of exposing, dissolving, and undermining the harmful influence of rigid conceptual schemes. In The Authoritarian Personality (1951) Adorno described the ways conformity to the demands of social propriety imposes paradox and contradiction on the lives of individual human beings.

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Babbage, Charles (1792-1871)
Babbage

English mathematician. A century before the development of electronic computers, Babbage invented a mechanical "difference engine" for the calculation of arithmetical functions and set out plans for an "analytical engine" whose operation would have included logarithmic and trigonometric functions as well. Babbage difference engineBabbage's interest in the practical conduct of business led to an extensive commentary on the inefficiency of common practices in The Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (1832) Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives , and Reflections on the Decline of Science in England



Bachelard, Gaston (1884-1962)
Bachelard

French philosopher of science; author of Psychoanalyse du feu (Psychoanalysis of Fire) (1937) , Le nouvel esprit scientifique (The New Scientific Spirit) (1934) and L'Actualitiè de l'histoire des sciences (History of Science) (1951). Rejecting both naive realism and absolute idealism, Bachelard maintained that scientific knowledge emerges from an imaginative interaction between the mind and experimental evidence, especially in twentieth-century quantum mechanics. His emphasis on discontinuity in the progress of science, accommodated in a non-Cartesian epistemology, anticipated portions of the work of Thomas Kuhn.



Bacon, Francis (Lord Verulam) (1561-1626)
Francis Bacon

English politician and philosopher. Bacon became Lord Chancellor of England in 1618, but was driven immediately from office under charges of official corruption. As an early empiricist, he rejected scholastic accounts of the natural world in favor of a new method for achieving knowledge, based exclusively on careful observation and cautious eliminative induction, which he described in The Advancement of Learning (1605) and Novum Organum ( New Organon) (1620) . Bacon warned that effective reasoning must be freed from the "idolatrous" influence of personal interest, human nature, social conventions, and academic philosophy. In The New Atlantis (1626) Bacon described the far-reaching social consequences of his epistemological program. Bacon's Essays (1601) address the whole range of his philosophical and social interests.





Bacon, Roger (1214-1292)
R. Bacon

English Franciscan philosopher who translated many Aristotelean treatises from Arabic into Latin. Although passionately interested in alchemy and magic, Roger defended reliance upon mathematics and experimental methods for the improvement of human knowledge generally and theological understanding in particular in the Opus Maius (Greater Work) (1267) and On Experimental Science (1268). His novel educational doctrines were understood to violate the condemnation of 1277, and much of Roger's later work, including the Compendium Studii Theologiae (1292) was suppressed.


baculum, argumentum ad

See appeal to force.


bad faith {Fr. mauvaise foi}

In the philosophy of Sartre, an effort to avoid anxiety by denying the full extent of one's own freedom. Bad faith, on this view, is an especially harmful variety of self-deception, since it forestalls authentic appropriation of responsibility for ourselves.



Baier, Annette (1929- )

American moral philosopher. From a thoughtful reading of Hume, Baier derives an ethical stance that emphasizes the importance of membership within a moral community in A Progress of Sentiments: Reflections on Hume's Treatise (1991) . In "What Do Women Want in a Moral Theory?" (1983), she argues that the concept of trust provides a vital link between traditional (male) accounts of rational obligation and the equally traditional (female) "ethics of love." Her most recent publications include and Moral Prejudices: Essays on Ethics (1994) and The Commons of the Mind (Open Court, 1997)


Baier, Kurt (1917- )

American moral philosopher. In The Moral Point of View (1958) , Baier argues that practical reasoning that takes into account both individual and social considerations is the appropriate method for deciding "what is the best thing to do" in particular circumstances. Thus, we are moral because it is rational so to be, even when our private interests are outweighed by the welfare of others.




Bakunin, Mikhail Alexandrovich (1814-1876)
Bakunin

Russian philosopher and political anarchist; author of Marxism, Freedom, and the State (1872) and God and the State (1916) . Bakunin participated in several European revolutionary movements in an effort to derive practical benefits from the theories of Marx and Proudhon. His philosophical writings emphasized the use of negative arguments as a dialectical method for defining creative results rather than relying upon what he regarded as pseudo-scientific theories of government.



"Barbara"

Name given by medieval logicians to any categorical syllogism whose standard form may be designated as AAA-1.

Example: All finches are birds, and all cardinals are finches, so all cardinals are birds.

This most common of all patterns in syllogistic reasoning is one of only fifteen forms that are always valid.


"Baroco"

Name given by medieval logicians to a categorical syllogism whose standard form is AOO-2.

Example: All cats are furry mammals, but some housepets are not furry mammals, so some housepets are not cats.

This is another of the fifteen forms in which syllogisms are always valid.


Bayes, Thomas (1702-1761)
Bayes

English clergyman and mathematician. "Bayes theorem," first stated in his Essay towards solving a problem in the doctrine of chances (1764), proposes that evidence confirms the likelihood of an hypothesis only to the degree that the appearance of this evidence would be more probable with the assumption of the hypothesis than without it.





Bayle, Pierre (1647-1706)
Bayle

French philosopher whose monumentally complex Dictionnaire historique et critique (Historical and Critical Dictionary) (1697) helped to promote the development of modern skepticism and greatly influenced the philosophy of Hume.

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Caird, Edward (1835-1908)
Caird

Scottish Hegelian philosopher. Caird was one of the first generation of 'British idealists,' whose philosophical work was largely in reaction to the then-dominant empiricist and associationist views of Alexander Bain (1818-1903) and J.S. Mill. Best known for his studies of Kant — A Critical Account of the Philosophy of Kant (1877) and The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1889) — and Hegel — Hegel (1883), Caird also exercised a strong influence on later idealists such as John Watson and Bernard Bosanquet, particularly concerning the development of an 'evolutionary' account of religion; see his two series of Gifford lectures, The Evolution of Religion (1893), and The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers (1904). [Contributed by Will Sweet.]




Cambridge Platonists

An influential group of seventeenth-century English philosophers and latitudinarian theologians who rejected the tenets of (Oxford-taught) scholasticism in favor of an eclectic rationalism that employed a neoplatonic ****physics and placed great emphasis on the role of innate ideas in the acquisition of worthwhile knowledge of reality, while opposing the mechanism of the new science and the atheism to which they feared it might lead. Prominent members of the group included Cudworth, Cumberland, Glanvill, More, Conway and Norris.


