Plekhanov, Georgy
Valentinovich (1856–1918), a leading theoretician of the Russian revolutionary
movement and the father of Russian Marxism. Exiled from his native Russia for
most of his adult life, in 1883 he founded in Switzerland the first Russian
Marxist association – the Emancipation of Labor, a forerunner of the Russian
Social Democratic Workers’ party. In philosophy he sought to systematize and
disseminate the outlook of Marx and Engels, for which he popularized the ne
‘dialectical materialism’. For the most part an orthodox Marxist in his
understanding of history, Plekhanov argued that historical developments cannot
be diverted or accelerated at will; he believed that Russia was not ready for a
proletarian revolution in the first decades of the twentieth century, and
consequently he opposed the Bolshevik faction in the Plato, commentaries on
Plekhanov, Georgy Valentinovich 713
713 split (1903) of the Social Democratic party. At the se time he was
not a simplistic economic determinist: he accepted the role of geographical,
psychological, and other non-economic factors in historical change. In
epistemology, Plekhanov agreed with Kant that we cannot know things in
themselves, but he argued that our sensations may be conceived as “hieroglyphs,”
corresponding point by point to the elements of reality without resembling
them. In ethics, too, Plekhanov sought to supplement Marx with Kant, tempering
the class analysis of morality with the view that there are universally binding
ethical principles, such as the principle that human beings should be treated
as ends rather than means. Because in these and other respects Plekhanov’s
version of Marxism conflicted with Lenin’s, his philosophy was scornfully
rejected by doctrinaire Marxist-Leninists during the Stalin era.
Plotinus (A.D. 204–70),
Greco-Roman Neoplatonist philosopher. Born in Egypt, though doubtless of Greek
ancestry, he studied Platonic philosophy in Alexandria with monius Saccas
(232–43); then, after a brief adventure on the staff of the Emperor Gordian III
on an unsuccessful expedition against the Persians, he ce to Rome in 244 and
continued teaching philosophy there until his death. He enjoyed the support of
many prominent people, including even the Emperor Gallienus and his wife. His
chief pupils were elius and Porphyry, the latter of whom collected and edited
his philosophical essays, the Enneads (so called because arranged by Porphyry
in six groups of nine). The first three groups concern the physical world and
our relation to it, the fourth concerns Soul, the fifth Intelligence, and the
sixth the One. Porphyry’s arrangement is generally followed today, though a
chronological sequence of tractates, which he also provides in his introductory
Life of Plotinus, is perhaps preferable. The most important treatises are I.1;
I.2; I.6; II.4; II.8; III.2–3; III.6; III.7; IV.3–4; V.1; V.3; VI.4–5; VI.7;
VI.8; VI.9; and the group III.8, V.8, V.5, and II.9 (a single treatise, split
up by Porphyry, that is a wide-ranging account of Plotinus’s philosophical
position, culminating in an attack on gnosticism). Plotinus saw himself as a
faithful exponent of Plato (see especially Enneads V.1), but he is far more
than that. Platonism had developed considerably in the five centuries that
separate Plato from Plotinus, taking on much from both Aristotelianism and
Stoicism, and Plotinus is the heir to this process. He also adds much
himself. EMANATIONISM, NEOPLATONISM.
J.M.D. pluralism, a philosophical perspective on the world that emphasizes
diversity rather than homogeneity, multiplicity rather than unity, difference
rather than seness. The philosophical consequences of pluralism were addressed
by Greek antiquity in its preoccupation with the problem of the one and the
many. The proponents of pluralism, represented principally by Empedocles,
Anaxagoras, and the Atomists (Leucippus and Democritus), maintained that
reality was made up of a multiplicity of entities. Adherence to this doctrine
set them in opposition to the monism of the Eleatic School (Parmenides), which
taught that reality was an impermeable unity and an unbroken solidarity. It was
thus that pluralism ce to be defined as a philosophical alternative to monism.
In the development of Occidental thought, pluralism ce to be contrasted not only
with monism but also with dualism, the philosophical doctrine that there are
two, and only two, kinds of existents. Descartes, with his doctrine of two
distinct substances – extended non-thinking substance versus non-extended
thinking substance – is commonly regarded as having provided the clearest exple
of philosophical dualism. Pluralism thus needs to be understood as marking out
philosophical alternatives to both monism and dualism. Pluralism as a
metaphysical doctrine requires that we distinguish substantival from
attributive pluralism. Substantival pluralism views the world as containing a
multiplicity of substances that remain irreducible to each other. Attributive
pluralism finds the multiplicity of kinds not ong the furniture of substances
that make up the world but rather ong a diversity of attributes and
distinguishing properties. However, pluralism ce to be defined not only as a
metaphysical doctrine but also as a regulative principle of explanation that
calls upon differing explanatory principles and conceptual schemes to account
for the manifold events of nature and the varieties of human experience. Recent
philosophical thought has witnessed a resurgence of interest in pluralism. This
was evident in the development of erican pragmatism, where pluralism received
piquant explenitude, principle of pluralism 714 714 pression in Jes’s A Pluralistic
Universe (1909). More recently pluralism was given a voice in the thought of
the later Wittgenstein, with its heavy accent on the plurality of language ges
displayed in our ordinary discourse. Also, in the current developments of
philosophical postmodernism (Jean-François Lyotard), one finds an explicit
pluralistic orientation. Here the emphasis falls on the multiplicity of
signifiers, phrase regimens, genres of discourse, and narrational strategies.
The alleged unities and totalities of thought, discourse, and action are
subverted in the interests of reclaiming the diversified and heterogeneous
world of human experience. Pluralism in contemporary thought initiates a move
into a postmetaphysical age. It is less concerned with traditional metaphysical
and epistemological issues, seeking answers to questions about the nature and
kinds of substances and attributes; and it is more attuned to the diversity of
social practices and the multiple roles of language, discourse, and narrative
in the panoply of human affairs. DEWEY,
POSTMODERN, PRAGMATISM,
SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY.
C.O.S. pluralitive logic, also called pleonetetic logic, the logic of ‘many’,
‘most’, ‘few’, and similar terms (including ‘four out of five’, ‘over 45
percent’ and so on). Consider (1) ‘Almost all F are G’ (2) ‘Almost all F are
not G’ (3) ‘Most F are G’ (4) ‘Most F are not G’ (5) ‘Many F are G’ (6) ‘Many F
are not G’ (1) i.e., ‘Few F are not G’ and (6) are contradictory, as are (2)
and (5) and (3) and (4). (1) and (2) cannot be true together (i.e., they are
contraries), nor can (3) and (4), while (5) and (6) cannot be false together
(i.e., they are subcontraries). Moreover, (1) entails (3) which entails (5),
and (2) entails (4) which entails (6). Thus (1)–(6) form a generalized “square
of opposition” (fitting inside the standard one). Sometimes (3) is said to be
true if more than half the F’s are G, but this makes ‘most’ unnecessarily
precise, for ‘most’ does not literally mean ‘more than half’. Although many
pluralitive terms are vague, their interrelations are logically precise. Again,
one might define ‘many’ as ‘There are at least n’, for some fixed n, at least
relative to context. But this not only erodes the vagueness, it also fails to
work for arbitrarily large and infinite domains. ‘Few’, ‘most’, and ‘many’ are
binary quantifiers, a type of generalized quantifier. A unary quantifier, such
as the standard quantifiers ‘some’ and ‘all’, connotes a second-level property,
e.g., ‘Something is F’ means ‘F has an instance’, and ‘All F’s are G’ means ‘F
and not G has no instance’. A generalized quantifier connotes a second-level
relation. ‘Most F’s are G’ connotes a binary relation between F and G, one that
cannot be reduced to any property of a truth-functional compound of F and G. In
fact, none of the standard pluralitive terms can be defined in first-order
logic. FORMAL LOGIC, SQUARE OF
OPPOSITION, VAGUENESS. S.L.R. plurality of causes, as used by J. S. Mill, more
than one cause of a single effect; i.e., tokens of different event types
causing different tokens of the se event type. Plurality of causes is distinct
from overdetermination of an event by more than one actual or potential token
cause. For exple, an animal’s death has a plurality of causes: it may die of
starvation, of bleeding, of a blow to the head, and so on. Mill thought these
cases were important because he saw that the existence of a plurality of causes
creates problems for his four methods for determining causes. Mill’s method of
agreement is specifically vulnerable to the problem: the method fails to reveal
the cause of an event when the event has more than one type of cause, because
the method presumes that causes are necessary for their effects. Actually,
plurality of causes is a commonplace fact about the world because very few
causes are necessary for their effects. Unless the background conditions are
specified in great detail, or the identity of the effect type is defined very narrowly,
almost all cases involve a plurality of causes. For exple, flipping the light
switch is a necessary cause of the light’s going on, only if one assumes that
there will be no short circuit across the switch, that the wiring will remain
as it is, and so on, or if one assumes that by ‘the light’s going on’ one means
the light’s going on in the normal way.
CAUSATION; MILL, J. S.; MILL’S METHODS;
TYPE–TOKEN DISTINCTION. B.E. Plutarch of Athens.NEOPLATONISM. Plutarch of
Chaeronea.ACADEMY, MIDDLE PLATONISM. PM.APPENDIX OF SPECIAL SYMBOLS.
pluralitive logic PM 715 715
pneuma.STOICISM. Po-hu tung (“White Tiger Hall Consultations”), an important
Chinese Confucian work of the later Han dynasty, resulting from discussions at
the imperial palace in A.D. 79 on the classics and their commentaries. Divided
into forty-three headings, the text sums up the dominant teachings of
Confucianism by affirming the absolute position of the monarch, a cosmology and
moral psychology based on the yin–yang theory, and a comprehensive social and
political philosophy. While emphasizing benevolent government, it legitimizes
the right of the ruler to use force to quell disorder. A system of “three bonds
and six relationships” defines the hierarchical structure of society. Human nature,
identified with the yang cosmic force, must be cultivated, while feelings (yin)
are to be controlled especially by rituals and education. The Confucian
orthodoxy affirmed also marks an end to the debate between the Old Text school
and the New Text school that divided earlier Han scholars. CONFUCIANISM; YIN, YANG. A.K.L.C. poiesis
(Greek, ‘production’), behavior aimed at an external end. In Aristotle, poiesis
is opposed to praxis (action). It is characteristic of crafts – e.g. building,
the end of which is houses. It is thus a kinesis (process). For Aristotle,
exercising the virtues, since it must be undertaken for its own sake, cannot be
poiesis. The knowledge involved in virtue is therefore not the se as that
involved in crafts. R.C. Poincaré, Jules Henri (1854–1912), French
mathematician and influential philosopher of science. Born into a prominent
fily in Nancy, he showed extraordinary talent in mathematics from an early age.
He studied at the École des Mines and worked as a mining engineer while completing
his doctorate in mathematics (1879). In 1881, he was appointed professor at the
University of Paris, where he lectured on mathematics, physics, and astronomy
until his death. His original contributions to the theory of differential
equations, algebraic topology, and number theory made him the leading
mathematician of his day. He published almost five hundred technical papers as
well as three widely read books on the philosophy of science: Science and
Hypothesis (1902), The Value of Science (1905), and Science and Method (1908).
Poincaré’s philosophy of science was shaped by his approach to mathematics.
Geometric axioms are neither synthetic a priori nor empirical; they are more
properly understood as definitions. Thus, when one set of axioms is preferred
over another for use in physics, the choice is a matter of “convention”; it is
governed by criteria of simplicity and economy of expression rather than by
which geometry is “correct.” Though Euclidean geometry is used to describe the
motions of bodies in space, it makes no sense to ask whether physical space
“really” is Euclidean. Discovery in mathematics resembles discovery in the
physical sciences, but whereas the former is a construction of the human mind,
the latter has to be fitted to an order of nature that is ultimately
independent of mind. Science provides an economic and fruitful way of
expressing the relationships between classes of sensations, enabling reliable
predictions to be made. These sensations reflect the world that causes them; the
(limited) objectivity of science derives from this fact, but science does not
purport to determine the nature of that underlying world. Conventions, choices
that are not determinable by rule, enter into the physical sciences at all
levels. Such principles as that of the conservation of energy may appear to be
empirical, but are in fact postulates that scientists have chosen to treat as
implicit definitions. The decision between alternative hypotheses also involves
an element of convention: the choice of a particular curve to represent a
finite set of data points, e.g., requires a judgment as to which is simpler.
Two kinds of hypotheses, in particular, must be distinguished. Inductive
generalizations from observation (“real generalizations”) are hypothetical in
the limited sense that they are always capable of further precision. Then there
are theories (“indifferent hypotheses”) that postulate underlying entities or
structures. These entities may seem explanatory, but strictly speaking are no
more than devices useful in calculation. For atomic theory to explain, atoms
would have to exist. But this cannot be established in the only way permissible
for a scientific claim, i.e. directly by experiment. Shortly before he died,
Poincaré finally allowed that Perrin’s experimental verification of Einstein’s
predictions regarding Brownian motion, plus his careful marshaling of twelve
other distinct experimental methods of calculating Avogadro’s number,
constituted the equivalent of an experimental proof of the existence of atoms:
“One can say that we see them because we can count them. . . . The atom of the
chemist is now a reality.”
CONVENTIONALISM, PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS. E.M. pneuma Poincaré, Jules
Henri 716 716 polarity Polish logic
717 polarity, the relation between distinct phenomena, terms, or concepts such
that each inextricably requires, though it is opposed to, the other, as in the
relation between the north and south poles of a magnet. In application to terms
or concepts, polarity entails that the meaning of one involves the meaning of
the other. This is conceptual polarity. Terms are existentially polar provided
an instance of one cannot exist unless there exists an instance of the other.
The second sense implies the first. Supply and demand and good and evil are
instances of conceptual polarity. North and south and buying and selling are
instances of existential polarity. Some polar concepts are opposites, such as
truth and falsity. Some are correlative, such as question and answer: an answer
is always an answer to a question; a question calls for an answer, but a
question can be an answer, and an answer can be a question. The concept is not
restricted to pairs and can be extended to generate mutual interdependence,
multipolarity. MEANING, PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE.
M.G.S. Polish logic, logic as researched, elucidated, and taught in Poland,
1919–39. Between the two wars colleagues Jan Lukasiewicz, Tadeusz Kotarbigki,
and Stanislaw Lesniewski, assisted by students-become-collaborators such as
Alfred Tarski, Jerzy Slupecki, Stanislaw Jaskowski, and Boleslaw Sobocigski,
together with mathematicians in Warsaw and philosophical colleagues elsewhere,
like Kasimir Ajdukiewicz and Tadeusz Czezowski, made Warsaw an internationally
known center of research in logic, metalogic, semantics, and foundations of
mathematics. The Warsaw “school” also dominated Polish philosophy, and made
Poland the country that introduced modern logic even in secondary schools. All
three founders took their doctorates in Lvov under Kasimir Twardowski
(1866–1938), mentor of leading thinkers of independent Poland between the wars.
Arriving from Vienna to take the chair of philosophy at twenty-nine, Twardowski
had to choose between concentrating on his own research and organizing the
study of philosophy in Poland. Dedicating his life primarily to the community
task, he bece the founder of modern Polish philosophy. Twardowski’s informal
distinction between distributive and collective conceptions influenced
classification of philosophy and the sciences, and anticipated Lesniewski’s
formal axiomatizations in ontology and mereology, respectively. Another common
inheritance important in Polish logic was Twardowski’s stress on the
process–product biguity. He applied this distinction to disbiguate ‘meaning’
and refine his teacher Brentano’s account of mental acts as meaningful
(“intentional”) events, by differentiating (1) what is meant or “intended” by
the act, its objective noema or noematic “intentional object,” from (2) its
corresponding noetic meaning or subjective “content,” the correlated
characteristic or structure by which it “intends” its “object” or “objective” –
i.e., means that: suchand-such (is so). Twardowski’s teaching – especially this
careful analysis of “contents” and “objects” of mental acts – contributed to
Meinong’s theory of objects, and linked it, Husserl’s phenomenology, and Anton
Marty’s “philosophical grmar” with the “descriptive psychology” of their common
teacher, the Aristotelian and Scholastic empiricist Brentano, and thus with sources
of the analytic movements in Vienna and Cbridge. Twardowski’s lectures on the
philosophical logic of content and judgment prepared the ground for scientific
semantics; his references to Boolean algebra opened the door to mathematical
logic; and his phenomenological idea of a general theory of objects pointed
toward Lesniewski’s ontology. Twardowski’s maieutic character, integrity,
grounding in philosophical traditions, and arduous training (lectures began at
six a.m.), together with his realist defense of the classical Aristotelian
correspondence theory of truth against “irrationalism,” dogmatism, skepticism,
and psychologism, influenced his many pupils, who bece leaders of Polish
thought in diverse fields. But more influential than any doctrine was his
rigorist ideal of philosophy as a strict scientific discipline of criticism and
logical analysis, precise definition, and conceptual clarification. His was a
school not of doctrine but of method. Maintaining this common methodological
inheritance in their divergent ways, and encouraged to learn more mathematical
logic than Twardowski himself knew, his students in logic were early influenced
by Frege’s and Husserl’s critique of psychologism in logic, Husserl’s logical
investigations, and the logical reconstruction of classical mathematics by
Frege, Schröder, Whitehead, and Russell. As lecturer in Lvov from 1908 until
his appointment to Warsaw in 1915, Lukasiewicz introduced mathematical logic
into Poland. To Lesniewski, newly arrived from studies in Germany as an
enthusiast for Marty’s philosophy of language, Lukasiewicz’s influential 1910
Critique of Aristotle’s principle of contradiction was a “revelation” in 1911.
ong other things it 717 Polish
notation political philosophy 718 revealed paradoxes like Russell’s, which
preoccupied him for the next eleven years as, logically refuting Twardowski’s
Platonist theory of abstraction, he worked out his own solutions and,
influenced also by Leon Chwistek, outgrew the influence of Hans Cornelius and
Leon Petraz´ycki, and developed his own “constructively nominalist”
foundations. In 1919 Kotarbisski and Lesniewski joined Lukasiewicz in Warsaw,
where they attracted students like Tarski, Sobocigski, and Slupecki in the
first generation, and Andrzej Mostowski and Czeslaw Lejewski in the next. When
the war ce, the survivors were scattered and the metalogicians Morchaj
Wajsberg, Moritz Presburger, and Adolf Lindenbaum were killed or “disappeared”
by the Gestapo. Lukasiewicz concentrated increasingly on history of logic
(especially in reconstructing the logic of Aristotle and the Stoics) and
deductive problems concerning syllogistic and propositional logic. His idea of
logical probability and development of three- or manyvalued and modal calculi
reflected his indeterminist sympathies in prewar exchanges with Kotarbigski and
Lesniewski on the status of truths (eternal, sempiternal, or both?), especially
as concerns future contingencies. Lesniewski concentrated on developing his
logical systems. He left elaboration of many of his seminal metalogical and
semantic insights to Tarski, who, despite a divergent inclination to simplify
metathematical deductions by expedient postulation, shared with Lesniewski,
Lukasiewicz, and Ajdukiewicz the conviction that only formalized languages can
be made logically consistent subjects and instruments of rigorous scientific
investigation. Kotarbigski drew on Lesniewski’s logic of predication to defend
his “reism” (as one possible application of Lesniewski’s ontology), to
facilitate his “concretist” progr for translating abstractions into more
concrete terms, and to rationalize his “imitationist” account of mental acts or
dispositions. Inheriting Twardowski’s role as cultural leader and educator,
Kotarbigski popularized the logical achievements of his colleagues in (e.g.)
his substantial 1929 treatise on the theory of knowledge, formal logic, and
scientific methodology; this work bece required reading for serious students
and, together with the lucid textbooks by Lukasiewicz and Ajdukiewicz, raised
the level of philosophical discussion in Poland. Jaskowski published a system
of “natural deduction” by the suppositional method practiced by Lesniewski
since 1916. Ajdukiewicz based his syntax on Lesniewski’s logical grmar, and by
his searching critiques influenced Kotarbigski’s “reist” and “concretist”
formulations. Closest in Poland to the logical positivists of the Vienna
Circle, Ajdukiewicz brought new sophistication to the philosophy of language
and of science by his exination of the role of conventions and meaning
postulates in scientific theory and language, distinguishing axiomatic,
deductive, and empirical rules of meaning. His evolving and refined
conventionalist analyses of theories, languages, “world perspectives,”
synonymy, translation, and analyticity, and his philosophical clarification by
paraphrase anticipated views of Carnap, Feigl, and Quine. But the Polish
thinkers, beyond their common methodological inheritance and general adherence
to extensional logic, subscribed to little common doctrine, and in their
exchanges with the Vienna positivists remained “too sober” (said Lukasiewicz)
to join in sweeping antimetaphysical manifestos. Like Twardowski, they were
critics of traditional formulations, who sought not to proscribe but to reform
metaphysics, by reformulating issues clearly enough to advance understanding.
Indeed, except for Chwistek, the mathematician Jan Slezygski, and the
historians I. M. Bochegski, Z. A. Jordan, and Jan Salucha, in addition to the
phenomenologist Roman Ingarden, the key figures in Polish logic were all
philosophical descendants of Twardowski.
KOTARBIgSKI, LESNIEWSKI,
LUKASIEWICZ. E.C.L. Polish notation.LOGICAL NOTATION. political
obligation.POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. political philosophy, the study of the nature
and justification of coercive institutions. Coercive institutions range in size
from the fily to the nation-state and world organizations like the United
Nations. They are institutions that at least sometimes employ force or the
threat of force to control the behavior of their members. Justifying such
coercive institutions requires showing that the authorities within them have a
right to be obeyed and that their members have a corresponding obligation to
obey them, i.e., that these institutions have legitimate political authority
over their members. Classical political philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle,
were primarily interested in providing a justification for city-states like
Athens or Sparta. But historically, as larger coercive insti 718 tutions bece possible and desirable,
political philosophers sought to justify them. After the seventeenth century,
most political philosophers focused on providing a justification for
nationstates whose claim to legitimate authority is restricted by both
geography and nationality. But from time to time, and more frequently in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, some political philosophers have sought to
provide a justification for various forms of world government with even more
extensive powers than those presently exercised by the United Nations. And
quite recently, feminist political philosophers have raised important
challenges to the authority of the fily as it is presently constituted.
Anarchism (from Greek an archos, ‘no government’) rejects this central task of
political philosophy. It maintains that no coercive institutions are justified.
Proudhon, the first self-described anarchist, believed that coercive
institutions should be replaced by social and economic organizations based on
voluntary contractual agreement, and he advocated peaceful change toward
anarchism. Others, notably Blanqui and Bakunin, advocated the use of violence
to destroy the power of coercive institutions. Anarchism inspired the
anarcho-syndicalist movement, Makhno and his followers during the Russian Civil
War, the Spanish anarchists during the Spanish Civil War, and the anarchist
gauchistes during the 1968 “May Events” in France. Most political philosophers,
however, have sought to justify coercive institutions; they have simply disagreed
over what sort of coercive institutions are justified. Liberalism, which
derives from the work of Locke, is the view that coercive institutions are
justified when they promote liberty. For Locke, liberty requires a
constitutional monarchy with parlientary government. Over time, however, the
ideal of liberty bece subject to at least two interpretations. The view that
seems closest to Locke’s is classical liberalism, which is now more frequently
called (political) libertarianism. This form of liberalism interprets
constraints on liberty as positive acts (i.e., acts of commission) that prevent
people from doing what they otherwise could do. According to this view, failing
to help people in need does not restrict their liberty. Libertarians maintain
that when liberty is so interpreted only a minimal or night-watchman state that
protects against force, theft, and fraud can be justified. In contrast, in
welfare liberalism, a form of liberalism that derives from the work of T. H.
Green, constraints on liberty are interpreted to include, in addition, negative
acts (i.e., acts of omission) that prevent people from doing what they
otherwise could do. According to this view, failing to help people in need does
restrict their liberty. Welfare liberals maintain that when liberty is
interpreted in this fashion, coercive institutions of a welfare state requiring
a guaranteed social minimum and equal opportunity are justified. While no one
denies that when liberty is given a welfare liberal interpretation some form of
welfare state is required, there is considerable debate over whether a minimal
state is required when liberty is given a libertarian interpretation. At issue
is whether the liberty of the poor is constrained when they are prevented from
taking from the surplus possessions of the rich what they need for survival. If
such prevention does constrain the liberty of the poor, it could be argued that
their liberty should have priority over the liberty of the rich not to be
interfered with when using their surplus possessions for luxury purposes. In
this way, it could be shown that even when the ideal of liberty is given a
libertarian interpretation, a welfare state, rather than a minimal state, is
justified. Both libertarianism and welfare liberalism are committed to individualism.
This view takes the rights of individuals to be basic and justifies the actions
of coercive institutions as promoting those rights. Communitarianism, which
derives from the writings of Hegel, rejects individualism. It maintains that
rights of individuals are not basic and that the collective can have rights
that are independent of and even opposed to what liberals claim are the rights
of individuals. According to communitarians, individuals are constituted by the
institutions and practices of which they are a part, and their rights and
obligations derive from those se institutions and practices. Fascism is an
extreme form of communitarianism that advocates an authoritarian state with
limited rights for individuals. In its National Socialism (Nazi) variety,
fascism was also antiSemitic and militarist. In contrast to liberalism and
communitarianism, socialism takes equality to be the basic ideal and justifies
coercive institutions insofar as they promote equality. In capitalist societies
where the means of production are owned and controlled by a relatively small
number of people and used primarily for their benefit, socialists favor taking
control of the means of production and redirecting their use to the general
welfare. According to Marx, the principle of distribution for a socialist
society is: from each according to political philosophy political philosophy
719 719 ability, to each according to
needs. Socialists disagree ong themselves, however, over who should control the
means of production in a socialist society. In the version of socialism favored
by Lenin, those who control the means of production are to be an elite
seemingly differing only in their ends from the capitalist elite they replaced.
In other forms of socialism, the means of production are to be controlled
democratically. In advanced capitalist societies, national defense, police and
fire protection, income redistribution, and environmental protection are
already under democratic control. Democracy or “government by the people” is
thought to apply in these areas, and to require some form of representation.
Socialists simply propose to extend the domain of democratic control to include
control of the means of production, on the ground that the very se arguments
that support democratic control in these recognized areas also support
democratic control of the means of production. In addition, according to Marx,
socialism will transform itself into communism when most of the work that
people perform in society becomes its own reward, making differential monetary
reward generally unnecessary. Then distribution in society can proceed
according to the principle, from each according to ability, to each according
to needs. It so happens that all of the above political views have been interpreted
in ways that deny that women have the se basic rights as men. By contrast,
feminism, almost by definition, is the political view that women and men have
the se basic rights. In recent years, most political philosophers have come to
endorse equal basic rights for women and men, but rarely do they address
questions that feminists consider of the utmost importance, e.g., how
responsibilities and duties are to be assigned in fily structures. Each of
these political views must be evaluated both internally and externally by
comparison with the other views. Once this is done, their practical
recommendations may not be so different. For exple, if welfare liberals
recognize that the basic rights of their view extend to distant peoples and
future generations, they may end up endorsing the se degree of equality
socialists defend. Whatever their practical requirements, each of these
political views justifies civil disobedience, even revolution, when certain of
those requirements have not been met. Civil disobedience is an illegal action
undertaken to draw attention to a failure by the relevant authorities to meet
basic moral requirements, e.g., the refusal of Rosa Parks to give up her seat
in a bus to a white man in accord with the local ordinance in Montgomery, Alaba,
in 1955. Civil disobedience is justified when illegal action of this sort is
the best way to get the relevant authorities to bring the law into better
correspondence with basic moral requirements. By contrast, revolutionary action
is justified when it is the only way to correct a radical failure of the
relevant authorities to meet basic moral requirements. When revolutionary
action is justified, people no longer have a political obligation to obey the
relevant authorities; that is, they are no longer morally required to obey
them, although they may still continue to do so, e.g. out of habit or fear.
Recent contemporary political philosophy has focused on the
communitarian–liberal debate. In defense of the communitarian view, Alasdair
MacIntyre has argued that virtually all forms of liberalism attempt to separate
rules defining right action from conceptions of the human good. On this
account, he contends, these forms of liberalism must fail because the rules
defining right action cannot be adequately grounded apart from a conception of
the good. Responding to this type of criticism, some liberals have openly
conceded that their view is not grounded independently of some conception of
the good. Rawls, e.g., has recently made clear that his liberalism requires a
conception of the political good, although not a comprehensive conception of
the good. It would seem, therefore, that the debate between communitarians and
liberals must turn on a comparative evaluation of their competing conceptions
of the good. Unfortunately, contemporary communitarians have not yet been very
forthcoming about what particular conception of the good their view
requires.
ETHICS, JUSTICE,
LIBERALISM, POLITICAL THEORY, SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. J.P.St. political theory,
reflection concerning the empirical, normative, and conceptual dimensions of
political life. There are no topics that all political theorists do or ought to
address, no required procedures, no doctrines acknowledged to be authoritative.
The meaning of ‘political theory’ resides in its fluctuating uses, not in any
essential property. It is nevertheless possible to identify concerted
tendencies ong those who have practiced this activity over twenty-five
centuries. Since approximately the seventeenth century, a primary question has
been how best to justify political theory political theory 720 720 the political rule of some people over
others. This question subordinated the issue that had directed and organized
most previous political theory, nely, what constitutes the best form of
political regime. Assuming political association to be a divinely ordained or
naturally necessary feature of the human estate, earlier thinkers had asked
what mode of political association contributes most to realizing the good for
humankind. Signaling the variable but intimate relationship between political
theory and political practice, the change in question reflected and helped to
consolidate acceptance of the postulate of natural human equality, the denial
of divinely or naturally given authority of some human beings over others. Only
a small minority of postseventeenth-century thinkers have entertained the
possibility, perhaps suggested by this postulate, that no form of rule can be
justified, but the shift in question altered the political theory agenda.
Issues concerning consent, individual liberties and rights, various forms of
equality as integral to justice, democratic and other controls on the authority
and power of government – none of which were ong the first concerns of ancient
or medieval political thinkers – moved to the center of political theory.
Recurrent tendencies and tensions in political theory may also be discerned
along dimensions that cross-cut historical divisions. In its most celebrated
representations, political theory is integral to philosophy. Systematic
thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, Hobbes and Hegel,
present their political thoughts as supporting and supported by their ethics
and theology, metaphysics and epistemology. Political argumentation must
satisfy the se criteria of logic, truth, and justification as any other; a
political doctrine must be grounded in the nature of reality. Other political
theorists align themselves with empirical science rather than philosophy. Often
focusing on questions of power, they aim to give accurate accounts and
factually grounded assessments of government and politics in particular times
and places. Books IV–VI of Aristotle’s Politics inaugurate this conception of
political theory; it is represented by Montesquieu, Marx, and much of
utilitarianism, and it is the numerically predominant form of academic
political theorizing in the twentieth century. Yet others, e.g., Socrates,
Machiavelli, Rousseau, and twentieth-century thinkers such as Rawls, mix the
previously mentioned modes but understand themselves as primarily pursuing the
practical objective of improving their own political societies. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY.
R.E.F. polyadic.DEGREE. Polyaenus.EPICUREANISM. polysemy.BIGUITY.
polysyllogism, a series of syllogisms connected by the fact that the conclusion
of one syllogism becomes a premise of another. The syllogism whose conclusion
is used as a premise in another syllogism within the chain is called the
prosyllogism; the syllogism is which the conclusion of another syllogism within
the chain is used as a premise is called the episyllogism. To illustrate, take
the standard form of the simplest polysyllogism: (a) (1) Every B is A (2) Every
C is B (3) , Every C is A (b) (4) Every C is A (5) Every D is C (6) , Every D
is A. The first member (a) of this polysyllogism is the prosyllogism, since its
conclusion, (3), occurs as a premise, (4), in the second argument. This second
member, (b), is the episyllogism, since it employs as one of its premises (4) the
conclusion (3) of the first syllogism. It should be noted that the terms
‘prosyllogism’ and ‘episyllogism’ are correlative terms. Moreover, a
polysyllogism may have more than two members.
SYLLOGISM. I.Bo. Pomponazzi, Pietro (1462–1525), Italian philosopher, an
Aristotelian who taught at the universities of Padua and Bologna. In De
incantationibus (“On Incantations,” 1556), he regards the world as a system of
natural causes that can explain apparently miraculous phenomena. Human beings
are subject to the natural order of the world, yet divine predestination and
human freedom are compatible (De fato, “On Fate,” 1567). Furthermore, he
distinguishes between what is proved by natural reason and what is accepted by
faith, and claims that, since there are arguments for and against the
immortality of the human individual soul, this belief is to be accepted solely
on the basis of faith (De immortalitate animae, “On the Immortality of the
Soul,” polyadic Pomponazzi, Pietro 721
721 1516). He defended his view of immortality in the Apologia (1518)
and in the Defensorium (1519). These three works were reprinted as Tractatus
acutissimi (1525). Pomponazzi’s work was influential until the seventeenth
century, when Aristotelianism ceased to be the main philosophy taught at the
universities. The eighteenth-century freethinkers showed new interest in his
distinction between natural reason and faith. P.Gar. pons asinorum (Latin,
‘asses’ bridge’), a methodological device based upon Aristotle’s description of
the ways in which one finds a suitable middle term to demonstrate categorical
propositions. Thus, to prove the universal affirmative, one should consider the
characters that entail the predicate P and the characters entailed by the
subject S. If we find in the two groups of characters a common member, we can
use it as a middle term in the syllogistic proof of (say) ‘All S are P’. Take
‘All men are mortal’ as the contemplated conclusion. We find that ‘organism’ is
ong the characters entailing the predicate ‘mortal’ and is also found in the
group of characters entailed by the subject ‘men’, and thus it may be used in a
syllogistic proof of ‘All men are mortal’. To prove negative propositions we
must, in addition, consider characters incompatible with the predicate, or incompatible
with the subject. Finally, proofs of particular propositions require
considering characters that entail the subject.
SYLLOGISM. I.Bo. Popper, Karl Raimund (1902–94), Austrian-born British
philosopher best known for contributions to philosophy of science and to social
and political philosophy. Educated at the University of Vienna (Ph.D., 1928),
he taught philosophy in New Zealand for a decade before becoming a reader and
then professor in logic and scientific method at the London School of Economics
(1946–69). He was knighted in 1965, elected a fellow of the Royal Society in
1976, and appointed Companion of Honour in 1982 (see his autobiography, Unended
Quest, 1976). In opposition to logical positivism’s verifiability criterion of
cognitive significance, Popper proposes that science be characterized by its
method: the criterion of demarcation of empirical science from pseudo-science
and metaphysics is falsifiability (Logik der Forschung, 1934, translated as The
Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1959). According to falsificationism, science
grows, and may even approach the truth, not by assing supporting evidence, but
through an unending cycle of problems, tentative solutions – unjustifiable
conjectures – and error elimination; i.e., the vigorous testing of deductive
consequences and the refutation of conjectures that fail (Conjectures and
Refutations, 1963). Since conjectures are not inferences and refutations are
not inductive, there is no inductive inference or inductive logic. More
generally, criticism is installed as the hallmark of rationality, and the
traditional justificationist insistence on proof, conclusive or inconclusive,
on confirmation, and on positive argument, is repudiated. Popper brings to the
central problems of Kant’s philosophy an uncompromising realism and
objectivism, the tools of modern logic, and a Darwinian perspective on
knowledge, thereby solving Hume’s problem of induction without lapsing into
irrationalism (Objective Knowledge, 1972). He made contributions of permanent
importance also to the axiomatization of probability theory (The Logic of
Scientific Discovery, 1959); to its interpretation, especially the propensity
interpretation (Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 3 vols.
1982–83); and to many other problems (The Self and Its Brain, with John C.
Eccles, 1977). Popper’s social philosophy, like his epistemology, is
anti-authoritarian. Since it is a historicist error to suppose that we can
predict the future of mankind (The Poverty of Historicism, 1957), the prime task
of social institutions in an open society – one that encourages criticism and
allows rulers to be replaced without violence – must be not large-scale utopian
planning but the minimization, through piecemeal reform, of avoidable
suffering. This way alone permits proper assessment of success or failure, and
thus of learning from experience (The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945). CONFIRMATION, DARWINISM, HISTORICISM, LOGICAL
POSITIVISM, PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE,
PROBABILITY, PROBLEM OF
INDUCTION, RATIONALITY. D.W.M. Porphyry (c.232–c.304), Greek Neoplatonist
philosopher, second to Plotinus in influence. He was born in Tyre, and is thus
sometimes called Porphyry the Phoenician. As a young man he went to Athens,
where he absorbed the Platonism of Cassius Longinus, who had in turn been
influenced by monius Saccas in Alexandria. Porphyry went to Rome in 263, where
he bece a disciple of Plotinus, who had also been influenced by monius.
Porphyry lived in Rome until 269, when, urged by Plotinus to pons asinorum Porphyry
722 722 travel as a cure for severe
depression, he traveled to Sicily. He remained there for several years before
returning to Rome to take over Plotinus’s school. He apparently died in Rome.
Porphyry is not noted for original thought. He seems to have dedicated himself
to explicating Aristotle’s logic and defending Plotinus’s version of
Neoplatonism. During his years in Sicily, Porphyry wrote his two most fous
works, the lengthy Against the Christians, of which only fragments survive, and
the Isagoge, or “Introduction.” The Isagoge, which purports to give an
elementary exposition of the concepts necessary to understand Aristotle’s
Categories, was translated into Latin by Boethius and routinely published in
the Middle Ages with Latin editions of Aristotle’s Organon, or logical
treatises. Its inclusion in that format arguably precipitated the discussion of
the so-called problem of universals in the twelfth century. During his later
years in Rome, Porphyry collected Plotinus’s writings, editing and organizing
them into a scheme of his own – not Plotinus’s – design, six groups of nine
treatises, thus called the Enneads. Porphyry prefaced his edition with an
informative biography of Plotinus, written shortly before Porphyry’s own death. NEOPLATONISM, PLOTINUS, TREE OF PORPHYRY.