"Camenes"

Name given by medieval logicians to a categorical syllogism whose standard form is AEE-4.

Example: All first-degree murders are premeditated homicides, but no premeditated homicides are actions performed in self-defence, so it follows that no actions performed in self-defence are first-degree murders.

This is one of the fifteen forms in which syllogisms are always valid.


"Camestres"

Name given by medieval logicians to any categorical syllogism whose standard form may be designated as AEE-2.

Example: All terriers are dogs, while no cats are dogs, so no cats are terriers.

This is another of the fifteen forms of valid syllogism.


Camus, Albert (1913-1960)
Camus

French-Algerian journalist and novelist. Camus explored the practical consequences of existentialist philosophy in his novels, L'Étranger (The Stranger) (1942) , La Peste (The Plague) (1947) , L'Homme Révolté (The Rebel) (1951) , and La Chute (The Fall) (1956) . His essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (Essai sur l'absurde) (The Myth of Sisyphus) (1943) describes the inherent absurdity of human life, a profound meaninglessness that can be mitigated only by moral integrity and social solidarity. Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1957 and died in an automobile accident three years later.





Cantor, Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp (1845-1918)
Cantor

German mathematician. Cantor developed modern set theory as the foundation for all of mathematics and used the "diagonal proof" to demonstrate that lines, planes, and spaces must all contain a non-denumerable infinity of points; that is, they cannot be counted in a one-to-one correspondence with the rational numbers. The reality of trans-finite quantities within the set of real numbers leads, in turn to "Cantor's paradox"—that every set has more subsets than members, so that there can be no set of all sets.



Carnap, Rudolf (1891-1970)
Carnap

German-American philosopher. A leading logical positivist, Carnap proposed in Der logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World) (1929) and Logische Syntax der Sprache (The Logical Syntax of Language) (1934) that all meaningful assertions in a description of reality must be derived from basic statements of experience. Carnap's influential articles "Pseudo-Problems in Philosophy" (1928) and "The Elimination of ****physics trough Logical Analysis of Language" (1932) propose that many traditional philosophical disputes amount to little more than differences in poetic rhetoric. His "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology" (1950) considers the degree of ontological commitment entailed by linguistic reference to abstract entities. In Meaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics and Modal Logic (1947) and Logical Foundations of Probability (1950), Carnap tried to devise a purely formal representation of the degree of confirmation to which scientific hypotheses are susceptible. Carnap's notions about the formation of scientific theories are expressed in Philosophical Foundations of Physics (1966).




Carneades (214-129 B.C.E.)
Carneades

Greek philosopher. As leader of the Academy, Carneades advocated a moderate skepticism, which permitted the qualified assertion of probabile judgments. In his own time, Carneades was famous for the ability to develop convincing arguments on both sides of any philosophical dispute.




Carroll, Lewis (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1832-1898)
Carroll

English logician, mathematician, and author. Carroll's fascination with logical and philosophical puzzles is apparent in the popular books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1876) as well as in the more technical Games of Logic (1887) and Symbolic Logic (1893) The philosophical paper on "What the Tortoise said to Achilles" (1895) raised a significant issue about the legitimacy of reiterated demands for epistemological justification.




Cartesianism

School of seventeenth-century thinkers who pursued the philosophical aims of Descartes. Prominent examples include Cordemoy, Geulincx, Malebranche, Pascal, Régis, and Rohault. The Cartesians tried to develop a comprehensive science of nature and to resolve the problems about mind-body interaction raised by Descartes's dualism.

Recommended Reading: Richard A. Watson, The Breakdown of Cartesian ****physics (Hackett, 1998) ; Tad M. Schmaltz, Radical Cartesianism: The French Reception of Descartes (Cambridge, 2002) and Causation in Early Modern Philosophy: Cartesianism, Occasionalism, and Preestablished Harmony, ed. by Steven Nadler (Penn. State, 1993)




Cassirer, Ernst (1874-1945)
Cassirer

German neo-Kantian philosopher who supposed that the fundamental categories of human thought are genuinely a priori, yet develop historically. In his massive Die Philosophie der symbolischen Formen (The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms) (1929) [vol. 1 , vol. 2 , vol. 3 , vol. 4 Cassirer suggested that these basic concepts are most clearly revealed in the cultural symbols of language, science, and mythology.



casuistry

Approach to ethics that begins by examining a series of concrete cases rather than by trying to deduce the consequences of a moral rule. Although Pascal criticized this method for the excessive, misleading, or harmful cleverness with which it was practiced in his day, it remains a common tool for applied ethics in a theological vein.



categorical / hypothetical imperative

In the moral philosophy of Kant, a distinction between ways in which the will may be obliged. A hypothetical imperative (of the form, "If you want X, then do A.") is always conditioned on something else, but a categorical imperative (of the form "Do A.") is absolute and universal. Moral action for Kant always follows from the categorical imperative, "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it become a universal law."


categorical logic

The traditional interpretation of the logic of classes developed by Aristotle and the medieval logicians.




categorical proposition

A statement of the relationship between two classes, each of which is designated by a categorical term. Within each proposition, the subject term occurs before the copula and the predicate term after. There are only four forms of categorical proposition, distinguished by their quantity and quality.


categorical syllogism

A logical argument consisting of exactly three categorical propositions, two premises and the conclusion, with a total of exactly three categorical terms, each used in only two of the propositions.


categorical term

A word or phrase that designates a class. Each categorical term divides the world into two parts: the original class and its complement; the things to which the term applies and those to which it does not.


category {Gk. kathgoria [katêgoria]}

Predicate; hence, a fundamental class of things in our conceptual framework. In Aristotle's logic specifically, the categories are the ten general modes of being (substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, possession, doing, and undergoing) by reference to which any individual thing may be described. Following the lead of stoic thought, medieval logicians commonly employed only the first four of these ten, but allowed for additional, syncategorematic terms that belonged to none of them. Kant employed a schematized table of a dozen categories as the basis for our understanding of the phenomenal realm. Gilbert Ryle used the term much more broadly, warning of the category mistakes that occur when we fail to respect the unique features of kinds of things.



category mistake

Confusion in the attribution of properties or the classification of things. Thus, to suppose that sleep is furious or that a city is nothing more than its buildings is to commit a category mistake. Ryle maintained that Cartesian dualism arises from the implicit occurrence of just such an error, the supposition that the origins of human behavior must reside in an immaterial substance.



catharsis {Gk. kaqarsiV [katharsis]}

Cleansing from guilt or defilement; hence, in Aristotle, the elimination of destructive emotions through appreciation of an aesthetic experience. The notion here is that vicariously experiencing strong feelings renders us less likely to be overcome by them in our own lives.

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d'Alembert, Jean Le Rond (1717-1783)
d'Alembert

French mathematician and philosopher who envisioned the achievement of universal scientific knowledge. His Discours préliminaire de l'Encyclopédie (Preface to the Encyclopedia) (1751) set the tone for the freethinkers of the French Enlightenment with its commitment to the empiricism of Bacon and Locke. d'Alembert defended strict materialism with respect to the physical world and agnosticism with respect to the existence of a deity. His Lettre à J.-J. Rousseau congratulates the Swiss philosopher on his article about Geneva in the Encyclopedia.



Daly, Mary (1928- )
Daly

American philosopher and theologian. Author of Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (1984) and the autobiographical Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Voyage: Containing Recollections from My Logbook of a Radical Feminist Philosopher (be-ing an account of my time/space travels and ideas—then, again, now, and how) (1992) . Reacting against her early training in neo-Thomist theology, Daly's early work, in The Church and the Second Sex (1968) and Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation (1973) , noted that the Christian tradition helps to support patriarchal society and explicitly rejected its conception of a supreme male deity.

Daly went on to develop an ethical position that regards woman-centered self-creation as the primary means of escaping male domination, and in Gyn/Ecology: The ****ethics of Radical Feminism (1978) she proposed that the life forces embodied in women can achieve their full effect only in a separate women's culture. In an effort to escape the linguistic embodiment of patriarchy, Daly often expresses herself by using inventive neologisms that are playful in tone but serious in purpose; Webster's First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language (1987) offers a delightful glimpse of the advantages of a "gynomorphic" language.





"Darii"

Name given by medieval logicians to any categorical syllogism whose standard form may be designated as AII-1.

Example: All logicians are philosophers, and some serious scholars are logicians, so some serious scholars are philosophers.

This is one of the fifteen forms in which syllogisms are always valid.


Darwin, Charles (1809-1882)
Darwin

English biologist who recorded his notes from the field in The Voyage of the Beagle (1848) . Darwin's Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871) revolutionized modern science by proposing a non-teleological explanation for the survival of otherwise random variations in animal species. Despite opposition from biblical literalists, a Darwinian version of the theory of evolution became widely accepted within a few decades.





Dasein

Heidegger's German term for "Being-there," the kind of existence that self-conscious human beings uniquely possess.



"Datisi"

Name given by medieval logicians to a categorical syllogism with the standard form AII-3.

Example: Since all bookstores are places that sell popular novels and some bookstores are coffee shops, it follows that some coffee shops are places that sell popular novels.

This is one of only fifteen forms of syllogism that are always valid.


Davidson, Donald (1917- )
Davidson

American philosopher who, like Quine, applies the methods of logical and linguistic analysis to the study of human nature. On Davidson's view, interpretation of a language should always be governed by a "principle of charity" that maximizes its true statements. Although he regards mental events as irreducibly intentional and denies the possibility of psycho-physical laws, Davidson defends a sophisticated identity theory ("anomalous monism") under which every mental event supervenes upon some physical event, subject to the usual physical laws of nature, even though it cannot be fully described in purely physical terms. Many of Davidson's most influential essays are collected in Essays on Actions and Events (1980) and Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (1984)





Day, Dorothy (1897-1980)
Day

American social activist. Day combined communist social concern with Christian convictions in the autobiographical From Union Square to Rome (1938). She founded The Catholic Worker magazine in 1933, established a "hospitality house" in New York City, and supported pacifistic resistance to several wars.

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"E" proposition

In the traditional notation for categorical logic, a proposition that is both universal and negative.

Example: "No reptiles are insects."

This proposition affirms that no individual is both a reptile and an insect. Its contradictory is an "I" proposition with the same subject and predicate terms.


Eckhart, Johannes ("Meister") (1260-1327)
Eckhart

German Dominican theologian whose Von unsagbaren Dingen and other writings and sermons identified the being and intellect of a unified deity that could be apprehended only through mystical apprehension of the divine through an inner spark [scintilla animae] of the soul. Condemned as pantheistic in his own time, Eckhart's doctrines were a significant application of neoplatonic thought.





Eco, Umberto (1932- )
Eco

Italian novelist, critic, and philosopher; author of Opera aperta (The Open Work) (1962) \, Trattato di semiotica generale (A Theory of Semiotics) (1976) \, and Semiotica e filosofia del linguaggio \ (Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language) (1984) \ A serious scholar of semiotics, Eco examines the use of signs, both in literary texts and — as in "Travels in Hyperreality" (1991) — in popular culture. His novels, Il Nome della Rosa (The Name of the Rose) (1980) , Foucault's Pendulum (1988) , and The Island of the Day Before (1994) offer the kind of postmodern entertainment, deliberately open to re-interpretation at many different levels, that he had proposed in Apocalittici e integrati (Apocalyptic Postponed) (1964)





ecofeminism

Belief that human violation of the natural world is an extension of the prevalent patriarchy of Western culture. On this view, efforts to protect the environment at large are feminist in spirit, since they challenge systemic male domination of the other.



R

effect {Ger. Wirkung}

An event that is taken to result from or to be produced by another event, with which it stands in a causal relationship.


efficient cause

The agent or event that produces some change in the accidental features of a thing; one of Aristotle's four causes.



egoism

Belief that human conduct is governed by self-interest. Psychological egoism holds that all human beings are, as a matter of fact, motivated to act only in pursuit of their own (at least apparent) advantage, never for the sake of others. Ethical egoism is the normative theory that right conduct can be defined in terms of (an enlightened notion of) one's own welfare. Though often held jointly, the distinction between fact and value clearly renders the two views distinct: some might argue that human beings ought to act on their own behalf even though they don't always do so, while others could suppose that they invariably do act selfishly even though they ought not.




eidos [eidos]

Greek term for what is seen—figure, shape, or form. In the philosophy of Plato, the eidos is the immutable genuine nature of a thing, one of the eternal, transcendent Forms apprehended by human reason {Gk. nouV [nous]}. Aristotle rejected the notion of independently existing Forms and understood them instead as abstract universals. By extension, Husserl used the term "eidetic" for the phenomenological apprehension of essences generally.




eikasia [eikásia]

Greek term used by Plato, to signify human imagination, which is focussed exclusively on a temporal appearance or image {Gk. eikwn}.




Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
Einstein

German physicist. Einstein's combination of simple thought-experiments with complex mathematical formulae transformed twentieth-century conceptions of matter, space, and time and earned him the Nobel Prize for physics in 1921. His Special and General Theories of Relativity (1905, 1915) emphasized the role of the observer in determining the ******* of our observations of the natural world. Although he assisted the careers of several of the logical positivists, his own philosophical reflections emphasized the independence of theory-formation from empirical evidence.





Eleatics
Elea

Presocratic philosophers, including Parmenides and Zeno, who used dialectical methods to argue that reality is a unified whole within which no motion or change is possible.




eliminativism

Belief that language should be purged of all reference to the (non-existent) things of a certain kind; the most extreme variety of reductionism. Thus, while a reductive materialist may hold that pains are really just activities of the central nervous system, an eliminative materialist proposes that we speak only of brain-states.

Also see Lyle Zynda, Steven Stich, Louis Caruana, and DPM.


Elizabeth of Bohemia (Elisabeth von der Pfalz) (1618-1680)
Princess Elizabeth

German princess. In her extensive correspondence with Descartes, Elizabeth deftly identified the impossibility of genuine interaction between mental and physical substances as the central difficulty with mind-body dualism.




emanation

That which inevitably flows outward from the transcendental central principle of reality ("the One") in the neoplatonic philosophy of Plotinus. Individual things, including human beings, are therefore presumed to be nothing more than the faint ripples left by a primordial big splash. The timeless reality of a central intelligence, Plotinus held, inexorably results in the formation of both soul as an active principle of organization and, eventually, inert matter.



emergent property

An irreducible feature (now commonly called supervenient) of a complex whole that cannot be inferred directly from the features of its simpler parts. Thus, for example, the familiar taste of salt is an emergent property with respect to the sodium and chlorine of which it is composed.





Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)
Emerson

American essayist and anti-slavery activist. Emerson's enthusiastic celebration of the individual person expressed a prominent element of nineteenth-century optimism in his Essays — First Series (1841) and Second Series (1844). Among his best-known philosophical works are "The American Scholar" (1837), a speech on American intellectual values, and the confidently humanistic essay, "Self-Reliance" (1841). Influenced by German Romanticism, Emerson helped to establish a lasting American taste for non-theistic spirituality.





emotion, appeal to (argumentum ad populum)

The informal fallacy of persuading someone to accept (or reject) a conclusion by arousing favorable (or unfavorable) emotions toward it or by emphasizing its widespread acceptance (or rejection) by others.

Example: "Nobody with an ounce of common sense or a single shred of integrity believes that our President is truly an effective leader. Therefore, the President is not an effective leader."


emotive meaning

Attitudes and feelings associated with the use of a word, phrase, or sentence, in contrast with its literal significance.


emotivism

The ****-ethical theory according to which the meaning of moral language is exhausted by its expression, evocation, or endorsement of powerful human feelings. Thus, for example, saying "Stealing is wrong," is just an especially strong way of reporting that I disapprove of stealing, evoking a similar disapproval from others, and thereby attempting to influence future conduct—both mine and theirs. Although its origins lie in the non-cognitivist morality of Hume, emotivism reached its height early in the twentieth century, with the work of the logical positivists and Stevenson.

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fact / value

Distinction between assertions about how things really are (fact) and how things ought to be (value). Drawn by Hume, but also defended by Stevenson, Hare, and other ethical noncognitivists, the distinction is usually taken to entail that claims about moral obligation can never be validly inferred from the truth of factual premises alone. It follows that people who agree completely on the simple description of a state of affairs may nevertheless differ with respect to the appropriate action to take in response to it.



facticity

The contingent conditions of an individual human life. In the existentialism of Heidegger and Sartre, facticity includes all of the concrete details—time and place of birth, for example, along with the prospect of death—against the background of which human freedom is to be exercized.



fallacy

A mistake in reasoning; an argument that fails to provide adequate logical support for the truth of its conclusion, yet appears convincing or persuasive in some other way. Common examples include both formal fallacies (structural errors in deductive logic) and informal fallacies (efforts to persuade by non-rational appeals).



fallibilism

Belief that some or all claims to knowledge could be mistaken. Although Peirce limited the application of fallibilism to the empirical statements of natural science, Quine extended it by challenging the notion that any proposition can be genuinely analytic. Unlike a skeptic, the fallibilist may not demand suspension of belief in the absence of certainty.



false cause

The informal fallacy of affirming the presence of a causal relationship on anything less than adequate grounds. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is a common variety of this fallacy.

Example: "After drinking milk for twenty years, Melanie became addicted to cocaine. Therefore, drinking milk caused her cocaine addiction."




falsifiability

A property of any proposition for which it is possible to specify a set of circumstances the occurrence of which would demonstrate that the proposition is false. According to Karl Popper, falsifiability is the crucial feature of scientific hypotheses: beliefs that can never be tested against the empirical evidence are dogmatic.

Recommended Reading: Karl R. Popper, Logic of Scientific Discovery (Routledge, 1992) and Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (Routledge, 1992)


al-Faràbi, Abu Nasr (872-950)
al-Farabi

Persian Islamic neoplatonist who employed Aristotelian logic in support of his arguments for the existence of god and used Plato's Republic as the model for his own description of civil society in Principles of Citizens of the Virtuous City




fatalism

Belief that every event is bound to happen as it does no matter what we do about it. Fatalism is the most extreme form of causal determinism, since it denies that human actions have any causal efficacy. Any determinist holds that indigestion is the direct consequence of natural causes, but the fatalist believes that it is bound occur whether or not I eat spicy foods.