W.E.M. Port-Royal Logic, originally entitled La logique, ou L’art de penser, a
treatise on logic, language, and method composed by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre
Nicole (1625–95), possibly with the help of Pascal, all of whom were solitaires
associated with the convent at Port-Royal-des-Chps, the spiritual and
intellectual center of French Jansenism. Originally written as an instruction
manual for the son of the Duc de Luynes, the Logic was soon expanded and
published (the first edition appeared in 1662, but it was constantly being
modified, augmented, and rewritten by its authors; by 1685 six editions in
French had appeared). The work develops the linguistic theories presented by
Arnauld and Claude Lancelot in the Grmaire générale et raisonnée (1660), and
reflects the pedagogical principles embodied in the curriculum of the “little
schools” run by PortRoyal. Its content is also permeated by the Cartesianism to
which Arnauld was devoted. The Logic’s influence grew beyond Jansenist circles,
and it soon bece in seventeenth-century France a standard manual for rigorous
thinking. Eventually, it was adopted as a textbook in French schools. The
authors declare their goal to be to make thought more precise for better
distinguishing truth from error – philosophical and theological – and to
develop sound judgment. They are especially concerned to dispel the errors and
confusions of the Scholastics. Logic is “the art of directing reason to a
knowledge of things for the instruction of ourselves and others.” This art
consists in reflecting on the mind’s four principal operations: conceiving,
judging, reasoning, and ordering. Accordingly, the Logic is divided into four
sections: on ideas and conception, on judgments, on reasoning, and on method.
S.N. Posidonius.ACADEMY, COMMENTARIES ON PLATO, STOICISM. positional
qualities.QUALITIES. positive and negative freedom, respectively, the area
within which the individual is self-determining and the area within which the
individual is left free from interference by others. More specifically, one is
free in the positive sense to the extent that one has control over one’s life,
or rules oneself. In this sense the term is very close to that of ‘autonomy’.
The forces that can prevent this self-determination are usually thought of as
internal, as desires or passions. This conception of freedom can be said to
have originated with Plato, according to whom a person is free when the parts
of the soul are rightly related to each other, i.e. the rational part of the
soul rules the other parts. Other advocates of positive freedom include
Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel. One is free in the negative sense if one is
not prevented from doing something by another person. One is prevented from
doing something if another person makes it impossible for one to do something
or uses coercion to prevent one from doing something. Hence persons are free in
the negative sense if they are not made unfree in the negative sense. The term
‘negative liberty’ was coined by Benth to mean the absence of coercion.
Advocates of negative freedom include Hobbes, Locke, and Hume. FREE WILL PROBLEM, KANT, POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY. G.D. positive duty.DUTY. positive feedback.CYBERNETICS. positive
freedom.POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE FREEDOM. Port-Royal Logic positive freedom
723 723 positive
morality.JURISPRUDENCE. positivism, legal.JURISPRUDENCE, LEGAL POSITIVISM.
positivism, logical.
COMTE, LOGICAL
POSITIVISM. possibilia.NECESSITY, POSSIBLE WORLDS. possibilist.EPISTEMIC LOGIC.
possibility.NECESSITY. possibility, epistemic.EPISTEMIC LOGIC. possible worlds,
alternative worlds in terms of which one may think of possibility. The idea of
thinking about possibility in terms of such worlds has played an important
part, both in Leibnizian philosophical theology and in the development of modal
logic and philosophical reflection about it in recent decades. But there are
important differences in the forms the idea has taken, and the uses to which it
has been put, in the two contexts. Leibniz used it in his account of creation.
In his view God’s mind necessarily and eternally contains the ideas of
infinitely many worlds that God could have created, and God has chosen the best
of these and made it actual, thus creating it. (Similar views are found in the
thought of Leibniz’s contemporary, Malebranche.) The possible worlds are thus
the complete alternatives ong which God chose. They are possible at least in
the sense that they are logically consistent; whether something more is
required in order for them to be coherent as worlds is a difficult question in
Leibniz interpretation. They are complete in that they are possible totalities
of creatures; each includes a whole (possible) universe, in its whole spatial
extent and its whole temporal history (if it is spatially and temporally
ordered). The temporal completeness deserves emphasis. If “the world of
tomorrow” is “a better world” than “the world of today,” it will still be part
of the se “possible world” (the actual one); for the actual “world,” in the
relevant sense, includes whatever actually has happened or will happen
throughout all time. The completeness extends to every detail, so that a
milligr’s difference in the weight of the smallest bird would make a different
possible world. The completeness of possible worlds may be limited in one way,
however. Leibniz speaks of worlds as aggregates of finite things. As
alternatives for God’s creation, they may well not be thought of as including
God, or at any rate, not every fact about God. For this and other reasons it is
not clear that in Leibniz’s thought the possible can be identified with what is
true in some possible world, or the necessary with what is true in all possible
worlds. That identification is regularly assumed, however, in the recent
development of what has become known as possible worlds semantics for modal
logic (the logic of possibility and necessity, and of other conceptions, e.g.
those pertaining to time and to morality, that have turned out to be formally
analogous). The basic idea here is that such notions as those of validity,
soundness, and completeness can be defined for modal logic in terms of models
constructed from sets of alternative “worlds.” Since the late 1950s many
important results have been obtained by this method, whose best-known exponent
is Saul Kripke. Some of the most interesting proofs depend on the idea of a
relation of accessibility between worlds in the set. Intuitively, one world is
accessible from another if and only if the former is possible in (or from the
point of view of) the latter. Different systems of modal logic are appropriate
depending on the properties of this relation (e.g., on whether it is or is not
reflexive and/or transitive and/or symmetrical). The purely formal results of
these methods are well established. The application of possible worlds
semantics to conceptions occurring in metaphysically richer discourse is more
controversial, however. Some of the controversy is related to debates over the
metaphysical reality of various sorts of possibility and necessity. Particularly
controversial, and also a focus of much interest, have been attempts to
understand modal claims de re, about particular individuals as such (e.g., that
I could not have been a musical performance), in terms of the identity and
nonidentity of individuals in different possible worlds. Similarly, there is
debate over the applicability of a related treatment of subjunctive
conditionals, developed by Robert Stalnaker and David Lewis, though it is clear
that it yields interesting formal results. What is required, on this approach,
for the truth of ‘If it were the case that A, then it would be the case that
B’, is that, ong those possible worlds in which A is true, some world in which
B is true be more similar, in the relevant respects, to the actual world than any
world in which B is false. One of the most controversial topics is the nature
of possible worlds themselves. Mathematical logicians need not be concerned
with this; a wide variety of sets of objects, real or ficpositive morality
possible worlds 724 724 titious, can
be viewed as having the properties required of sets of “worlds” for their
purposes. But if metaphysically robust issues of modality (e.g., whether there
are more possible colors than we ever see) are to be understood in terms of
possible worlds, the question of the nature of the worlds must be taken
seriously. Some philosophers would deny any serious metaphysical role to the
notion of possible worlds. At the other extreme, David Lewis has defended a
view of possible worlds as concrete totalities, things of the se sort as the
whole actual universe, made up of entities like planets, persons, and so forth.
On his view, the actuality of the actual world consists only in its being this
one, the one that we are in; apart from its relation to us or our linguistic
acts, the actual is not metaphysically distinguished from the merely possible.
Many philosophers find this result counterintuitive, and the infinity of
concrete possible worlds an extravagant ontology; but Lewis argues that his
view makes possible attractive reductions of modality (both logical and
causal), and of such notions as that of a proposition, to more concrete
notions. Other philosophers are prepared to say there are non-actual possible
worlds, but that they are entities of a quite different sort from the actual
concrete universe – sets of propositions, perhaps, or some other type of
“abstract” object. Leibniz himself held a view of this kind, thinking of
possible worlds as having their being only in God’s mind, as intentional objects
of God’s thought.
COUNTERFACTUALS, KRIPKE
SEMANTICS, MODAL LOGIC. R.M.A. possible worlds semantics.KRIPKE SEMANTICS,
POSSIBLE WORLDS. postcard paradox.SEMANTIC PARADOXES.
Post-complete.COMPLETENESS. post hoc, ergo propter hoc.INFORMAL FALLACY.
postmodern, of or relating to a complex set of reactions to modern philosophy
and its presuppositions, as opposed to the kind of agreement on substantive
doctrines or philosophical questions that often characterizes a philosophical
movement. Although there is little agreement on precisely what the
presuppositions of modern philosophy are, and disagreement on which
philosophers exemplify these presuppositions, postmodern philosophy typically
opposes foundationalism, essentialism, and realism. For Rorty, e.g., the presuppositions
to be set aside are foundationalist assumptions shared by the leading
sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century philosophers. For Nietzsche,
Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida, the contested presuppositions to be set aside
are as old as metaphysics itself, and are perhaps best exemplified by Plato.
Postmodern philosophy has even been characterized, by Lyotard, as preceding
modern philosophy, in the sense that the presuppositions of philosophical
modernism emerge out of a disposition whose antecedent, unarticulated beliefs
are already postmodern. Postmodern philosophy is therefore usefully regarded as
a complex cluster concept that includes the following elements: an anti- (or
post-) epistemological standpoint; anti-essentialism; anti-realism;
anti-foundationalism; opposition to transcendental arguments and transcendental
standpoints; rejection of the picture of knowledge as accurate representation;
rejection of truth as correspondence to reality; rejection of the very idea of
canonical descriptions; rejection of final vocabularies, i.e., rejection of
principles, distinctions, and descriptions that are thought to be
unconditionally binding for all times, persons, and places; and a suspicion of
grand narratives, metanarratives of the sort perhaps best illustrated by
dialectical materialism. In addition to these things postmodern philosophy is
“against,” it also opposes characterizing this menu of oppositions as
relativism, skepticism, or nihilism, and it rejects as “the metaphysics of
presence” the traditional, putatively impossible dre of a complete, unique, and
closed explanatory system, an explanatory system typically fueled by binary
oppositions. On the positive side, one often finds the following themes: its
critique of the notion of the neutrality and sovereignty of reason – including
insistence on its pervasively gendered, historical, and ethnocentric character;
its conception of the social construction of word–world mappings; its tendency
to embrace historicism; its critique of the ultimate status of a contrast
between epistemology, on the one hand, and the sociology of knowledge, on the
other hand; its dissolution of the notion of the autonomous, rational subject;
its insistence on the artifactual status of divisions of labor in knowledge
acquisition and production; and its bivalence about the Enlightenment and its
ideology. Many of these elements or elective affinities were already surfacing
in the growing opposition to the spectator theory of knowledge, in Europe and
in the English-speaking world, long before possible worlds semantics postmodern
725 725 the term ‘postmodern’ bece a
commonplace. In Anglophone philosophy this took the early form of Dewey’s (and
pragmatism’s) opposition to positivism, early Kuhn’s redescription of scientific
practice, and Wittgenstein’s insistence on the language-ge character of
representation; critiques of “the myth of the given” from Sellars to Davidson
and Quine; the emergence of epistemology naturalized; and the putative
description-dependent character of data, tethered to the theory dependence of
descriptions (in Kuhn, Sellars, Quine, and Arthur Fine – perhaps in all
constructivists in the philosophy of science). In Europe, many of these
elective affinities surfaced explicitly in and were identified with
poststructuralism, although traces are clearly evident in Heidegger’s (and
later in Derrida’s) attacks on Husserl’s residual Cartesianism; the rejection
of essential descriptions (Wesensanschauungen) in Husserl’s sense; Saussure’s
and structuralism’s attack on the autonomy and coherence of a transcendental
signified standing over against a selftransparent subject; Derrida’s
deconstructing the metaphysics of presence; Foucault’s redescriptions of
epistemes; the convergence between French- and English-speaking social
constructivists; attacks on the language of enabling conditions as reflected in
worries about the purchase of necessary and sufficient conditions talk on both
sides of the Atlantic; and Lyotard’s many interventions, particularly those
against grand narratives. Many of these elective affinities that characterize
postmodern philosophy can also be seen in the virtually universal challenges to
moral philosophy as it has been understood traditionally in the West, not only
in German and French philosophy, but in the reevaluation of “the morality of
principles” in the work of MacIntyre, Willis, Nussbaum, John McDowell, and
others. The force of postmodern critiques can perhaps best be seen in some of
the challenges of feminist theory, as in the work of Judith Butler and Hélène
Cixous, and gender theory generally. For it is in gender theory that the
conception of “reason” itself as it has functioned in the shared philosophical
tradition is redescribed as a conception that, it is often argued, is (en)gendered,
patriarchal, homophobic, and deeply optional. The term ‘postmodern’ is less
clear in philosophy, its application more uncertain and divided than in some
other fields, e.g., postmodern architecture. In architecture the concept is
relatively clear. It displaces modernism in assignable ways, emerges as an
oppositional force against architectural modernism, a rejection of the work and
tradition inaugurated by Walter Gropius, Henri Le Corbusier, and Mies van der
Rohe, especially the International Style. In postmodern architecture, the
modernist principle of abstraction, of geometric purity and simplicity, is
displaced by multivocity and pluralism, by renewed interest in buildings as
signs and signifiers, interest in their referential potential and resources. The
modernist’s aspiration to buildings that are timeless in an important sense is
itself read by postmodernists as an iconography that privileges the brave new
world of science and technology, an aspiration that glorifies uncritically the
industrial revolution of which it is itself a quintessential expression. This
aspiration to timelessness is displaced in postmodern architecture by a direct
and self-conscious openness to and engagement with history. It is this relative
specificity of the concept postmodern architecture that enabled Charles Jencks
to write that “Modern Architecture died in St. Louis Missouri on July 15, 1972
at 3:32 P.M.” Unfortunately, no remotely similar sentence can be written about
postmodern philosophy. ANTI-REALISM,
DECONSTRUCTION, FOUCAULT, FOUNDATIONALISM, LYOTARD, RORTY, SOCIAL
CONSTRUCTIVISM, STRUCTURALISM. B.M. post-structuralism.CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY,
LYOTARD, STRUCTURALISM. potency, for Aristotle, a kind of capacity that is a
correlative of action. We require no instruction to grasp the difference
between ‘X can do Y’ and ‘X is doing Y’, the latter meaning that the deed is
actually being done. That an agent has a potency to do something is not a pure
prediction so much as a generalization from past performance of individual or
kind. Aristotle uses the exple of a builder, meaning someone able to build, and
then confronts the Megaric objection that the builder can be called a builder
only when he actually builds. Clearly one who is doing something can do it, but
Aristotle insists that the napping carpenter has the potency to hmer and saw. A
potency based on an acquired skill like carpentry derives from the potency
shared by those who acquire and those who do not acquire the skill. An
unskilled worker can be said to be a builder “in potency,” not in the sense
that he has the skill and can employ it, but in the sense that he can acquire
the skill. In both acquisition and employment, ‘potency’ refers to the actual –
either the actual acquisition of the skill or its actual use. These post-structuralism
potency 726 726 potentiality, first
practical attitude 727 correlatives emerged from Aristotle’s analysis of change
and becoming. That which, from not having the skill, comes to have it is said to
be “in potency” to that skill. From not having a certain shape, wood comes to
have a certain shape. In the shaped wood, a potency is actualized. Potency must
not be identified with the unshaped, with what Aristotle calls privation.
Privation is the negation of P in a subject capable of P. Parmenides’
identification of privation and potency, according to Aristotle, led him to
deny change. How can not-P become P? It is the subject of not-P to which the
change is attributed and which survives the change that is in potency to X. ARISTOTLE. R.M. potentiality,
first.ARISTOTLE. potentiality, second.ARISTOTLE. pour soi.SARTRE. poverty of
the stimulus, a psychological phenomenon exhibited when behavior is
stimulusunbound, and hence the immediate stimulus characterized in
straightforward physical terms does not completely control behavior. Human
beings sort stimuli in various ways and hosts of influences seem to affect
when, why, and how we respond – our background beliefs, facility with language,
hypotheses about stimuli, etc. Suppose a person visiting a museum notices a
painting she has never before seen. Pondering the unfiliar painting, she says,
“an bitious visual synthesis of the music of Mahler and the poetry of Keats.”
If stimulus (painting) controls response, then her utterance is a product of earlier
responses to similar stimuli. Given poverty of the stimulus, no such control is
exerted by the stimulus (the painting). Of course, some influence of response
must be conceded to the painting, for without it there would be no utterance.
However, the utterance may well outstrip the visitor’s conditioning and
learning history. Perhaps she had never before talked of painting in terms of
music and poetry. The linguist No Chomsky made poverty of the stimulus central
to his criticism of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (1957). Chomsky argued that
there is no predicting, and certainly no critical stimulus control of, much
human behavior. G.A.G. power, a disposition; an ability or capacity to yield
some outcome. One tradition (which includes Locke) distinguishes active and
passive powers. A knife has the active power to slice an apple, which has the
passive power to be sliced by the knife. The distinction seems largely
grmatical, however. Powers act in concert: the power of a grain of salt to
dissolve in water and the water’s power to dissolve the salt are reciprocal and
their manifestations mutual. Powers or dispositions are sometimes thought to be
relational properties of objects, properties possessed only in virtue of
objects standing in appropriate relations to other objects. However, if we
distinguish, as we must, between a power and its manifestation, and if we allow
that an object could possess a power that it never manifested (a grain of salt
remains soluble even if it never dissolves), it would seem that an object could
possess a power even if appropriate reciprocal partners for its manifestation
were altogether non-existent. This appears to have been Locke’s view (An Essay
concerning Human Understanding, 1690) of “secondary qualities” (colors, sounds,
and the like), which he regarded as powers of objects to produce certain sorts
of sensory experience in observers. Philosophers who take powers seriously
disagree over whether powers are intrinsic, “built into” properties (this view,
defended by C. B. Martin, seems to have been Locke’s), or whether the
connection between properties and the powers they bestow is contingent,
dependent perhaps upon contingent laws of nature (a position endorsed by
Armstrong). Is the solubility of salt a characteristic built into the salt, or
is it a “second-order” property possessed by the salt in virtue of (i) the
salt’s possession of some “firstorder” property and (ii) the laws of nature?
Reductive analyses of powers, though influential, have not fared well. Suppose
a grain of salt is soluble in water. Does this mean that if the salt were
placed in water, it would dissolve? No. Imagine that were the salt placed in
water, a technician would intervene, imposing an electromagnetic field, thereby
preventing the salt from dissolving. Attempts to exclude “blocking” conditions
– by appending “other things equal” clauses perhaps – face charges of
circularity: in nailing down what other things must be equal we find ourselves
appealing to powers. Powers evidently are fundental features of our world. DISPOSITION, QUALITIES, RELATION,
SUPERVENIENCE. J.F.H. power set.SET THEORY. practical argument.PRACTICAL
REASONING. practical attitude.PRACTICAL REASONING. 727 practical freedom practical reasoning
728 practical freedom.FREE WILL PROBLEM. practical judgment.AKRASIA. practical
logic.INFORMAL LOGIC. practical modality.FREE WILL PROBLEM. practical
rationality.RATIONALITY. practical reason, the capacity for argument or
demonstrative inference, considered in its application to the task of prescribing
or selecting behavior. Some philosophical concerns in this area pertain to the
actual thought processes by which plans of action are formulated and carried
out in practical situations. A second major issue is what role, if any,
practical reason plays in determining norms of conduct. Here there are two
fundental positions. Instrumentalism is typified by Hume’s claim that reason
is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions. According to
instrumentalism, reason by itself is incapable of influencing action directly.
It may do so indirectly, by disclosing facts that arouse motivational impulses.
And it fulfills an indispensable function in discerning means–end relations by
which our objectives may be attained. But none of those objectives is set by
reason. All are set by the passions – the desiderative and aversive impulses
aroused in us by what our cognitive faculties apprehend. It does not follow
from this alone that ethical motivation reduces to mere desire and aversion,
based on the pleasure and pain different courses of action might afford. There
might yet be a specifically ethical passion, or it might be that independently
based moral injunctions have in themselves a special capacity to provoke
ordinary desire and aversion. Nevertheless, instrumentalism is often associated
with the view that pleasure and pain, happiness and unhappiness, are the sole
objects of value and disvalue, and hence the only possible motivators of
conduct. Hence, it is claimed, moral injunctions must be grounded in these motives,
and practical reason is of interest only as subordinated to inclination. The
alternative to instrumentalism is the view chpioned by Kant, that practical
reason is an autonomous source of normative principles, capable of motivating
behavior independently of ordinary desire and aversion. On this view it is the
passions that lack intrinsic moral import, and the function of practical reason
is to limit their motivational role by formulating normative principles binding
for all rational agents and founded in the operation of practical reason
itself. Theories of this kind usually view moral principles as grounded in
consistency, and an impartial respect for the autonomy of all rational agents.
To be morally acceptable, principles of conduct must be universalizable, so
that all rational agents could behave in the se way without their conduct
either destroying itself or being inconsistently motivated. There are
advantages and disadvantages to each of these views. Instrumentalism offers a
simpler account of both the function of practical reason and the sources of
human motivation. But it introduces a strong subjective element by giving
primacy to desire, thereby posing a problem of how moral principles can be
universally binding. The Kantian approach offers more promise here, since it
makes universalizability essential to any type of behavior being moral. But it
is more complex, and the claim that the deliverances of practical reason carry
intrinsic motivational force is open to challenge.
practical reasoning, the
inferential process by which considerations for or against envisioned courses
of action are brought to bear on the formation and execution of intention. The
content of a piece of practical reasoning is a practical argument. Practical
arguments can be complex, but they are often summarized in syllogistic form.
Important issues concerning practical reasoning include how it relates to
theoretical reasoning, whether it is a causal process, and how it can be
evaluated. Theories of practical reasoning tend to divide into two basic
categories. On one sort of view, the intrinsic features of practical reasoning
exhibit little or no difference from those of theoretical reasoning. What makes
practical reasoning practical is its subject matter and motivation. Hence the
following could be a bona fide practical syllogism: Exercise would be good for
me. Jogging is exercise. Therefore, jogging would be good for me. This argument
has practical subject matter, and if made with a view toward intention
formation it would be practical in motivation also. But it consists entirely of
propositions, which are appropriate contents for belief-states. In princi 728 ple, therefore, an agent could accept
its conclusion without intending or even desiring to jog. Intention formation
requires a further step. But if the content of an intention cannot be a
proposition, that step could not count in itself as practical reasoning unless
such reasoning can employ the contents of strictly practical mental states.
Hence many philosophers call for practical syllogisms such as: Would that I
exercise. Jogging is exercise. Therefore, I shall go jogging. Here the first
premise is optative and understood to represent the content of a desire, and
the conclusion is the content of a decision or act of intention formation.
These contents are not true or false, and so are not propositions. Theories
that restrict the contents of practical reasoning to propositions have the
advantage that they allow such reasoning to be evaluated in terms of filiar
logical principles. Those that permit the inclusion of optative content entail
a need for more complex modes of evaluation. However, they bring more of the
process of intention formation under the aegis of reason; also, they can be
extended to cover the execution of intentions, in terms of syllogisms that
terminate in volition. Both accounts must deal with cases of self-deception, in
which the considerations an agent cites to justify a decision are not those
from which it sprang, and cases of akrasia, where the agent views one course of
action as superior, yet carries out another. Because mental content is always
abstract, it cannot in itself be a nomic cause of behavior. But the states and
events to which it belongs – desires, beliefs, etc. – can count as causes, and
are so treated in deterministic explanations of action. Opponents of
determinism reject this step, and seek to explain action solely through the
teleological or justifying force carried by mental content. Practical
syllogisms often summarize very complex thought processes, in which multiple
options are considered, each with its own positive and negative aspects. Some
philosophers hold that when successfully concluded, this process issues in a
judgment of what action would be best all things considered – i.e., in light of
all relevant considerations. Practical reasoning can be evaluated in numerous
ways. Some concern the reasoning process itself: whether it is timely and duly
considers the relevant alternatives, as well as whether it is well structured
logically. Other concerns have to do with the products of practical reasoning.
Decisions may be deemed irrational if they result in incompatible intentions,
or conflict with the agent’s beliefs regarding what is possible. They may also
be criticized if they conflict with the agent’s best interests. Finally, an
agent’s intentions can fail to accord with standards of morality. The
relationship ong these ways of evaluating intentions is important to the
foundations of ethics.
practition, Castañeda’s
term for the characteristic content of practical thinking. Each practition
represents an action as something to be done, say, as intended, commanded,
recommended, etc., and not as an accomplishment or prediction. Thus, unlike
propositions, practitions are not truth-valued, but they can be components of
valid arguments and so possess values akin to truth; e.g., the command ‘Jes,
extinguish your cigar!’ seems legitimate given that Jes is smoking a cigar in a
crowded bus. Acknowledging practitions is directly relevant to many other
fields.
praedicenta (singular: praedicentum), in
medieval philosophy, the ten Aristotelian categories: substance, quantity,
quality, relation, where, when, position (i.e., orientation – e.g., “upright”),
having, action, and passivity. These were the ten most general of all genera.
All of them except substance were regarded as accidental. It was disputed
whether this tenfold classification was intended as a linguistic division ong
categorematic terms or as an ontological division ong extralinguistic
realities. Some authors held that the division was primarily linguistic, and
that extralinguistic realities were divided according to some but not all the
praedicenta. Most authors held that everything in any way real belonged to one
praedicentum or another, although some made an exception for God. But authors
who believed in complexe significabile usually regarded them as not belonging
practical syllogism praedicenta 729
729 to any praedicentum.
pragmatic contradiction,
a contradiction that is generated by pragmatic rather than logical implication.
A logically implies B if it is impossible for B to be false if A is true,
whereas A pragmatically implies B if in most (but not necessarily all)
contexts, saying ‘A’ can reasonably be taken as indicating that B is true.
Thus, if I say, “It’s raining,” what I say does not logically imply that I
believe that it is raining, since it is possible for it to be raining without
my believing it is. Nor does my saying that it is raining logically imply that
I believe that it is, since it is possible for me to say this without believing
it. But my saying this does pragmatically imply that I believe that it is
raining, since normally my saying this can reasonably be taken to indicate that
I believe it. Accordingly, if I were to say, “It’s raining but I don’t believe
that it’s raining,” the result would be a pragmatic contradiction. The first
part (“It’s raining”) does not logically imply the negation of the second part
(“I don’t believe that it’s raining”) but my saying the first part does
pragmatically imply the negation of the second part.
pragmatism, a philosophy
that stresses the relation of theory to praxis and takes the continuity of
experience and nature as revealed through the outcome of directed action as the
starting point for reflection. Experience is the ongoing transaction of
organism and environment, i.e., both subject and object are constituted in the
process. When intelligently ordered, initial conditions are deliberately
transformed according to ends-inview, i.e., intentionally, into a subsequent
state of affairs thought to be more desirable. Knowledge is therefore guided by
interests or values. Since the reality of objects cannot be known prior to
experience, truth claims can be justified only as the fulfillment of conditions
that are experimentally determined, i.e., the outcome of inquiry. As a
philosophic movement, pragmatism was first formulated by Peirce in the early
1870s in the Metaphysical Club in Cbridge, Massachusetts; it was announced as a
distinctive position in Jes’s 1898 address to the Philosophical Union at the
University of California at Berkeley, and further elaborated according to the
Chicago School, especially by Dewey, Mead, and Jane Adds (1860–1935). Emphasis
on the reciprocity of theory and praxis, knowledge and action, facts and
values, follows from its postDarwinian understanding of human experience,
including cognition, as a developmental, historically contingent, process. C.
I. Lewis’s pragmatic a priori and Quine’s rejection of the analytic– synthetic
distinction develop these insights further. Knowledge is instrumental – a tool
for organizing experience satisfactorily. Concepts are habits of belief or
rules of action. Truth cannot be determined solely by epistemological criteria
because the adequacy of these criteria cannot be determined apart from the
goals sought and values instantiated. Values, which arise in historically
specific cultural situations, are intelligently appropriated only to the extent
that they satisfactorily resolve problems and are judged worth retaining.
According to pragmatic theories of truth, truths are beliefs that are confirmed
in the course of experience and are therefore fallible, subject to further
revision. True beliefs for Peirce represent real objects as successively
confirmed until they converge on a final determination; for Jes, leadings that
are worthwhile; and according to Dewey’s theory of inquiry, the transformation
of an indeterminate situation into a determinate one that leads to warranted assertions.
Pragmatic ethics is naturalistic, pluralistic, developmental, and experimental.
It reflects on the motivations influencing ethical systems, exines the
individual developmental process wherein an individual’s values are gradually
distinguished from those of society, situates moral judgments within
problematic situations irreducibly individual and social, and proposes as
ultimate criteria for decision making the value for life as growth, determined
by all those affected by the actual or projected outcomes. The original
interdisciplinary development of pragmatism continues in its influence on the
humanities. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., member of the Metaphysical Club, later
justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, developed a pragmatic theory of law. Peirce’s
Principle of Pragmatism, by which meaning resides in conceivable practical
effects, and his triadic theory of signs developed into the pragmatic biguity
pragmatism 730 730 field of semiotics.
Jes’s Principles of Psychology (1890) not only established experimental
psychology in North erica, but shifted philosophical attention away from
abstract analyses of rationality to the continuity of the biological and the
mental. The reflex arc theory was reconstructed into an interactive loop of
perception, feeling, thinking, and behavior, and joined with the selective
interest of consciousness to become the basis of radical empiricism. Mead’s
theory of the emergence of self and mind in social acts and Dewey’s analyses of
the individual and society influenced the human sciences. Dewey’s theory of
education as community-oriented, based on the psychological developmental
stages of growth, and directed toward full participation in a democratic
society, was the philosophical basis of progressive education. CONTEXTUALISM, DEWEY, JES, NATURALISM,
PEIRCE. C.H.S. pragmatism, ethical.MORAL EPISTEMOLOGY. praxis (from Greek
prasso, ‘doing’, ‘acting’), in Aristotle, the sphere of thought and action that
comprises the ethical and political life of man, contrasted with the theoretical
designs of logic and epistemology (theoria). It was thus that ‘praxis’ acquired
its general definition of ‘practice’ through a contrastive comparison with
‘theory’. Throughout the history of Western philosophy the concept of praxis
found a place in a variety of philosophical vocabularies. Marx and the
neoMarxists linked the concept with a production paradigm in the interests of
historical explanation. Within such a scheme of things the activities
constituting the relations of production and exchange are seen as the dominant
features of the socioeconomic history of humankind. Significations of ‘praxis’
are also discernible in the root meaning of pragma (deed, affair), which
informed the development of erican pragmatism. In more recent times the notion of
praxis has played a prominent role in the formation of the school of critical
theory, in which the performatives of praxis are seen to be more directly
associated with the entwined phenomena of discourse, communication, and social
practices. The central philosophical issues addressed in the current literature
on praxis have to do with the theory–practice relationship and the problems
associated with a value-free science. The general thrust is that of undermining
or subverting the traditional bifurcation of theory and practice via a
recognition of praxis-oriented endeavors that antedate both theory construction
and the construal of practice as a mere application of theory. Both the project
of “pure theory,” which makes claims for a value-neutral standpoint, and the
purely instrumentalist understanding of practice, as itself shorn of
discernment and insight, are jettisoned. The consequent philosophical task
becomes that of understanding human thought and action against the backdrop of
the everyday communicative endeavors, habits, and skills, and social practices
that make up our inheritance in the world.
CRITICAL THEORY, MARX, MARXISM. C.O.S. Praxis
school, a school of philosophy originating in Zagreb and Belgrade which, from
1964 to 1974, published the international edition of the leading postwar
Marxist journal Praxis. During the se period, it organized the Korcula Summer
School, which attracted scholars from around the Western world. In a reduced
form the school continues each spring with the Social Philosophy Course in
Dubrovnik, Croatia. The founders of praxis philosophy include Gajo Petrovic
(Zagreb), Milan Kangrga (Zagreb), and Mihailo Markovic (Belgrade). Another
wellknown member of the group is Svetozar Stojanovic (Belgrade), and a
second-generation leader is Gvozden Flego (Zagreb). The Praxis school
emphasized the writings of the young Marx while subjecting dogmatic Marxism to
one of its strongest criticisms. Distinguishing between Marx’s and Engels’s
writings and emphasizing alienation and a dynic concept of the human being, it
contributed to a greater understanding of the interrelationship between the
individual and society. Through its insistence on Marx’s call for a “ruthless
critique,” the school stressed open inquiry and freedom of speech in both East
and West. Quite possibly the most important and original philosopher of the
group, and certainly Croatia’s leading twentieth-century philosopher, was Gajo
Petrovic (1927–93). He called for (1) understanding philosophy as a radical
critique of all existing things, and (2) understanding human beings as beings
of praxis and creativity. This later led to a view of human beings as
revolutionary by nature. At present he is probably best remembered for his Marx
in the Mid-Twentieth Century and Philosophie und Revolution. Milan Kangrga
(b.1923) also emphasizes human creativity while insisting that one should
understand human beings as producers who humanize nature. An ethical
problematic of humanity can pragmatism, ethical Praxis school 731 731 be realized through a variety of
disciplines that include aesthetics, philosophical anthropolgy, theory of
knowledge, ontology, and social thought. Mihailo Markovic (b.1923), a member of
the Belgrade Eight, is best known for his theory of meaning, which leads him to
a theory of socialist humanism. His most widely read work in the West is From
Affluence to Praxis: Philosophy and Social Criticism. MARXISM, PRAXIS. J.Bi. & H.P.
preanalytic, considered but naive; commonsensical; not tainted by prior
explicit theorizing; said of judgments and, derivatively, of beliefs or
intuitions underlying such judgments. Preanalytic judgments are often used to
test philosophical theses. All things considered, we prefer theories that
accord with preanalytic judgments to those that do not, although most theorists
exhibit a willingness to revise preanalytic assessments in light of subsequent
inquiry. Thus, a preanalytic judgment might be thought to constitute a starting
point for the philosophical consideration of a given topic. Is justice giving
every man his due? It may seem so, preanalytically. Attention to concrete
exples, however, may lead us to a different view. It is doubtful, even in such
cases, that we altogether abandon preanalytic judgments. Rather, we endeavor to
reconcile apparently competing judgments, making adjustments in a way that
optimizes overall coherence.
PRETHEORETICAL, REFLECTIVE EQUILIBRIUM. J.F.H. precising
definition.DEFINITION. precognition.PARAPSYCHOLOGY. preconscious.FREUD.
pre-Critical.KANT. predestination.
FREE WILL PROBLEM.
predicables, also praedicabilia, sometimes called the quinque voces (five
words), in medieval philosophy, genus, species, difference, proprium, and
accident, the five main ways general predicates can be predicated. The list
comes from Porphyry’s Isagoge. It was debated whether it applies to linguistic
predicates only or also to extralinguistic universals. Things that have
accidents can exist without them; other predicables belong necessarily to
whatever has them. (The Aristotelian/Porphyrian notion of “inseparable
accident” blurs this picture.) Genus and species are natural kinds; other
predicables are not. A natural kind that is not a narrowest natural kind is a
genus; one that is not a broadest natural kind is a species. (Some genera are also
species.) A proprium is not a species, but is coextensive with one. A
difference belongs necessarily to whatever has it, but is neither a natural
kind nor coextensive with one. ACCIDENT,
DEFINITION, PRAEDICENTA, PROPRIUM. P.V.S. predicate.GRMAR, LOGICAL SUBJECT.
predicate, projectible.GRUE PARADOX. predicate calculus.FORMAL LOGIC. predicate
hierarchy.HIERARCHY. predicate logic.FORMAL LOGIC. predication.QUALITIES.
predication, ‘is’ of.IS. predicative property.TYPE THEORY.
prediction.PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. prediction paradox.PARADOX. preemptive
cause.CAUSATION. preestablished harmony.LEIBNIZ, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND.
preexistence, existence of the individual soul or psyche prior to its current
embodiment, when the soul or psyche is taken to be separable and capable of
existing independently from its embodiment. The current embodiment is then
often described as a reincarnation of the soul. Plato’s Socrates refers to such
a doctrine several times in the dialogues, notably in the myth of Er in Book X
of the Republic. The doctrine is distinguished from two other teachings about
the soul: creationism, which holds that the individual human soul is directly
created by God, and traducianism, which held that just as body begets body in
biological generation, so the soul of the new human being is begotten by the
parental soul. In Hinduism, the cycle of reincarnations represents the period
of estrangement and trial for the soul or Atman before it achieves release
(moksha).
prescriptivism, the
theory that evaluative judgments necessarily have prescriptive meaning.
Associated with noncognitivism and moral antirealism, prescriptivism holds that
moral language is such that, if you say that you think one ought to do a
certain kind of act, and yet you are not committed to doing that kind of act in
the relevant circumstances, then you either spoke insincerely or are using the
word ‘ought’ in a less than full-blooded sense. Prescriptivism owes its stature
to Hare. One of his innovations is the distinction between “secondarily evaluative”
and “primarily evaluative” words. The prescriptive meaning of secondarily
evaluative words, such as ‘soft-hearted’ or ‘chaste’, may vary significantly
while their descriptive meanings stay relatively constant. Hare argues the
reverse for the primarily evaluative words ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘right’, ‘wrong’,
‘ought’, and ‘must’. For exple, some people assign to ‘wrong’ the descriptive
meaning ‘forbidden by God’, others assign it the descriptive meaning ‘causes
social conflict’, and others give it different descriptive meanings; but since
all use ‘wrong’ with the se prescriptive meaning, they are using the se
concept. In part to show how moral judgments can be prescriptive and yet have
the se logical relations as indicative sentences, Hare distinguished between
phrastics and neustics. The phrastic, or content, can be the se in indicative
and prescriptive sentences; e.g., ‘S’s leaving’ is the phrastic not only of the
indicative ‘S will leave’ but also of the prescription ‘S ought to leave’.