Feigl, Herbert (1902-1988)
Feigl

Austrian-American philosopher. A member of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists, Feigl later taught at the University of Minnesota. He defended a materialist account of the human mind in The "Mental" and the "Physical" (1958)



feminism

Commitment to the abolition of male domination in human society. Feminists differ widely in their accounts of the origins of patriarchy, their analyses of its most common consequences, and their concrete proposals for overcoming it, but all share in the recognition that the subordination of women to men in our culture is indefensible and eliminable. Many feminist philosophers oppose Cartesian dualism, scientific objectivity, and traditional theories of moral obligation as instances of masculine over-reliance on reason. Serious attention to the experiences of women would offer a more adequate account of human life.





"Ferio"

Name given by medieval logicians to any categorical syllogism whose standard form may be designated as EIO-1.

Example: No mendicant friars are wealthy patrons of the arts, but some medieval philosophers are mendicant friars, so some medieval philosophers are not wealthy patrons of the arts.

This is one of the fifteen forms of valid syllogism.


"Ferison"

Name given by medieval logicians to any categorical syllogism whose standard form is EIO-3.

Example: Since no people who admire Marx are political conservatives and some people who admire Marx are South Carolinians, it follows that some South Carolinians are not political conservatives.

This is another of the fifteen forms in which syllogisms are always valid.


Fermat, Pierre de (1601-1665)
Fermat

French jurist and amateur mathematician. Although he engaged in a lengthy and bitter dispute with Descartes, Fermat worked together with Pascal on the development of the modern theory of probability. The famous "Last Theorem" Fermat proposed in a marginal notation—that for any n greater than 2, there are no integers that satisfy the equation xn + yn = zn —was proven only in 1994.



"Festino"

Name given by medieval logicians to a categorical syllogism with the standard form EIO-2.

Example: No people deserving of our admiration and praise are inveterate liars, but some wealthy industrialists are inveterate liars; therefore, some wealthy industrialists are not people deserving of our admiration and praise.

This is one of the fifteen forms in which syllogisms are always valid.


Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas (1804-1872)
Feuerbach

German philosopher. As a follower of Kant and critic of idealism, Feuerbach supposed that Hegel had mistakenly inverted the relationship between individuals and the Absolute. In Das Wesen des Christientums (The Essence of Christianity) (1841) he argued that religion is a projection of human values onto the concept of the divine. Eliminating the vestiges of theological dependence, Feuerbach maintained in Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft (Principles of the Philosophy of the Future) (1843) will make it possible to avoid alienation and enjoy a thoroughly humanistic life.




Feyerabend, Paul (1924-1994)
Feyerabend

Austrian-American philosopher. An outspoken opponent of Popper's philosophy of science, Feyerabend argued in Against Method (1975) that there is no privileged method for the confirmation of scientific theories. Thus, Feyerabend defended cultural pluralism and "scientific anarchism" in Science in a Free Society (1978) , Farewell to Reason (1987) , and Three Dialogues on Knowledge (1991)






Feynman, Richard Phillips (1918-1988)
Feynman

American physicist who contributed significantly to the development of modern quantum mechanics, the phenomena of superfluidity, and the nature of weak subatomic particle interactions. Feynman shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1965. His colorful career and criticism of NASA are detailed in the autobiographical Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman (1984)

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Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1900-2002)
Gadamer

German philosopher; a student of Nicolai Hartmann. In Wahrheit und Methode, Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermaneutik (Truth and Method) (1960) , Philosophical Hermeneutics (1977) Reason in the Age of Science (1983) , Gadamer develops a hermeneutic according to which the meaning of any text is a function of the historical situations of both author and interpreter. Since each reading is grounded in its own context, no one reading offers a definitive or final interpretation of the text; the virtual dialogue continues indefinitely.





Galilei, Galileo (1564-1642)
Galileo

Italian mathematician and scientist who developed modern scientific method and applied it to the study of astronomy and terrestrial motion. Author of Il Saggiatore (The Assayer) (1623), Dialogo Sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems) (1632) Galileo's telescope , and Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze (Discourse on Two New Sciences) (1638) Despite his careful delineation of scientific and religious concerns in Considerations on the Copernican Opinion (1615), Galileo's advocacy of Copernican astronomy earned him condemnation by the church. Artifacts from Galileo's career are displayed at the Museum of the History of Science in Florence, and his Lettere (Letters) are available on-line.





Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand (1869-1948)
Gandhi

Indian political leader, also called "Mahatma" (the Great-Souled). In opposition to racial discrimination against Indian nationals in South Africa and to British colonial rule of India itself, Gandhi urged the practice of Satyagraha in a practical effort to achieve peaceful resolution of political differences as head of the Indian National Congress. Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place (1941) includes a detailed description of the method he espoused. Active in efforts to reduce Hindu-Muslim ethnic conflict, Gandhi himself was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic.






Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655)
Gassendi

French logician and philosopher. Gassendi revived interest in ancient atomism by defending a strictly mechanistic account of the physical world. Like Descartes, however, he exempted all thinking beings from this explanation. Gassendi proposed a limited empirical skepticism in Exercitationes Paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos (Exercises against the Aristoteleans) (1624) and in the fifth set of Objections that were appended to the publication of Descartes's Meditations in 1641. The Disquisitio ****physica (1644) and Syntagma Philosophiae Epicuri (1649) contain a clear defence of his adherence to an atomistic natural philosophy.



Gauss, Carl Friedrich (1777-1855)
Gauss

German physicist and mathematician. Gauss established the foundations of modern number theory with his work on primes in Disquisitiones arithmeticae (1801) and contributed significantly to the study of electromagnetic forces. Gauss was the teacher of Riemann and Dedekind.



Gay, John (1699-1745)

English moral philosopher. Gay's Dissertation concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality (1731) provided an early statement of the utilitarian theory. The greatest happiness principle, he supposed, represents a middle ground between the egoism of Hobbes and Hutcheson's moral sense theory.


Gemeinschaft / Gesellschaft

German distinction between community, characterized by traditional practices and a personal sense of belonging, and the more individualistic, competitive, and impersonal organization of mere society.



gender / sex

Distinction between the socially-constructed expectations associated with masculinity and femininity and the biological categories of male and female. De Beauvoir, MacKinnon, and other feminists draw attention to the disparate power relationships established by gender differentiation in our culture.





general will [Fr. volonté générale]

Collective desire for the welfare of a society as a whole. According to Jean Jacques Rousseau, the citizens of a properly-contracted civil society are infallibly guided by the general will, rather than by their conflicting individual self-interests.





genus and differentia

Latin terms used by medieval logicians in an effort to define a term by indicating the general kind (genus) of things to which it refers and then specifying the special feature (differentia) which sets them apart from other things of the same kind. This usage derives from Aristotle's logic, where the highest kind {Gk. genoV [genos]} to which an individual thing belongs is one of the basic categories of being.