Hare’s Language of Morals (1952) specified that the neustic indicates mood,
i.e., whether the sentence is indicative, imperative, interrogative, etc.
However, in an article in Mind (1989) and in Sorting Out Ethics (1997), he used
‘neustic’ to refer to the sign of subscription, and ‘tropic’ to refer to the
sign of mood. Prescriptivity is especially important if moral judgments are
universalizable. For then we can employ golden rule–style moral reasoning.
EMOTIVISM, ETHICS, HARE,
UNIVERSALIZABILITY. B.W.H. present-aim theory.PARFIT. pre-Socratics, the early
Greek philosophers who were not influenced by Socrates. (Generally they lived
before Socrates, but some are contemporary with him or even younger.) The
classification (though not the term) goes back to Aristotle, who saw Socrates’
humanism and emphasis on ethical issues as a watershed in the history of
philosophy. Aristotle rightly noted that philosophers prior to Socrates had
stressed natural philosophy and cosmology rather than ethics. He credited them
with discovering material principles and moving causes of natural events, but
he criticized them for failing to stress structural elements of things (formal
causes) and values or purposes (final causes). Unfortunately, no writing of any
pre-Socratic survives in more than a fragmentary form, and evidence of their
views is thus often indirect, based on reports or criticisms of later writers.
In order to reconstruct pre-Socratic thought, scholars have sought to collect
testimonies of ancient sources and to identify quotations from the preSocratics
in those sources. As modern research has revealed flaws in the interpretations
of ancient witnesses, it has become a principle of exegesis to base
reconstructions of their views on the actual words of the pre-Socratics
themselves wherever possible. Because of the fragmentary and derivative nature
of our evidence, even basic principles of a philosopher’s system sometimes
remain controversial; nevertheless, we can say that thanks to modern methods of
historiography, there are many points we understand better than ancient
witnesses who are our secondary sources. Our best ancient secondary source is
Aristotle, who lived soon after the pre-Socratics and had access to most of
their writings. He interprets his predecessors from the standpoint of his own
theory; but any historian must interpret philosophers in light of some
theoretical background. Since we have extensive writings of Aristotle, we 733 pre-Socratics pre-Socratics 734
understand his system and can filter out his own prejudices. His colleague
Theophrastus was the first professional historian of philosophy. Adopting
Aristotle’s general frework, he systematically discussed pre-Socratic theories.
Unfortunately his work itself is lost, but many fragments and summaries of
parts of it remain. Indeed, virtually all ancient witnesses writing after
Theophrastus depend on him for their general understanding of the early
philosophers, sometimes by way of digests of his work. When biography bece an
important genre in later antiquity, biographers collected facts, anecdotes,
slanders, chronologies (often based on crude a priori assumptions), lists of
book titles, and successions of school directors, which provide potentially
valuable information. By reconstructing ancient theories, we can trace the broad
outlines of pre-Socratic development with some confidence. The first
philosophers were the Milesians, philosophers of Miletus on the Ionian coast of
Asia Minor, who in the sixth century B.C. broke away from mythological modes of
explanation by accounting for all phenomena, even apparent prodigies of nature,
by means of simple physical hypotheses. Aristotle saw the Milesians as material
monists, positing a physical substrate – of water, or the apeiron, or air; but
their material source was probably not a continuing substance that underlies
all changes as Aristotle thought, but rather an original stuff that was
transformed into different stuffs. Pythagoras migrated from Ionia to southern
Italy, founding a school of Pythagoreans who believed that souls transmigrated
and that number was the basis of all reality. Because Pythagoras and his early
followers did not publish anything, it is difficult to trace their development
and influence in detail. Back in Ionia, Heraclitus criticized Milesian
principles because he saw that if substances changed into one another, the
process of transformation was more important than the substances that appeared
in the cycle of changes. He thus chose the unstable substance fire as his
material principle and stressed the unity of opposites. Parmenides and the
Eleatic School criticized the notion of notbeing that theories of physical
transformations seemed to presuppose. One cannot even conceive of or talk of
not-being; hence any conception that presupposes not-being must be ruled out.
But the basic notions of coming-to-be, differentiation, and indeed change in
general presuppose not-being, and thus must be rejected. Eleatic analysis leads
to the further conclusion, implicit in Parmenides, explicit in Melissus, that
there is only one substance, what-is. Since this substance does not come into
being or change in any way, nor does it have any internal differentiations, the
world is just a single changeless, homogeneous individual. Parmenides’ argument
seems to undermine the foundations of natural philosophy. After Parmenides
philosophers who wished to continue natural philosophy felt compelled to grant
that coming-to-be and internal differentiation of a given substance were
impossible. But in order to accommodate natural processes, they posited a
plurality of unchanging, homogeneous elements – the four elements of
Empedocles, the elemental stuffs of Anaxagoras, the atoms of Democritus – that
by arrangement and rearrangement could produce the cosmos and the things in it.
There is no real coming-to-be and perishing in the world since the ultimate
substances are everlasting; but some limited kind of change such as chemical
combination or mixture or locomotion could account for changing phenomena in
the world of experience. Thus the “pluralists” incorporated Eleatic principles
into their systems while rejecting the more radical implications of the Eleatic
critique. Pre-Socratic philosophers developed more complex systems as a
response to theoretical criticisms. They focused on cosmology and natural
philosophy in general, chpioning reason and nature against mythological
traditions. Yet the pre-Socratics have been criticized both for being too
narrowly scientific in interest and for not being scientific (experimental)
enough. While there is some justice in both criticisms, their interests showed
breadth as well as narrowness, and they at least made significant conceptual
progress in providing a frework for scientific and philosophical ideas. While
they never developed sophisticated theories of ethics, logic, epistemology, or
metaphysics, nor invented experimental methods of confirmation, they did
introduce the concepts that ultimately bece fundental in modern theories of
cosmic, biological, and cultural evolution, as well as in atomism, genetics, and
social contract theory. Because the Socratic revolution turned philosophy in
different directions, the pre-Socratic line died out. But the first
philosophers supplied much inspiration for the sophisticated fourthcentury
systems of Plato and Aristotle as well as the basic principles of the great
Hellenistic schools, Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Skepticism.
MILESIANS, PARMENIDES,
PYTHAGORAS. D.W.G. presupposition, (1) a relation between sentences or
statements, related to but distinct from entailment and assertion; (2) what a
speaker takes to be understood in making an assertion. The first notion is
semantic, the second pragmatic. The semantic notion was introduced by Strawson
in his attack on Russell’s theory of descriptions, and perhaps anticipated by
Frege. Strawson argued that ‘The present king of France is bald’ does not
entail ‘There is a present king of France’ as Russell held, but instead
presupposes it. Semantic presupposition can be defined thus: a sentence or
statement S presupposes a sentence or statement SH provided S entails SH and
the negation of S also entails SH . SH is a condition of the truth or falsity
of S. Thus, since ‘There is a present king of France’ is false, ‘The present
king of France is bald’ is argued to be neither true nor false. So construed,
presupposition is defined in terms of, but is distinct from, entailment. It is
also distinct from assertion, since it is viewed as a precondition of the truth
or falsity of what is asserted. The pragmatic conception does not appeal to
truth conditions, but instead contrasts what a speaker presupposes and what
that speaker asserts in making an utterance. Thus, someone who utters ‘The
present king of France is bald’ presupposes – believes and believes that the
audience believes – that there is a present king of France, and asserts that
this king is bald. So conceived, presuppositions are beliefs that the speaker
takes for granted; if these beliefs are false, the utterance will be
inappropriate in some way, but it does not follow that the sentence uttered
lacks a truth-value. These two notions of presupposition are logically
independent. On the semantic characterization, presupposition is a relation
between sentences or statements requiring that there be truth-value gaps. On
the pragmatic characterization, it is speakers rather than sentences or
statements that have presuppositions; no truth-value gaps are required. Many
philosophers and linguists have argued for treating what have been taken to be
cases of semantic presupposition, including the one discussed above, as
pragmatic phenomena. Some have denied that semantic presuppositions exist. If
not, intuitions about presupposition do not support the claims that natural
languages have truth-value gaps and that we need a three-valued logic to represent
the semantics of natural language adequately. Presupposition is also distinct
from implicature. If someone reports that he has just torn his coat and you
say, “There’s a tailor shop around the corner,” you conversationally implicate
that the shop is open. This is not a semantic presupposition because if it is
false that the shop is open, there is no inclination to say that your assertion
was neither true nor false. It is not a pragmatic presupposition because it is
not something you believe the hearer believes.
IMPLICATION, IMPLICATURE, MANY-VALUED LOGIC. R.B. pretheoretical,
independent of theory. More specifically, a proposition is pretheoretical,
according to some philosophers, if and only if it does not depend for its
plausibility or implausibility on theoretical considerations or considerations
of theoretical analysis. The term ‘preanalytic’ is often used synonymously with
‘pretheoretical’, but the former is more properly paired with analysis rather
than with theory. Some philosophers characterize pretheoretical propositions as
“intuitively” plausible or implausible. Such propositions, they hold, can
regulate philosophical theorizing as follows: in general, an adequate
philosophical theory should not conflict with intuitively plausible
propositions (by implying intuitively implausible propositions), and should
imply intuitively plausible propositions. Some philosophers grant that
theoretical considerations can override “intuitions” – in the sense of
intuitively plausible propositions – when overall theoretical coherence (or
reflective equilibrium) is thereby enhanced.
Price, Richard (1723–91),
Welsh Dissenting minister, actuary, and moral philosopher. His main work, A
Review of the Principal Question in Morals (1758), is a defense of rationalism
in ethics. He argued that the understanding immediately perceives simple,
objective, moral qualities of actions. The resulting intuitive knowledge of
moral truths is accompanied by feelings of approval and disapproval responsible
for moral motivation. He also wrote influential papers on life expectancy,
public finance, and annuities; communicated to the Royal Society the paper by
his deceased friend Thomas Bayes containing Bayes’s theorem; and defended the
erican and French revolutions. Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France
is a response to one of Price’s sermons. J.W.A. presupposition Price, Richard
735 735 Prichard, H(arold) A(rthur)
(1871–1947), English philosopher and founder of the Oxford school of intuitionism.
An Oxford fellow and professor, he published Kant’s Theory of Knowledge (1909)
and numerous essays, collected in Moral Obligation (1949, 1968) and in
Knowledge and Perception (1950). Prichard was a realist in his theory of
knowledge, following Cook Wilson. He held that through direct perception in
concrete cases we obtain knowledge of universals and of necessary connections
between them, and he elaborated a theory about our knowledge of material
objects. In “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” (1912) he argued
powerfully that it is wrong to think that a general theory of obligation is
possible. No single principle captures the various reasons why obligatory acts
are obligatory. Only by direct perception in particular cases can we see what
we ought to do. With this essay Prichard founded the Oxford school of
intuitionism, carried on by, ong others, Ross.
ETHICS, ROSS. J.B.S. Priestley, Joseph (1733–1804), British experimental
chemist, theologian, and philosopher. In 1774 he prepared oxygen by heating
mercuric oxide. Although he continued to favor the phlogiston hypothesis, his
work did much to discredit that idea. He discovered many gases, including
monia, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrochloric acid. While studying
the layer of carbon dioxide over a brewing vat, he conceived the idea of
dissolving it under pressure. The resulting “soda water” was fous throughout
Europe. His Essay on Government (1768) influenced Jefferson’s ideas in the
erican Declaration of Independence. The essay also contributed to the
utilitarianism of Benth, supplying the phrase “the greatest happiness of the
greatest number.” Priestley modified the associationism of Locke, Hume, and
Hartley, holding that a sharp distinction must be drawn between the results of
association in forming natural propensities and its effects on the development
of moral ideas. On the basis of this distinction, he argued, against Hume, that
differences in individual moral sentiments are results of education, through
the association of ideas, a view anticipated by Helvétius. Priestley served as
minister to anti-Establishment congregations. His unpopular stress on
individual freedom resulted in his move to Pennsylvania, where he spent his
last years. R.E.B. prima facie duty.DUTY, ROSS. prima facie evidence.EVIDENCE.
prima facie justification.JUSTIFICATION. prima facie right.RIGHTS. primarily
valuative word.PRESCRIPTIVISM. primary process.FREUD. primary
qualities.QUALITIES. primary rule.HART. primary substance.ARISTOTLE. prime
matter.HYLOMORPHISM. prime mover, the original source and cause of motion
(change) in the universe – an idea that was developed by Aristotle and bece
important in Judaic, Christian, and Islic thought about God. According to
Aristotle, something that is in motion (a process of change) is moving from a
state of potentiality to a state of actuality. For exple, water that is being
heated is potentially hot and in the process of becoming actually hot. If a
cause of change must itself actually be in the state that it is bringing about,
then nothing can produce motion in itself; whatever is in motion is being moved
by another. For otherwise something would be both potentially and actually in
the se state. Thus, the water that is potentially hot can become hot only by
being changed by something else (the fire) that is actually hot. The prime
mover, the original cause of motion, must itself, therefore, not be in motion;
it is an unmoved mover. Aquinas and other theologians viewed God as the prime
mover, the ultimate cause of all motion. Indeed, for these theologians the argument
to establish the existence of a first mover, itself unmoved, was a principal
argument used in their efforts to prove the existence of God on the basis of
reason. Many modern thinkers question the argument for a first mover on the
ground that it does not seem to be logically impossible that the motion of one
thing be caused by a second thing whose motion in turn is caused by a third
thing, and so on without end. Defenders of the argument claim that it
presupposes a distinction between two different causal series, one temporal and
one simultaneous, and argue that the objection succeeds only against a temporal
causal series. Prichard, H(arold) A(rthur) prime mover 736 736
AGENT CAUSATION, AQUINAS, ARISTOTLE. W.L.R. primitive symbol.LOGISTIC
SYSTEM. principium individuationis, the cause (or basis) of individuality in
individuals; what makes something individual as opposed to universal, e.g.,
what makes the cat Minina individual and thus different from the universal,
cat. Questions regarding the principle of individuation were first raised
explicitly in the early Middle Ages. Classical authors largely ignored
individuation; their ontological focus was on the problem of universals. The
key texts that originated the discussion of the principle of individuation are
found in Boethius. Between Boethius and 1150, individuation was always
discussed in the context of more pressing issues, particularly the problem of
universals. After 1150, individuation slowly emerged as a focus of attention,
so that by the end of the thirteenth century it had become an independent
subject of discussion, especially in Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Most early modern
philosophers conceived the problem of individuation epistemically rather than
metaphysically; they focused on the discernibility of individuals rather than
the cause of individuation (Descartes). With few exceptions (Karl Popper), the
twentieth century has followed this epistemic approach (P. F. Strawson). INDIVIDUATION, METAPHYSICS. J.J.E.G.
principle of bivalence, the principle that any (significant) statement is
either true or false. It is often confused with the principle of excluded
middle. Letting ‘Tp’ stand for ‘p is true’ and ‘Tp’ for ‘p is false’ and
otherwise using standard logical notation, bivalence is ‘Tp 7 T-p’ and excluded
middle is ‘T (p 7 -p)’. That they are different principles is shown by the fact
that in probability theory, where ‘Tp’ can be expressed as ‘Pr(p) % 1’,
bivalence ‘(Pr (p) % 1) 7 (Pr (~p) % 1)’ is not true for all values of p – e.g.
it is not true where ‘p’ stands for ‘given a fair toss of a fair die, the
result will be a six’ (a statement with a probability of 1 /6, where -p has a
probability of 5 /6) – but excluded middle ‘Pr(p 7 -p) % 1’ is true for all
definite values of p, including the probability case just given. If we allow
that some (significant) statements have no truth-value or probability and
distinguish external negation ‘Tp’ from internal negation ‘T-p’, we can
distinguish bivalence and excluded middle from the principle of non-contradiction,
nely, ‘-(Tp • T-p)’, which is equivalent to ‘-Tp 7 -T-p’. Standard
truth-functional logic sees no difference between ‘p’ and ‘Tp’, or ‘-Tp’ and
‘T-p’, and thus is unable to distinguish the three principles. Some
philosophers of logic deny there is such a difference.
MANY-VALUED LOGIC,
PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC, VAGUENESS. R.P. principle of charity.MEANING. principle of
comprehension.SET THEORY. principle of concretion.WHITEHEAD. principle of
conservation.PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. principle of contradiction, also called
principle of non-contradiction, the principle that a statement and its negation
cannot both be true. It can be distinguished from the principle of bivalence,
and given certain controversial assumptions, from the principle of excluded
middle; but in truth-functional logic all three are regarded as equivalent.
Outside of formal logic the principle of (non-)contradiction is best expressed
as Aristotle expresses it: “Nothing can both be and not be at the se time in
the se respect.” LAWS OF THOUGHT,
PRINCIPLE OF BIVALENCE. R.P. principle of determinism.MILL’S METHODS. principle
of dominance.NEWCOMB’S PARADOX. principle of double effect, the view that there
is a morally relevant difference between those consequences of our actions we
intend and those we do not intend but do still foresee. According to the
principle, if increased literacy means a higher suicide rate, those who work
for education are not guilty of driving people to kill themselves. A physician
may give a patient painkillers foreseeing that they will shorten his life, even
though the use of outright poisons is forbidden and the physician does not
intend to shorten the patient’s life. An army attacking a legitimate military
target may accept as inevitable, without intending to bring about, the deaths
of a number of civilians. Traditional moral theologians affirmed the existence
of exceptionless prohibitions such as primitive symbol principle of double
effect 737 737 that against taking an
innocent human life, while using the principle of double effect to resolve hard
cases and avoid moral blind alleys. They held that one may produce a forbidden
effect, provided (1) one’s action also had a good effect, (2) one did not seek
the bad effect as an end or as a means, (3) one did not produce the good effect
through the bad effect, and (4) the good effect was important enough to
outweigh the bad one. Some contemporary philosophers and Roman Catholic
theologians hold that a modified version of the principle of double effect is
the sole justification of deadly deeds, even when the person killed is not
innocent. They drop any restriction on the causal sequence, so that (e.g.) it
is legitimate to cut off the head of an unborn child to save the mother’s life.
But they oppose capital punishment on the ground that those who inflict it
require the death of the convict as part of their plan. They also play down the
fourth requirement, on the ground that the weighing of incommensurable goods it
requires is impossible. Consequentialists deny the principle of double effect,
as do those for whom the crucial distinction is between what we cause by our
actions and what just happens. In the most plausible view, the principle does
not presuppose exceptionless moral prohibitions, only something stronger than
prima facie duties. It is easier to justify an oblique evasion of a moral
requirement than a direct violation, even if direct violations are sometimes
permissible. So understood, the principle is a guide to prudence rather than a
substitute for it. ETHICS, EUTHANASIA,
INTENTION, JUST WAR THEORY. P.E.D. principle of excluded middle, the principle
that the disjunction of any (significant) statement with its negation is always
true; e.g., ‘Either there is a tree over 500 feet tall or it is not the case
that there is such a tree’. The principle is often confused with the principle
of bivalence. PRINCIPLE OF BIVALENCE.
R.P. principle of generic consistency.UNIVERSALIZABILITY. principle of
indifference, a rule for assigning a probability to an event based on “parity
of reasons.” According to the principle, when the “weight of reasons” favoring
one event is equal to the “weight of reasons” favoring another, the two events
should be assigned the se probability. When there are n mutually exclusive and
collectively exhaustive events, and there is no reason to favor one over
another, then we should be “indifferent” and the n events should each be
assigned probability 1/n (the events are equiprobable), according to the
principle. This principle is usually associated with the nes Bernoulli (Ars
Conjectandi, 1713) and Laplace (Théorie analytique des probabilités, 1812), and
was so called by J. M. Keynes (A Treatise on Probability, 1921). The principle
gives probability both a subjective (“degree of belief”) and a logical (“partial
logical entailment”) interpretation. One rationale for the principle says that
in ignorance, when no reasons favor one event over another, we should assign
equal probabilities. It has been countered that any assignment of probabilities
at all is a claim to some knowledge. Also, several seemingly natural
applications of the principle, involving non-linearly related variables, have
led to some mathematical contradictions, known as Bertrand’s paradox, and
pointed out by Keynes. BERTRAND’S
PARADOX, EQUIPROBABLE, KEYNES, LAPLACE, PROBABILITY. E.Ee. principle of
insufficient reason, the principle that if there is no sufficient reason (or
explanation) for something’s being (the case), then it will not be (the case).
Since the rise of modern probability theory, many have identified the principle
of insufficient reason with the principle of indifference (a rule for assigning
a probability to an event based on “parity of reasons”). The two principles are
closely related, but it is illuminating historically and logically to view the
principle of insufficient reason as the general principle stated above (which
is related to the principle of sufficient reason) and to view the principle of
indifference as a special case of the principle of insufficient reason applying
to probabilities. As Mach noted, the principle of insufficient reason, thus
conceived, was used by Archimedes to argue that a lever with equal weights at
equal distances from a central fulcrum would not move, since if there is no
sufficient reason why it should move one way or the other, it would not move
one way or the other. Philosophers from Anaximander to Leibniz used the se
principle to argue for various metaphysical theses. The principle of
indifference can be seen to be a special case of this principle of insufficient
reason applying to probabilities, if one reads the principle of indifference as
follows: when there are N mutually exclusive and exhaustive events and there is
no sufficient reason to believe that any one of them is more probable than any other,
principle of excluded middle principle of insufficient reason 738 738 then no one of them is more probable
than any other (they are equiprobable). The idea of “parity of reasons”
associated with the principle of indifference is, in such manner, related to
the idea that there is no sufficient reason for favoring one outcome over
another. This is significant because the principle of insufficient reason is
logically equivalent to the more filiar principle of sufficient reason (if
something is [the case], then there is a sufficient reason for its being [the
case]) – which means that the principle of indifference is a logical
consequence of the principle of sufficient reason. If this is so, we can
understand why so many were inclined to believe the principle of indifference
was an a priori truth about probabilities, since it was an application to
probabilities of that most fundental of all alleged a priori principles of
reasoning, the principle of sufficient reason. Nor should it surprise us that
the alleged a priori truth of the principle of indifference was as
controversial in probability theory as was the alleged a priori truth of the
principle of sufficient reason in philosophy generally. PRINCIPLES OF INDIFFERENCE, PROBABILITY.
R.H.K. principle of limited variety.MILL’S METHODS. principle of logical
form.LOGICAL FORM. principle of maximizing expected utility.NEWCOMB’S PARADOX.
principle of non-contradiction.PRINCIPLE OF CONTRADICTION. principle of
parsimony.OCKH’S RAZOR. principle of perfection.LEIBNIZ. principle of
plenitude, the principle that every genuine possibility is realized or
actualized. This principle of the “fullness of being” was ned by A. O. Lovejoy,
who showed that it was commonly assumed throughout the history of Western
science and philosophy, from Plato to Plotinus (who associated it with
inexhaustible divine productivity), through Augustine and other medieval
philosophers, to the modern rationalists (Spinoza and Leibniz) and the
Enlightenment. Lovejoy connected plenitude to the great chain of being, the
idea that the universe is a hierarchy of beings in which every possible form is
actualized. In the eighteenth century, the principle was “temporalized”: every
possible form of creature would be realized – not necessarily at all times – but
at some stage “in the fullness of time.” A clue about the significance of
plenitude lies in its connection to the principle of sufficient reason
(everything has a sufficient reason [cause or explanation] for being or not
being). Plenitude says that if there is no sufficient reason for something’s
not being (i.e., if it is genuinely possible), then it exists – which is
logically equivalent to the negative version of sufficient reason: if something
does not exist, then there is a sufficient reason for its not being. R.H.K.
principle of proportionality.CAJETAN. principle of
self-determination.SELF-DETERMINATION. principle of subsidiarity.SUBSIDIARITY.
principle of sufficient reason.LEIBNIZ, PRINCIPLE OF INSUFFICIENT REASON.
principle of the anomalism of the mental.PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. principle of the
conservation of matter.
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE.
principle of uncertainty.PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, QUANTUM MECHANICS. principle of
universality.UNIVERSALIZABILITY. principle of
universalizability.UNIVERSALIZABILITY. principle of unlimited comprehension.SET
THEORY. principle of utility.UTILITARIANISM. principle of verifiability, a
claim about what meaningfulness is: at its simplest, a sentence is meaningful
provided there is a method for verifying it. Therefore, if a sentence has no
such method, i.e., if it does not have associated with it a way of telling
whether it is conclusively true or conclusively false, then it is meaningless.
The purpose for which this verificationist principle was originally introduced
was to demarcate sentences that are “apt to make a significant statement of
fact” from “nonsensical” or “pseudo-” sentences. It is part of the emotive
theory of content, e.g., that moral discourse is not (literally, cognitively)
meaningful, and therefore, not facprinciple of limited variety principle of
verifiability 739 739 tual. And, with
the verifiability principle, the central European logical positivists of the
1920s hoped to strip “metaphysical discourse” of its pretensions of factuality.
For them, whether there is a reality external to the mind, as the realists
claim, or whether all reality is made up of “ideas” or “appearances,” as
idealists claim, is a “meaningless pseudo-problem.” The verifiability principle
proved impossible to fre in a form that did not admit all metaphysical
sentences as meaningful. (Further, it casts doubt on its own status. How was it
to be verified?) So, e.g., in the first edition of Language, Truth and Logic,
Ayer proposed that a sentence is verifiable, and consequently meaningful, if
some observation sentence can be deduced from it in conjunction with certain
other premises, without being deducible from those other premises alone. It
follows that any metaphysical sentence M is meaningful since ‘if M, then O’
always is an appropriate premise, where O is an observation sentence. In the
preface to the second edition, Ayer offered a more sophisticated account: M is
directly verifiable provided it is an observation sentence or it entails, in
conjunction with certain observation sentences, some observation sentence that
does not follow from them alone. And M is indirectly verifiable provided it
entails, in conjunction with certain other premises, some directly verifiable
sentence that does not follow from those other premises alone and these
additional premises are either analytic or directly verifiable (or are
independently indirectly verifiable). The new verifiability principle is then
that all and only sentences directly or indirectly verifiable are “literally
meaningful.” Unfortunately, Ayer’s emendation admits every nonanalytic
sentence. Let M be any metaphysical sentence and O1 and O2 any pair of
observation sentences logically independent of each other. Consider sentence A:
‘either O1 or (not-M and not-O2)’. Conjoined with O2, A entails O1. But O2
alone does not entail O1. So A is directly verifiable. Therefore, since M
conjoined with A entails O1, which is not entailed by A alone, M is indirectly
verifiable. Various repairs have been attempted; none has succeeded. LOGICAL POSITIVISM, MEANING, VERIFICATIONISM,
VIENNA CIRCLE. E.L. priority, conceptual.DEPENDENCE. prior probability.BAYES’S
THEOREM. prisca theologica.FICINO. prisoner’s dilemma, a problem in ge theory,
and more broadly the theory of rational choice, that takes its ne from a filiar
sort of pleabargaining situation: Two prisoners (Robin and Carol) are
interrogated separately and offered the se deal: If one of them confesses
(“defects”) and the other does not, the defector will be given immunity from
prosecution and the other will get a stiff prison sentence. If both confess,
both will get moderate prison terms. If both remain silent (cooperate with each
other), both will get light prison terms for a lesser offense. There are thus
four possible outcomes: (1) Robin confesses and gets immunity, while Carol is
silent and gets a stiff sentence. (2) Both are silent and get light sentences.
(3) Both confess and get moderate sentences. (4) Robin is silent and gets a
stiff sentence, while Carol confesses and gets immunity. Assume that for Robin,
(1) would be the best outcome, followed by (2), (3), and (4), in that order.
Assume that for Carol, the best outcome is (4), followed by (2), (3), and (1).
Each prisoner then reasons as follows: “My confederate will either confess or
remain silent. If she confesses, I must do likewise, in order to avoid the
‘sucker’s payoff’ (immunity for her, a stiff sentence for me). If she remains
silent, then I must confess in order to get immunity – the best outcome for me.
Thus, no matter what my confederate does, I must confess.” Under those
conditions, both will confess, effectively preventing each other from achieving
anything better than the option they both rank as only third-best, even though
they agree that option (2) is second-best. This illustrative story (attributed
to A. W. Tucker) must not be allowed to obscure the fact that many sorts of
social interactions have the se structure. In general, whenever any two parties
must make simultaneous or independent choices over a range of options that has the
ordinal payoff structure described in the plea bargaining story, they are in a
prisoner’s dilemma. Diplomats, negotiators, buyers, and sellers regularly find
themselves in such situations. They are called iterated prisoner’s dilemmas if
the se parties repeatedly face the se choices with each other. Moreover, there
are analogous problems of cooperation and conflict at the level of manyperson
interactions: so-called n-person prisoner’s diemmas or free rider problems. The
provision of public goods provides an exple. Suppose there is a public good,
such as clean air, priority, conceptual prisoner’s dilemma 740 740 privacy, epistemic privation 741
national defense, or public radio, which we all want. Suppose that is can be
provided only by collective action, at some cost to each of the contributors,
but that we do not have to have a contribution from everyone in order to get
it. Assume that we all prefer having the good to not having it, and that the
best outcome for each of us would be to have it without cost to ourselves. So
each of us reasons as follows: “Other people will either contribute enough to
produce the good by themselves, or they will not. If they do, then I can have
it cost-free (the best option for me) and thus I should not contribute. But if others
do not contribute enough to produce the good by themselves, and if the
probability is very low that my costly contribution would make the difference
between success and failure, once again I should not contribute.” Obviously, if
we all reason in this way, we will not get the public good we want. Such
problems of collective action have been noticed by philosophers since Plato.
Their current nomenclature, rigorous ge-theoretic formulation, empirical study,
and systematic philosophical development, however, has occurred since
1950. GE THEORY, SOCIAL CHOICE THEORY.
L.C.B. privacy, epistemic.EPISTEMIC PRIVACY. private language argument, an
argument designed to show that there cannot be a language that only one person can
speak – a language that is essentially private, that no one else can in
principle understand. In addition to its intrinsic interest, the private
language argument is relevant to discussions of linguistic rules and linguistic
meaning, behaviorism, solipsism, and phenomenalism. The argument is closely
associated with Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (1958). The exact
structure of the argument is controversial; this account should be regarded as
a standard one, but not beyond dispute. The argument begins with the
supposition that a person assigns signs to sensations, where these are taken to
be private to the person who has them, and attempts to show that this
supposition cannot be sustained because no standards for the correct or
incorrect application of the se sign to a recurrence of the se sensation are
possible. Thus Wittgenstein supposes that he undertakes to keep a diary about
the recurrence of a certain sensation; he associates it with the sign ‘S’, and
marks ‘S’ on a calendar every day he has that sensation. Wittgenstein finds the
nature of the association of the sign and sensation obscure, on the ground that
‘S’ cannot be given an ordinary definition (this would make its meaning
publicly accessible) or even an ostensive definition. He further argues that
there is no difference between correct and incorrect entries of ‘S’ on
subsequent days. The initial sensation with which the sign ‘S’ was associated
is no longer present, and so it cannot be compared with a subsequent sensation
taken to be of the se kind. He could at best claim to remember the nature of
the initial sensation, and judge that it is of the se kind as today’s. But
since the memory cannot confirm its own accuracy, there is no possible test of
whether he remembers the initial association of sign and sensation right today.
Consequently there is no criterion for the correct reapplication of the sign
‘S’. Thus we cannot make sense of the notion of correctly reapplying ‘S’, and
cannot make sense of the notion of a private language. The argument described
appears to question only the claim that one could have terms for private mental
occurrences, and may not seem to impugn a broader notion of a private language
whose expressions are not restricted to signs for sensations. Advocates of
Wittgenstein’s argument would generalize it and claim that the focus on
sensations simply highlights the absence of a distinction between correct and
incorrect reapplications of words. A language with terms for publicly
accessible objects would, if private to its user, still be claimed to lack criteria
for the correct reapplication of such terms. This broader notion of a private
language would thus be argued to be equally incoherent.
privation, a lack of
something that it is natural or good to possess. The term is closely associated
with the idea that evil is itself only a lack of good, privatio boni. In
traditional theistic religions everything other than God is created by God out
of nothing, creation ex nihilo. Since, being perfect, God would create only
what is good, the entire original creation and every creature from the most
complex to the simplest are created entirely good. The original creation
contains no evil whatever. What then is evil and how does it enter the world?
The idea that evil is a privation of good does not mean, e.g., that a rock has
some degree of evil because it lacks such good qualities as consciousness and
courage. A thing has some degree of evil only if it lacks some good that
is 741 privileged access privileged
access 742 proper for that thing to possess. In the original creation each
created thing possessed the goods proper to the sort of thing it was. According
to Augustine, evil enters the world when creatures with free will abandon the
good above themselves for some lower, inferior good. Human beings, e.g., become
evil to the extent that they freely turn from the highest good (God) to their
own private goods, becoming proud, selfish, and wicked, thus deserving the
further evils of pain and punishment. One of the problems for this explanation
of the origin of evil is to account for why an entirely good creature would use
its freedom to turn from the highest good to a lesser good.
privileged access,
special first-person awareness of the contents of one’s own mind. Since
Descartes, many philosophers have held that persons are aware of the occurrent
states of their own minds in a way distinct from both their mode of awareness
of physical objects and their mode of awareness of the mental states of others.
Cartesians view such apprehension as privileged in several ways. First, it is
held to be immediate, both causally and epistemically. While knowledge of
physical objects and their properties is acquired via spatially intermediate
causes, knowledge of one’s own mental states involves no such causal chains.
And while beliefs about physical properties are justified by appeal to ways
objects appear in sense experience, beliefs about the properties of one’s own
mental states are not justified by appeal to properties of a different sort. I
justify my belief that the paper on which I write is white by pointing out that
it appears white in apparently normal light. By contrast, my belief that white
appears in my visual experience seems to be self-justifying. Second, Cartesians
hold that first-person apprehension of occurrent mental contents is
epistemically privileged in being absolutely certain. Absolute certainty
includes infallibility, incorrigibility, and indubitability. That a judgment is
infallible means that it cannot be mistaken; its being believed entails its
being true (even though judgments regarding occurrent mental contents are not
necessary truths). That it is incorrigible means that it cannot be overridden
or corrected by others or by the subject himself at a later time. That it is
indubitable means that a subject can never have grounds for doubting it.
Philosophers sometimes claim also that a subject is omniscient with regard to
her own occurrent mental states: if a property appears within her experience,
then she knows this. Subjects’ privileged access to the immediate contents of
their own minds can be held to be necessary or contingent. Regarding
corrigibility, for exple, proponents of the stronger view hold that
first-person reports of occurrent mental states could never be overridden by
conflicting evidence, such as conflicting readings of brain states presumed to
be correlated with the mental states in question. They point out that knowledge
of such correlations would itself depend on first-person reports of mental
states. If a reading of my brain indicates that I in pain, and I sincerely claim not to be,
then the law linking brain states of that type with pains must be mistaken.
Proponents of the weaker view hold that, while persons are currently the best
authorities as to the occurrent contents of their own minds, evidence such as
conflicting readings of brain states could eventually override such authority,
despite the dependence of the evidence on earlier firstperson reports. Weaker
views on privileged access may also deny infallibility on more general grounds.
In judging anything, including an occurrent mental state, to have a particular
property P, it seems that I must remember which property P is, and memory
appears to be always fallible. Even if such judgments are always fallible,
however, they may be more immediately justified than other sorts of judgments.
Hence there may still be privileged access, but of a weaker sort. In the
twentieth century, Ryle attacked the idea of privileged access by analyzing
introspection, awareness of what one is thinking or doing, in terms of
behavioral dispositions, e.g. dispositions to give memory reports of one’s
mental states when asked to do so. But while behaviorist or functional analyses
of some states of mind may be plausible, for instance analyses of cognitive
states such as beliefs, accounts in these terms of occurrent states such as
sensations or images are far less plausible. A more influential attack on
stronger versions of privileged access was mounted by Wilfrid Sellars.
According to him, we must be trained to report non-inferentially on properties
of our sense experience by first learning to respond with whole systems of
concepts to public, physical objects. Before I can learn to report a red sense
impression, I must learn the system of color concepts and the logical relations
ong them by learning to respond to colored objects. Hence, knowledge of my own
mental states cannot be the firm basis from which I progress to other
knowledge. 742 Even if this order of
concept acquisition is determined necessarily, it still may be that persons’
access to their own mental states is privileged in some of the ways indicated,
once the requisite concepts have been acquired. Beliefs about one’s own
occurrent states of mind may still be more immediately justified than beliefs
about physical properties, for exple.
CERTAINTY,
FOUNDATIONALISM, IMMEDIACY, PERCEPTION. A.H.G. pro attitude, a favorable
disposition toward an object or state of affairs. Although some philosophers
equate pro attitudes with desires, the expression is more often intended to
cover a wide range of conative states of mind including wants, feelings,
wishes, values, and principles. My regarding a certain course of action open to
me as morally required and my regarding it as a source of selfish satisfaction
equally qualify as pro attitudes toward the object of that action. It is widely
held that intentional action, or, more generally, acting for reasons, is
necessarily based, in part, on one or more pro attitudes. If I go to the store
in order to buy some turnips, then, in addition to my regarding my store-going
as conducive to turnip buying, I must have some pro attitude toward turnip
buying. ACTION THEORY, PRACTICAL
REASONING. J.F.H. probabilism.MEDINA. probabilistic automaton.
probability, a numerical
value that can attach to items of various kinds (e.g., propositions, events,
and kinds of events) that is a measure of the degree to which they may or
should be expected – or the degree to which they have “their own disposition,”
i.e., independently of our psychological expectations – to be true, to occur,
or to be exemplified (depending on the kind of item the value attaches to).
There are both multiple interpretations of probability and two main kinds of
theories of probability: abstract formal calculi and interpretations of the
calculi. An abstract formal calculus axiomatically characterizes formal
properties of probability functions, where the arguments of the function are
often thought of as sets, or as elements of a Boolean algebra. In application,
the nature of the arguments of a probability function, as well as the meaning
of probability, are given by interpretations of probability. The most fous
axiomatization is Kolmogorov’s (Foundations of the Theory of Probability,
1933). The three axioms for probability functions Pr are: (1) Pr(X) M 0 for all
X; (2) Pr(X) % 1 if X is necessary (e.g., a tautology if a proposition, a
necessary event if an event, and a “universal set” if a set); and (3) Pr(X 7 Y)
% Pr(X) ! Pr(Y) (where ‘7’ can mean, e.g., logical disjunction, or
set-theoretical union) if X and Y are mutually exclusive (X & Y is a
contradiction if they are propositions, they can’t both happen if they are
events, and their set-theoretical intersection is empty if they are sets).
Axiom (3) is called finite additivity, which is sometimes generalized to
countable additivity, involving infinite disjunctions of propositions, or
infinite unions of sets. Conditional probability, Pr(X/Y) (the probability of X
“given” or “conditional on” Y), is defined as the quotient Pr(X & Y)/Pr(Y).
An item X is said to be positively or negatively statistically (or
probabilistically) correlated with an item Y according to whether Pr(X/Y) is
greater than or less than Pr(X/-Y) (where -Y is the negation of a proposition
Y, or the non-occurrence of an event Y, or the set-theoretical complement of a
set Y); in the case of equality, X is said to be statistically (or
probabilistically) independent of Y. All three of these probabilistic relations
are symmetric, and sometimes the term ‘probabilistic relevance’ is used instead
of ‘correlation’. From the axioms, filiar theorems can be proved: e.g., (4)
Pr(-X) % 1 – Pr(X); (5) Pr(X 7 Y) % Pr(X) ! Pr(Y) – Pr(X & Y) (for all X
and Y); and (6) (a simple version of Bayes’s theorem) Pr(X/Y) % Pr(Y/X)Pr(X)/Pr(Y).
Thus, an abstract formal calculus of probability allows for calculation of the
probabilities of some items from the probabilities of others. The main
interpretations of probability include the classical, relative frequency,
propensity, logical, and subjective interpretations. According to the classical
interpretation, the probability of an event, e.g. of heads on a coin toss, is
equal to the ratio of the number of “equipossibilities” (or equiprobable
events) favorable to the event in question to the total number of relevant
equipossibilities. On the relative frequency interpretation, developed by Venn
(The Logic of Chance, 1866) and Reichenbach (The Theory of Probability, pro
attitude probability 743 743 1935),
probability attaches to sets of events within a “reference class.” Where W is
the reference class, and n is the number of events in W, and m is the number of
events in (or of kind) X, within W, then the probability of X, relative to W,
is m/n. For various conceptual and technical reasons, this kind of “actual
finite relative frequency” interpretation has been refined into various
infinite and hypothetical infinite relative frequency accounts, where
probability is defined in terms of limits of series of relative frequencies in
finite (nested) populations of increasing sizes, sometimes involving
hypothetical infinite extensions of an actual population. The reasons for these
developments involve, e.g.: the artificial restriction, for finite populations,
of probabilities to values of the form i/n, where n is the size of the
reference class; the possibility of “mere coincidence” in the actual world,
where these may not reflect the true physical dispositions involved in the
relevant events; and the fact that probability is often thought to attach to possibilities
involving single events, while probabilities on the relative frequency account
attach to sets of events (this is the “problem of the single case,” also called
the “problem of the reference class”). These problems also have inspired
“propensity” accounts of probability, according to which probability is a more
or less primitive idea that measures the physical propensity or disposition of
a given kind of physical situation to yield an outcome of a given type, or to
yield a “long-run” relative frequency of an outcome of a given type. A theorem
of probability proved by Jacob Bernoulli (Ars Conjectandi, 1713) and sometimes
called Bernoulli’s theorem or the weak law of large numbers, and also known as
the first limit theorem, is important for appreciating the frequency
interpretation. The theorem states, roughly, that in the long run, frequency
settles down to probability. For exple, suppose the probability of a certain
coin’s landing heads on any given toss is 0.5, and let e be any number greater
than 0. Then the theorem implies that as the number of tosses grows without
bound, the probability approaches 1 that the frequency of heads will be within
e of 0.5. More generally, let p be the probability of an outcome O on a trial
of an experiment, and assume that this probability remains constant as the
experiment is repeated. After n trials, there will be a frequency, f n, of
trials yielding outcome O. The theorem says that for any numbers d and e
greater than 0, there is an n such that the probability (P) that _p–f n_ ‹ e is
within d of 1 (P ( 1–d). Bernoulli also showed how to calculate such n for
given values of d, e, and p. It is important to notice that the theorem
concerns probabilities, and not certainty, for a long-run frequency. Notice
also the assumption that the probability p of O remains constant as the
experiment is repeated, so that the outcomes on trials are probabilistically
independent of earlier outcomes. The kinds of interpretations of probability
just described are sometimes called “objective” or “statistical” or “empirical”
since the value of a probability, on these accounts, depends on what actually
happens, or on what actual given physical situations are disposed to produce –
as opposed to depending only on logical relations between the relevant events
(or propositions), or on what we should rationally expect to happen or what we
should rationally believe. In contrast to these accounts, there are the
“logical” and the “subjective” interpretations of probability. Carnap (“The Two
Concepts of Probability,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 1945) has
marked this kind of distinction by calling the second concept probability1 and
the first probability2. According to the logical interpretation, associated
with Carnap ( Logical Foundations of Probability, 1950; and Continuum of
Inductive Methods, 1952), the probability of a proposition X given a
proposition Y is the “degree to which Y logically entails X.” Carnap developed
an ingenious and elaborate set of systems of logical probability, including,
e.g., separate systems depending on the degree to which one happens to be,
logically and rationally, sensitive to new information in the reevaluation of
probabilities. There is, of course, a connection between the ideas of logical
probability, rationality, belief, and belief revision. It is natural to
explicate the “logical-probabilistic” idea of the probability of X given Y as
the degree to which a rational person would believe X having come to learn Y
(taking account of background knowledge). Here, the idea of belief suggests a
subjective (sometimes called epistemic or partial belief or degree of belief)
interpretation of probability; and the idea of probability revision suggests
the concept of induction: both the logical and the subjective interpretations
of probability have been called “inductive probability” – a formal apparatus to
characterize rational learning from experience. The subjective interpretation
of probability, according to which the probability of a proposition is a
measure of one’s degree of belief in it, was developed by, e.g., Rsey (“Truth
and Probability,” in his Foundations of Mathematics and Other Essays, 1926);
Definetti (“Foresight: Its Logical Laws, Its Subjective Sources,” 1937,
transprobability probability 744 744
lated by H. Kyburg, Jr., in H. E. Smokler, Studies in Subjective Probability,
1964); and Savage (The Foundations of Statistics, 1954). Of course, subjective
probability varies from person to person. Also, in order for this to be an
interpretation of probability, so that the relevant axioms are satisfied, not
all persons can count – only rational, or “coherent” persons should count. Some
theorists have drawn a connection between rationality and probabilistic degrees
of belief in terms of dispositions to set coherent betting odds (those that do
not allow a “Dutch book” – an arrangement that forces the agent to lose come
what may), while others have described the connection in more general
decision-theoretic terms.
BAYES’s THEOREM, CARNAP,
DUTCH BOOK, INDUCTION, PROPENSITY, REICHENBACH. E.Ee. probability,
prior.BAYES’s THEOREM. probability function.
BAYESIAN RATIONALITY.
problematic judgment.KANT. problematic modality.MODALITY. problem of
evil.PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. problem of induction. First stated by Hume, this
problem concerns the logical basis of inferences from observed matters of fact
to unobserved matters of fact. Although discussion often focuses upon
predictions of future events (e.g., a solar eclipse), the question applies also
to inferences to past facts (e.g., the extinction of dinosaurs) and to present
occurrences beyond the range of direct observation (e.g., the motions of
planets during daylight hours). Long before Hume the ancient Skeptics had
recognized that such inferences cannot be made with certainty; they realized
there can be no demonstrative (deductive) inference, say, from the past and
present to the future. Hume, however, posed a more profound difficulty: Are we
justified in placing any degree of confidence in the conclusions of such inferences?
His question is whether there is any type of non-demonstrative or inductive
inference in which we can be justified in placing any confidence at all.
According to Hume, our inferences from the observed to the unobserved are based
on regularities found in nature. We believe, e.g., that the earth, sun, and
moon move in regular patterns (according to Newtonian mechanics), and on that
basis astronomers predict solar and lunar eclipses. Hume notes, however, that
all of our evidence for such uniformities consists of past and present
experience; in applying these uniformities to the future behavior of these
bodies we are making an inference from the observed to the unobserved. This
point holds in general. Whenever we make inferences from the observed to the unobserved
we rely on the uniformity of nature. The basis for our belief that nature is
reasonably uniform is our experience of such uniformity in the past. If we
infer that nature will continue to be uniform in the future, we are making an
inference from the observed to the unobserved – precisely the kind of inference
for which we are seeking a justification. We are thus caught up in a circular
argument. Since, as Hume emphasized, much of our reasoning from the observed to
the unobserved is based on causal relations, he analyzed causality to ascertain
whether it could furnish a necessary connection between distinct events that
could serve as a basis for such inferences. His conclusion was negative. We
cannot establish any such connection a priori, for it is impossible to deduce
the nature of an effect from its cause – e.g., we cannot deduce from the
appearance of falling snow that it will cause a sensation of cold rather than
heat. Likewise, we cannot deduce the nature of a cause from its effect – e.g.,
looking at a diond, we cannot deduce that it was produced by great heat and
pressure. All such knowledge is based on past experience. If we infer that
future snow will feel cold or that future dionds will be produced by great heat
and pressure, we are again making inferences from the observed to the
unobserved. Furthermore, if we carefully observe cases in which we believe a
cause–effect relation holds, we cannot perceive any necessary connection
between cause and effect, or any power in the cause that brings about the
effect. We observe only that an event of one type (e.g., drinking water) occurs
prior to and contiguously with an event of another type (quenching thirst).
Moreover, we notice that events of the two types have exhibited a constant
conjunction; i.e., whenever an event of the first type has occurred in the past
it has been followed by one of the second type. We cannot discover any
necessary connection or causal power a posteriori; we can only establish
priority, contiguity, and constant conjunction up to the present. If we infer
that this constant conjunction will persist in future cases, we are making
another inference from observed to unobserved cases. To use causality as a
basis for justifying inference from the observed to the probability, prior problem
of induction 745 745 unobserved would
again invovle a circular argument. Hume concludes skeptically that there can be
no rational or logical justification of inferences from the observed to the
unobserved – i.e., inductive or non-demonstrative inference. Such inferences
are based on custom and habit. Nature has endowed us with a proclivity to
extrapolate from past cases to future cases of a similar kind. Having observed
that events of one type have been regularly followed by events of another type,
we experience, upon encountering a case of the first type, a psychological
expectation that one of the second type will follow. Such an expectation does
not constitute a rational justification. Although Hume posed his problem in
terms of homely exples, the issues he raises go to the heart of even the most
sophisticated empirical sciences, for all of them involve inference from
observed phenomena to unobserved facts. Although complex theories are often
employed, Hume’s problem still applies. Its force is by no means confined to
induction by simple enumeration. Philosophers have responded to the problem of
induction in many different ways. Kant invoked synthetic a priori principles.
Many twentieth-century philosophers have treated it as a pseudo-problem, based
on linguistic confusion, that requires dissolution rather than solution. Carnap
maintained that inductive intuition is indispensable. Reichenbach offered a
pragmatic vindication. Goodman has recommended replacing Hume’s “old riddle”
with a new riddle of induction that he has posed. Popper, taking Hume’s
skeptical arguments as conclusive, advocates deductivism. He argues that
induction is unjustifiable and dispensable. None of the many suggestions is
widely accepted as correct.
problem of other minds,
the question of what rational basis a person can have for the belief that other
persons are similarly conscious and have minds. Every person, by virtue of
being conscious, is aware of her own state of consciousness and thus knows she
has a mind; but the mental states of others are not similarly apparent to her.
An influential attempt to solve this problem was made by philosophical
behaviorists. According to Ryle in The Concept of Mind (1949), a mind is not a
ghost in the physical machine but (roughly speaking) an aggregate of
dispositions to behave intelligently and to respond overtly to sensory
stimulation. Since the behavior distinctive of these mentalistic dispositions
is readily observable in other human beings, the so-called problem of other
minds is easily solved: it arose from mere confusion about the concept of mind.
Ryle’s opponents were generally willing to concede that such dispositions
provide proof that another person has a “mind” or is a sentient being, but they
were not willing to admit that those dispositions provide proof that other
people actually have feelings, thoughts, and sensory experiences. Their
convictions on this last matter generated a revised version of the otherminds
problem; it might be called the problem of other-person experiences. Early
efforts to solve the problem of other minds can be viewed as attempts to solve
the problem of other-person experiences. According to J. S. Mill’s Exination of
Sir Willi Hilton’s Philosophy (1865), one can defend one’s conviction that
others have feelings and other subjective experiences by employing an argument
from analogy. To develop that analogy one first attends to how one’s own
experiences are related to overt or publicly observable phenomena. One might
observe that one feels pain when pricked by a pin and that one responds to the
pain by wincing and saying “ouch.” The next step is to attend to the behavior
and circumstances of others. Since other people are physically very similar to
oneself, it is reasonable to conclude that if they are pricked by a pin and
respond by wincing and saying “ouch,” they too have felt pain. Analogous
inferences involving other sorts of mental states and other sorts of behavior
and circumstances add strong support, Mill said, to one’s belief in
other-person experiences. Although arguments from analogy are generally
conceded to provide rationally acceptable evidence for unobserved phenomena,
the analogical argument for other-person experiences was vigorously attacked in
the 1960s by philosophers influenced by Wittgenstein’s Philosophical
Investigations (1953). Their central contention was that anyone employing the
argument must assume that, solely from her own case, she knows what feelings
and thoughts are. This assumption was refuted, they thought, by Wittgenstein’s private
language argument, which proved that we learn what feelings and thoughts are
only in the process of learning a publicly understandable language containing
an appropriate psychological vocabulary. To understand this latter vocabulary,
these critics said, one must be able to use its ingredient words correctly
problem of other minds problem of other minds 746 746 in relation to others as well as to
oneself; and this can be ascertained only because words like ‘pain’ and
‘depression’ are associated with behavioral criteria. When such criteria are
satisfied by the behavior of others, one knows that the words are correctly
applied to them and that one is justified in believing that they have the
experiences in question. The supposed problem of other-person experiences is
thus “dissolved” by a just appreciation of the preconditions for coherent
thought about psychological states. Wittgenstein’s claim that, to be
conceivable, “an inner process stands in need of external criteria,” lost its
hold on philosophers during the 1970s. An important consideration was this: if
a feeling of pain is a genuine reality different from the behavior that
typically accompanies it, then so-called pain behavior cannot be shown to
provide adequate evidence for the presence of pain by a purely linguistic
argument; some empirical inductive evidence is needed. Since, contrary to
Wittgenstein, one knows what the feeling of pain is like only by having that
feeling, one’s belief that other people occasionally have feelings that are significantly
like the pain one feels oneself apparently must be supported by an argument in
which analogy plays a central role. No other strategy seems possible. BEHAVIORISM, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, PRIVATE
LANGUAGE ARGUMENT, WITTGENSTEIN. B.A.
problem of the criterion,
a problem of epistemology, arising in the attempt both to formulate the
criteria and to determine the extent of knowledge. Skeptical and non-skeptical
philosophers disagree as to what, or how much, we know. Do we have knowledge of
the external world, other minds, the past, and the future? Any answer depends
on what the correct criteria of knowledge are. The problem is generated by the
seeming plausibility of the following two propositions: (1) In order to
recognize instances, and thus to determine the extent, of knowledge, we must
know the criteria for it. (2) In order to know the criteria for knowledge
(i.e., to distinguish between correct and incorrect criteria), we must already
be able to recognize its instances. According to an argument of ancient Greek
Skepticism, we can know neither the extent nor the criteria of knowledge
because (1) and (2) are both true. There are, however, three further
possibilities. First, it might be that (2) is true but (1) false: we can
recognize instances of knowledge even if we do not know the criteria of
knowledge. Second, it might be that (1) is true but (2) false: we can identify
the criteria of knowledge without prior recognition of its instances. Finally,
it might be that both (1) and (2) are false. We can know the extent of
knowledge without knowing criteria, and vice versa. Chisholm, who has devoted
particular attention to this problem, calls the first of these options
particularism, and the second methodism. Hume, a skeptic about the extent of
empirical knowledge, was a methodist. Reid and Moore were particularists; they
rejected Hume’s skepticism on the ground that it turns obvious cases of
knowledge into cases of ignorance. Chisholm advocates particularism because he
believes that, unless one knows to begin with what ought to count as an
instance of knowledge, any choice of a criterion is ungrounded and thus
arbitrary. Methodists turn this argument around: they reject as dogmatic any
identification of instances of knowledge not based on a criterion. SKEPTICISM. M.St. problem of the single
case.PROBABILITY, PROPENSITY. problem of the speckled hen, a problem propounded
by Ryle as an objection to Ayer’s analysis of perception in terms of
sense-data. It is implied by this analysis that, if I see a speckled hen (in a
good light and so on), I do so by means of apprehending a speckled sense-datum.
The analysis implies further that the sense-datum actually has just the number
of speckles that I seem to see as I look at the hen, and that it is immediately
evident to me just how many speckles this is. Thus, if I seem to see many
speckles as I look at the hen, the sense-datum I apprehend must actually
contain many speckles, and it must be immediately evident to me how many it
does contain. Now suppose it seems to me that I see more than 100 speckles.
Then the datum I apprehending must
contain more than 100 speckles. Perhaps it contains 132 of them. The analysis
would then imply, absurdly, that it must be immediately evident to me that the
number of speckles is exactly 132. One way to avoid this implication would be
to deny that a sense-datum of mine could contain exactly 132 speckles – or any
other large, determinate number of them – precisely on the ground that it could
never seem to me that I was seeing exactly that many speckles. A possible
drawback of this approach is that it involves committing oneself to the claim,
which some philosophers have found problem of the criterion problem of the
speckled hen 747 747
self-contradictory, that a sense-datum may contain many speckles even if there
is no large number n such that it contains n speckles. PERCEPTION, VAGUENESS. R.Ke.
proceduralism.JURISPRUDENCE. process philosophy.WHITEHEAD. process–product
biguity, an biguity that occurs when a noun can refer either to a process (or
activity) or to the product of that process (or activity). E.g., ‘The
definition was difficult’ could mean either that the activity of defining was a
difficult one to perform, or that the definiens (the form of words proposed as
equivalent to the term being defined) that the definer produced was difficult
to understand. Again, ‘The writing absorbed her attention’ leaves it unclear
whether it was the activity of writing or a product of that activity that she
found engrossing. Philosophically significant terms that might be held to
exhibit process–product biguity include: ‘analysis’, ‘explanation’,
‘inference’, ‘thought’. P.Mac. process theology, any theology strongly
influenced by the theistic metaphysics of Whitehead or Hartshorne; more
generally, any theology that takes process or change as basic characteristics
of all actual beings, including God. Those versions most influenced by
Whitehead and Hartshorne share a core of convictions that constitute the most
distinctive theses of process theology: God is constantly growing, though
certain abstract features of God (e.g., being loving) remain constant; God is
related to every other actual being and is affected by what happens to it;
every actual being has some self-determination, and God’s power is reconceived
as the power to lure (attempt to persuade) each actual being to be what God
wishes it to be. These theses represent significant differences from ideas of
God common in the tradition of Western theism, according to which God is
unchanging, is not really related to creatures because God is not affected by
what happens to them, and has the power to do whatever it is logically possible
for God to do (omnipotence). Process theologians also disagree with the idea
that God knows the future in all its details, holding that God knows only those
details of the future that are causally necessitated by past events. They claim
these are only certain abstract features of a small class of events in the near
future and of an even smaller class in the more distant future. Because of
their understanding of divine power and their affirmation of creaturely
self-determination, they claim that they provide a more adequate theodicy.
Their critics claim that their idea of God’s power, if correct, would render
God unworthy of worship; some also make this claim about their idea of God’s
knowledge, preferring a more traditional idea of omniscience. Although
Whitehead and Hartshorne were both philosophers rather than theologians,
process theology has been more influential ong theologians. It is a major
current in contemporary erican Protestant theology and has attracted the
attention of some Roman Catholic theologians as well. It also has influenced
some biblical scholars who are attempting to develop a distinctive process
hermeneutics.
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION,
WHITEHEAD. J.A.K. Proclus.COMMENTARIES ON PLATO, HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY,
NEOPLATONISM. Prodicus.SOPHISTS. production theory, the economic theory dealing
with the conversion of factors of production into consumer goods. In capitalistic
theories that assume ideal markets, firms produce goods from three kinds of
factors: capital, labor, and raw materials. Production is subject to the
constraint that profit (the difference between revenues and costs) be
maximized. The firm is thereby faced with the following decisions: how much to
produce, what price to charge for the product, what proportions to combine the
three kinds of factors in, and what price to pay for the factors. In markets
close to perfect competition, the firm will have little control over prices so
the decision problem tends to reduce to the ounts of factors to use. The range
of feasible factor combinations depends on the technologies available to firms.
Interesting complications arise if not all firms have access to the se
technologies, or if not all firms make accurate responses concerning
technological changes. Also, if the scale of production affects the feasible
technologies, the firms’ decision process must be subtle. In each of these
cases, imperfect competition will result. Marxian economists think that the
concepts used in this kind of production theory have a normative component. In
reality, a large firm’s capital tends to be owned by a rather small, privileged
class of non-laborers and labor is treated as a commodity like any other
factor. This might proceduralism production theory 748 748 lead to the perception that profit
results primarily from capital and, therefore, belongs to its owners. Marxians
contend that labor is primarily responsible for profit and, consequently, that
labor is entitled to more than the market wage.
PERFECT COMPETITION, PHILOSOPHY OF ECONOMICS. A.N. productive
reason.THEORETICAL REASON. professional ethics, a term designating one or more
of (1) the justified moral values that should govern the work of professionals;
(2) the moral values that actually do guide groups of professionals, whether
those values are identified as (a) principles in codes of ethics promulgated by
professional societies or (b) actual beliefs and conduct of professionals; and
(3) the study of professional ethics in the preceding senses, either (i)
normative (philosophical) inquiries into the values desirable for professionals
to embrace, or (ii) descriptive (scientific) studies of the actual beliefs and
conduct of groups of professionals. Professional values include principles of
obligation and rights, as well as virtues and personal moral ideals such as
those manifested in the lives of Jane Adds, Albert Schweitzer, and Thurgood
Marshall. Professions are defined by advanced expertise, social organizations,
society-granted monopolies over services, and especially by shared commitments
to promote a distinctive public good such as health (medicine), justice (law),
or learning (education). These shared commitments imply special duties to make
services available, maintain confidentiality, secure informed consent for
services, and be loyal to clients, employers, and others with whom one has
fiduciary relationships. Both theoretical and practical issues surround these
duties. The central theoretical issue is to understand how the justified moral
values governing professionals are linked to wider values, such as human
rights. Most practical dilemmas concern how to balance conflicting duties. For
exple, what should attorneys do when confidentiality requires keeping
information secret that might save the life of an innocent third party? Other
practical issues are problems of vagueness and uncertainty surrounding how to
apply duties in particular contexts. For exple, does respect for patients’
autonomy forbid, permit, or require a physician to assist a terminally ill
patient desiring suicide? Equally important is how to resolve conflicts of
interest in which self-seeking places moral values at risk. APPLIED ETHICS, BIOETHICS. M.W.M. progrming
language.COMPUTER THEORY. progrs, modal logic of.DYNIC LOGIC. projectible
predicate.GRUE PARADOX. projection.HEIDEGGER. projectivism.MORAL PSYCHOLOGY.
prolepsis.EPICUREANISM, HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY. proof.PROOF THEORY. proof,
finitary.HILBERT’S PROGR. proof, indirect.REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM. proof by
recursion, also called proof by mathematical induction, a method for
conclusively demonstrating the truth of universal propositions about the
natural numbers. The system of (natural) numbers is construed as an infinite
sequence of elements beginning with the number 1 and such that each subsequent
element is the (immediate) successor of the preceding element. The (immediate)
successor of a number is the sum of that number with 1. In order to apply this method
to show that every number has a certain chosen property it is necessary to
demonstrate two subsidiary propositions often called respectively the basis
step and the inductive step. The basis step is that the number 1 has the chosen
property; the inductive step is that the successor of any number having the
chosen property is also a number having the chosen property (in other words,
for every number n, if n has the chosen property then the successor of n also
has the chosen property). The inductive step is itself a universal proposition
that may have been proved by recursion. The most commonly used exple of a
theorem proved by recursion is the remarkable fact, known before the time of
Plato, that the sum of the first n odd numbers is the square of n. This
proposition, mentioned prominently by Leibniz as requiring and having
demonstrative proof, is expressed in universal form as follows: for every
number n, the sum of the first n odd numbers is n2. 1 % 12, (1 ! 3) % 22, (1 !
3 ! 5) % 32, and so on. Rigorous formulation of a proof by recursion productive
reason proof by recursion 749 749
often uses as a premise the proposition called, since the time of De Morgan,
the principle of mathematical induction: every property belonging to 1 and
belonging to the successor of every number to which it belongs is a property
that belongs without exception to every number. Peano (1858–1932) took the
principle of mathematical induction as an axiom in his 1889 axiomatization of
arithmetic (or the theory of natural numbers). The first acceptable formulation
of this principle is attributed to Pascal.
DE MORGAN, OMEGA, PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS. J.Cor. proof-theoretic
reflection principles.REFLECTION PRINCIPLES. proof theory, a branch of
mathematical logic founded by David Hilbert in the 1920s to pursue Hilbert’s
Progr. The foundational problems underlying that progr had been formulated
around the turn of the century, e.g., in Hilbert’s fous address to the
International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris (1900). They were closely
connected with investigations on the foundations of analysis carried out by
Cantor and Dedekind; but they were also related to their conflict with
Kronecker on the nature of mathematics and to the difficulties of a completely
unrestricted notion of set or multiplicity. At that time, the central issue for
Hilbert was the consistency of sets in Cantor’s sense. He suggested that the
existence of consistent sets (multiplicities), e.g., that of real numbers,
could be secured by proving the consistency of a suitable, characterizing
axiomatic system; but there were only the vaguest indications on how to do
that. In a radical departure from standard practice and his earlier hints,
Hilbert proposed four years later a novel way of attacking the consistency problem
for theories in Über die Grundlagen der Logik und der Arithmetik (1904). This
approach would require, first, a strict formalization of logic together with
mathematics, then consideration of the finite syntactic configurations
constituting the joint formalism as mathematical objects, and showing by
mathematical arguments that contradictory formulas cannot be derived. Though
Hilbert lectured on issues concerning the foundations of mathematics during the
subsequent years, the technical development and philosophical clarification of
proof theory and its aims began only around 1920. That involved, first of all,
a detailed description of logical calculi and the careful development of parts
of mathematics in suitable systems. A record of the former is found in Hilbert
and Ackermann, Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik (1928); and of the latter in
Supplement IV of Hilbert and Bernays, Grundlagen der Mathematik II (1939). This
presupposes the clear distinction between metathematics and mathematics
introduced by Hilbert. For the purposes of the consistency progr metathematics
was now taken to be a very weak part of arithmetic, so-called finitist
mathematics, believed to correspond to the part of mathematics that was
accepted by constructivists like Kronecker and Brouwer. Additional
metathematical issues concerned the completeness and decidability of theories.
The crucial technical tool for the pursuit of the consistency problem was
Hilbert’s e-calculus. The metathematical problems attracted the collaboration
of young and quite brilliant mathematicians (with philosophical interests); ong
them were Paul Bernays, Wilhelm Ackermann, John von Neumann, Jacques Herbrand,
Gerhard Gentzen, and Kurt Schütte. The results obtained in the 1920s were
disappointing when measured against the hopes and bitions: Ackermann, von
Neumann, and Herbrand established essentially the consistency of arithmetic
with a very restricted principle of induction. That limits of finitist
considerations for consistency proofs had been reached bece clear in 1931
through Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. Also, special cases of the decision
problem for predicate logic (Hilbert’s Entscheidungsproblem) had been solved;
its general solvability was made rather implausible by some of Gödel’s results
in his 1931 paper. The actual proof of unsolvability had to wait until 1936 for
a conceptual clarification of ‘mechanical procedure’ or ‘algorithm’; that was
achieved through the work of Church and Turing. The further development of
proof theory is roughly characterized by two complementary tendencies: (1) the
extension of the metathematical fre relative to which “constructive”
consistency proofs can be obtained, and (2) the refined formalization of parts
of mathematics in theories much weaker than set theory or even full second-order
arithmetic. The former tendency started with the work of Gödel and Gentzen in
1933 establishing the consistency of full classical arithmetic relative to
intuitionistic arithmetic; it led in the 1970s and 1980s to consistency proofs
of strong subsystems of secondorder arithmetic relative to intuitionistic
theories of constructive ordinals. The latter tendency reaches back to Weyl’s
book Das Kontinuum (1918) and culminated in the 1970s by showing
proof-theoretic reflection principles proof theory 750 750 that the classical results of
mathematical analysis can be formally obtained in conservative extensions of
first-order arithmetic. For the metathematical work Gentzen’s introduction of
sequent calculi and the use of transfinite induction along constructive
ordinals turned out to be very important, as well as Gödel’s primitive
recursive functionals of finite type. The methods and results of proof theory
are playing, not surprisingly, a significant role in computer science. Work in
proof theory has been motivated by issues in the foundations of mathematics,
with the explicit goal of achieving epistemological reductions of strong
theories for mathematical practice (like set theory or second-order arithmetic)
to weak, philosophically distinguished theories (like primitive recursive
arithmetic). As the formalization of mathematics in strong theories is crucial
for the metathematical approach, and as the progrmatic goal can be seen as a
way of circumventing the philosophical issues surrounding strong theories,
e.g., the nature of infinite sets in the case of set theory, Hilbert’s
philosophical position is often equated with formalism – in the sense of Frege
in his Über die Grundlagen der Geometrie (1903–06) and also of Brouwer’s
inaugural address Intuitionism and Formalism (1912). Though such a view is not
completely unsupported by some of Hilbert’s polemical remarks during the 1920s,
on balance, his philosophical views developed into a sophisticated
instrumentalism, if that label is taken in Ernest Nagel’s judicious sense (The
Structure of Science, 1961). Hilbert’s is an instrumentalism emphasizing the
contentual motivation of mathematical theories; that is clearly expressed in
the first chapter of Hilbert and Bernays’s Grundlagen der Mathematik I (1934).
A sustained philosophical analysis of proof-theoretic research in the context
of broader issues in the philosophy of mathematics was provided by Bernays; his
penetrating essays stretch over five decades and have been collected in
Abhandlungen zur Philosophie der Mathematik (1976). CONSISTENCY, FORMALIZATION, GÖDEL’s
INCOMPLETENESS THEOREMS, HILBERT’s PROGR, METATHEMATICS. W.S. propensity, an
irregular or non-necessitating causal disposition of an object or system to
produce some result or effect. Propensities are usually conceived as
essentially probabilistic in nature. A die may be said to have a propensity of
“strength” or magnitude 1 /6 to turn up a 3 if thrown from a dice box, of
strength 1 /3 to turn up, say, a 3 or 4, etc. But propensity talk is arguably
appropriate only when determinism fails. Strength is often taken to vary from 0
to 1. Popper regarded the propensity notion as a new physical or metaphysical
hypothesis, akin to that of forces. Like Peirce, he deployed it to interpret
probability claims about single cases: e.g., the probability of this radium
atom’s decaying in 1,600 years is 1 /2. On relative frequency interpretations,
probability claims are about properties of large classes such as relative
frequencies of outcomes in them, rather than about single cases. But
single-case claims appear to be common in quantum theory. Popper advocated a
propensity interpretation of quantum theory. Propensities also feature in
theories of indeterministic or probabilistic causation. Competing theories about
propensities attribute them variously to complex systems such as chance or
experimental set-ups or arrangements (a coin and tossing device), to entities
within such set-ups (the coin itself), and to particular trials of such
set-ups. Long-run theories construe propensities as dispositions to give rise
to certain relative frequencies of, or probability distributions over, outcomes
in long runs of trials, which are sometimes said to “manifest” or “display” the
propensities. Here a propensity’s strength is identical to some such frequency.
By contrast, single-case theories construe propensities as dispositions of
singular trials to bring about particular outcomes. Their existence, not their
strength, is displayed by such an outcome. Here frequencies provide evidence
about propensity strength. But the two can always differ; they converge with a
limiting probability of 1 in an appropriate long run. CAUSATION, DETERMINISM, DISPOSITION, PEIRCE,
PROBABILITY, QUANTUM MECHANICS. D.S. proper class.CLASS. properly basic
relief.EVIDENTIALISM, PLANTINGA. proper nes, causal theory of.CAUSAL THEORY OF
PROPER NES. proper sensibles.ARISTOTLE. proper symbol.
SYNCATEGOREMATA.
properties of terms, doctrine of.SHERWOOD. property, roughly, an attribute,
characteristic, feature, trait, or aspect. propensity property 751 751 Intensionality. There are two salient
ways of talking about properties. First, as predicables or instantiables. For
exple, the property red is predicable of red objects; they are instances of it.
Properties are said to be intensional entities in the sense that distinct
properties can be truly predicated of (i.e., have as instances) exactly the se
things: the property of being a creature with a kidney & the property of
being a creature with a heart, though these two sets have the se members.
Properties thus differ from sets (collections, classes); for the latter satisfy
a principle of extensionality: they are identical if they have the se elements.
The second salient way of talking about properties is by means of property
abstracts such as ‘the property of being F’. Such linguistic expressions are
said to be intensional in the following semantical (vs. ontological) sense:
‘the property of being F’ and ‘the property of being G’ can denote different
properties even though the predicates ‘F’ and ‘G’ are true of exactly the se
things. The standard explanation (Frege, Russell, Carnap, et al.) is that ‘the
property of being F’ denotes the property that the predicate ‘F’ expresses.
Since predicates ‘F’ and ‘G’ can be true of the se things without being
synonyms, the property abstracts ‘being F’ and ‘being G’ can denote different
properties. Identity criteria. Some philosophers believe that properties are
identical if they necessarily have the se instances. Other philosophers hold
that this criterion of identity holds only for a special subclass of properties
– those that are purely qualitative – and that the properties for which this
criterion does not hold are all “complex” (e.g., relational, disjunctive,
conditional, or negative properties). On this theory, complex properties are
identical if they have the se form and their purely qualitative constituents
are identical. Ontological status. Because properties are a kind of universal,
each of the standard views on the ontological status of universals has been
applied to properties as a special case. Nominalism: only particulars (and
perhaps collections of particulars) exist; therefore, either properties do not
exist or they are reducible (following Carnap et al.) to collections of
particulars (including perhaps particulars that are not actual but only
possible). Conceptualism: properties exist but are dependent on the mind.
Realism: properties exist independently of the mind. Realism has two main
versions. In rebus realism: a property exists only if it has instances. Ante
rem realism: a property can exist even if it has no instances. For exple, the
property of being a man weighing over ton has no instances; however, it is
plausible to hold that this property does exist. After all, this property seems
to be what is expressed by the predicate ‘is a man weighing over a ton’.
Essence and accident. The properties that a given entity has divide into two
disjoint classes: those that are essential to the entity and those that are accidental
to it. A property is essential to an entity if, necessarily, the entity cannot
exist without being an instance of the property. A property is accidental to an
individual if it is possible for the individual to exist without being an
instance of the property. Being a number is an essential property of nine;
being the number of the planets is an accidental property of nine. Some
philosophers believe that all properties are either essential by nature or
accidental by nature. A property is essential by nature if it can be an
essential property of some entity and, necessarily, it is an essential property
of each entity that is an instance of it. The property of being self-identical
is thus essential by nature. However, it is controversial whether every property
that is essential to something must be essential by nature. The following is a
candidate counterexple. If this automobile backfires loudly on a given
occasion, loudness would seem to be an essential property of the associated
bang. That particular bang could not exist without being loud. If the
automobile had backfired softly, that particular bang would not have existed;
an altogether distinct bang – a soft bang – would have existed. By contrast, if
a man is loud, loudness is only an accidental property of him; he could exist
without being loud. Loudness thus appears to be a counterexple: although it is
an essential property of certain particulars, it is not essential by nature. It
might be replied (echoing Aristotle) that a loud bang and a loud man instantiate
loudness in different ways and, more generally, that properties can be
predicated (instantiated) in different ways. If so, then one should be specific
about which kind of predication (instantiation) is intended in the definition
of ‘essential by nature’ and ‘accidental by nature’. When this is done, the
counterexples might well disappear. If there are indeed different ways of being
predicated (instantiated), most of the foregoing remarks about intensionality,
identity criteria, and the ontological status of properties should be refined
accordingly. ESSENTIALISM,
INTENSIONALITY, RELATION. G.B. property property 752 752 property, accidental proposition 753
property, accidental.RELATION. property, Cbridge.CBRIDGE CHANGE. property,
consequential.SUPERVENIENCE. property, extrinsic.RELATION. property,
hereditary.RELATION. property, impredicative.TYPE THEORY. property,
intrinsic.RELATION. property, non-predicative.TYPE THEORY. property,
phenomenal.QUALIA. property, predicative.TYPE THEORY. proportionality,
principle of.CAJETAN.
proposition, an abstract
object said to be that to which a person is related by a belief, desire, or
other psychological attitude, typically expressed in language containing a
psychological verb (‘think’, ‘deny’, ‘doubt’, etc.) followed by a thatclause.