Gersonides (Levi ben Gershom) (1288-1344)

French Jewish mathematician and philosopher. Following the leads of Maimonides and Ibn Rushd, Gersonides maintained that truths of reason cannot conflict with revealed religion. He denied the possibility of creation ex nihilo, supposing instead that matter is eternal. On Gersonides view, however, genuine human freedom is possible because the omniscience of god extends only to knowledge of universals.




Gettier, Edmund (1927- )
Gettier

American philosopher whose Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? (1963) offers counter-examples to show that even justified true belief may not be genuine knowledge in cases where that which justifies one's belief happens not to be related directly to the truth of what one believes.



Geulincx, Arnold (1624-1669)

Belgian philosopher; author of Quaestiones quodlibeticae (Miscellaneous Questions) (1653), Logica restituta (Restored Logic) (1662), and De virtute (On Virtue) (1665). As a devoted Cartesian, Geulincx sought to resolve the dualist's problem of mind-body interaction by appealing to divine intervention as the genuine source of all causation, presaging the occasionalism of Malebranche. The coincidence of mental thoughts with bodily motions, he argued, is like the conformity between unconnected but synchronized clocks.

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Habermas, Jürgen (1929- )
Habermas

German philosopher. As a prominent member of the Frankfurt school, Habermas engages in critical study of the historical origins of human knowledge in many disciplines. His Theorie und Praxis: Sozial-Philosophische Studien (Theory and Practice) (1963) and Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus (Legitimation Crisis) (1973) examine the social conditions under which the uninhibited dialogue of an "ethics of discourse" is possible in the public literary sphere, serving the basic human needs to gain control over the natural world, to explore the character of interpersonal relationships, and to escape the domination of social power-structures. In Erkentniss und Interesse (Knowledge and Human Interests) (1968) Habermas again emphasized the implications of social context for the development of epistemology. Habermas is also the author of Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (The Theory of Communicative Action) (1981) and Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne (Philosophical Discourse on Modernity) (1985) , where he criticizes the more radical views of Foucault and Lyotard.





haecceity {Lat. haecceitas}

Thisness; the property that uniquely distinguishes each individual thing from others of its kind. Introduced by Duns Scotus as a name for the individuating essence of any particular, the term has been used more recently in connection with the view that rigidly designated individuals can exist in each of many possible worlds.




Hamilton, William (1788-1856)
Hamilton

Scottish philosopher; author of Lectures on ****physics and Logic (1860). Hamilton followed Reid in defending common sense against the skepticism of empiricists like Hume Hamilton's thought was subjected, in turn, to sharp criticism by Mill.


Hampshire, Stuart (1914- )

English philosopher whose careful study of the philosophy of Spinoza in Spinoza (1951) prompted the development of a detailed description of the presuppositions necessary for human behavior in Thought and Action (1959) and Morality and Conflict (1983) Hampshire suggests that the nature of human freedom can best be understood by considering the difference between the declaration of what one intends to do and a prediction of what one is likely to do.



happiness {Gk. eudaimonia [eudaimonia]; Ger. Glück}

General well-being in human life, an important goal for many people and a significant issue for theories in normative ethics. Aristotle disagreed with the identification of happiness with bodily pleasure defended by Aristippus and other hedonists. Most utilitarians accept this identification, but emphasize the importance of considering the greatest happiness of everyone rather than merely one's own.



Haraway, Donna Jeanne (1944- )
Haraway

American feminist philosopher of science who proposes a fundamental re-examination of the concepts of human nature and political identity in light of postmodern rejection of stark dualisms. Her "Manifesto for Cyborgs" (1965) suggests that the extent of our reliance on technology makes it difficult to understand ourselves independently of mechanical devices. Although we are all fabricated hybrids of organism and machine, Haraway supposes that feminist cyborgs have the opportunity to escape the perils of patriarchal capitalist technology.





Harding, Sandra (1935- )
Harding

American philosopher of science. In Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (with Merrill Hintikka) (1983) The Science Question in Feminism (1986) and Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women's Lives (1991) , Harding shows that it may be possible to eliminate such basic concepts of traditional Western epistemology as "objectivity," "universality," and "duality." Doing so would create the possibility of alternative ways of thinking, grounded in fundamentally different standpoints, including a feminist perspective borne of women's experience of reality.





Hare, Richard Mervyn (1919-2002 )
Hare

English philosopher. In The Language of Morals (1952) Freedom and Reason (1963) , and Moral Thinking (1981) Hare defended a noncognitivist ethical theory according to which moral assertions are prescriptive commands whose genuine universalizability makes them applicable to every moral agent.






Hart, Herbert Lionel Adolphus (1907-1992)
Hart

English legal philosopher who applied the methods of analytic philosophy to the foundations of jurisprudence in The Concept of Law (1961) rejecting the rival claims of modern legal positivism. Hart's Law, Liberty, and Morality (1963) and The Morality of the Criminal Law (1965) offer a classic defence of the view that private sexual conduct ought not to be subjected to public legislation. He is also the author of Punishment and Responsibility (1968) and Essays on Bentham (1982) both of which examine details of the utilitarian moral theory.






Hartley, David (1705-1759)
Hartley

English physician and philosopher. Hartley's Observations on Man: his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations (1749) offered a physiological explanation for the association of ideas in purely mechanistic terms. His classification of various types of pleasure experienced by individual human beings was the basis for the later work of Bentham.



Hartmann, Nicolai (1882-1950)
Hartmann

German philosopher whose early writings, including Grundzüge eine Methaphysik der Erkenntnis (****physics of Knowledge) (1921) and Ethik (Ethics) (1926) used the philosophy of Kant as the starting point for idealistic accounts of reality and human freedom. In such later works as Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit (Possibility and Actuality) (1938), Der Aufbau der realen Welt (Construction of the Real World) (1940), and Neue Wege der Ontologie (New Ways of Ontology) (1949) however, Hartmann employed phenomenological methods in defence of a vigorous realism.