The psychological states in question are called propositional attitudes. When I
believe that snow is white I stand in the relation of believing to the
proposition that snow is white. When I hope that the protons will not decay, hope
relates me to the proposition that the protons will not decay. A proposition
can be a common object for various attitudes of various agents: that the
protons will not decay can be the object of my belief, my hope, and your fear.
A sentence expressing an attitude is also taken to express the associated
proposition. Because ‘The protons will not decay’ identifies my hope, it
identifies the proposition to which my hope relates me. Thus the proposition
can be the shared meaning of this sentence and all its synonyms, in English or
elsewhere (e.g., ‘die Protonen werden nicht zerfallen’). This, in sum, is the
traditional doctrine of propositions. Although it seems indispensable in some
form – for theorizing about thought and language, difficulties abound. Some critics
regard propositions as excess baggage in any account of meaning. But unless
this is an expression of nominalism, it is confused. Any systematic theory of
meaning, plus an apparatus of sets (or properties) will let us construct
proposition-like objects. The proposition a sentence S expresses might, e.g.,
be identified with a certain set of features that determines S’s meaning. Other
sentences with these se features would then express the se proposition. A
natural way to associate propositions with sentences is to let the features in
question be semantically significant features of the words from which sentences
are built. Propositions then acquire the logical structures of sentences: they
are atomic, conditional, existential, etc. But combining the view of
propositions as meanings with the traditional idea of propositions as bearers
of truthvalues brings trouble. It is assumed that two sentences that express
the se proposition have the se truth-value (indeed, that sentences have their
truth-values in virtue of the propositions they express). Yet if propositions
are also meanings, this principle fails for sentences with indexical elements:
although ‘I pale’ has a single meaning,
two utterances of it can differ in truth-value. In response, one may suggest
that the proposition a sentence S expresses depends both on the linguistic
meaning of S and on the referents of S’s indexical elements. But this reveals
that proposition is a quite technical concept – and one that is not motivated
simply by a need to talk about meanings. Related questions arise for
propositions as the objects of (propositional) attitudes. My belief that I pale may be true, yours that you are pale
false. So our beliefs should take distinct propositional objects. Yet we would
each use the se sentence, ‘I pale’, to
express our belief. Intuitively, your belief and mine also play similar
cognitive roles. We may each choose the sun exposure, clothing, etc., that we
take to be appropriate to a fair complexion. So our attitudes seem in an
important sense to be the se – an identity that the assignment of distinct
propositional objects hides. Apparently, the characterization of beliefs (e.g.)
as being propositional attitudes is at best one component of a more refined,
largely unknown account. Quite apart from complications about indexicality,
propositions inherit standard difficulties about meaning. Consider the beliefs
that Hesperus is a planet and that Phosphorus is a planet. It seems that
someone might have one but not the other, thus that they are attitudes toward
distinct propositions. This difference apparently reflects the difference in
meaning between the sentences ‘Hesperus is a planet’ and ‘Phosphorus is a
planet’. The principle would be that non-synonymous sentences express distinct
propositions. But it is unclear what makes for a difference in meaning. Since
the sentences agree in logico-grmatical structure and in the refer 753 proposition, maximal propositional
opacity 754 ents of their terms, their specific meanings must depend on some more
subtle feature that has resisted definition. Hence our concept of proposition
is also only partly defined. (Even the idea that the sentences here express the
se proposition is not easily refuted.) What such difficulties show is not that
the concept of proposition is invalid but that it belongs to a still
rudimentary descriptive scheme. It is too thoroughly enmeshed with the concepts
of meaning and belief to be of use in solving their attendant problems. (This
observation is what tends, through a confusion, to give rise to skepticism
about propositions.) One may, e.g., reasonably posit structured abstract
entities – propositions – that represent the features on which the truth-values
of sentences depend. Then there is a good sense in which a sentence is true in
virtue of the proposition it expresses. But how does the use of words in a
certain context associate them with a particular proposition? Lacking an
answer, we still cannot explain why a given sentence is true. Similarly, one
cannot explain belief as the acceptance of a proposition, since only a
substantive theory of thought would reveal how the mind “accepts” a proposition
and what it does to accept one proposition rather than another. So a
satisfactory doctrine of propositions remains elusive.
propositional function,
an operation that, when applied to something as argument (or to more than one
thing in a given order as arguments), yields a truth-value as the value of that
function for that argument (or those arguments). This usage presupposes that
truth-values are objects. A function may be singulary, binary, ternary, etc. A
singulary propositional function is applicable to one thing and yields, when so
applied, a truth-value. For exple, being a prime number, when applied to the
number 2, yields truth; negation, when applied to truth, yields falsehood. A
binary propositional function is applicable to two things in a certain order
and yields, when so applied, a truth-value. For exple, being north of when
applied to New York and Boston in that order yields falsehood. Material
implication when applied to falsehood and truth in that order yields truth. The
term ‘propositional function’ has a second use, to refer to an operation that,
when applied to something as argument (or to more than one thing in a given
order as arguments), yields a proposition as the value of the function for that
argument (or those arguments). For exple, being a prime number when applied to
2 yields the proposition that 2 is a prime number. Being north of, when applied
to New York and Boston in that order, yields the proposition that New York is
north of Boston. This usage presupposes that propositions are objects. In a
third use, ‘propositional function’ designates a sentence with free occurrences
of variables. Thus, ‘x is a prime number’, ‘It is not the case that p’, ‘x is
north of y’ and ‘if p then q’ are propositional functions in this sense. C.S.
propositional justification.EPISTEMOLOGY. propositional knowledge.EPISTEMOLOGY.
propositional object.PROPOSITION. propositional opacity, failure of a clause to
express any particular proposition (especially due to the occurrence of
pronouns or demonstratives). If having a belief about an individual involves a
relation to a proposition, and if a part of the proposition is a way of representing
the individual, then belief characterizations that do not indicate the
believer’s way of representing the individual could be called propositionally
opaque. They do not show all of the propositional elements. For exple, ‘My
son’s clarinet teacher believes that he should try the bass drum’ would be
propositionally opaque because ‘he’ does not indicate how my son John’s teacher
represents John, e.g. as his student, as my son, as the boy now playing, etc.
This characterization of the exple is not appropriate if propositions are as
Russell conceived them, sometimes containing the individuals themselves as
constituents, because then the propositional constituent (John) has been
referred to. Generally, a characterization of a propositional 754 attitude is propositionally opaque if
the expressions in the embedded clause do not refer to the propositional
constituents. It is propositionally transparent if the expressions in the
embedded clause do so refer. As a rule, referentially opaque contexts are used in
propositionally transparent attributions if the referent of a term is distinct
from the corresponding propositional constituent.
DE DICTO, KNOWLEDGE DE
RE, PROPOSITION, REFERENTIALLY TRANSPARENT. T.M. propositional
operator.SENTENTIAL CONNECTIVE. propositional representation.COGNITIVE SCIENCE.
propositional theory of meaning.MEANING. propositional verb.PROPOSITION.
proprietates terminorum (Latin, ‘properties of terms’), in medieval logic from
the twelfth century on, a cluster of semantic properties possessed by
categorematic terms. For most authors, these properties apply only when the
terms occur in the context of a proposition. The list of such properties and
the theory governing them vary from author to author, but always include (1)
suppositio. Some authors add (2) appellatio (‘appellating’, ‘ning’, ‘calling’,
often not sharply distinguishing from suppositio), the property whereby a term
in a certain proposition nes or is truly predicable of things, or (in some
authors) of presently existing things. Thus ‘philosophers’ in ‘Some
philosophers are wise’ appellates philosophers alive today. (3) pliatio
(‘pliation’, ‘broadening’), whereby a term refers to past or future or merely
possible things. The reference of ‘philosophers’ is pliated in ‘Some philosophers
were wise’. (4) Restrictio (‘restriction’, ‘narrowing’), whereby the reference
of a term is restricted to presently existing things (‘philosophers’ is so
restricted in ‘Some philosophers are wise’), or otherwise narrowed from its
normal range (‘philosophers’ in ‘Some Greek philosophers were wise’). (5)
Copulatio (‘copulation’, ‘coupling’), which is the type of reference adjectives
have (‘wise’ in ‘Some philosophers are wise’), or alternatively the semantic
function of the copula. Other meanings too are sometimes given to these terms,
depending on the author. Appellatio especially was given a wide variety of
interpretations. In particular, for Buridan and other fourteenth-century
Continental authors, appellatio means ‘connotation’. Restrictio and copulatio
tended to drop out of the literature, or be treated only perfunctorily, after
the thirteenth century. SUPPOSITIO.
P.V.S. proprioception.PERCEPTION. proprium, one of Porphyry’s five predicables,
often translated as ‘property’ or ‘attribute’; but this should not be confused
with the broad modern sense in which any feature of a thing may be said to be a
property of it. A proprium is a nonessential peculiarity of a species. (There
are no propria of individuals or genera generalissima, although they may have other
uniquely identifying features.) A proprium necessarily holds of all members of
its species and of nothing else. It is not mentioned in a real definition of
the species, and so is not essential to it. Yet it somehow follows from the
essence or nature expressed in the real definition. The standard exple is
risibility (the ability to laugh) as a proprium of the species man. The real
definition of ‘man’ is ‘rational animal’. There is no mention of any ability to
laugh. Nevertheless anything that can laugh has both the biological apparatus
to produce the sounds (and so is an animal) and also a certain wit and insight
into humor (and so is rational). Conversely, any rational animal will have both
the vocal chords and diaphragm required for laughing (since it is an animal,
although the inference may seem too quick) and also the mental wherewithal to
see the point of a joke (since it is rational). Thus any rational animal has
what it takes to laugh. In short, every man is risible, and conversely, but
risibility is not an essential feature of man.
protocol statement, one
of the statements that constitute the foundations of empirical knowledge. The
term was introduced by proponents of foundationalism, who were convinced that
in order to avoid the most radical skepticism, one propositional operator
protocol statement 755 755 must
countenance beliefs that are justified but not as a result of an inference. If
all justified beliefs are inferentially justified, then to be justified in
believing one proposition P on the basis of another, E, one would have to be
justified in believing both E and that E confirms P. But if all justification
were inferential, then to be justified in believing E one would need to infer
it from some other proposition one justifiably believes, and so on ad
infinitum. The only way to avoid this regress is to find some statement
knowable without inferring it from some other truth. Philosophers who agree
that empirical knowledge has foundations do not necessarily agree on what those
foundations are. The British empiricists restrict the class of contingent
protocol statements to propositions describing the contents of mind
(sensations, beliefs, fears, desires, and the like). And even here a statement
describing a mental state would be a protocol statement only for the person in
that state. Other philosophers, however, would take protocol statements to
include at least some assertions about the immediate physical environment. The
plausibility of a given candidate for a protocol statement depends on how one
analyzes non-inferential justification. Some philosophers rely on the idea of
acquaintance. One is non-inferentially justified in believing something when
one is directly acquainted with what makes it true. Other philosophers rely on
the idea of a state that is in some sense self-presenting. Still others want to
understand the notion in terms of the inconceivability of error. The main
difficulty in trying to defend a coherent conception of non-inferential
justification is to find an account of protocol statements that gives them
enough conceptual content to serve as the premises of arguments, while avoiding
the charge that the application of concepts always brings with it the
possibility of error and the necessity of inference. EPISTEMOLOGY, FOUNDATIONALISM. R.A.F.
protothetic.LAWS OF THOUGHT, LEsNIEWSKI. prototype theory, a theory according
to which human cognition involves the deployment of “categories” organized
around stereotypical exemplars. Prototype theory differs from traditional
theories that take the concepts with which we think to be individuated by means
of boundary-specifying necessary and sufficient conditions. Advocates of
prototypes hold that our concept of bird, for instance, consists in an
indefinitely bounded conceptual “space” in which robins and sparrows are
central, and chickens and penguins are peripheral – though the category may be
differently organized in different cultures or groups. Rather than being
all-ornothing, category membership is a matter of degree. This conception of
categories was originally inspired by the notion, developed in a different
context by Wittgenstein, of fily resemblance. Prototypes were first discussed
in detail and given empirical credibility in the work of Eleanor Rosch (see,
e.g., “On the Internal Structure of Perceptual and Semantic Categories,”
1973).
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE,
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, WITTGENSTEIN. J.F.H. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph (1809–65),
French socialist theorist and father of anarchism. He bece well known following
the publication of What Is Property? (1840), the work containing his main
ideas. He argued that the owner of the means of production deprives the workers
of a part of their labor: “property is theft.” In order to enable each worker
to dispose of his labor, capital and largescale property must be limited. The
need to abolish large-scale private property surpassed the immediate need for a
state as a controlling agent over chaotic social relationships. To this end he
stressed the need for serious reforms in the exchange system. Since the economy
and society largely depended on the credit system, Proudhon advocated
establishing popular banks that would approve interest-free loans to the poor.
Such a mutualism would start the transformation of the actual into a just and
nonexploited society of free individuals. Without class antagonism and
political authorities, such a society would tend toward an association of
communal and industrial collectivities. It would move toward a flexible world
federation based on self-management. The main task of social science, then, is
to make manifest this immanent logic of social processes. Proudhon’s ideas
influenced anarchists, populists (Bakunin, Herzen), and syndicalists (Jaurès).
His conception of self-management was an important inspiration for the later
concept of soviets (councils). He criticized the inequalities of the
contemporary society from the viewpoint of small producers and peasants.
Although eclectic and theoretically rather naive, his work attracted the
serious attention of his contemporaries and led to a strong attack by Marx in
The Holy Fily and The Poverty of Philosophy. G.Fl. protothetic Proudhon,
Pierre-Joseph 756 756 provability
predicate.GÖDEL’S INCOMPLETENESS THEOREMS. prudence.ETHICS.
pseudohallucination, a non-deceptive hallucination. An ordinary hallucination
might be thought to comprise two components: (i) a sensory component, whereby
one experiences an image or sensory episode similar in many respects to a
veridical perceiving except in being non-veridical; and (ii) a cognitive
component, whereby one takes (or is disposed to take) the image or sensory
episode to be veridical. A pseudohallucination resembles a hallucination, but
lacks this second component. In experiencing a pseudohallucination, one
appreciates that one is not perceiving veridically. The source of the term
seems to be the painter Wassily Kandinsky, who employed it (in 1885) to
characterize a series of apparently drug-induced images experienced and
pondered by a friend who recognized them, at the very time they were occurring,
not to be veridical. Kandinsky’s account is discussed by Jaspers (in his
General Psychopathology, 1916), and thereby entered the clinical lore.
Pseudohallucinations may be brought on by the sorts of pathological condition
that give rise to hallucinations, or by simple fatigue, emotional adversity, or
loneliness. Thus, a driver, late at night, may react to non-existent objects or
figures on the road, and immediately recognize his error. PERCEPTION. J.F.H. pseudo-overdeterminism.
CAUSATION.
pseudorandomness.COMPUTER THEORY. psychoanalysis.FREUD. psycholinguistics, an
interdisciplinary research area that uses theoretical descriptions of language
taken from linguistics to investigate psychological processes underlying
language production, perception, and learning. There is considerable
disagreement as to the appropriate characterization of the field and the major
problems. Philosophers discussed many of the problems now studied in
psycholinguistics before either psychology or linguistics were spawned, but the
self-consciously interdisciplinary field combining psychology and linguistics
emerged not long after the birth of the two disciplines. (Meringer used the
adjective ‘psycholingisch-linguistische’ in an 1895 book.) Various national traditions
of psycholinguistics continued at a steady but fairly low level of activity
through the 1920s and declined somewhat during the 1930s and 1940s because of
the antimentalist attitudes in both linguistics and psychology.
Psycholinguistic researchers in the USSR, mostly inspired by L. S. Vygotsky
(Thought and Language, 1934), were more active during this period in spite of
official suppression. Numerous quasi-independent sources contributed to the
rebirth of psycholinguistics in the 1950s; the most significant was a seminar
held at Indiana University during the summer of 1953 that led to the
publication of Psycholinguistics: A Survey of Theory and Research Problems
(1954), edited by C. E. Osgood and T. A. Sebeok – a truly interdisciplinary
book jointly written by more than a dozen authors. The contributors attempted
to analyze and reconcile three disparate approaches: learning theory from
psychology, descriptive linguistics, and information theory (which ce mainly
from engineering). The book had a wide impact and led to many further
investigations, but the nature of the field changed rapidly soon after its
publication with the Chomskyan revolution in linguistics and the cognitive turn
in psychology. The two were not unrelated: Chomsky’s positive contribution,
Syntactic Structures, was less broadly influential than his negative review
(Language, 1959) of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. Against the
empiricist-behaviorist view of language understanding and production, in which
language is merely the exhibition of a more complex form of behavior, Chomsky
argued the avowedly rationalist position that the ability to learn and use
language is innate and unique to humans. He emphasized the creative aspect of
language, that almost all sentences one hears or produces are novel. One of his
premises was the alleged infinity of sentences in natural languages, but a less
controversial argument can be given: there are tens of millions of five-word
sentences in English, all of which are readily understood by speakers who have
never heard them. Chomsky’s work promised the possibility of uncovering a very
special characteristic of the human mind. But the promise was qualified by the
disclaimer that linguistic theory describes only the competence of the ideal
speaker. Many psycholinguists spent countless hours during the 1960s and 1970s
seeking the traces of underlying competence beneath the untidy performances of
actual speakers. During the 1970s, as Chomsky frequently revised his theories
of syntax and semantics in significant ways, and numerous alternative
linprovability predicate psycholinguistics 757 757 guistic models were under
consideration, psychologists generated a range of productive research problems
that are increasingly remote from the Chomskyan beginnings. Contemporary
psycholinguistics addresses phonetic, phonological, syntactic, semantic, and
pragmatic influences on language processing. Few clear conclusions of
philosophical import have been established. For exple, several decades of
animal research have shown that other species can use significant portions of
human language, but controversy abounds over how central those portions are to
language. Studies now clearly indicate the importance of word frequency and
coarticulation, the dependency of a hearer’s identification of a sound as a
particular phoneme, or of a visual pattern as a particular letter, not only on
the physical features of the pattern but on the properties of other patterns
not necessarily adjacent. Physically identical patterns may be heard as a d in
one context and a t in another. It is also accepted that at least some of the
human lignuistic abilities, particularly those involved in reading and speech
perception, are relatively isolated from other cognitive processes. Infant
studies show that children as young as eight months learn statistically
important patterns characteristic of their natural language – suggesting a
complex set of mechanisms that are automatic and invisible to us.
COMMON GOOD, PHILOSOPHY
OF ECONOMICS, SOCIAL CHOICE THEORY. Pufendorf, Suel (1632–94), German historian
and theorist of natural law. Pufendorf was influenced by both Grotius and
Hobbes. He portrayed people as contentious and quarrelsome, yet as needing one
another’s company and assistance. Natural law shows how people can live with
one another while pursuing their own conflicting projects. To minimize
religious disputes about morals, Pufendorf sought a way of deriving laws of
nature from observable facts alone. Yet he thought divine activity essential to
morality. He opened his massive Latin treatise On the Law of Nature and of
Nations (1672) with a voluntarist account of God’s creation of the essence of
mankind: given that we have the nature God gave us, certain laws must be valid
for us, but only God’s will determined our nature. As a result, our nature
indicates God’s will for us. Hence observable facts about ourselves show us
what laws God commands us to obey. Because we so obviously need one another’s
assistance, the first law is to increase our sociability, i.e. our willingness
to live together. All other laws indicate acts that would bring about this end.
In the course of expounding the laws he thought important for the development
of social life to the high cultural level our complex nature points us toward,
Pufendorf analyzed all the main points that a full legal system must cover. He
presented the rudiments of laws of marriage, property, inheritance, contract,
and international relations in both war and peace. He also developed the
Grotian theory of personal rights, asserting for the first time that rights are
pointless unless for each right there are correlative duties binding on others.
Taking obligation as his fundental concept, he developed an imporpsychological
behaviorism Pufendorf, Suel 758 758
punishment Putn, Hilary 759 tant distinction between perfect and imperfect
duties and rights. And in working out a theory of property he suggested the
first outlines of a historical sociology of wealth later developed by Ad Smith.
Pufendorf’s works on natural law were textbooks for all of Europe for over a
century and were far more widely read than any other treatments of the
subject. DUTY, GROTIUS, HOBBES,
NATURAL LAW. J.B.S.
punishment, a distinctive form of legal sanction, distinguished first by its
painful or unpleasant nature (to the offender), and second by the ground on
which the sanction is imposed, which must be because the offender offended
against the norms of a society. None of these three attributes is a strictly
necessary condition for proper use of the word ‘punishment’. There may be
unpleasant consequences visited by nature upon an offender such that he might
be said to have been “punished enough”; the consequences in a given case may
not be unpleasant to a particular offender, as in the punishment of a masochist
with his favorite form of self-abuse; and punishment may be imposed for reasons
other than offense against society’s norms, as is the case with punishment
inflicted in order to deter others from like acts. The “definitional stop”
argument in discussions of punishment seeks to tie punishment analytically to
retributivism. Retributivism is the theory that punishment is justified by the
moral desert of the offender; on this view, a person who culpably does a
wrongful action deserves punishment, and this desert is a sufficient as well as
a necessary condition of just punishment. Punishment of the deserving, on this
view, is an intrinsic good that does not need to be justified by any other good
consequences such punishment may achieve, such as the prevention of crime.
Retributivism is not to be confused with the view that punishment satisfies the
feelings of vengeful citizens nor with the view that punishment preempts such
citizens from taking the law into their own hands by vigilante action – these
latter views being utilitarian. Retributivism is also not the view (sometimes
called “weak” or “negative” retributivism) that only the deserving are to be
punished, for desert on such a view typically operates only as a limiting and
not as a justifying condition of punishment. The thesis known as the
“definitional stop” says that punishment must be retributive in its
justification if it is to be punishment at all. Bad treatment inflicted in
order to prevent future crime is not punishment but deserves another ne,
usually ‘telishment’. The dominant justification of non-retributive punishment
(or telishment) is deterrence. The good in whose ne the bad of punishing is
justified, on this view, is prevention of future criminal acts. If punishment
is inflicted to prevent the offender from committing future criminal acts, it
is styled “specific” or “special” deterrence; if punishment is inflicted to
prevent others from committing future criminal acts, it is styled “general”
deterrence. In either case, punishment of an action is justified by the future
effect of that punishment in deterring future actors from committing crimes.
There is some vagueness in the notion of deterrence because of the different
mechanisms by which potential criminals are influenced not to be criminals by
the exple of punishment: such punishment may achieve its effects through fear
or by more benignly educating those would-be criminals out of their criminal
desires. ETHICS,
Putn, Hilary. “You are
too formal, Grice.” erican philosopher who has made significant contributions
to the philosophies of language, science, and mind, and to mathematical logic
and metaphysics. He completed his Ph.D. in 1951 at the University of California
(Los Angeles) and has taught at Northwestern, Princeton, MIT, and Harvard. In
the late 1950s he contributed (with Martin Davis and Julia Robinson) to a proof
of the unsolvability of Hilbert’s tenth problem (completed in 1970 by Yuri
Matiyasevich). Rejecting both Platonism and conventionalism in mathematics, he
explored the concepts of mathematical truth and logical necessity on the
assumption that logic is not entirely immune from empirical revision – e.g.,
quantum mechanics may require a rejection of classical logic. In the 1950s and
1960s he advanced functionalism, an original theory of mind in which human
beings are conceived as Turing machines (computers) and mental states are
functional (or 759 computational)
states. While this theory is presupposed by much contemporary research in
cognitive science, Putn himself (in Representation and Reality, 1988) abandoned
the view, arguing that genuine intentionality cannot be reduced to
computational states because the content of beliefs is (a) determined by facts
external to the individual and (b) individuatable only by interpreting our
belief system as a whole (meaning holism). Putn’s criticism of functionalism
relies on the “new theory of reference” – sometimes called the “causal” or
“direct” theory – that he and Kripke (working independently) developed during
the late 1960s and early 1970s and that is today embraced by many philosophers
and scientists. In “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’ ” (1975) Putn claims that the
reference of natural kind terms like ‘water’ is determined by facts about the
world – the microphysical structure of water (H2O) and the linguistic practices
of speakers – and not by the internal mental states of speakers. Early in his
career, Putn chpioned scientific realism, rejecting conventionalism and arguing
that without a realist commitment to theoretical entities (e.g., electrons) the
success of science would be a “miracle.” In 1976 he fously abandoned
metaphysical realism in favor of “internal realism,” which gives up commitment
to mind-independent objects and relativizes ontology to conceptual schemes. In
a series of model-theoretic arguments, Putn challenged the metaphysical realist
assumption that an epistemically ideal theory might be false, claiming that it
requires an implausibly “magical” theory of reference. To the se end, he sought
to demonstrate that we are not “brains in a vat” and that radical skepticism is
incoherent (Reason, Truth and History, 1981). More recently, he has emphasized
conceptual relativity in his attack on metaphysical realism’s commitment to
“one true theory” and, in his Dewey Lectures (1994), has defended direct
perceptual realism, showing his allegiance to everyday “realism.” There is
growing appreciation of the underlying unity in Putn’s work that helps correct
his reputation for “changing his mind.” He has consistently sought to do
justice both to the “real world” of common sense and science and to distinctly
human ways of representing that world. In the 1990s his energies were
increasingly directed to our “moral image of the world.” Leading a revival of
erican pragmatism, he has attacked the fact–value dichotomy, articulating a
moral view that resists both relativism and authoritarianism. Putn’s influence
now extends beyond philosophers and scientists, to literary theorists,
cognitive linguists, and theologians.
CAUSAL THEORY OF PROPER
NES, FUNCTIONALISM, MEANING, PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE.
D.L.A. Pyrrhonian Skepticism.SKEPTICISM, SKEPTICS. Pyrrho of Elis (c.365–c.270
B.C.), Greek philosopher, regarded as the founder of Skepticism. Like Socrates,
he wrote nothing, but impressed many with provocative ideas and calm demeanor.
His equanimity was admired by Epicurus; his attitude of indifference influenced
early Stoicism; his attack on knowledge was taken over by the skeptical
Academy; and two centuries later, a revival of Skepticism adopted his ne. Many
of his ideas were anticipated by earlier thinkers, notably Democritus. But in
denying the veracity of all sensations and beliefs, Pyrrho carried doubt to new
and radical extremes. According to ancient anecdote, which presents him as
highly eccentric, he paid so little heed to normal sensibilities that friends
often had to rescue him from grave danger; some nonetheless insisted he lived
into his nineties. He is also said to have emulated the “naked teachers” (as
the Hindu Brahmans were called by Greeks) whom he met while traveling in the
entourage of Alexander the Great. Pyrrho’s chief exponent and publicist was
Timon of Phlius (c.325–c.235 B.C.). His bestpreserved work, the Silloi
(“Lpoons”), is a parody in Homeric epic verse that mocks the pretensions of
numerous philosophers on an imaginary visit to the underworld. According to
Timon, Pyrrho was a “negative dogmatist” who affirmed that knowledge is
impossible, not because our cognitive apparatus is flawed, but because the
world is fundentally indeterminate: things themselves are “no more” cold than
hot, or good than bad. But Timon makes clear that the key to Pyrrho’s
Skepticism, and a major source of his impact, was the ethical goal he sought to
achieve: by training himself to disregard all perception and values, he hoped
to attain mental tranquility.
ACADEMY, DEMOCRITUS,
EPICUREANISM, SKEPTICS, STOICISM. S.A.W. Pythagoras (570?–495? B.C.), the most
fous of the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers. He emigrated from the island of
Sos (off Asia Minor) to Croton (southern Italy) in 530. There he Pyrrhonian
Skepticism Pythagoras 760 760 founded
societies based on a strict way of life. They had great political impact in
southern Italy and aroused opposition that resulted in the burning of their
meeting houses and, ultimately, in the societies’ disappearance in the fourth
century B.C. Pythagoras’s fe grew exponentially with the pasage of time.
Plato’s immediate successors in the Academy saw true philosophy as an unfolding
of the original insight of Pythagoras. By the time of Iblichus (late third
century A.D.), Pythagoreanism and Platonism had become virtually identified.
Spurious writings ascribed both to Pythagoras and to other Pythagoreans arose
beginning in the third century B.C. Eventually any thinker who saw the natural
world as ordered according to pleasing mathematical relations (e.g., Kepler) ce
to be called a Pythagorean. Modern scholarship has shown that Pythagoras was
not a scientist, mathematician, or systematic philosopher. He apparently wrote
nothing. The early evidence shows that he was fous for introducing the doctrine
of metempsychosis, according to which the soul is immortal and is reborn in
both human and animal incarnations. Rules were established to purify the soul
(including the prohibition against eating beans and the emphasis on training of
the memory). General reflections on the natural world such as “number is the
wisest thing” and “the most beautiful, harmony” were preserved orally. A belief
in the mystical power of number is also visible in the veneration for the
tetractys (tetrad: the numbers 1–4, which add up to the sacred number 10). The
doctrine of the harmony of the spheres – that the heavens move in accord with
number and produce music – may go back to Pythagoras. It is often assumed that
there must be more to Pythagoras’s thought than this, given his fe in the later
tradition. However, Plato refers to him only as the founder of a way of life
(Republic 600a9). In his account of pre-Socratic philosophy, Aristotle refers
not to Pythagoras himself, but to the “so-called Pythagoreans” whom he dates in
the fifth century.
ARCHYTAS, PHILOLAUS.
C.A.H. Pythagoreanism.PYTHAGORAS. Pythagoreanism Pythagoreanism 761 761 quale.QUALIA. qualia (singular: quale),
those properties of mental states or events, in particular of sensations and
perceptual states, which determine “what it is like” to have them. Sometimes
‘phenomenal properties’ and ‘qualitative features’ are used with the se
meaning. The felt difference between pains and itches is said to reside in
differences in their “qualitative character,” i.e., their qualia. For those who
accept an “actobject” conception of perceptual experience, qualia may include
such properties as “phenomenal redness” and “phenomenal roundness,” thought of
as properties of sense-data, “phenomenal objects,” or portions of the visual
field. But those who reject this conception do not thereby reject qualia; a
proponent of the adverbial analysis of perceptual experience can hold that an
experience of “sensing redly” is so in virtue of, in part, what qualia it has,
while denying that there is any sense in which the experience itself is red.
Qualia are thought of as non-intentional, i.e., non-representational, features
of the states that have them. So in a case of “spectrum inversion,” where one
person’s experiences of green are “qualitatively” just like another person’s
experiences of red, and vice versa, the visual experiences the two have when
viewing a ripe tomato would be alike in their intentional features (both would
be of a red, round, bulgy surface), but would have different qualia. Critics of
physicalist and functionalist accounts of mind have argued from the possibility
of spectrum inversion and other kinds of “qualia inversion,” and from such
facts as that no physical or functional description will tell one “what it is
like” to smell coffee, that such accounts cannot accommodate qualia. Defenders
of such accounts are divided between those who claim that their accounts can
accommodate qualia and those who claim that qualia are a philosophical myth and
thus that there are none to accommodate.
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND,
QUALITIES. S.Sho. qualisign.PEIRCE. qualitative identity.IDENTITY. qualitative
predicate, a kind of predicate postulated in some attempts to solve the grue
paradox. (1) On the syntactic view, a qualitative predicate is a syntactically
more or less simple predicate. Such simplicity, however, is relative to the
choice of primitives in a language. In English, ‘green’ and ‘blue’ are
primitive, while ‘grue’ and ‘bleen’ must be introduced by definitions (‘green
and first exined before T, or blue otherwise’, ‘blue and first exined before T,
or green otherwise’, respectively). In other languages, ‘grue’ and ‘bleen’ may
be primitive and hence “simple,” while ‘green’ and ‘blue’ must be introduced by
definitions (‘grue and first exined before T, or bleen otherwise’, ‘bleen and
first exined before T, or grue otherwise’, respectively). (2) On the semantic
view, a qualitative predicate is a predicate to which there corresponds a
property that is “natural” (to us) or of easy semantic access. The quality of
greenness is easy and natural; the quality of grueness is strained. (3) On the
ontological view, a qualitative predicate is a predicate to which there
corresponds a property that is woven into the causal or modal structure of
reality in a way that gruesome properties are not. GRUE PARADOX, PROPERTY. D.A.J. qualities,
properties or characteristics. There are three specific philosophical senses.
(1) Qualities are physical properties, logical constructions of physical
properties, or dispositions. Physical properties, such as mass, shape, and
electrical charge, are properties in virtue of which objects can enter into
causal relations. Logical constructions of physical properties include
conjunctions and disjunctions of them; being 10 # .02 cm long is a disjunctive
property. A disposition of an object is a potential for the object to enter
into a causal interaction of some specific kind under some specific condition;
e.g., an object is soluble in water if and only if it would dissolve were it in
enough pure water. (Locke held a very complex theory of powers. On Locke’s
theory, the dispositions of objects are a kind of power and the human will is a
kind of power. However, the human will is not part of 762 Q 762 the modern notion of disposition.) So,
predicating a disposition of an object implies a subjunctive conditional of the
form: if such-and-such were to happen to the object, then so-and-so would
happen to it; that my vase is fragile implies that if my vase were to be hit
sufficiently hard then it would break. (Whether physical properties are
distinct from dispositions is disputed.) Three sorts of qualities are often
distinguished. Primary qualities are physical properties or logical
constructions from physical properties. Secondary qualities are dispositions to
produce sensory experiences of certain phenomenal sorts under appropriate
conditions. The predication of a secondary quality, Q, to an object implies
that if the object were to be perceived under normal conditions then the object
would appear to be Q to the perceivers: if redness is a secondary quality, then
that your coat is red implies that if your coat were to be seen under normal conditions,
it would look red. Locke held that the following are secondary qualities:
colors, tastes, smells, sounds, and warmth or cold. Tertiary qualities are
dispositions that are not secondary qualities, e.g. fragility. (Contrary to
Locke, the color realist holds that colors are either primary or tertiary
qualities; so that x is yellow is logically independent of the fact that x
looks yellow under normal conditions. Since different spectral reflectances
appear to be the se shade of yellow, some color realists hold that any shade of
yellow is a disjunctive property whose components are spectral reflectances.)
(2) Assuming a representative theory of perception, as Locke did, qualities
have two characteristics: qualities are powers (or dispositions) of objects to
produce sensory experiences (sensedata on some theories) in humans; and, in
sensory experience, qualities are represented as intrinsic properties of
objects. Instrinsic properties of objects are properties that objects have
independently of their environment. Hence an exact duplicate of an object has
all the intrinsic properties of the original, and an intrinsic property of x
never has the form, x-stands-in-suchand-such-a-relation-to-y. Locke held that
the primary qualities are extension (size), figure (shape), motion or rest,
solidity (impenetrability), and number; the primary qualities are correctly
represented in perception as intrinsic features of objects, and the secondary
qualities (listed in (1)) are incorrectly represented in perception as intrinsic
features of objects. (Locke seems to have been mistaken in holding that number
is a quality of objects.) Positional qualities are qualities defined in terms
of the relative positions of points in objects and their surrounding: shape,
size, and motion and rest. Since most of Locke’s primary qualities are
positional, some non-positional quality is needed to occupy positions. On
Locke’s account, solidity fulfills this role, although some have argued (Hume)
that solidity is not a primary quality. (3) Primary qualities are properties
common to and inseparable from all matter; secondary qualities are not really
qualities in objects, but only powers of objects to produce sensory effects in
us by means of their primary qualities. (This is another use of ‘quality’ by
Locke, where ‘primary’ functions much like ‘real’ and real properties are given
by the metaphysical assumptions of the science of Locke’s time.) Qualities are
distinct from representations of them in predications. Sometimes the se quality
is represented in different ways by different predications: ‘That is water’ and
‘That is H2O’. The distinction between qualities and the way they are
represented in predications opens up the Lockean possibility that some
qualities are incorrectly represented in some predications. Features of
predications are sometimes used to define a quality; dispositions are sometimes
defined in terms of subjunctive conditionals (see definition of ‘secondary
qualities’ in (1)), and disjunctive properties are defined in terms of disjunctive
predications. Features of predications are also used in the following
definition of ‘independent qualities’: two qualities, P and Q, are independent
if and only if, for any object x, the predication of P and of Q to x are
logically independent (i.e., that x is P and that x is Q are logically
independent); circularity and redness are independent, circularity and
triangularity are dependent. (If two determinate qualities, e.g., circularity
and triangularity, belong to the se determinable, say shape, then they are
dependent, but if two determinate qualities, e.g., squareness and redness,
belong to different determinables, say shape and color, they are
independent.)
DISPOSITION, PROPERTY,
QUALIA. E.W.A. quality.SYLLOGISM. quantification, the application of one or
more quantifiers (e.g., ‘for all x’, ‘for some y’) to an open formula. A
quantification (or quantified) sentence results from first forming an open
formula from a sentence by replacing expressions belonging to a certain class
of expressions in the sentences by variables (whose substituends are quality
quantification 763 763 the expressions
of that class) and then prefixing the formula with quantifiers using those
variables. For exple, from ‘Bill hates Mary’ we form ‘x hates y’, to which we prefix
the quantifiers ‘for all x’ and ‘for some y’, getting the quantification
sentence ‘for all x, for some y, x hates y’ (‘Everyone hates someone’). In
referential quantification only terms of reference may be replaced by
variables. The replaceable terms of reference are the substituends of the
variables. The values of the variables are all those objects to which reference
could be made by a term of reference of the type that the variables may
replace. Thus the previous exple ‘for all x, for some y, x hates y’ is a
referential quantification. Terms standing for people (‘Bill’, ‘Mary’, e.g.)
are the substituends of the variables ‘x’ and ‘y’. And people are the values of
the variables. In substitutional quantification any type of term may be
replaced by variables. A variable replacing a term has as its substituends all
terms of the type of the replaced term. For exple, from ‘Bill married Mary’ we
may form ‘Bill R Mary’, to which we prefix the quantifier ‘for some R’, getting
the substitutional quantification ‘for some R, Bill R Mary’. This is not a
referential quantification, since the substituends of ‘R’ are binary predicates
(such as ‘marries’), which are not terms of reference. Referential
quantification is a species of objectual quantification. The truth conditions
of quantification sentences objectually construed are understood in terms of
the values of the variable bound by the quantifier. Thus, ‘for all v, fv’ is
true provided ‘fv’ is true for all values of the variable ‘v’; ‘for some v, fv’
is true provided ‘fv’ is true for some value of the variable ‘v’. The truth or
falsity of a substitutional quantification turns instead on the truth or
falsity of the sentences that result from the quantified formula by replacing
variables by their substituends. For exple, ‘for some R, Bill R Mary’ is true
provided some sentence of the form ‘Bill R Mary’ is true. In classical logic
the universal quantifier ‘for all’ is definable in terms of negation and the
existential quantifier ‘for some’: ‘for all x’ is short for ‘not for some x
not’. The existential quantifier is similarly definable in terms of negation
and the universal quantifier. In intuitionistic logic, this does not hold. Both
quantifiers are regarded as primitive.
FORMAL LOGIC, PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC. C.S. quantificational shift
fallacy.FORMAL FALLACY. quantification theory, elementary.FORMAL LOGIC.
quantifier.FORMAL LOGIC, PLURALITIVE LOGIC. quantifier elimination.UNIVERSAL
INSTANTIATION. quantifier shift fallacy.FORMAL FALLACY. quantifying in, use of
a quantifier outside of an opaque construction to attempt to bind a variable
within it, a procedure whose legitimacy was first questioned by Quine. An
opaque construction is one that resists substitutivity of identity. ong others,
the constructions of quotation, the verbs of propositional attitude, and the
logical modalities can give rise to opacity. For exple, the position of ‘six’
in: (1) ‘six’ contains exactly three letters is opaque, since the substitution
for ‘six’ by its codesignate ‘immediate successor of five’ renders a truth into
a falsehood: (1H) ‘the immediate successor of five’ contains exactly three
letters. Similarly, the position of ‘the earth’ in: (2) Tom believes that the
earth is habitable is opaque, if the substitution of ‘the earth’ by its codesignate
‘the third planet from the sun’ renders a sentence that Tom would affirm into
one that he would deny: (2H) Tom believes that the third planet from the sun is
habitable. Finally, the position of ‘9’ (and of ‘7’) in: (3) Necessarily (9 (
7) is opaque, since the substitution of ‘the number of major planets’ for its
codesignate ‘9’ renders a truth into a falsehood: (3H) Necessarily (the number
of major planets ( 7). Quine argues that since the positions within opaque
constructions resist substitutivity of identity, they cannot meaningfully be
quantified. Accordingly, the following three quantified sentences are
meaningless: (1I) (Ex) (‘x’ ( 7), (2I) (Ex) (Tom believes that x is habitable),
quantificational shift fallacy quantifying in 764 764 (3I) (Ex) necessarily (x ( 7). (1I),
(2I), and (3I) are meaningless, since the second occurrence of ‘x’ in each of
them does not function as a variable in the ordinary (nonessentialist)
quantificational way. The second occurrence of ‘x’ in (1I) functions as a ne that
nes the twenty-fourth letter of the alphabet. The second occurrences of ‘x’ in
(2I) and in (3I) do not function as variables, since they do not allow all
codesignative terms as substituends without change of truth-value. Thus, they
may take objects as values but only objects designated in certain ways, e.g.,
in terms of their intensional or essential properties. So, short of acquiescing
in an intensionalist or essentialist metaphysics, Quine argues, we cannot in
general quantify into opaque contexts.
INTENSIONALITY, MEANING, SUBSTITUTIVITY SALVA
VERITATE. R.F.G. quantity.MAGNITUDE, SYLLOGISM. quantum logic, the logic of
which the models are certain non-Boolean algebras derived from the mathematical
representation of quantum mechanical systems. (The models of classical logic
are, formally, Boolean algebras.) This is the central notion of quantum logic
in the literature, although the term covers a variety of modal logics,
dialogics, and operational logics proposed to elucidate the structure of
quantum mechanics and its relation to classical mechanics. The dynical
quantities of a classical mechanical system (position, momentum, energy, etc.)
form a commutative algebra, and the dynical properties of the system (e.g., the
property that the position lies in a specified range, or the property that the
momentum is greater than zero, etc.) form a Boolean algebra. The transition
from classical to quantum mechanics involves the transition from a commutative
algebra of dynical quantities to a noncommutative algebra of so-called
observables. One way of understanding the conceptual revolution from classical
to quantum mechanics is in terms of a shift from the class of Boolean algebras
to a class of non-Boolean algebras as the appropriate relational structures for
the dynical properties of mechanical systems, hence from a Boolean classical
logic to a non-Boolean quantum logic as the logic applicable to the fundental
physical processes of our universe. This conception of quantum logic was
developed formally in a classic 1936 paper by G. Birkhoff and J. von Neumann
(although von Neumann first proposed the idea in 1927). The features that
distinguish quantum logic from classical logic vary with the formulation. In
the Birkhoff–von Neumann logic, the distributive law of classical logic fails,
but this is by no means a feature of all versions of quantum logic. It follows
from Gleason’s theorem (1957) that the non-Boolean models do not admit
two-valued homomorphisms in the general case, i.e., there is no partition of
the dynical properties of a quantum mechanical system into those possessed by
the system and those not possessed by the system that preserves algebraic
structure, and equivalently no assignment of values to the observables of the
system that preserves algebraic structure. This result was proved independently
for finite sets of observables by S. Kochen and E. P. Specker (1967). It
follows that the probabilities specified by the Born interpretation of the
state function of a quantum mechanical system for the results of measurements
of observables cannot be derived from a probability distribution over the
different possible sets of dynical properties of the system, or the different
possible sets of values assignable to the observables (of which one set is
presumed to be actual), determined by hidden variables in addition to the state
function, if these sets of properties or values are required to preserve
algebraic structure. While Bell’s theorem (1964) excludes hidden variables
satisfying a certain locality condition, the Kochen-Specker theorem relates the
non-Booleanity of quantum logic to the impossibility of hidden variable
extensions of quantum mechanics, in which value assignments to the observables
satisfy constraints imposed by the algebraic structure of the observables. BOOLEAN ALGEBRA, PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE,
QUANTUM MECHANICS. J.Bub quantum mechanics, also called quantum theory, the
science governing objects of atomic and subatomic dimensions. Developed
independently by Werner Heisenberg (as matrix mechanics, 1925) and Erwin
Schrödinger (as wave mechanics, 1926), quantum mechanics breaks with classical
treatments of the motions and interactions of bodies by introducing probability
and acts of measurement in seemingly irreducible ways. In the widely used
Schrödinger version, quantum mechanics associates with each physical system a
time-dependent function, called the state function (alternatively, the state
vector or Y function). The evolution of the system is represented quantity
quantum mechanics 765 765 quantum mechanics
quantum mechanics 766 by the temporal transformation of the state function in
accord with a master equation, known as the Schrödinger equation. Also
associated with a system are “observables”: (in principle) measurable
quantities, such as position, momentum, and energy, including some with no good
classical analogue, such as spin. According to the Born interpretation (1926),
the state function is understood instrumentally: it enables one to calculate,
for any possible value of an observable, the probability that a measurement of
that observable would find that particular value. The formal properties of
observables and state functions imply that certain pairs of observables (such
as linear momentum in a given direction, and position in the se direction) are
incompatible in the sense that no state function assigns probability 1 to the
simultaneous determination of exact values for both observables. This is a
qualitative statement of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (alternatively,
the indeterminacy principle, or just the uncertainty principle).
Quantitatively, that principle places a precise limit on the accuracy with
which one may simultaneously measure a pair of incompatible observables. There
is no corresponding limit, however, on the accuracy with which a single
observable (say, position alone, or momentum alone) may be measured. The
uncertainty principle is sometimes understood in terms of complementarity, a
general perspective proposed by Niels Bohr according to which the connection
between quantum phenomena and observation forces our classical concepts to
split into mutually exclusive packages, both of which are required for a
complete understanding but only one of which is applicable under any particular
experimental conditions. Some take this to imply an ontology in which quantum
objects do not actually possess simultaneous values for incompatible
observables; e.g., do not have simultaneous position and momentum. Others would
hold, e.g., that measuring the position of an object causes an uncontrollable
change in its momentum, in accord with the limits on simultaneous accuracy
built into the uncertainty principle. These ways of treating the principle are
not uncontroversial. Philosophical interest arises in part from where the
quantum theory breaks with classical physics: nely, from the apparent breakdown
of determinism (or causality) that seems to result from the irreducibly
statistical nature of the theory, and from the apparent breakdown of
observer-independence or realism that seems to result from the fundental role
of measurement in the theory. Both features relate to the interpretation of the
state function as providing only a summary of the probabilities for various
measurement outcomes. Einstein, in particular, criticized the theory on these
grounds, and in 1935 suggested a striking thought experiment to show that,
assuming no action-at-a-distance, one would have to consider the state function
as an incomplete description of the real physical state for an individual
system, and therefore quantum mechanics as merely a provisional theory.
Einstein’s exple involved a pair of systems that interact briefly and then
separate, but in such a way that the outcomes of various measurements performed
on each system, separately, show an uncanny correlation. In 1951 the physicist
David Bohm simplified Einstein’s exple, and later (1957) indicated that it may
be realizable experimentally. The physicist John S. Bell then formulated a
locality assumption (1964), similar to Einstein’s, that constrains factors which
might be used in describing the state of an individual system, so-called hidden
variables. Locality requires that in the EinsteinBohm experiment hidden
variables not allow the measurement performed on one system in a correlated
pair immediately to influence the outcome obtained in measuring the other,
spatially separated system. Bell demonstrated that locality (in conjunction
with other assumptions about hidden variables) restricts the probabilities for
measurement outcomes according to a system of inequalities known as the Bell
inequalities, and that the probabilities of certain quantum systems violate
these inequalities. This is Bell’s theorem. Subsequently several experiments of
the Einstein-Bohm type have been performed to test the Bell inequalities. Although
the results have not been univocal, the consensus is that the experimental data
support the quantum theory and violate the inequalities. Current research is
trying to evaluate the implications of these results, including the extent to
which they rule out local hidden variables. (See J. Cushing and E. McMullin,
eds., Philosophical Consequences of Quantum Theory, 1989.) The descriptive
incompleteness with which Einstein charged the theory suggests other problems.
A particularly dratic one arose in correspondence between Schrödinger and
Einstein; nely, the “gruesome” Schrödinger cat paradox. Here a cat is confined
in a closed chber containing a radioactive atom with a fifty-fifty chance of
decaying in the next hour. If the atom decays it triggers a relay that causes a
hmer to fall and smash a glass vial holding a quantity of 766 prussic acid sufficient to kill the
cat. According to the Schrödinger equation, after an hour the state function
for the entire atom ! relay ! hmer ! glass vial ! cat system is such that if we
observe the cat the probability for finding it alive (dead) is 50 percent.
However, this evolved state function is one for which there is no definite
result; according to it, the cat is neither alive nor dead. How then does any
definite fact of the matter arise, and when? Is the act of observation itself
instrumental in bringing about the observed result, does that result come about
by virtue of some special random process, or is there some other account
compatible with definite results of measurements? This is the so-called quantum
measurement problem and it too is an active area of research. DETERMINISM, EINSTEIN, FIELD THEORY,
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, RELATIVITY. A.F. quasi-indicator, Castañeda’s term for
an expression used to ascribe indexical reference to a speaker or thinker. If
John says “I hungry” it is incorrect to
report what he said with ‘John claims that I
hungry’, since ‘I’, being an indexical, expresses speaker’s reference,
not John’s. However, ‘John claims that John is hungry’ fails to represent the
indexical element of his assertion. Instead, we use ‘John claims that he
himself is hungry’, where ‘he himself’ is a quasiindicator depicting John’s
reference to himself qua self. Because of its subjective and perspectival character,
we cannot grasp the exact content of another’s indexical reference, yet
quasi-indexical representations are possible since we confront the world
through generically the se indexical modes of presentation. If these modes are
irreducible, then quasi-indicators are indispensable for describing the
thoughts and experiences of others. As such, they are not equivalent to or
replaceable by any antecedents occurring outside the scope of psychological
verbs to which they are subordinated.
CASTAÑEDA, GUISE THEORY, INDEXICAL, SCOPE. T.K. quasi-quotes.CORNERS.
quaternio terminorum.SYLLOGISM. quiddity.AVICENNA,
ESSENTIALISM. Quine,
W(illard) V(an) O(rman) (b.1908), erican philosopher and logician, renowned for
his rejection of the analytic–synthetic distinction and for his advocacy of
extensionalism, naturalism, physicalism, empiricism, and holism. Quine took his
doctorate in philosophy at Harvard in 1932. After four years of postdoctoral
fellowships, he was appointed to the philosophy faculty at Harvard in 1936. There
he remained until he retired from teaching in 1978. During six decades Quine
published scores of journal articles and more than twenty books. His writings
touch a number of areas, including logic, philosophy of logic, set theory,
philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, metaphysics,
epistemology, and ethics. ong his most influential articles and books are “New
Foundations for Mathematical Logic” (1936), “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951),
“Epistemology Naturalized” (1969), and Word and Object (1960). In “New
Foundations” he develops a set theory that avoids Russell’s paradox without
relying on Russell’s theory of types. Rather, following Ernst Zermelo, Quine
drops the presumption that every membership condition determines a set. The
system of “New Foundations” continues to be widely discussed by mathematicians.
“Two Dogmas” sets out to repudiate what he sees as two dogmas of logical
empiricism. The first is the so-called analytic–synthetic distinction; the
second is a weak form of reductionism to the effect that each synthetic
statement has associated with it a unique set of confirming experiences and a
unique set of infirming experiences. Against the first dogma, Quine argues that
none of the then-current attempts to characterize analyticity (e.g., “a
statement is analytic if and only if it is true solely in virtue of its
meaning”) do so with sufficient clarity, and that any similar characterization
is likewise doomed to fail. Against the second dogma, Quine argues that a more
accurate account of the relation between the statements of a theory and
experience is holistic rather than reductionistic, that is, only as a corporate
body do the statements of a theory face the tribunal of experience. Quine
concludes that the effects of rejecting these two dogmas of empiricism are (1)
a blurring of the supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and natural
science and (2) a shift toward pragmatism. In “Epistemology Naturalized” Quine
argues in favor of naturalizing epistemology: old-time epistemology (first
philosophy) has failed in its attempt to ground science on something firmer
than science and should, therefore, be replaced by a scientific account of how
we acquire our overall theory of the world and why it works so well. quasi-indicator
Quine, W(illard) V(an) O(rman) 767 767
In Word and Object, Quine’s most fous book, he argues in favor of (1)
naturalizing epistemology, (2) physicalism as against phenomenalism and
mind–body dualism, and (3) extensionality as against intensionality. He also
(4) develops a behavioristic conception of sentence-meaning, (5) theorizes
about language learning, (6) speculates on the ontogenesis of reference, (7)
explains various forms of biguity and vagueness, (8) recommends measures for
regimenting language so as to eliminate biguity and vagueness as well as to
make a theory’s logic and ontic commitments perspicuous (“to be is to be the
value of a bound variable”), (9) argues against quantified modal logic and the
essentialism it presupposes, (10) argues for Platonic realism in mathematics,
(11) argues for scientific realism and against instrumentalism, (12) develops a
view of philosophical analysis as explication, (13) argues against analyticity
and for holism, (14) argues against countenancing propositions, and (15) argues
that the meanings of theoretical sentences are indeterminate and that the
reference of terms is inscrutable. Quine’s subsequent writings have largely
been devoted to summing up, clarifying, and expanding on themes found in Word
and Object. ANALYTIC –SYNTHETIC
DISTINCTION, EMPIRICISM, EXTENSIONALISM, HOLISM, NATURALISM, NATURALISTIC
EPISTEMOLOGY, PHYSICALISM. R.F.G. quinque voces.PREDICABLES. quinque voces
quinque voces 768 768 Rabad.IBN DAUD.
racetrack paradox.ZENO’S PARADOXES. racism, hostility, contempt, condescension,
or prejudice, on the basis of social practices of racial classification, and
the wider phenomena of social, economic, and political mistreatment that often
accompany such classification. The most salient instances of racism include the
Nazi ideology of the “Aryan master race,” erican chattel slavery, South African
apartheid in the late twentieth century, and the “Jim Crow” laws and traditions
of segregation that subjugated African descendants in the Southern United States
during the century after the erican Civil War. Social theorists dispute
whether, in its essence, racism is a belief or an ideology of racial
inferiority, a system of social oppression on the basis of race, a form of
discourse, discriminatory conduct, or an attitude of contempt or heartlessness
(and its expression in individual or collective behavior). The case for any of
these as the essence of racism has its drawbacks, and a proponent must show how
the others can also come to be racist in virtue of that essence. Some deny that
racism has any nature or essence, insisting it is nothing more than changing
historical realities. However, these thinkers must explain what makes each
reality an instance of racism. Theorists differ over who and what can be racist
and under what circumstances, some restricting racism to the powerful, others
finding it also in some reactions by the oppressed. Here, the former owe an
explanation of why power is necessary for racism, what sort (economic or
political? general or contextual?), and in whom or what (racist individuals?
their racial groups?). Although virtually everyone thinks racism objectionable,
people disagree over whether its central defect is cognitive (irrationality,
prejudice), economic/prudential (inefficiency), or moral (unnecessary
suffering, unequal treatment). Finally, racism’s connection with the biguous
and controversial concept of race itself is complex. Plainly, racism
presupposes the legitimacy of racial classifications, and perhaps the
metaphysical reality of races. Nevertheless, some hold that racism is also
prior to race, with racial classifications invented chiefly to explain and help
justify the oppression of some peoples by others. The term originated to
designate the pseudoscientific theories of racial essence and inferiority that
arose in Europe in the nineteenth century and were endorsed by Germany’s Third
Reich. Since the civil rights movement in the United States after World War II,
the term has come to cover a much broader range of beliefs, attitudes,
institutions, and practices. Today one hears charges of unconscious, covert,
institutional, paternalistic, benign, anti-racist, liberal, and even reverse
racism. Racism is widely regarded as involving ignorance, irrationality,
unreasonableness, injustice, and other intellectual and moral vices, to such an
extent that today virtually no one is willing to accept the classification of
oneself, one’s beliefs, and so on, as racist, except in contexts of
self-reproach. As a result, classifying anything as racist, beyond the most
egregious cases, is a serious charge and is often hotly disputed.
JUSTICE, POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY, SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. J.L.A.G. radical translation.INDETERMINACY OF
TRANSLATION. Ranuja (1017?–1137?), Indian philosopher who founded the
Visistadvaita tradition. His theistic system provides the theoretical basis for
Bhakti devotional Hinduism. His most important writings are the Sribhafya (a
commentary on the Brahma-Sutras of Badarayana that presents an interpretation
competitive to Shankara’s), the Gita-Bhacya (a commentary on the Bhagavad
Gita), and the Vedarthasgraha (a commentary on the Upanishads). He rejects
natural theology, offers a powerful criticism of Advaita Vedanta, and presents
a systematic articulation of devotional theism.
VISISTADVAITA VEDANTA. K.E.Y. rified type theory.TYPE THEORY. Rist
movement.RUS. Rsey, Frank Plumpton (1903–30), influential 769 R 769 British philosopher of logic and mathematics.
His primary interests were in logic and philosophy, but decades after his
untimely death two of his publications sparked new branches of economics, and
in pure mathematics his combinatorial theorems gave rise to “Rsey theory”
(Economic Journal 1927, 1928; Proc. London Math. Soc., 1928). During his
lifetime Rsey’s philosophical reputation outside Cbridge was based largely on
his architectural reparation of Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica,
strengthening its claim to reduce mathematics to the new logic formulated in
Volume 1 – a reduction rounded out by Wittgenstein’s assessment of logical
truths as tautologous. Rsey clarified this logicist picture of mathematics by
radically simplifying Russell’s rified theory of types, eliminating the need
for the unarguable axiom of reducibility (Proc. London Math. Soc., 1925). His
philosophical work was published mostly after his death. The canon, established
by Richard Braithwaite (The Foundations of Mathematics . . . , 1931), remains
generally intact in D. H. Mellor’s edition (Philosophical Papers, 1990).
Further writings of varying importance appear in his Notes on Philosophy,
Probability and Mathematics (M. C. Galavotti, ed., 1991) and On Truth (Nicholas
Rescher and Ulrich Majer, eds., 1991). As an undergraduate Rsey observed that
the redundancy account of truth “enables us to rule out at once some theories
of truth such as that ‘to be true’ means ‘to work’ or ‘to cohere’ since clearly
‘p works’ and ‘p coheres’ are not equivalent to ‘p’.” Later, in the canonical
“Truth and Probability” (1926), he readdressed to knowledge and belief the main
questions ordinarily associated with truth, analyzing probability as a mode of
judgment in the frework of a theory of choice under uncertainty. Reinvented and
acknowledged by L. J. Savage (Foundations of Statistics, 1954), this forms the
theoretical basis of the currently dominant “Bayesian” view of rational
decision making. Rsey cut his philosophical teeth on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
LogicoPhilosophicus. His translation appeared in 1922; a long critical notice
of the work (1923) was his first substantial philosophical publication. His
later role in Wittgenstein’s rejection of the Tractatus is acknowledged in the
foreword to Philosophical Investigations (1953). The posthumous canon has been
a gold mine. An exple: “Propositions” (1929), reading the theoretical terms (T,
U, etc.) of an axiomatized scientific theory as variables, sees the theory’s
content as conveyed by a “Rsey sentence” saying that for some T, U, etc., the
theory’s axioms are true, a sentence in which all extralogical terms are
observational. Another exple: “General Propositions and Causality” (1929),
offering in a footnote the “Rsey test” for acceptability of conditionals, i.e.,
add the if-clause to your bient beliefs (minimally modified to make the
enlarged set self-consistent), and accept the conditional if the then-clause
follows.
BAYESIAN RATIONALITY,
PROBABILITY, TRUTH. R.J. Rsey-eliminability.BETH’S DEFINABILITY THEOREM. Rsey
sentence.PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. Rsey test.RSEY. Rus,
Petrus, in French, Pierre de La Rée (1515–72), French philosopher who
questioned the authority of Aristotle and influenced the methods and teaching
of logic through the seventeenth century. In 1543 he published his Dialecticae
institutiones libri XV, and in 1555 reworked it as Dialectique – the first
philosophical work in French. He was appointed by François I as the first
Regius Professor of the University of Paris, where he taught until he was
killed in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572. Rus doubted that we can
apodictically intuit the major premises required for Aristotle’s rational
syllogism. Turning instead to Plato, Rus proposed that a “Socratizing” of logic
would produce a more workable and fruitful result. As had Agricola and Sturm,
he reworked the rhetorical and liberal arts traditions’ concepts of “invention,
judgment, and practice,” placing “method” in the center of judgment. Proceeding
in these stages, we can “read” nature’s “arguments,” because they are modeled
on natural reasoning, which in turn can emulate the reasoning by which God
creates. Often his results were depicted graphically in tables (as in chapter
IX of Hobbes’s Leviathan). When carefully done they would show both what is
known and where gaps require further investigation; the process from invention
to judgment is continuous. Rus’s works saw some 750 editions in one century,
fostering the “Rist” movement in emerging Protestant universities and the
erican colonies. He influenced Bacon, Hobbes, Milton, Methodism, Cbridge
Platonism, and Alsted in Europe, and Hooker and Congregationalism in Puritan
erica. Inconsistencies make him less than a major figure in the history
Rsey-eliminability Rus, Petrus 770 770
of logic, but his many works and their rapid popularity led to philosophical
and educational efforts to bring the world of learning to the “plain man” by
using the vernacular, and by more closely correlating the rigor of philosophy
with the memorable and persuasive powers of rhetoric; he saw this goal as
Socratic. C.Wa. randomness.PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. range.RELATION. Rashdall,
Hastings (1858–1924), English historian, theologian, and personal idealist.
While acknowledging that Berkeley needed to be corrected by Kant, Rashdall
defended Berkeley’s thesis that objects only exist for minds. From this he
concluded that there is a divine mind that guarantees the existence of nature
and the objectivity of morality. In his most important philosophical work, The
Theory of Good and Evil (1907), Rashdall argued that actions are right or wrong
according to whether they produce well-being, in which pleasure as well as a
virtuous disposition are constituents. Rashdall coined the ne ‘ideal
utilitarianism’ for this view.
UTILITARIANISM. J.W.A. rational choice theory.DECISION THEORY.
rationalism, the position that reason has precedence over other ways of
acquiring knowledge, or, more strongly, that it is the unique path to
knowledge. It is most often encountered as a view in epistemology, where it is
traditionally contrasted with empiricism, the view that the senses are primary
with respect to knowledge. (It is important here to distinguish empiricism with
respect to knowledge from empiricism with respect to ideas or concepts; whereas
the former is opposed to rationalism, the latter is opposed to the doctrine of
innate ideas.) The term is also encountered in the philosophy of religion,
where it may designate those who oppose the view that revelation is central to
religious knowledge; and in ethics, where it may designate those who oppose the
view that ethical principles are grounded in or derive from emotion, empathy,
or some other non-rational foundation. The term ‘rationalism’ does not
generally designate a single precise philosophical position; there are several
ways in which reason can have precedence, and several accounts of knowledge to
which it may be opposed. Furthermore, the very term ‘reason’ is not altogether
clear. Often it designates a faculty of the soul, distinct from sensation,
imagination, and memory, which is the ground of a priori knowledge. But there
are other conceptions of reason, such as the narrower conception in which
Pascal opposes reason to “knowledge of the heart” (Pensées, section 110), or
the computational conception of reason Hobbes advances in Leviathan I.5. The
term might thus be applied to a number of philosophical positions from the
ancients down to the present. ong the ancients, ‘rationalism’ and ‘empiricism’
especially denote two schools of medicine, the former relying primarily on a
theoretical knowledge of the hidden workings of the human body, the latter
relying on direct clinical experience. The term might also be used to
characterize the views of Plato and later Neoplatonists, who argued that we
have pure intellectual access to the Forms and general principles that govern
reality, and rejected sensory knowledge of the imperfect realization of those
Forms in the material world. In recent philosophical writing, the term
‘rationalism’ is most closely associated with the positions of a group of
seventeenth-century philosophers, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and sometimes
Malebranche. These thinkers are often referred to collectively as the
Continental rationalists, and are generally opposed to the socalled British
empiricists, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. All of the former share the view that
we have a non-empirical and rational access to the truth about the way the
world is, and all privilege reason over knowledge derived from the senses.
These philosophers are also attracted to mathematics as a model for knowledge
in general. But these common views are developed in quite different ways.
Descartes claims to take his inspiration from mathematics – not mathematics as
commonly understood, but the analysis of the ancients. According to Descartes,
we start from first principles known directly by reason (the cogito ergo sum of
the Meditations), what he calls intuition in his Rules for the Direction of the
Mind; all other knowledge is deduced from there. A central aim of his
Meditations is to show that this faculty of reason is trustworthy. The senses,
on the other hand, are generally deceptive, leading us to mistake sensory
qualities for real qualities of extended bodies, and leading us to the false
philosophy of Aristotle and to Scholasticism. Descartes does not reject the
senses altogether; in Meditation VI he argues that the senses are most often
correct in circumstances concerning the preservation of life. Perhaps
paradoxically, experiment is important to Descartes’s scientific randomness
rationalism 771 771 work. However, his
primary interest is in the theoretical account of the phenomena experiment
reveals, and while his position is unclear, he may have considered experiment
as an auxiliary to intuition and deduction, or as a second-best method that can
be used with problems too complex for pure reason. Malebranche, following
Descartes, takes similar views in his Search after Truth, though unlike
Descartes, he emphasizes original sin as the cause of our tendency to trust the
senses. Spinoza’s model for knowledge is Euclidean geometry, as realized in the
geometrical form of the Ethics. Spinoza explicitly argues that we cannot have
adequate ideas of the world through sensation (Ethics II, propositions 16–31).
In the Ethics he does see a role for the senses in what he calls knowledge of
the first and knowledge of the second kinds, and in the earlier Emendation of
the Intellect, he suggests that the senses may be auxiliary aids to genuine
knowledge. But the senses are imperfect and far less valuable, according to
Spinoza, than intuition, i.e., knowledge of the third kind, from which sensory
experience is excluded. Spinoza’s rationalism is implicit in a central
proposition of the Ethics, in accordance with which “the order and connection
of ideas is the se as the order and connection of things” (Ethics II,
proposition 7), allowing one to infer causal connections between bodies and
states of the material world directly from the logical connections between
ideas. Leibniz, too, emphasizes reason over the senses in a number of ways. In
his youth he believed that it would be possible to calculate the truth-value of
every sentence by constructing a logical language whose structure mirrors the
structure of relations between concepts in the world. This view is reflected in
his mature thought in the doctrine that in every truth, the concept of the
predicate is contained in the concept of the subject, so that if one could take
the God’s-eye view (which, he concedes, we cannot), one could determine the
truth or falsity of any proposition without appeal to experience (Discourse on
Metaphysics, section 8). Leibniz also argues that all truths are based on two
basic principles, the law of non-contradiction (for necessary truths), and the
principle of sufficient reason (for contingent truths) (Monadology, section
31), both of which can be known a priori. And so, at least in principle, the
truth-values of all propositions can be determined a priori. This reflects his
practice in physics, where he derives a number of laws of motion from the
principle of the equality of cause and effect, which can be known a priori on
the basis of the principle of sufficient reason. But, at the se time, referring
to the empirical school of ancient medicine, Leibniz concedes that “we are all
mere Empirics in three fourths of our actions” (Monadology, section 28). Each
of the so-called Continental rationalists does, in his own way, privilege
reason over the senses. But the common designation ‘Continental rationalism’
arose only much later, probably in the nineteenth century. For their contemporaries,
more impressed with their differences than their common doctrines, the
Continental rationalists did not form a single homogeneous school of
thought. A PRIORI, EMPIRICISM,
INTUITION. D.Garb. rationalism, Continental.RATIONALISM. rationalism, moral.MORAL
SENSE THEORY. rationality. In its primary sense, rationality is a normative
concept that philosophers have generally tried to characterize in such a way
that, for any action, belief, or desire, if it is rational we ought to choose
it. No such positive characterization has achieved anything close to universal
assent because, often, several competing actions, beliefs, or desires count as
rational. Equating what is rational with what is rationally required eliminates
the category of what is rationally allowed. Irrationality seems to be the more
fundental normative category; for although there are conflicting substantive
accounts of irrationality, all agree that to say of an action, belief, or
desire that it is irrational is to claim that it should always be avoided.
Rationality is also a descriptive concept that refers to those intellectual
capacities, usually involving the ability to use language, that distinguish
persons from plants and most other animals. There is some dispute about whether
some non-human animals, e.g., dolphins and chimpanzees, are rational in this
sense. Theoretical rationality applies to beliefs. An irrational belief is one
that obviously conflicts with what one should know. This characterization of an
irrational belief is identical with the psychiatric characterization of a
delusion. It is a personrelative concept, because what obviously conflicts with
what should be known by one person need not obviously conflict with what should
be known by another. On this account, any belief that is not irrational counts
as rational. Many positive characterizations of rational beliefs have
rationalism, Continental rationality 772
772 been proposed, e.g., (1) beliefs that are either self-evident or
derived from self-evident beliefs by a reliable procedure and (2) beliefs that
are consistent with the overwhelming majority of one’s beliefs; but all of
these positive characterizations have encountered serious objections. Practical
rationality applies to actions. For some philosophers it is identical to
instrumental rationality. On this view, commonly called instrumentalism, acting
rationally simply means acting in a way that is maximally efficient in
achieving one’s goals. However, most philosophers realize that achieving one
goal may conflict with achieving another, and therefore require that a rational
action be one that best achieves one’s goals only when these goals are
considered as forming a system. Others have added that all of these goals must
be ones that would be chosen given complete knowledge and understanding of what
it would be like to achieve these goals. On the latter account of rational
action, the system of goals is chosen by all persons for themselves, and apart
from consistency there is no external standpoint from which to evaluate rationally
any such system. Thus, for a person with a certain system of goals it will be
irrational to act morally. Another account of rational action is not at all
person-relative. On this account, to act rationally is to act on
universalizable principles, so that what is a reason for one person must be a
reason for everyone. One point of such an account is to make it rationally
required to act morally, thus making all immoral action irrational. However, if
to call an action irrational is to claim that everyone would hold that it is
always to be avoided, then it is neither irrational to act immorally in order
to benefit oneself or one’s friends, nor irrational to act morally even when
that goes against one’s system of goals. Only a negative characterization of
what is rational as what is not irrational, which makes it rationally
permissible to act either morally or in accordance with one’s own system of
goals, as long as these goals meet some minimal objective standard, seems
likely to be adequate. EPISTEMOLOGY,
ETHICS, PRACTICAL REASONING, THEORETICAL REASON. B.Ge. rationality,
epistemic.IRRATIONALITY. rationality, instrumental.RATIONALITY. rationality,
practical.RATIONALITY. rationality, theoretical.RATIONALITY. rationalization,
(1) an apparent explanation of a person’s action or attitude by appeal to
reasons that would justify or exculpate the person for it – if, contrary to
fact, those reasons were to explain it; (2) an explanation or interpretation
made from a rational perspective. In sense (1), rationalizations are
pseudo-explanations, often motivated by a desire to exhibit an item in a
favorable light. Such rationalizations sometimes involve self-deception.
Depending on one’s view of justification, a rationalization might justify an
action – by adducing excellent reasons for its performance – even if the agent,
not having acted for those reasons, deserves no credit for so acting. In sense
(2) (a sense popularized in philosophy by Donald Davidson), rationalizations of
intentional actions are genuine explanations in terms of agents’ reasons. In
this sense, we provide a rationalization for – or “rationalize” – Robert’s
shopping at Zed’s by identifying the reason(s) for which he does so: e.g., he
wants to buy an excellent kitchen knife and believes that Zed’s sells the best
cutlery in town. (Also, the reasons for which an agent acts may themselves be
said to rationalize the action.) Beliefs, desires, and intentions may be
similarly rationalized. In each case, a rationalization exhibits the
rationalized item as, to some degree, rational from the standpoint of the
person to whom it is attributed.
RATIONALITY, REASONS FOR ACTION, SELF-DECEPTION. A.R.M. rational
number.MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS. rational psychology, the a priori study of the
mind. This was a large component of eighteenthand nineteenth-century
psychology, and was contrasted by its exponents with empirical psychology,
which is rooted in contingent experience. The term ‘rational psychology’ may
also designate a mind, or form of mind, having the property of rationality.
Current philosophy of mind includes much discussion of rational psychologies,
but the notion is apparently biguous. On one hand, there is rationality as
intelligibility. This is a minimal coherence, say of desires or inferences,
that a mind must possess to be a mind. For instance, Donald Davidson, many
functionalists, and some decision theorists believe there are principles of
rationality of this sort that constrain the appropriate attribution of beliefs
and desires to a person, so that a mind must meet such constraints if it is to
have beliefs and desires. On another pole, there is rationality as
justification. For someone’s psychology to have this property is for that
psychology to be as rationality, epistemic rational psychology 773 773 reason requires it to be, say for that
person’s inferences and desires to be supported by proper reasons given their
proper weight, and hence to be justified. Rationality as justification is a
normative property, which it would seem some minds lack. But despite the
apparent differences between these two sorts of rationality, some important
work in philosophy of mind implies either that these two senses in fact
collapse, or at least that there are intervening and significant senses, so
that things at least a lot like normative principles constrain what our
psychologies are. PHILOSOPHY OF MIND.
J.R.M. rational reconstruction, also called logical reconstruction, translation
of a discourse of a certain conceptual type into a discourse of another
conceptual type with the aim of making it possible to say everything (or
everything important) that is expressible in the former more clearly (or
perspicuously) in the latter. The best-known exple is one in Carnap’s Der
Logische Aufbau der Welt. Carnap attempted to translate discourse concerning
physical objects (e.g., ‘There is a round brown table’) into discourse
concerning immediate objects of sense experience (‘Color patches of
such-and-such chromatic characteristics and shape appear in such-and-such a
way’). He was motivated by the empiricist doctrine that immediate sense
experience is conceptually prior to everything else, including our notion of a
physical object. In addition to talk of immediate sense experience, Carnap
relied on logic and set theory. Since their use is difficult to reconcile with
strict empiricism, his translation would not have fully vindicated empiricism
even if it had succeeded. DEFINITION,
LOGICAL POSITIVISM, PHENOMENALISM. T.Y. ratio recta.INDIRECT DISCOURSE. ratio
scale.MAGNITUDE. ravens paradox.CONFIRMATION. Rawls, John (b.1921), erican
philosopher widely recognized as one of the leading political philosophers of
the twentieth century. His A Theory of Justice (1971) is one of the primary
texts in political philosophy. Political Liberalism (1993) revises Rawls’s
theory to make his conception of justice compatible with liberal pluralism, but
leaves the core of his conception intact. Drawing on the liberal and democratic
social contract traditions of Locke, Rousseau, and Kant, Rawls argues that the
most reasonable principles of justice are those everyone would accept and agree
to from a fair position. Since these principles determine the justice of
society’s political constitution, economy, and property rules (its “basic
structure”), Rawls takes a fair agreement situation to be one where everyone is
impartially situated as equals. In this so-called original position everyone is
equally situated by a hypothetical “veil of ignorance.” This veil requires
individuals to set aside their knowledge of their particular differences,
including knowledge of their talents, wealth, social position, religious and
philosophical views, and particular conceptions of value. Rawls argues that in
the hypothetical original position everyone would reject utilitarianism, perfectionism,
and intuitionist views. Instead they would unanimously accept justice as
fairness. This conception of justice consists mainly of two principles. The
first principle says that certain liberties are basic and are to be equally
provided to all: liberty of conscience, freedom of thought, freedom of
association, equal political liberties, freedom and integrity of the person,
and the liberties that maintain the rule of law. These are basic liberties,
because they are necessary to exercise one’s “moral powers.” The two moral
powers are, first, the capacity to be rational, to have a rational conception
of one’s good; and second, the capacity for a sense of justice, to understand,
apply, and act from requirements of justice. These powers constitute essential
interests of free and equal moral persons since they enable each person to be a
free and responsible agent taking part in social cooperation. Rawls’s second
principle of justice, the difference principle, regulates permissible
differences in rights, powers, and privileges. It defines the limits of
inequalities in wealth, income, powers, and positions that may exist in a just
society. It says, first, that social positions are to be open to all to compete
for on terms of fair equality of opportunity. Second, inequalities in wealth,
income, and social powers and positions are permissible only if they maximally
benefit the least advantaged class in society. The difference principle implies
that a just economic system distributes income and wealth so as to make the
class of least advantaged persons better off than they would be under any
alternative economic system. This principle is to be consistent with the
“priority” of the first principle, which requires that equal basic liberties
cannot be traded for other benefits. The least advanrational reconstruction
Rawls, John 774 774 Ray, John reality
775 taged’s right to vote, for exple, cannot be limited for the sake of
improving their relative economic position. Instead, a basic liberty can be
limited only for the sake of maintaining other basic liberties. Rawls contends
that, taking the two principles of justice together, a just society maximizes
the worth to the least advantaged of the basic liberties shared by all (Theory,
p. 205). The priority of basic liberty implies a liberal egalitarian society in
which each person is ensured adequate resources to effectively exercise her
basic liberties and become independent and self-governing. A just society is
then governed by a liberal-democratic constitution that protects the basic
liberties and provides citizens with equally effective rights to participate in
electoral processes and influence legislation. Economically a just society
incorporates a modified market system that extensively distributes income and
wealth – either a “property-owning democracy” with widespread ownership of
means of production, or liberal socialism.