Hayek, Friedrich August von (1899-1992)
Hayek

Austrian-British economist. In Economics and Knowledge (1936), The Road to Serfdom (1944) , and Individualism and Economic Order (1949) Hayek agreed with Popper, in opposition to Keynes that the limitations of human knowledge subvert rational attempts at social planning, leaving only "free market" forces as the foundations of economic life. Hayek won the Nobel Prize in 1974, and is also the author of The Constitution of Liberty (1960) and the three-part Law, Legislation, and Liberty (1978) — Rules and Order The Mirage of Social Justice and The Political Order of a Free People

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"I" proposition

In the traditional notation for categorical logic, a proposition that is both particular and affirmative.

Example: "Some birds are Canada geese."

Such a proposition affirms that there is at least one thing that belongs to both of the designated classes. Its contradictory is an "E" proposition with the same subject and predicate terms.


Ibn Daud, Abraham ben David Hallevi (1110-1180)

Jewish philosopher. Ibn Daud was the first Jewish Aristotelean. His Sefer ha-Qabbalah (The Book of Tradition) (1161) and Emunah Ramah (The Exalted Faith) (1161) grounded Jewish theology on the ****physics of Ibn Sina, providing an important influence on the work of Maimonides. Ibn Daud defended free will by proposing limitations on the extent of divine omnipotence.


Ibn Gabirol, Solomon (1020-1057)
Ibn Gabirol

Jewish philosopher and poet. Translated into Latin as Fons Vitae (The Source of Life) , Ibn Gabirol's philosophical work expressed a unique version of neoplatonism. His distinction between the essence and the will of god had significant influence on the thought of Duns Scotus.



Ibn Rushd, Abù al-Walìd Muhammad b. Ahmad (1126-1198)
Ibn Rushd

Andalusian Islamic philosopher who responded to the anti-philosophical tirades of al-Ghazàlì in Tahafut al tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence) by defending the capacity of human reason to achieve knowledge independently of the neoplatonist doctrines of Ibn Sina and Maimonides. Ibn Rushd's exposition of the logical and ****physical texts of Aristotle earned him the title of "The Commentator" among scholastic thinkers. He subjected theology to the claims of philosophy, holding that matter is eternal and allowing for immortality only as impersonal identification with the Agent Intellect shared by all. His arguments that knowledge is better founded on reason than on faith were greatly influential on Aquinas.






Ibn Sina, Abù'Alì al-Husayn (980-1037)
Ibn Sina

Persian Islamic philosopher and physician whose Kitab Al-Shifa (Book of Healing) commented on the philosophy of Aristotle. As a leading neoplatonist, Ibn Sina emphasized the causal necessity that characterizes emanations from the divine, but supposed that human knowledge can best be achieved by mystical illumination.






idea {Ger. Begriff}

The ******* of conscious thought. Plato used the Greek word idea to designate the universal Forms. For modern representationalists like Descartes and Locke, however, ideas are the immediate objects of every mental activity. Ideas in this sense are supposed to represent things—present or absent—before the mind.

Recommended Reading: Gail Fine, On Ideas: Aristotle's Criticism of Plato's Theory of Forms (Clarendon, 1995) Margaret Dauler Wilson, Ideas and Mechanism (Princeton, 1999) David Hausman and Alan Hausman, Descartes's Legacy: Mind & Meaning in Early Modern Philosophy (Toronto, 1997) John W. Yolton, Locke and the Way of Ideas (St. Augustine, 1993) and Richard A. Watson, Representational Ideas: From Plato to Patricia Churchland (Kluwer, 1995)


idealism

Belief that only mental entities are real, so that physical things exist only in the sense that they are perceived. Berkeley defended his "immaterialism" on purely empiricist grounds, while Kant and Fichte arrived at theirs by transcendental arguments. German, English, and (to a lesser degree) American philosophy during the nineteenth century was dominated by the monistic absolute idealism of Hegel, Bradley, and Royce.





identity

The logical relation of numerical sameness, in which each thing stands only to itself. Although everything is what it is and not anything else, philosophers try to formulate more precisely the criteria by means of which we may be sure that one and the same thing is cognized under two different descriptions or at two distinct times. Leibniz held that numerical identity is *****alent to indiscernibility or sameness of all the features each thing has. But Locke maintained that judgments of identity are invariably made by reference to types or sorts of things. The identity of individual persons is an especially troublesome case.





identity theory of mind

Belief that mental properties and events are identical with physical properties and events. Although the details are not yet apparent, identity theorists suppose that scientific research into the nature of the central nervous system will eventually establish the contingent identity of every kind of conscious experience with some neurophysiological phenomenon. Significant variations of the identity theory include physicalism and neutral monism.





ignorance, appeal to (argumentum ad ignoratiam)

The informal fallacy of supposing that a proposition must be true because there is no proof that it is false.

Example: "The F.B.I. investigation was never able to establish that Smith was not at the scene of the crime on the night of June 25th, so we may safely conclude that he was there."




ignoratiam, argumentum ad

See appeal to ignorance.


ignoratio elenchi

Latin phrase meaning, "misunderstanding of the refutation." See irrelevant conclusion.


illicit major

The formal fallacy committed in a categorical syllogism that is invalid because its major term is undistributed in the major premise but distributed in the conclusion.

Example: "All dogs are mammals. No cats are dogs. Therefore, no cats are mammals."




illicit minor

The formal fallacy committed in a categorical syllogism that is invalid because its minor term is undistributed in the minor premise but distributed in the conclusion.

Example: "All poodles are mammals. All poodles are pets. Therefore, All pets are mammals."




illocutionary act

The speech act of doing something else—offering advice or taking a vow, for example—in the process of uttering meaningful language. Thus, for example, in saying "I will repay you this money next week," one typically performs the illocutionary act of making a promise.





imagination {Gk. eikasia [eikásia]}

The capacity to consider sensible objects without actually perceiving them or supposing that they really exist. Philosophers have disagreed over whether or not acts of imagination necessarily involve mental images or ideas.




immediate inference

The relationship between two propositions that are logically *****alent. In categorical logic, the traditional immediate inferences include: conversion, obversion, and contraposition.


impartiality

The absence of any bias toward or away from a particular person or opinion. Enlightenment philosophers often upheld the use of human reason as an impartial tool, but postmodern thinkers raise significant doubts about the possibility and value of such objectivity. Although moral impartiality has traditionally been regarded as a virtue, in strict practice it would require callous disregard for every special relationship with another person. In public life, however, impartiality is a crucial component of justice.




implication

Relation between two propositions, one of which may be inferred from the other.
p q p É q
T T T
T F F
F T T
F F T

A material implication is a compound statement that is true except when its first component statement (the antecedent is true and its second (the consequent) is false. Thus, the truth of the antecedent ensures that of the consequent. Material implication is symbolized here in the form:

p É q

Example: "If Bob is competent, then Bob should get the job."