CONTRACTARIANISM, JUSTICE, KANT, LIBERALISM, RIGHTS, UTILITARIANISM.
S.Fr. Ray, John (1627–1705), English naturalist whose work on the structure and
habits of plants and animals led to important conclusions on the methodology of
classification and gave a strong impetus to the design argument in natural
theology. In an early paper he argued that the determining characteristics of a
species are those transmitted by seed, since color, scent, size, etc., vary
with climate and nutriment. Parallels from the animal kingdom suggested the
correct basis for classification would be structural. But we have no knowledge
of real essences. Our experience of nature is of a continuum, and for practical
purposes kinships are best identified by a plurality of criteria. His mature
theory is set out in Dissertatio Brevis (1696) and Methodus Emendata (1703).
The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (1691 and three
revisions) was a best-selling compendium of Ray’s own scientific learning and
was imitated and quarried by many later exponents of the design argument.
Philosophically, he relied on others, from Cicero to Cudworth, and was
superseded by Paley. M.A.St. Razi, al.AL-RazI. reactive attitude.STRAWSON. real
assent.NEWMAN. real definition.DEFINITION. real distinction.FUNDENTUM
DIVISIONIS. real essence.ESSENTIALISM. realism, direct.DIRECT REALISM. realism,
internal.PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. realism, metaphysical.ARMSTRONG, METAPHYSICAL
REALISM. realism, modal.LEWIS, DAVID. realism, moral.MORAL REALISM. realism,
naive.PERCEPTION. realism, perceptual.PERCEPTION. realism, scientific.
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE;
SELLARS, WILFRID. realism, Scotistic.DUNS SCOTUS. realism ante rem.PROPERTY.
realism in rebus.PROPERTY. reality, in standard philosophical usage, how things
actually are, in contrast with their mere appearance. Appearance has to do with
how things seem to a particular perceiver or group of perceivers. Reality is
sometimes said to be twoway-independent of appearance. This means that
appearance does not determine reality. First, no matter how much agreement
there is, based on appearance, about the nature of reality, it is always
conceivable that reality differs from appearance. Secondly, appearances are in
no way required for reality: reality can outstrip the range of all
investigations that we are in a position to make. It may be that reality always
brings with it the possibility of appearances, in the counterfactual sense that
if there were observers suitably situated, then if conditions were not
conducive to error, they would have experiences of such-and-such a kind. But
the truth of such a counterfactual seems to be grounded in the facts of
reality. Phenomenalism holds, to the contrary, that the facts of reality can be
explained by such counterfactuals, but phe
775 reality principle reasons for action 776 nomenalists have failed to
produce adequate non-circular analyses. The concept of reality on which it is
two-wayindependent of experience is sometimes called objective reality.
However, Descartes used this phrase differently, to effect a contrast with
formal or actual reality. He held that there must be at least as much reality
in the efficient and total cause of an effect as in the effect itself, and
applied this principle as follows: “There must be at least as much actual or
formal reality in the efficient and total cause of an idea as objective reality
in the idea itself.” The objective reality of an idea seems to have to do with
its having representational content, while actual or formal reality has to do
with existence independent of the mind. Thus the quoted principle relates
features of the cause of an idea to the representational content of the idea. Descartes’s
main intended applications were to God and material objects. DESCARTES. G.Fo. reality principle.FREUD.
realizability, multiple.FUNCTIONALISM. realization.PHILOSOPHY OF MIND.
realization, physical.REDUCTION. real mathematics.HILBERT’S PROGR. real
number.MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS. real proposition.HILBERT’S PROGR.
reason.PRACTICAL REASON, THEORETICAL REASON. reason,
all-things-considered.REASONS FOR ACTION. reason, evidential.EPISTEMOLOGY.
reason, exciting.HUTCHESON. reason, explaining.REASONS FOR ACTION. reason,
justifying.HUTCHESON. reason, normative.REASONS FOR ACTION. reason,
objective.REASONS FOR ACTION. reason, overriding.REASONS FOR ACTION. reason,
practical.KANT, PRACTICAL REASON. reason, principle of sufficient.LEIBNIZ.
reason, productive.THEORETICAL REASON. reason, pure.KANT. reason,
subjective.REASONS FOR ACTION. reason, theoretical.THEORETICAL REASON.
reasoning.CIRCULAR REASONING, KANT, PRACTICAL REASONING. reasoning,
circular.CIRCULAR REASONING. reasoning, demonstrative.INFERENCE. reasons externalism.EXTERNALISM.
reasons for action, considerations that call for or justify action. They may be
subjective or objective. A subjective reason is a consideration an agent
understands to support a course of action, whether or not it actually does. An
objective reason is one that does support a course of action, regardless of
whether the agent realizes it. What are cited as reasons may be matters either
of fact or of value, but when facts are cited values are also relevant. Thus
the fact that cigarette smoke contains nicotine is a reason for not smoking
only because nicotine has undesirable effects. The most important evaluative
reasons are normative reasons – i.e., considerations having (e.g.) ethical
force. Facts become obligating reasons when, in conjunction with normative
considerations, they give rise to an obligation. Thus in view of the obligation
to help the needy, the fact that others are hungry is an obligating reason to
see they are fed. Reasons for action enter practical thinking as the contents
of beliefs, desires, and other mental states. But not all the reasons one has
need motivate the corresponding behavior. Thus I may recognize an obligation to
pay taxes, yet do so only for fear of punishment. If so, then only my fear is
an explaining reason for my action. An overriding reason is one that takes
precedence over all others. It is often claimed that moral reasons override all
others objectively, and should do so subjectively as well. Finally, one may
speak of an all-things-considered reason – one that after due consideration is
taken as finally determinative of what shall be done. 776
PRACTICAL REASON, REASONS FOR BELIEF. H.J.M. reasons for belief,
roughly, bases of belief. The word ‘belief’ is commonly used to designate both
a particular sort of psychological state, a state of believing, and a
particular intentional content or proposition believed. Reasons for belief
exhibit an analogous duality. A proposition, p, might be said to provide a
normative reason to believe a proposition, q, for instance, when p bears some
appropriate warranting relation to q. And p might afford a perfectly good
reason to believe q, even though no one, as a matter of fact, believes either p
or q. In contrast, p is a reason that I have for believing q, if I believe p
and p counts as a reason (in the sense above) to believe q. Undoubtedly, I have
reason to believe countless propositions that I shall never, as it happens,
come to believe. Suppose, however, that p is a reason for which I believe q. In
that case, I must believe both p and q, and p must be a reason to believe q –
or, at any rate, I must regard it as such. It may be that I must, in addition,
believe q at least in part because I believe p. Reasons in these senses are
inevitably epistemic; they turn on considerations of evidence,
truth-conduciveness, and the like. But not all reasons for belief are of this
sort. An explanatory reason, a reason why I believe p, may simply be an
explanation for my having or coming to have this belief. Perhaps I believe p because
I was brainwashed, or struck on the head, or because I have strong
non-epistemic motives for this belief. (I might, of course, hold the belief on
the basis of unexceptionable epistemic grounds. When this is so, my believing p
may both warrant and explain my believing q.) Reflections of this sort can lead
to questions concerning the overall or “all-things-considered” reasonableness
of a given belief. Some philosophers (e.g., Clifford) argue that a belief’s
reasonableness depends exclusively on its epistemic standing: my believing p is
reasonable for me provided it is epistemically reasonable for me; where belief
is concerned, epistemic reasons are overriding. Others, siding with Jes, have
focused on the role of belief in our psychological economy, arguing that the
reasonableness of my holding a given belief can be affected by a variety of
non-epistemic considerations. Suppose I have some evidence that p is false, but
that I stand to benefit in a significant way from coming to believe p. If that
is so, and if the practical advantages of my holding p considerably outweigh
the practical disadvantages, it might seem obvious that my holding p is
reasonable for me in some all-embracing sense.
PASCAL, REASONS FOR ACTION. J.F.H. reasons internalism.EXTERNALISM. rebirth,
wheel of.
BUDDHISM, SSARA.
recognition, rule of.JURISPRUDENCE. recollection.PLATO, SURVIVAL.
reconstruction.RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. reconstruction, logical.RATIONAL
RECONSTRUCTION. reconstruction, rational.RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. Rectification
of Nes.CHENG MING. recurrence, eternal.ETERNAL RETURN. recursion, definition
by.DEFINITION. recursion, proof by.PROOF BY RECURSION. recursive function
theory, a relatively recent area of mathematics that takes as its point of
departure the study of an extremely limited class of arithmetic functions
called the recursive functions. Strictly speaking, recursive function theory is
a branch of higher arithmetic (number theory, or the theory of natural numbers)
whose universe of discourse is restricted to the nonnegative integers: 0, 1, 2,
etc. However, the techniques and results of the newer area do not resemble
those traditionally associated with number theory. The class of recursive
functions is defined in a way that makes evident that every recursive function
can be computed or calculated. The hypothesis that every calculable function is
recursive, which is known as Church’s thesis, is often taken as a kind of axiom
in recursive function theory. This theory has played an important role in
modern philosophy of mathematics, especially when epistemological issues are
studied.
CHURCH’S THESIS,
COMPUTABILITY, PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS, PROOF BY RECURSION. J.Cor.
redintegration, a psychological process, similar to reasons for belief
redintegration 777 777 or involving
classical conditioning, in which one feature of a situation causes a person to
recall, visualize, or recompose an entire original situation. On opening a pack
of cigarettes, a person may visualize the entire process, including striking
the match, lighting the cigarette, and puffing. Redintegration is used as a
technique in behavior therapy, e.g. when someone trying to refrain from smoking
is exposed to unpleasant odors and vivid pictures of lungs caked with cancer,
and then permitted to smoke. If the unpleasantness of the odors and
visualization outweighs the reinforcement of smoking, the person may resist
smoking. Philosophically, redintegration is of interest for two reasons. First,
the process may be critical in prudence. By bringing long-range consequences of
behavior into focus in present deliberation, redintegration may help to protect
long-range interests. Second, redintegration offers a role for visual images in
producing behavior. Images figure in paradigmatic cases of redintegration. In
recollecting pictures of cancerous lungs, the person may refrain from
smoking.
COGNITIVE PSYCHOTHERAPY,
CONDITIONING. G.A.G. reducibility, axiom of.TYPE THEORY. reduct, Craig.
CRAIG’S INTERPOLATION
THEOREM. reductio ad absurdum. (1) The principles (A / - A) / -A and (-A / A) /
A. (2) The argument forms ‘If A then B and not-B; therefore, not-A’ and ‘If
not-A then B and not-B; therefore, A’ and arguments of these forms. Reasoning
via such arguments is known as the method of indirect proof. (3) The rules of
inference that permit (i) inferring not-A having derived a contradiction from A
and (ii) inferring A having derived a contradiction from not-A. Both rules hold
in classical logic and come to the se thing in any logic with the law of double
negation. In intuitionist logic, however, (i) holds but (ii) does not.
DOUBLE NEGATION,
MATHEMATICAL INTUITIONISM. G.F.S. reduction, the replacement of one expression
by a second expression that differs from the first in prima facie reference.
So-called reductions have been meant in the sense of uniformly applicable
explicit definitions, contextual definitions, or replacements suitable only in
a limited range of contexts. Thus, authors have spoken of reductive conceptual
analyses, especially in the early days of analytic philosophy. In particular,
in the sensedatum theory (talk of) physical objects was supposed to be reduced
to (talk of) sense-data by explicit definitions or other forms of conceptual
analysis. Logical positivists talked of the reduction of theoretical vocabulary
to an observational vocabulary, first by explicit definitions, and later by
other devices, such as Carnap’s reduction sentences. These appealed to a test
condition predicate, T (e.g., ‘is placed in water’), and a display predicate, D
(e.g., ‘dissolves’), to introduce a dispositional or other “non-observational”
term, S (e.g., ‘is water-soluble’): (Ex) [Tx / (Dx / Sx]), with ‘/’
representing the material conditional. Negative reduction sentences for
non-occurrence of S took the form (Ex) [NTx / (NDx / - Sx)]. For coinciding
predicate pairs T and TD and -D and ND Carnap referred to bilateral reduction
sentences: (Ex) [Tx / (Dx S Sx)]. Like so many other attempted reductions,
reduction sentences did not achieve replacement of the “reduced” term, S, since
they do not fix application of S when the test condition, T, fails to apply. In
the philosophy of mathematics, logicism claimed that all of mathematics could
be reduced to logic, i.e., all mathematical terms could be defined with the
vocabulary of logic and all theorems of mathematics could be derived from the
laws of logic supplemented by these definitions. Russell’s Principia
Mathematica carried out much of such a progr with a reductive base of something
much more like what we now call set theory rather than logic, strictly
conceived. Many now accept the reducibility of mathematics to set theory, but
only in a sense in which reductions are not unique. For exple, the natural
numbers can equally well be modeled as classes of equinumerous sets or as von
Neumann ordinals. This non-uniqueness creates serious difficulties, with
suggestions that set-theoretic reductions can throw light on what numbers and
other mathematical objects “really are.” In contrast, we take scientific
theories to tell us, unequivocally, that water is H20 and that temperature is
mean translational kinetic energy. Accounts of theory reduction in science
attempt to analyze the circumstance in which a “reducing theory” appears to
tell us the composition of objects or properties described by a “reduced
theory.” The simplest accounts follow the general pattern of reduction: one
provides “identity statements” or “bridge laws,” with at least the form of
explicit definitions, for all terms in the reducibility, axiom of reduction 778 778 reduced theory not already appearing in
the reducing theory; and then one argues that the reduced theory can be deduced
from the reducing theory augmented by the definitions. For exple, the laws of
thermodynics are said to be deducible from those of statistical mechanics,
together with statements such as ‘temperature is mean translational kinetic
energy’ and ‘pressure is mean momentum transfer’. How should the identity
statements or bridge laws be understood? It takes empirical investigation to
confirm statements such as that temperature is mean translational kinetic
energy. Consequently, some have argued, such statements at best constitute
contingent correlations rather than strict identities. On the other hand, if
the relevant terms and their extensions are not mediated by analytic
definitions, the identity statements may be analogized to identities involving
two nes, such as ‘Cicero is Tully’, where it takes empirical investigation to
establish that the two nes happen to have the se referent. One can generalize
the idea of theory reduction in a variety of ways. One may require the bridge
laws to suffice for the deduction of the reduced from the reducing theory
without requiring that the bridge laws take the form of explicit identity
statements or biconditional correlations. Some authors have also focused on the
fact that in practice a reducing theory T2 corrects or refines the reduced
theory T1, so that it is really only a correction or refinement, T1*, that is
deducible from T2 and the bridge laws. Some have consequently applied the term
‘reduction’ to any pair of theories where the second corrects and extends the
first in ways that explain both why the first theory was as accurate as it was
and why it made the errors that it did. In this extended sense, relativity is
said to reduce Newtonian mechanics. Do the social sciences, especially
psychology, in principle reduce to physics? This prospect would support the
so-called identity theory (of mind and body), in particular resolving important
problems in the philosophy of mind, such as the mind–body problem and the
problem of other minds. Many (though by no means all) are now skeptical about
the prospects for identifying mental properties, and the properties of other
special sciences, with complex physical properties. To illustrate with an exple
from economics (adapted from Fodor), in the right circumstances just about any
physical object could count as a piece of money. Thus prospects seem dim for
finding a closed and finite statement of the form ‘being a piece of money is .
. .’, with only predicates from physics appearing on the right (though some
would want to admit infinite definitions in providing reductions). Similarly,
one suspects that attributes, such as pain, are at best functional properties
with indefinitely many possible physical realizations. Believing that
reductions by finitely stable definitions are thus out of reach, many authors
have tried to express the view that mental properties are still somehow
physical by saying that they nonetheless supervene on the physical properties
of the organisms that have them. In fact, these se difficulties that affect
mental properties affect the paradigm case of temperature, and probably all
putative exples of theoretical reduction. Temperature is mean translational
temperature only in gases, and only idealized ones at that. In other
substances, quite different physical mechanisms realize temperature.
Temperature is more accurately described as a functional property, having to do
with the mechanism of heat transfer between bodies, where, in principle, the
required mechanism could be physically realized in indefinitely many ways. In
most and quite possibly all cases of putative theory reduction by strict
identities, we have instead a relation of physical realization, constitution,
or instantiation, nicely illustrated by the property of being a calculator
(exple taken from Cummins). The property of being a calculator can be
physically realized by an abacus, by devices with gears and levers, by ones
with vacuum tubes or silicon chips, and, in the right circumstances, by
indefinitely many other physical arrangements. Perhaps many who have used
‘reduction’, particularly in the sciences, have intended the term in this sense
of physical realization rather than one of strict identity. Let us restrict
attention to properties that reduce in the sense of having a physical
realization, as in the cases of being a calculator, having a certain
temperature, and being a piece of money. Whether or not an object counts as
having properties such as these will depend, not only on the physical
properties of that object, but on various circumstances of the context.
Intensions of relevant language users constitute a plausible candidate for
relevant circumstances. In at least many cases, dependence on context arises
because the property constitutes a functional property, where the relevant
functional system (calculational practices, heat transfer, monetary reduction
reduction 779 779 systems) are much
larger than the propertybearing object in question. These exples raise the
question of whether many and perhaps all mental properties depend ineliminably
on relations to things outside the organisms that have the mental
properties. EXPLANATION, PHILOSOPHY OF
SCIENCE, SUPERVENIENCE, UNITY OF SCIENCE. P.Te. reduction,
phenomenological.HUSSERL. reduction base.REDUCTION. reductionism.
REDUCTION. reductionism,
explanatory.METHODOLOGICAL HOLISM. reduction sentence, for a given predicate Q3
of space-time points in a first-order language, any universal sentence S1 of
the form: (x) [Q1x / (Q2x / Q3 x)], provided that the predicates Q1 and Q2 are
consistently applicable to the se space-time points. If S1 has the form given
above and S2 is of the form (x) [Q4x / (Q5 / - Q6)] and either S1 is a
reduction sentence for Q3 or S2 is a reduction sentence for -Q3, the pair {S1,
S2} is a reduction pair for Q3. If Q1 % Q4 and Q2 % - Q5, the conjunction of S1
and S2 is equivalent to a bilateral reduction sentence for Q3 of the form (x)
[Q1 / (Q3 S Q2)]. These concepts were introduced by Carnap in “Testability and
Meaning,” Philosophy of Science (1936–37), to modify the verifiability
criterion of meaning to a confirmability condition where terms can be
introduced into meaningful scientific discourse by chains of reduction pairs
rather than by definitions. The incentive for this modification seems to have
been to accommodate the use of disposition predicates in scientific discourse.
Carnap proposed explicating a disposition predicate Q3 by bilateral reduction
sentences for Q3. An important but controversial feature of Carnap’s approach
is that it avoids appeal to nonextensional conditionals in explicating
disposition predicates.
referentially
transparent. An occurrence of a singular term t in a sentence ‘. . . t . . .’
is referentially transparent (or purely referential) if and only if the
truth-value of ‘. . . t . . .’ depends on whether the referent of t satisfies
the open sentence ‘. . . x . . .’; the satisfaction of ‘. . . x . . .’ by the
referent of t would guarantee the truth of ‘. . . t . . .’, and failure of this
individual to satisfy ‘. . . x . . .’ would guarantee that ‘. . . t . . .’ was
not true. ‘Boston is a city’ is true if and only if the referent of ‘Boston’
satisfies the open sentence ‘x is a city’, so the occurrence of ‘Boston’ is
referentially transparent. But in ‘The expression “Boston” has six letters’,
the length of the word within the quotes, not the features of the city Boston,
determines the truth-value of the sentence, so the occurrence is not
referentially transparent. According to a Fregean theory of meaning, the
reference of any complex expression (that is a meaningful unit) is a function
of the referents of its parts. Within this context, an occurrence of a
referential term t in a meaningful expression ‘. . . t . . .’ is referentially
transparent (or purely referential) if and only if t contributes its referent
to the reference of ‘. . . t . . .’. The expression ‘the area around Boston’
refers to the particular area it does because of the referent of ‘Boston’ (and
the reference or extension of the function expressed by ‘the area around x’).
An occurrence of a referential term t in a meaningful expression ‘. . . t . .
.’ is referentially opaque if and only if it is not referentially transparent.
Thus, if t has a referentially opaque occurrence in a sentence ‘. . . t . . .’,
then the truth-value of ‘. . . t . . .’ depends on something reduction,
phenomenological referentially transparent 780 780 other than whether the referent of t
satisfies ‘. . . x . . .’. Although these definitions apply to occurrences of
referential terms, the terms ‘referentially opaque’ and ‘referentially
transparent’ are used primarily to classify linguistic contexts for terms as
referentially opaque contexts. If t occurs purely referentially in S but not in
C(S), then C ( ) is a referentially opaque context. But we must qualify this:
C( ) is a referentially opaque context for that occurrence of t in S. It would
not follow (without further argument) that C( ) is a referentially opaque context
for other occurrences of terms in sentences that could be placed into C( ).
Contexts of quotation, propositional attitude, and modality have been widely
noted for their potential to produce referential opacity. Consider: (1) John
believes that the number of planets is less than eight. (2) John believes that
nine is less than eight. If (1) is true but (2) is not, then either ‘the number
of planets’ or ‘nine’ has an occurrence that is not purely referential, because
the sentences would differ in truth-value even though the expressions are
co-referential. But within the sentences: (3) The number of planets is less
than eight. (4) Nine is less than eight. the expressions appear to have purely
referential occurrence. In (3) and (4), the truth-value of the sentence as a
whole depends on whether the referent of ‘The number of planets’ and ‘Nine’
satisfies ‘x is less than eight’. Because the occurrences in (3) and (4) are
purely referential but those in (1) and (2) are not, the context ‘John believes
that ( )’ is a referentially opaque context for the relevant occurrence of at
least one of the two singular terms. Some argue that the occurrence of ‘nine’
in (2) is purely referential because the truth-value of the sentence as a whole
depends on whether the referent, nine, satisfies the open sentence ‘John
believes that x is less than eight’. Saying so requires that we make sense of
the concept of satisfaction for such sentences (belief sentences and others)
and that we show that the concept of satisfaction applies in this way in the
case at hand (sentence (2)). There is controversy about whether these things
can be done. In (1), on the other hand, the truth-value is not determined by
whether nine (the referent of ‘the number of planets’) satisfies the open
sentence, so that occurrence is not purely referential. Modal contexts raise
similar questions. (5) Necessarily, nine is odd. (6) Necessarily, the number of
planets is odd. If (5) is true but (6) is not, then at least one of the
expressions does not have a purely referential occurrence, even though both
appear to be purely referential in the non-modal sentence that appears in the
context ‘Necessarily, ———’. Thus the context is referentially opaque for the
occurrence of at least one of these terms. On an alternative approach,
genuinely singular terms always occur referentially, and ‘the number of
planets’ is not a genuinely singular term. Russell’s theory of definite
descriptions, e.g., provides an alternative semantic analysis for sentences
involving definite descriptions. This would enable us to say that even simple
sentences like (3) and (4) differ considerably in syntactic and semantic
structure, so that the similarity that suggests the problem, the seemingly
similar occurrences of co-referential terms, is merely apparent. DE DICTO, QUANTIFYING IN, SUBSTITUTIVITY
SALVA VERITATE. T.M. referential occurrence.QUANTIFYING IN. referential
opacity.
REFERENTIALLY
TRANSPARENT. referential quantification.QUANTIFICATION. referential theory of
meaning.MEANING, PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE. reflection principles, two varieties
of internal statements related to correctness in formal axiomatic systems. (1)
Proof-theoretic reflection principles are formulated for effectively presented
systems S that contain a modicum of elementary number theory sufficient to
arithmetize their own syntactic notions, as done by Kurt Gödel in his 1931 work
on incompleteness. Let ProvS (x) express that x is the Gödel number of a
statement provable in S, and let nA be the number of A, for any statement A of S.
The weakest reflection principle considered for S is the collection Rfn(S) of
all statements of the form ProvS (nA) P A, which express that if A is provable
from S then A (is true). The proposition ConS expressing the consistency of S
is a consequence of Rfn(S) (obtained by taking A to be a disprovable
statement). Thus, by Gödel’s second referential occurrence reflection
principles 781 781 incompleteness
theorem, Rfn(S) is stronger than S if S is consistent. Reflection principles
are used in the construction of ordinal logics as a systematic means of
overcoming incompleteness. (2) Set-theoretic reflection principles are
formulated for systems S of axiomatic set theory, such as ZF
(Zermelo-Fraenkel). In the simplest form they express that any property A in
the language of S that holds of the universe of “all” sets, already holds of a
portion of that universe coextensive with some set x. This takes the form A P
(Dx)A(x) where in A(x) all quantifiers of A are relativized to x. In contrast
to proof-theoretic reflection principles, these may be established as theorems
of ZF.
GÖDEL’S INCOMPLETENESS
THEOREMS, ORDINAL LOGIC, SET THEORY. S.Fe. reflective equilibrium, as usually
conceived, a coherence method for justifying evaluative principles and
theories. The method was first described by Goodman, who proposed it be used to
justify deductive and inductive principles. According to Goodman (Fact, Fiction
and Forecast, 1965), a particular deductive inference is justified by its
conforming with deductive principles, but these principles are justified in
their turn by conforming with accepted deductive practice. The idea, then, is
that justified inferences and principles are those that emerge from a process
of mutual adjustment, with principles being revised when they sanction
inferences we cannot bring ourselves to accept, and particular inferences being
rejected when they conflict with rules we are unwilling to revise. Thus,
neither principles nor particular inferences are epistemically privileged. At
least in principle, everything is liable to revision. Rawls further articulated
the method of reflective equilibrium and applied it in ethics. According to
Rawls (A Theory of Justice, 1971), inquiry begins with considered moral
judgments, i.e., judgments about which we are confident and which are free from
common sources of error, e.g., ignorance of facts, insufficient reflection, or
emotional agitation. According to narrow reflective equilibrium, ethical
principles are justified by bringing them into coherence with our considered
moral judgments through a process of mutual adjustment. Rawls, however, pursues
a wide reflective equilibrium. Wide equilibrium is attained by proceeding to
consider alternatives to the moral conception accepted in narrow equilibrium,
along with philosophical arguments that might decide ong these conceptions. The
principles and considered judgments accepted in narrow equilibrium are then
adjusted as seems appropriate. One way to conceive of wide reflective
equilibrium is as an effort to construct a coherent system of belief by a
process of mutual adjustment to considered moral judgments and moral principles
(as in narrow equilibrium) along with the background philosophical, social
scientific, and any other relevant beliefs that might figure in the arguments
for and against alternative moral conceptions, e.g., metaphysical views
regarding the nature of persons. As in Goodman’s original proposal, none of the
judgments, principles, or theories involved is privileged: all are open to
revision. COHERENTISM, RAWLS. M.R.D.
reflexive.RELATION. reformed epistemology.EXISTENTIALISM, PLANTINGA. regional
supervenience.SUPERVENIENCE. regress.INFINITE REGRESS ARGUMENT, VICIOUS
REGRESS. regress argument.
EPISTEMIC REGRESS
ARGUMENT, INFINITE REGRESS ARGUMENT. regression analysis, a part of statistical
theory concerned with the analysis of data with the aim of inferring a linear
functional relationship between assumed independent (“regressor”) variables and
a dependent (“response”) variable. A typical exple involves the dependence of
crop yield on the application of fertilizer. For the most part, higher ounts of
fertilizer are associated with higher yields. But typically, if crop yield is
plotted vertically on a graph with the horizontal axis representing ount of fertilizer
applied, the resulting points will not fall in a straight line. This can be due
either to random (“stochastic”) fluctuations (involving measurement errors,
irreproducible conditions, or physical indeterminism) or to failure to take
into account other relevant independent variables (such as ount of rainfall).
In any case, from any resulting “scatter diagr,” it is possible mathematically
to infer a “best-fitting” line. One method is, roughly, to find the line that
minimizes the average absolute distance between a line and the data points
collected. More commonly, the average of the squares of these distances is
minimized (this is the “least squares” method). If more than one independent
variable is suspected, the theory of multiple regression, which takes into
account mulreflective equilibrium regression analysis 782 782 tiple regressors, can be applied: this
can help to minimize an “error term” involved in regression. Computers must be
used for the complex computations typically encountered. Care must be taken in
connection with the possibility that a lawlike, causal dependence is not really
linear (even approximately) over all ranges of the regressor variables (e.g.,
in certain ranges of ounts of application, more fertilizer is good for a plant,
but too much is bad). CURVEFITTING
PROBLEM. E.Ee. regressor variable.REGRESSION ANALYSIS. regularity theory of
causation.CAUSATION. regulative principle.KANT. Reichenbach, Hans (1891–1953),
German philosopher of science and a major leader of the movement known as
logical empiricism. Born in Hburg, he studied engineering for a brief time,
then turned to mathematics, philosophy, and physics, which he pursued at the
universities of Berlin, Munich, and Göttingen. He took his doctorate in
philosophy at Erlangen (1915) with a dissertation on mathematical and
philosophical aspects of probability, and a degree in mathematics and physics
by state exination at Göttingen (1916). In 1933, with Hitler’s rise to power,
he fled to Istanbul, then to the University of California at Los Angeles, where
he remained until his death. Prior to his departure from Germany he was
professor of philosophy of science at the University of Berlin, leader of the
Berlin Group of logical empiricists, and a close associate of Einstein. With Carnap
he founded Erkenntnis, the major journal of scientific philosophy before World
War II. After a short period early in his career as a follower of Kant,
Reichenbach rejected the synthetic a priori, chiefly because of considerations
arising out of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. He remained thereafter
chpion of empiricism, adhering to a probabilistic version of the verifiability
theory of cognitive meaning. Never, however, did he embrace the logical
positivism of the Vienna Circle; indeed, he explicitly described his principal
epistemological work, Experience and Prediction (1938), as his refutation of
logical positivism. In particular, his logical empiricism consisted in
rejecting phenomenalism in favor of physicalism; he rejected phenomenalism both
in embracing scientific realism and in insisting on a thoroughgoing
probabilistic analysis of scientific meaning and scientific knowledge. His main
works span a wide range. In Probability and Induction he advocated the
frequency interpretation of probability and offered a pragmatic justification
of induction. In his philosophy of space and time he defended conventionality
of geometry and of simultaneity. In foundations of quantum mechanics he adopted
a three-valued logic to deal with causal anomalies. He wrote major works on
epistemology, logic, laws of nature, counterfactuals, and modalities. At the
time of his death he had almost completed The Direction of Time, which was
published posthumously (1956).
Reid, Thomas (1710–96),
Scottish philosopher, a defender of common sense and critic of the theory of
impressions and ideas articulated by Hume. Reid was born exactly one year
before Hume, in Strachan, Scotland. A bright lad, he went to Marischal College
in Aberdeen at the age of twelve, studying there with Thomas Blackwell and
George Turnbull. The latter apparently had great influence on Reid. Turnbull
contended that knowledge of the facts of sense and introspection may not be
overturned by reasoning and that volition is the only active power known from experience.
Turnbull defended common sense under the cloak of Berkeley. Reid threw off that
cloak with considerable panache, but he took over the defense of common sense
from Turnbull. Reid moved to a position of regent and lecturer at King’s
College in Aberdeen in 1751. There he formed, with John Gregory, the Aberdeen
Philosophical Society, which met fortnightly, often to discuss Hume. Reid
published his Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense in
1764, and, in the se year, succeeded Ad Smith in the chair of moral philosophy
at Old College in Glasgow. After 1780 he no longer lectured but devoted himself
to his later works, Essays on the Intellectual Powers (1785) and Essays on the
Active Powers (1788). He was highly influential in Scotland and on the
Continent in the eighteenth century and, from time to time, in England and the
United States thereafter. Reid thought that one of his major contributions was
the refutation of Hume’s theory of impressions and ideas. Reid probably was
convinced in his teens of the truth of Berkeley’s doctrine that what the mind
is immediately aware of is always some idea, but his later study of Hume’s
Treatise convinced him that, contrary to regressor variable Reid, Thomas
783 783 Berkeley, it was impossible to
reconcile this doctrine, the theory of ideas, with common sense. Hume had
rigorously developed the theory, Reid said, and drew forth the conclusions.
These, Reid averred, were absurd. They included the denial of our knowledge of
body and mind, and, even more strikingly, of our conceptions of these things.
The reason Reid thought that Hume’s theory of ideas led to these conclusions
was that for Hume, ideas were faded impressions of sense, hence, sensations. No
sensation is like a quality of a material thing, let alone like the object that
has the quality. Consider movement. Movement is a quality of an object wherein
the object changes from one place to another, but the visual sensation that
arises in us is not the change of place of an object, it is an activity of
mind. No two things could, in fact, be more unalike. If what is before the mind
is always some sensation, whether vivacious or faded, we should never obtain
the conception of something other than a sensation. Hence, we could never even
conceive of material objects and their qualities. Even worse, we could not
conceive of our own minds, for they are not sensations either, and only
sensations are immediately before the mind, according to the theory of ideas.
Finally, and even more absurdly, we could not conceive of past sensations or
anything that does not now exist. For all that is immediately before the mind
is sensations that exist presently. Thus, we could not even conceive of
qualities, bodies, minds, and things that do not now exist. But this is absurd,
since it is obvious that we do think of all these things and even of things
that have never existed. The solution, Reid suggested, is to abandon the theory
of ideas and seek a better one. Many have thought Reid was unfair to Hume and
misinterpreted him. Reid’s Inquiry was presented to Hume by Dr. Blair in
manuscript form, however, and in reply Hume does not at all suggest that he has
been misinterpreted or handled unfairly. Whatever the merits of Reid’s
criticism of Hume, it was the study of the consequences of Hume’s philosophy
that accounts for Reid’s central doctrine of the human faculties and their
first principles. Faculties are innate powers, ong them the powers of
conception and conviction. Reid’s strategy in reply to Hume is to build a nativist
theory of conception on the failure of Hume’s theory of ideas. Where the theory
of ideas, the doctrine of impressions and ideas, fails to account for our
conception of something, of qualities, bodies, minds, past things, nonexistent
things, Reid hypothesizes that our conceptions originate from a faculty of the
mind, i.e., from an innate power of conception. This line of argument reflects
Reid’s respect for Hume, whom he calls the greatest metaphysician of the age,
because Hume drew forth the consequences of a theory of conception, which we
might call associationism, according to which all our conceptions result from
associating sensations. Where the associationism of Hume failed, Reid
hypothesized that conceptions arise from innate powers of conception that
manifest themselves in accordance with original first principles of the mind.