A strict implication (or entailment) is a tautologous statement of the same form.

Example: "If George is the same height as Janet, then Janet is the same height as George."

Recommended Reading: David H. Sanford, If P, Then Q: Conditionals and the Foundations of Reasoning (Routledge, 1992) W. L. Harper, R. Stalnaker, and G. Pearce, Ifs: Conditionals, Belief, Decision, Chance, and Time (Kluwer, 1980) and Michael Woods, Conditionals, ed. by David Wiggins and Dorothy Edgington (Clarendon, 1997)


Implication (Impl.)

A rule of replacement of the form:

( p É q ) º ( ~ p Ú q )

Example: "If it rains, then we cancel the picnic." is *****alent to "Either it doesn't rain or we cancel the picnic."

The truth-table analysis of this *****alence amounts to a definition of material implication in terms of negation and disjunction.

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James: Pragmatism and Empiricism

William James was a fellow-member of the "****physical Club," where Peirce established the pragmatist movement. But James had greater academic success than his friend, using his M.D. as the basis for a respectable career teaching in the Department of Philosophy and Psychology at Harvard. Wide-ranging interests in human life, behavior, and religion led James to develop the pragmatic method more explicitly as a foundation for a thoroughly empiricist alternative to the prevailing idealism of his era.


James vigorously supported the development of psychology as an academic discipline independent of philosophy at Harvard. His own most significant contribution to the scientific study of mind was The Principles of Psychology (1890), a monumental compendium of psychological research. Although James presumed the reliability of an introspective method, his emphasis on empirical foundations helped to foster more narrowly experimental approaches.

Thus, for example, James's study was tempered by his firm supposition that the self is invariably embodied. Sensation of the external world, memory, the formation of habit, and personal identity all therefore rest upon organic features of the living body. Such realism standpoint clearly differentiated James from the idealistic theories of his American philosophical contemporaries.

Nevertheless, James himself identified consciousness as the central object of psychological investigation and devoted great attention to the "stream of thought" as experienced by the individual thinker. Most dramatically, James analyzed human volition as a the result of a deliberate exercise of will that not only secures the freedom presupposed by moral agency but also established the person as an independent being. For James, free will is both theoretically and personally essential to the character of human life.

Pragmatic Meaning

James willingly incorporated many of Peirce's pragmatic principles as part of his own conception of the philosophical method. In "What Pragmatism Means" (1907), for example, he offered a simple story about someone chasing a squirrel around a tree and suggested that a verbal dispute over whether or not the person "goes round" the squirrel can best be resolved by asking disputants about the practical bearing of each alternative. Thusly exemplified, the "pragmatic method" seems little more than the time-honored philosophical demand for precision in the use of language. As James noted,

A pragmatist . . .
. . . turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins
. . . turns towards concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action and towards power.

Here it is clear that pragmatism not only reacts againts the excesses of absolute idealism, but is likely to oppose rationalism in any form; it is small wonder that James published his later work in Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912) as radically empiricist.

Appealing to Dewey and Schiller as well as Peirce in "What Pragmatism Means," however, James described the acquisition of new beliefs and their assimilation to old opinions as a complex process whose features somewhat resemble traditional idealistic applications of the coherence theory of truth. Ultimately, he supposed, the crucial issue is what it would be "better for us" to believe in every instance.

Pragmatic Truth

This amounts to the development of a distinctively pragmatic theory of truth. In a later lecture from the same series ("Pragmatism's Theory of Truth") James wrote:

Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication.

Although he accepted the most general definition of truth as a correspondence with reality, James supposed that the most crucial aspect of reality is experiential regularity. It is, then, by reference to what we (pragmatically) expect to happen that any belief acquires its use for us.

Decrying as trivial all rationalistic efforts to define truth as a system of interconnected beliefs, James baldly asserted that "'The true' . . . is only the expedient in the way of our thinking." Some reasonable qualifications follow, of course. The "payoffs" may take any number of different forms, and long-term outcomes matter more than those in the immediate present. There remains a clear sense that truth is the characteristic feature of beliefs that tend to help us to be ready for what happens in our experience. That is, belief has a function in the life of human beings—namely, to prepare us for successful action in the face of recurrent circumstances—and beliefs that best fulfil that function are the ones most deserve to be called true.

The Will to Believe

In some instances, naturally, we don't yet have enough experiential evidence upon which to base a reliable judgment. English mathematician W. K. Clifford had argued in "The Ethics of Belief" (1879) that the proper response in such cases is an agnostic one: given the social consequences of adherence to particular beliefs, it would be immoral to accept the truth of any proposition about which we cannot be wholly certain. In "The Will to Believe" (1897), James took a very different approach, explicitly defending the exercise of faith.

Note well that James here considered only those cases in which the usual methods of arriving at the truth have not (yet) yielded satisfactory results. A genuine option between two (or more) undertain hypotheses arises only when:

1. each hypothesis is living (rather than dead) in the sense that it holds some minimal degree of appeal;
2. the choice among them is forced (rather than avoidable) in the sense that some course of action is inevitable; and
3. the outcome is momentous (rather than trivial) in the sense that the alternatives are significant to the whole of life.

James argued that it is appropriate to resolve such cases on non-rational grounds, as a matter of choice, passion, or volition.

The goals or aims of human cognition include both "Believe truth" and "Shun error," James pointed out, even though the two purposes may be contrary to each other in particular applications. According to James, Clifford honored the second maxim so rigidly as to risk violating the first, while a dogmatist would do the reverse. James himself supposed it vital at least to allow for a deliberate decision to believe in the absence of rational demonstration or scientific confirmation.

As a description of how many human beings do, in fact, arrive at beliefs upon which they are willing to live their lives, of course, this view is hard to dispute. But James clearly meant to recommend "the will to believe" as a practice, especially with regard to religious convictions. Like Pascal, he supposed that belief in the existence of god is, if undemonstrable, nevertheless a good wager.