The resulting hypotheses were not treated as a priori necessities but as
empirical hypotheses. Reid notes, therefore, that there are marks by which we
can discern the operation of an innate first principle, which include the early
appearance of the operation, its universality in mankind, and its
irresistibility. The operations of the mind that yield our conceptions of
qualities, bodies, and minds all bear these marks, Reid contends, and that
warrants the conclusion that they manifest first principles. It should be noted
that Reid conjectured that nature would be frugal in the implantation of innate
powers, supplying us with no more than necessary to produce the conceptions we
manifest. Reid is, consequently, a parsimonious empiricist in the development
of his nativist psychology. Reid developed his theory of perception in great
detail and his development led, surprisingly, to his articulation of
non-Euclidean geometry. Indeed, while Kant was erroneously postulating the a
priori necessity of Euclidean space, Reid was developing non-Euclidean geometry
to account for the empirical features of visual space. Reid’s theory of
perception is an exple of his empiricism. In the Inquiry, he says that
sensations, which are operations of the mind, and impressions on the organs of
sense, which are material, produce our conceptions of primary and secondary
qualities. Sensations produce our original conceptions of secondary qualities
as the causes of those sensations. They are signs that suggest the existence of
the qualities. A sensation of smell suggests the existence of a quality in the
object that causes the sensation, though the character of the cause is
otherwise unknown. Thus, our original conception of secondary qualities is a
relative conception of some unknown cause of a sensation. Our conception of
primary qualities differs not, as Locke suggested, because of some resemblance
between the sensation and the quality (for, as Berkeley noted, there is no
resemblance between a sensation and quality), but because our original conReid,
Thomas Reid, Thomas 784 784 ceptions
of primary qualities are clear and distinct. The sensation is a sign that
suggests a definite conception of the primary quality, e.g. a definite
conception of the movement of the object, rather than a mere conception of
something, we know not what, that gives rise to the sensation. These
conceptions of qualities signified by sensations result from the operations of
principles of our natural constitution. These signs, which suggest the
conception of qualities, also suggest a conception of some object that has
them. This conception of the object is also relative, in that it is simply a
conception of a subject of the qualities. In the case of physical qualities,
the conception of the object is a conception of a material object. Though
sensations, which are activities of the mind, suggest the existence of
qualities, they are not the only signs of sense perception. Some impressions on
the organs of sense, the latter being material, also give rise to conceptions
of qualities, especially to our conception of visual figure, the seen shape of
the object. But Reid can discern no sensation of shape. There are, of course,
sensations of color, but he is convinced from the experience of those who have
cataracts and see color but not shape that the sensations of color are
insufficient to suggest our conceptions of visual figure. His detailed account
of vision and especially of the seeing of visual figure leads him to one of his
most brilliant moments. He asks what sort of data do we receive upon the eye
and answers that the data must be received at the round surface of the eyeball
and processed within. Thus, visual space is a projection in three dimensions of
the information received on the round surface of the eye, and the geometry of
this space is a non-Euclidean geometry of curved space. Reid goes on to derive
the properties of the space quite correctly, e.g., in concluding that the
angles of a triangle will sum to a figure greater than 180 degrees and thereby
violate the parallels postulate. Thus Reid discovered that a non-Euclidean
geometry was satisfiable and, indeed, insisted that it accurately described the
space of vision (not, however, the space of touch, which he thought was
Euclidean). From the standpoint of his theory of perceptual signs, the exple of
visual figure helps to clarify his doctrine of the signs of perception. We do
not perceive signs and infer what they signify. This inference, Reid was
convinced by Hume, would lack the support of reasoning, and Reid concluded that
reasoning was, in this case, superfluous. The information received on the
surface of the eye produces our conceptions of visual figure immediately.
Indeed, these signs pass unnoticed as they give rise to the conception of
visual figure in the mind. The relation of sensory signs to the external things
they signify originally is effected by a first principle of the mind without
the use of reason. The first principles that yield our conceptions of qualities
and objects yield convictions of the existence of these things at the se time.
A question naturally arises as to the evidence of these convictions. First
principles yield the convictions along with the conceptions, but do we have
evidence of the existence of the qualities and objects we are convinced exist?
We have the evidence of our senses, of our natural faculties, and that is all
the evidence possible here. Reid’s point is that the convictions in questions
resulting from the original principles of our faculties are immediately
justified. Our faculties are, however, all fallible, so the justification that
our original convictions possess may be refuted. We can now better understand
Reid’s reply to Hume. To account for our convictions of the existence of body,
we must abandon Hume’s theory of ideas, which cannot supply even the conception
of body. We must discover both the original first principles that yield the
conception and conviction of objects and their qualities, and first principles
to account for our convictions of the past, of other thinking beings, and of
morals. Just as there are first principles of perception that yield convictions
of the existence of presently existing objects, so there are first principles
of memory that yield the convictions of the existence of past things,
principles of testimony that yield the convictions of the thoughts of others,
and principles of morals that yield convictions of our obligations. Reid’s
defense of a moral faculty alongside the faculties of perception and memory is
striking. The moral faculty yields conceptions of the justice and injustice of
an action in response to our conception of that action. Reid shrewdly notes
that different people may conceive of the se action in different ways. I may
conceive of giving some money as an action of gratitude, while you may consider
it squandering money. How we conceive of an action depends on our moral
education, but the response of our moral faculty to an action conceived in a specific
way is original and the se in all who have the faculty. Hence differences in
moral judgment are due, not to principles of the moral faculty, but to
differences in how we conceive of our actions. This doctrine of a moral faculty
again provides a counterpoint to the moral philosophy of Hume, for, according
Reid, Thomas Reid, Thomas 785 785 to
Reid, judgments of justice and injustice pertaining to all matters, including
promises, contracts, and property, arise from our natural faculties and do not
depend on anything artificial. Reid’s strategy for defending common sense is
clear enough. He thinks that Hume showed that we cannot arrive at our
convictions of external objects, of past events, of the thoughts of others, of
morals, or, for that matter, of our own minds, from reasoning about impressions
and ideas. Since those convictions are a fact, philosophy must account for them
in the only way that remains, by the hypothesis of innate faculties that yield
them. But do we have any evidence for these convictions? Evidence, Reid says,
is the ground of belief, and our evidence is that of our faculties. Might our
faculties deceive us? Reid answers that it is a first principle of our
faculties that they are not fallacious. Why should we assume that our faculties
are not fallacious? First, the belief is irresistible. However we wage war with
first principles, the principles of common sense, they prevail in daily life.
There we trust our faculties whether we choose to or not. Second, all
philosophy depends on the assumption that our faculties are not fallacious.
Here Reid employs an ad hominem argument against Hume, but one with
philosophical force. Reid says that, in response to a total skeptic who decides
to trust none of his faculties, he puts his hand over his mouth in silence. But
Hume trusted reason and consciousness, and therefore is guilty of pragmatic
inconsistency in calling the other faculties into doubt. They come from the se
shop, Reid says, and he who calls one into doubt has no right to trust the others.
All our faculties are fallible, and, therefore, we must, to avoid arbitrary
favoritism, trust them all at the outset or trust none. The first principles of
our faculties are trustworthy. They not only account for our convictions, but
are the ground and evidence of those convictions. This nativism is the original
engine of justification. Reid’s theory of original perceptions is supplemented
by a theory of acquired perceptions, those which incorporate the effects of
habit and association, such as the perception of a passing coach. He
distinguishes acquired perceptions from effects of reasoning. The most
important way our original perceptions must be supplemented is by general
conceptions. These result from a process whereby our attention is directed to some
individual quality, e.g., the whiteness of a piece of paper, which he calls
abstraction, and a further process of generalizing from the individual quality
to the general conception of the universal whiteness shared by many
individuals. Reid is a sophisticated nominalist; he says that the only things
that exist are individual, but he includes individual qualities as well as
individual objects. The reason is that individual qualities obviously exist and
are needed as the basis of generalization. To generalize from an individual we
must have some conception of what it is like, and this conception cannot be
general, on pain of circularity or regress, but must be a conception of an
individual quality, e.g., the whiteness of this paper, which it uniquely possesses.
Universals, though predicated of objects to articulate our knowledge, do not
exist. We can think of universals, just as we can think of centaurs, but though
they are the objects of thought and predicated of individuals that exist, they
do not themselves exist. Generalization is not driven by ontology but by
utility. It is we and not nature that sort things into kinds in ways that are
useful to us. This leads to a division-of-labor theory of meaning because
general conceptions are the meanings of general words. Thus, in those domains
in which there are experts, in science or the law, we defer to the experts
concerning the general conceptions that are the most useful in the area in
question. Reid’s theory of the intellectual powers, summarized briefly above,
is supplemented by his theory of our active powers, those that lead to actions.
His theory of the active powers includes a theory of the principles of actions.
These include animal principles that operate without understanding, but the
most salient and philosophically important part of Reid’s theory of the active
powers is his theory of the rational principles of action, which involve
understanding and the will. These rational principles are those in which we
have a conception of the action to be performed and will its performance.
Action thus involves an act of will or volition, but volitions as Reid
conceived of them are not the esoteric inventions of philosophy but, instead,
the commonplace activities of deciding and resolving to act. Reid is a libertarian
and maintains that our liberty or freedom refutes the principle of necessity or
determinism. Freedom requires the power to will the action and also the power
not to will it. The principle of necessity tells us that our action was
necessitated and, therefore, that it was not in our power not to have willed as
we did. It is not sufficient for freedom, as Hume suggested, that we act as we
will. We must also have the Reid, Thomas Reid, Thomas 786 786 power to determine what we will. The
reason is that willing is the means to the end of action, and he who lacks
power over the means lacks power over the end. This doctrine of the active
power over the determinations of our will is founded on the central principle
of Reid’s theory of the active powers, the principle of agent causation. The
doctrine of acts of the will or volitions does not lead to a regress, as
critics allege, because my act of will is an exercise of the most basic kind of
causality, the efficient causality of an agent. I the efficient cause of my acts of will. My
act of will need not be caused by an antecedent act of will because my act of
will is the result of my exercise of my causal power. This fact also refutes an
objection to the doctrine of liberty – that if my action is not necessitated,
then it is fortuitous. My free actions are caused, not fortuitous, though they
are not necessitated, because they are caused by me. How, one might inquire, do
we know that we are free? The doubt that we are free is like other skeptical
doubts, and receives a similar reply, nely, that the conviction of our freedom
is a natural and original conviction arising from our faculties. It occurs
prior to instruction and it is irresistible in practical life. Any person with
two identical coins usable to pay for some item must be convinced that she can
pay with the one or the other; and, unlike the ass of Buridan, she readily
exercises her power to will the one or the other. The conviction of freedom is
an original one, not the invention of philosophy, and it arises from the first
principles of our natural faculties, which are trustworthy and not fallacious.
The first principles of our faculties hang together like links in a chain, and
one must either raise up the whole or the links prove useless. Together, they are
the foundation of true philosophy, science, and practical life, and without
them we shall lead ourselves into the coalpit of skepticism and despair.
Reimarus, Hermann Suel
(1694–1768), German philosopher, born in Hburg and educated in philosophy and
theology at Jena. For most of his life he taught Oriental languages at a high
school in Hburg. The most important writings he published were a treatise on
natural religion, Abhandlungen von den vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natürlichen
Religion (1754); a textbook on logic, Vernunftlehre (1756); and an interesting
work on instincts in animals, Allgemeine Betrachtungen über die Triebe der
Tiere (1760). However, he is today best known for his Apologie oder
Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes (“Apology for or Defense of
the Rational Worshipers of God”), posthumously published in 1774–77. In it,
Reimarus reversed his stance on natural theology and openly advocated a deism
in the British tradition. The controversy created by its publication had a
profound impact on the further development of German theology. Though Reimarus
always remained basically a follower of Wolff, he was often quite critical of
Wolffian rationalism in his discussion of logic and psychology. WOLFF. M.K. Reinhold, Karl Leonhard (1743–1819),
Austrian philosopher who was both a popularizer and a critic of Kant. He was
the first occupant of the chair of critical philosophy established at the
University of Jena in 1787. His Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie (1786/87)
helped to popularize Kantianism. Reinhold also proclaimed the need for a more
“scientific” presentation of the critical philosophy, in the form of a
rigorously deductive system in which everything is derivable from a single
first principle (“the principle of consciousness”). He tried to satisfy this
need with Elementarphilosophie (“Elementary Philosophy” or “Philosophy of the
Elements”), expounded in his Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen
Vorstellungsvermögens (“Attempt at a New Theory of the Human Faculty of Representation,”
1789), Beyträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Missverständnisse der Philosophen I
(“Contributions to the Correction of the Prevailing Misunderstandings of
Philosophers,” 1790), and Ueber das Fundent des philosophischen Wissens (“On
the Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge,” 1791). His criticism of the duality
of Kant’s starting point and of the ad hoc character of his deductions
contributed to the demand for a more coherent exposition of transcendental
idealism, while his strategy for accomplishing this task stimulated others
(above all, Fichte) to seek an even more “fundental” first principle for
philosophy. Reinhold later bece an enthusiastic adherent, first of Fichte’s
Wissenschaftslehre and then of Bardili’s “rational realism,” before finally
adopting a novel “linguistic” approach to philosophical problems.
Reinhold, Karl Leonhard
787 787 reism, also called concretism,
the theory that the basic entities are concrete objects. Reism differs from
nominalism in that the problem of universals is not its only motivation and
often not the principal motivation for the theory. Three types of reism can be
distinguished. (1) Brentano held that every object is a concrete or individual
thing. He said that substances, aggregates of substances, parts of substances,
and individual properties of substances are the only things that exist. There
is no such thing as the existence or being of an object; and there are no
non-existent objects. One consequence of this doctrine is that the object of
thought (what the thought is about) is always an individual object and not a
proposition. For exple, the thought that this paper is white is about this
paper and not about the proposition that this paper is white. Meinong attacked
Brentano’s concretism and argued that thoughts are about “objectives,” not
objects. (2) Kotarbigski, who coined the term ‘reism’, holds as a basic
principle that only concrete objects exist. Although things may be hard or
soft, red or blue, there is no such thing as hardness, softness, redness, or
blueness. Sentences that contain abstract words are either strictly meaningless
or can be paraphrased into sentences that do not contain any abstract words.
Kotarbinski is both a nominalist and a materialist. (Brentano was a nominalist
and a dualist.) (3) Thomas Garrigue Masaryk’s concretism is quite different
from the first two. For him, concretism is the theory that all of a person’s
cognitive faculties participate in every instance of knowing: reason, senses,
emotion, and will. BRENTANO,
KOTARBIGSKI, MEINONG. A.P.M. relation, a two-or-more-place property (e.g.,
loves or between), or the extension of such a property. In set theory, a
relation is any set of ordered pairs (or triplets, etc., but these are
reducible to pairs). For simplicity, the formal exposition here uses the
language of set theory, although an intensional (property-theoretic) view is
later assumed. The terms of a relation R are the members of the pairs
constituting R, the items that R relates. The collection D of all first terms
of pairs in R is the domain of R; any collection with D as a subcollection may
also be so called. Similarly, the second terms of these pairs make up (or are a
subcollection of) the range (counterdomain or converse domain) of R. One
usually works within a set U such that R is a subset of the Cartesian product
U$U (the set of all ordered pairs on U). Relations can be: (1) reflexive (or
exhibit reflexivity): for all a, aRa. That is, a reflexive relation is one
that, like identity, each thing bears to itself. Exples: a weighs as much as b;
or the universal relation, i.e., the relation R such that for all a and b, aRb.
(2) symmetrical (or exhibit symmetry): for all a and b, aRb P bRa. In a
symmetrical relation, the order of the terms is reversible. Exples: a is a sibling
of b; a and b have a common divisor. Also symmetrical is the null relation,
under which no object is related to anything. (3) transitive (or exhibit
transitivity): for all a, b, and c, (aRb & bRc) P aRc. Transitive relations
carry across a middle term. Exples: a is less than b; a is an ancestor of b.
Thus, if a is less than b and b is less than c, a is less than c: less than has
carried across the middle term, b. (4) antisymmetrical: for all a and b, (aRb
& bRa) P a % b. (5) trichotomous, connected, or total (trichotomy): for all
a and b, aRb 7 bRa 7 a % b. (6) asymmetrical: aRb & bRa holds for no a and
b. (7) functional: for all a, b, and c, (aRb & aRc) P b % c. In a
functional relation (which may also be called a function), each first term uniquely
determines a second term. R is non-reflexive if it is not reflexive, i.e., if
the condition (1) fails for at least one object a. R is non-symmetric if (2)
fails for at least one pair of objects (a, b). Analogously for non-transitive.
R is irreflexive (aliorelative) if (1) holds for no object a and intransitive
if (3) holds for no objects a, b, and c. Thus understands is non-reflexive
since some things do not understand themselves, but not irreflexive, since some
things do; loves is nonsymmetric but not asymmetrical; and being a cousin of is
non-transitive but not intransitive, as being mother of is. (1)–(3) define an
equivalence relation (e.g., the identity relation ong numbers or the relation
of being the se age as ong people). A class of objects bearing an equivalence
relation R to each other is an equivalence class under R. (1), (3), and (4)
define a partial order; (3), (5), and (6) a linear order. Similar properties
define other important classifications, such as lattice and Boolean algebra.
The converse of a relation R is the set of all pairs (b, a) such that aRb; the
comreism relation 788 788 plement of R
is the set of all pairs (a, b) such that –aRb (i.e. aRb does not hold). A more
complex exple will show the power of a relational vocabulary. The ancestral of
R is the set of all (a, b) such that either aRb or there are finitely many cI ,
c2, c3, . . . , cn such that aRcI and c1Rc2 and c2Rc3 and . . . and cnRb. Frege
introduced the ancestral in his theory of number: the natural numbers are
exactly those objects bearing the ancestral of the successor-of relation to
zero. Equivalently, they are the intersection of all sets that contain zero and
are closed under the successor relation. (This is formalizable in second-order
logic.) Frege’s idea has many applications. E.g., assume a set U, relation R on
U, and property F. An element a of U is hereditarily F (with respect to R) if a
is F and any object b which bears the ancestral of R to a is also F. Hence F is
here said to be a hereditary property, and the set a is hereditarily finite
(with respect to the membership relation) if a is finite, its members are, as
are the members of its members, etc. The hereditarily finite sets (or the sets
hereditarily of cardinality ‹ k for any inaccessible k) are an important subuniverse
of the universe of sets. Philosophical discussions of relations typically
involve relations as special cases of properties (or sets). Thus nominalists
and Platonists disagree over the reality of relations, since they disagree
about properties in general. Similarly, one important connection is to formal
semantics, where relations are customarily taken as the denotations of
(relational) predicates. Disputes about the notion of essence are also
pertinent. One says that a bears an internal relation, R, to b provided a’s
standing in R to b is an essential property of a; otherwise a bears an external
relation to b. If the essential–accidental distinction is accepted, then a
thing’s essential properties will seem to include certain of its relations to
other things, so that we must admit internal relations. Consider a point in
space, which has no identity apart from its place in a certain system.
Similarly for a number. Or consider my hand, which would perhaps not be the se
object if it had not developed as part of my body. If it is true that I could
not have had other parents – that possible persons similar to me but with
distinct parents would not really be me – then I, too, internally related to other things, nely my
parents. Similar arguments would generate numerous internal relations for
organisms, artifacts, and natural objects in general. Internal relations will
also seem to exist ong properties and relations themselves. Roundness is
essentially a kind of shape, and the relation larger than is essentially the
converse of the relation smaller than. In like usage, a relation between a and
b is intrinsic if it depends just on how a and b are; extrinsic if they have it
in virtue of their relation to other things. Thus, higher-than intrinsically
relates the Alps to the Appalachians. That I prefer viewing the former to the
latter establishes an extrinsic relation between the mountain ranges. Note that
this distinction is obscure (as is internal-external). One could argue that the
Alps are higher than the Appalachians only in virtue of the relation of each to
something further, such as space, light rays, or measuring rods. Another issue
specific to the theory of relations is whether relations are real, given that
properties do exist. That is, someone might reject nominalism only to the
extent of admitting one-place properties. Although such doctrines have some
historical importance (in, e.g., Plato and Bradley), they have disappeared.
Since relations are indispensable to modern logic and semantics, their inferiority
to one-place properties can no longer be seriously entertained. Hence relations
now have little independent significance in philosophy.
ESSENTIALISM, IDENTITY,
METAPHYSICS, POSSIBLE WORLDS, SET THEORY, SPACE. S.J.W. relationalism.FIELD
THEORY. relational logic, the formal study of the properties of and operations
on (binary) relations that was initiated by Peirce between 1870 and 1882. Thus,
in relational logic, one might exine the formal properties of special kinds of
relations, such as transitive relations, or asymmetrical ones, or orderings of
certain types. Or the focus might be on various operations, such as that of
forming the converse or relative product. Formal deductive systems used in such
studies are generally known as calculi of relations.
relativism, the denial
that there are certain kinds of universal truths. There are two main types,
cognitive and ethical. Cognitive relativism holds that there are no universal
truths about the world: the world has no intrinsic characteristics, there are
just different ways of interpreting it. The Greek Sophist Protagoras, the first
person on record to hold such a view, said, “Man is the measure of all things;
of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are
not.” Goodman, Putn, and Rorty are contemporary philosophers who have held
versions of relativism. Rorty says, e.g., that “ ‘objective truth’ is no more
and no less than the best idea we currently have about how to explain what is
going on.” Critics of cognitive relativism contend that it is
self-referentially incoherent, since it presents its statements as universally
true, rather than simply relatively so. Ethical relativism is the theory that
there are no universally valid moral principles: all moral principles are valid
relative to culture or individual choice. There are two subtypes:
conventionalism, which holds that moral principles are valid relative to the
conventions of a given culture or society; and subjectivism, which maintains
that individual choices are what determine the validity of a moral principle.
Its motto is, Morality lies in the eyes of the beholder. As Ernest Hemingway
wrote, “So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel
good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.” Conventionalist
ethical relativism consists of two theses: a diversity thesis, which specifies
that what is considered morally right and wrong varies from society to society,
so that there are no moral principles accepted by all societies; and a
dependency thesis, which specifies that all moral principles derive their
validity from cultural acceptance. From these two ideas relativists conclude
that there are no universally valid moral principles applying everywhere and at
all times. The first thesis, the diversity thesis, or what may simply be called
cultural relativism, is anthropological; it registers the fact that moral rules
differ from society to society. Although both ethical relativists and
non-relativists typically accept cultural relativism, it is often confused with
the normative thesis of ethical relativism. The opposite of ethical relativism
is ethical objectivism, which asserts that although cultures may differ in
their moral principles, some moral principles have universal validity. Even if,
e.g., a culture does not recognize a duty to refrain from gratuitous harm, that
principle is valid and the culture should adhere to it. There are two types of
ethical objectivism, strong and weak. Strong objectivism, sometimes called
absolutism, holds that there is one true moral system with specific moral
rules. The ethics of ancient Israel in the Old Testent with its hundreds of
laws exemplifies absolutism. Weak objectivism holds that there is a core
morality, a determinate set of principles that are universally valid (usually
including prohibitions against killing the innocent, stealing, breaking of
promises, and lying). But weak objectivism accepts an indeterminate area where
relativism is legitimate, e.g., rules regarding sexual mores and regulations of
property. Both types of objectivism recognize what might be called application
relativism, the endeavor to apply moral rules where there is a conflict between
rules or where rules can be applied in different ways. For exple, the ancient
Callactians ate their deceased parents but eschewed the impersonal practice of
burying them as disrespectful, whereas contemporary society has the opposite
attitudes about the care of dead relatives; but both practices exemplify the se
principle of the respect for the dead. According to objectivism, cultures or
forms of life can fail to exemplify an adequate moral community in at least
three ways: (1) the people are insufficiently intelligent to put constitutive
principles in order; (2) they are under considerable stress so that it becomes
too burdensome to live by moral principles; and (3) a combination of (1) and
(2). Ethical relativism is sometimes confused with ethical skepticism, the view
that we cannot know whether there are any valid moral principles. Ethical
nihilism holds that there are no valid moral principles. J. L. Mackie’s error
theory is a version of this view. Mackie held that while we all believe some
moral principles to be true, there are compelling arguments to the contrary.
Ethical objectivism must be distinguished from moral realism, the view that
valid moral principles are true, independently of human choice. Objectivism may
be a form of ethical constructivism, typified by Rawls, whereby objective
principles are simply those that impartial human beings would choose behind the
veil of ignorance. That is, the principles are not truly independent of
hypothetical human choices, but are constructs from those choices. ETHICAL OBJECTIVISM, ETHICS, MORAL
EPISTEMOLOGY, MORAL REALISM, SKEPTICISM. L.P.P. relativism, cultural.RELATIVISM.
relativism, ethical.RELATIVISM. relativism relativism, ethical 790 790 relativism, scientific.THEORY-LADEN.
relativity, a term applied to Einstein’s theories of electrodynics (special
relativity, 1905) and gravitation (general relativity, 1916) because both hold
that certain physical quantities, formerly considered objective, are actually
“relative to” the state of motion of the observer. They are called “special”
and “general” because, in special relativity, electrodynical laws determine a
restricted class of kinematical reference fres, the “inertial fres”; in general
relativity, the very distinction between inertial fres and others becomes a
relative distinction. Special relativity. Classical mechanics makes no
distinction between uniform motion and rest: not velocity, but acceleration is
physically detectable, and so different states of uniform motion are physically
equivalent. But classical electrodynics describes light as wave motion with a
constant velocity through a medium, the “ether.” It follows that the measured
velocity of light should depend on the motion of the observer relative to the
medium. When interferometer experiments suggested that the velocity of light is
independent of the motion of the source, H. A. Lorentz proposed that objects in
motion contract in the direction of motion through the ether (while their local
time “dilates”), and that this effect masks the difference in the velocity of
light. Einstein, however, associated the interferometry results with many other
indications that the theoretical distinction between uniform motion and rest in
the ether lacks empirical content. He therefore postulated that, in
electrodynics as in mechanics, all states of uniform motion are equivalent. To
explain the apparent paradox that observers with different velocities can agree
on the velocity of light, he criticized the idea of an “absolute” or
fre-independent measure of simultaneity: simultaneity of distant events can
only be established by some kind of signaling, but experiment suggested that
light is the only signal with an invariant velocity, and observers in relative
motion who determine simultaneity with light signals obtain different results.
Furthermore, since objective measurement of time and length presupposes
absolute simultaneity, observers in relative motion will also disagree on time
and length. So Lorentz’s contraction and dilatation are not physical effects,
but consequences of the relativity of simultaneity, length, and time, to the
motion of the observer. But this relativity follows from the invariance of the
laws of electrodynics, and the invariant content of the theory is expressed
geometrically in Minkowski spacetime. Logical empiricists took the theory as an
illustration of how epistemological analysis of a concept (time) could
eliminate empirically superfluous notions (absolute simultaneity). General
relativity. Special relativity made the velocity of light a limit for all
causal processes and required revision of Newton’s theory of gravity as an
instantaneous action at a distance. General relativity incorporates gravity
into the geometry of space-time: instead of acting directly on one another,
masses induce curvature in space-time. Thus the paths of falling bodies
represent not forced deviations from the straight paths of a flat space-time,
but “straightest” paths in a curved space-time. While space-time is “locally”
Minkowskian, its global structure depends on mass-energy distribution. The
insight behind this theory is the equivalence of gravitational and inertial
mass: since a given gravitational field affects all bodies equally, weight is
indistinguishable from the inertial force of acceleration; freefall motion is
indistinguishable from inertial motion. This suggests that the Newtonian
decomposition of free fall into inertial and accelerated components is
arbitrary, and that the freefall path itself is the invariant basis for the
structure of space-time. A philosophical motive for the general theory was to
extend the relativity of motion. Einstein saw special relativity’s restricted
class of equivalent reference fres as an “epistemological defect,” and he
sought laws that would apply to any fre. His inspiration was Mach’s criticism
of the Newtonian distinction between “absolute” rotation and rotation relative to
observable bodies like the “fixed stars.” Einstein formulated Mach’s criticism
as a fundental principle: since only relative motions are observable, local
inertial effects should be explained by the cosmic distribution of masses and
by motion relative to them. Thus not only velocity and rest, but motion in
general would be relative. Einstein hoped to effect this generalization by
eliminating the distinction between inertial fres and freely falling fres.
Because free fall remains a privileged state of motion, however,
non-gravitational acceleration remains detectable, and absolute rotation
remains distinct from relative rotation. Einstein also thought that relativity
of motion would result from the general covariance (coordinate-independence) of
his theory – i.e., that general equivalence of coordinate systems meant general
equivalence relativism, scientific relativity 791 791 of states of motion. It is now clear,
however, that general covariance is a mathematical property of physical
theories without direct implications about motion. So general relativity does
not “generalize” the relativity of motion as Einstein intended. Its great
accomplishments are the unification of gravity and geometry and the
generalization of special relativity to space-times of arbitrary curvature,
which has made possible the modern investigation of cosmological
structure. EINSTEIN, FIELD THEORY,
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, SPACE-TIME. R.D. relativity, general.RELATIVITY.
relativity, perceptual.PERCEPTION. relativity, special.
RELATIVITY. relativity,
theory of.RELATIVITY. relativity of knowledge.MANNHEIM. relevance logic, any of
a range of logics and philosophies of logic united by their insistence that the
premises of a valid inference must be relevant to the conclusion. Standard, or
classical, logic contains inferences that break this requirement, e.g., the
spread law, that from a contradiction any proposition whatsoever follows.
Relevance logic had its genesis in a system of strenge Implikation published by
Wilhelm Ackermann in 1956. Ackermann’s idea for rejecting irrelevance was taken
up and developed by Alan Anderson and Nuel Belnap in a series of papers between
1959 and Anderson’s death in 1974. The first main summaries of these researches
appeared under their nes, and those of many collaborators, in Entailment: The
Logic of Relevance and Necessity (vol. 1, 1975; vol. 2, 1992). By the time of
Anderson’s death, a substantial research effort into relevance logic was under
way, and it has continued. Besides the rather vague unity of the idea of
relevance between premises and conclusion, there is a technical criterion often
used to mark out relevance logic, introduced by Belnap in 1960, and applicable
really only to propositional logics (the main focus of concern to date): a
necessary condition of relevance is that premises and conclusion should share a
(propositional) variable. Early attention was focused on systems E of
entailment and T of ticket entailment. Both are subsystems of C. I. Lewis’s
system S4 of strict implication and of classical truth-functional logic (i.e.,
consequences in E and T in ‘P’ are consequences in S4 in ‘ ’ and in classical
logic in ‘/’). Besides rejection of the spread law, probably the most notorious
inference that is rejected is disjunctive syllogism (DS) for extensional
disjunction (which is equivalent to detachment for material implication): A 7
B,ÝA , B. The reason is immediate, given acceptance of Simplification and
Addition: Simplification takes us from A & ÝA to each conjunct, and
Addition turns the first conjunct into A 7 B. Unless DS were rejected, the
spread law would follow. Since the late 1960s, attention has shifted to the
system R of relevant implication, which adds permutation to E, to mingle
systems which extend E and R by the mingle law A P (A P A), and to
contraction-free logics, which additionally reject contraction, in one form
reading (A P (A P B)) P (A P B). R minus contraction (RW) differs from linear
logic, much studied recently in computer science, only by accepting the
distribution of ‘&’ over ‘7’, which the latter rejects. Like linear logic,
relevance logic contains both truth-functional and non-truth-functional
connectives. Unlike linear logic, however, R, E, and T are undecidable (unusual
ong propositional logics). This result was obtained only in 1984. In the early
1970s, relevance logics were given possible-worlds semantics by several authors
working independently. They also have axiomatic, natural deduction, and sequent
(or consecution) formulations. One technical result that has attracted
attention has been the demonstration that, although relevance logics reject DS,
they all accept Ackermann’s rule Gma: that if A 7 B and ÝA are theses, so is B.
A recent result occasioning much surprise was that relevant arithmetic
(consisting of Peano’s postulates on the base of quantified R) does not admit
Gma. IMPLICATION, MODAL LOGIC. S.L.R.
relevant alternative.
CONTEXTUALISM.
reliabilism, a type of theory in epistemology that holds that what qualifies a
belief as knowledge or as epistemically justified is its reliable linkage to
the truth. David Armstrong motivates reliabilism with an analogy between a
thermometer that reliably indicates the temperature and a belief that reliably
indicates the truth. A belief qualifies as knowledge, he says, if there is a
lawlike connection in nature that guarantees that the belief is true. A cousin
of the nomic sufficiency account is the counterfactual approach, proposed by
Dretske, Goldman, and Nozick. A typical formulation of this approach says that
a belief qualifies relativity, general reliabilism 792 792 as knowledge if the belief is true and
the cognizer has reasons for believing it that would not obtain unless it were
true. For exple, someone knows that the telephone is ringing if he believes
this, it is true, and he has a specific auditory experience that would not
occur unless the telephone were ringing. In a slightly different formulation,
someone knows a proposition if he believes it, it is true, and if it were not
true he would not believe it. In the exple, if the telephone were not ringing,
he would not believe that it is, because he would not have the se auditory
experience. These accounts are guided by the idea that to know a proposition it
is not sufficient that the belief be “accidentally” true. Rather, the belief,
or its mode of acquisition, must “track,” “hook up with,” or “indicate” the
truth. Unlike knowledge, justified belief need not guarantee or be “hooked up”
with the truth, for a justified belief need not itself be true. Nonetheless,
reliabilists insist that the concept of justified belief also has a connection
with truth acquisition. According to Goldman’s reliable process account, a
belief’s justificational status depends on the psychological processes that
produce or sustain it. Justified beliefs are produced by appropriate
psychological processes, unjustified beliefs by inappropriate processes. For
exple, beliefs produced or preserved by perception, memory, introspection, and
“good” reasoning are justified, whereas beliefs produced by hunch, wishful
thinking, or “bad” reasoning are unjustified. Why are the first group of
processes appropriate and the second inappropriate? The difference appears to
lie in their reliability. ong the beliefs produced by perception,
introspection, or “good” reasoning, a high proportion are true; but only a low
proportion of beliefs produced by hunch, wishful thinking, or “bad” reasoning
are true. Thus, what qualifies a belief as justified is its being the outcome
of a sequence of reliable belief-forming processes. Reliabilism is a species of
epistemological externalism, because it makes knowledge or justification depend
on factors such as truth connections or truth ratios that are outside the
cognizer’s mind and not necessarily accessible to him. Yet reliabilism
typically emphasizes internal factors as well, e.g., the cognitive processes
responsible for a belief. Process reliabilism is a form of naturalistic
epistemology because it centers on cognitive operations and thereby paves the
way for cognitive psychology to play a role in epistemology. EPISTEMOLOGY, NATURALISTIC EPISTEMOLOGY,
PERCEPTION. A.I.G. religion, natural.NATURAL RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.
religion, philosophy of.NATURAL RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.
reminiscence.PLATO. Renouvier, Charles (1815–1903), French philosopher
influenced by Kant and Comte, the latter being one of his teachers. Renouvier
rejected many of the views of both these philosophers, however, charting his
own course. He emphasized the irreducible plurality and individuality of all
things against the contemporary tendencies toward absolute idealism. Human
individuality he associated with indeterminism and freedom. To the extent that
agents are undetermined by other things and self-determining, they are unique
individuals. Indeterminism also extends to the physical world and to knowledge.
He rejected absolute certitude, but defended the universality of the laws of
logic and mathematics. In politics and religion, he emphasized individual
freedom and freedom of conscience. His emphasis on plurality, indeterminism,
freedom, novelty, and process influenced Jes and, through Jes, erican
pragmatism.
rerum natura (Latin, ‘the
nature of things’), metaphysics. The phrase can also be used more narrowly to
mean the nature of physical reality, and often it presupposes a naturalistic
view of all religion, natural rerum natura 793 793 reality. Lucretius’s epic poem De rerum
natura is an Epicurean physics, designed to underpin the Epicurean morality.
A.P.M. res cogitans.DESCARTES. res extensa.DESCARTES. residues, method
of.MILL’S METHODS. respondent conditioning.
BEHAVIORISM. response
variable.REGRESSION ANALYSIS. responsibility, a condition that relates an agent
to actions of, and consequences connected to, that agent, and is always necessary
and sometimes sufficient for the appropriateness of certain kinds of appraisals
of that agent. Responsibility has no single definition, but is several closely
connected specific concepts. Role responsibility. Agents are identified by
social roles that they occupy, say parent or professor. Typically duties are
associated with such roles – to care for the needs of their children, to attend
classes and publish research papers. A person in a social role is “responsible
for” the execution of those duties. One who carries out such duties is “a
responsible person” or “is behaving responsibly.” Causal responsibility.
Events, including but not limited to human actions, cause other events. The
cause is “responsible” for the effect. Causal responsibility does not imply
consciousness; objects and natural phenomena may have causal responsibility.
Liability responsibility. Practices of praise and ble include constraints on
the mental stance that an agent must have toward an action or a consequence of
action, in order for praise or ble to be appropriate. To meet such constraints
is to meet a fundental necessary condition for liability for praise or ble –
hence the expression ‘liability responsibility’. These constraints include such
factors as intention, knowledge, recklessness toward consequences, absence of
mistake, accident, inevitability of choice. An agent with the capability for
liability responsibility may lack it on some occasion – when mistaken, for
exple. Capacity responsibility. Practices of praise and ble assume a level of
intellectual and emotional capability. The severely mentally disadvantaged or
the very young, for exple, do not have the capacity to meet the conditions for
liability responsibility. They are not “responsible” in that they lack capacity
responsibility. Both morality and law embody and respect these distinctions,
though law institutionalizes and formalizes them. Final or “bottom-line”
assignment of responsibility equivalent to indeed deserving praise or ble
standardly requires each of the latter three specific kinds of responsibility.
The first kind supplies some normative standards for praise or ble.
CAUSATION, DIMINISHED
CAPACITY, FREE WILL, HART, INTENTION, MENS REA. R.A.Sh. responsibility,
diminished.DIMINISHED CAPACITY. restricted quantification.FORMAL LOGIC.
restrictio.PROPRIETATES TERMINORUM. resultance, a relation according to which
one property (the resultant property, sometimes called the consequential
property) is possessed by some object or event in virtue of (and hence as a result
of) that object or event possessing some other property or set of properties.
The idea is that properties of things can be ordered into connected levels,
some being more basic than and giving rise to others, the latter resulting from
the former. For instance, a figure possesses the property of being a triangle
in virtue of its possessing a collection of properties, including being a plane
figure, having three sides, and so on; the former resulting from the latter. An
object is brittle (has the property of being brittle) in virtue of having a
certain molecular structure. It is often claimed that moral properties like
rightness and goodness are resultant properties: an action is right in virtue
of its possessing other properties. These exples make it clear that the nature
of the necessary connection holding between a resultant property and those base
properties that ground it may differ from case to case. In the geometrical
exple, the very concept of being a triangle grounds the resultance relation in
question, and while brittleness is nomologically related to the base properties
from which it results, in the moral case, the resultance relation is arguably
neither conceptual nor causal.
CONSTITUTION, NATURALISM, SUPERVENIENCE. M.C.T. resultant
attribute.SUPERVENIENCE. res cogitans resultant attribute 794 794 retributive justice.JUSTICE,
PUNISHMENT. retributivism.PUNISHMENT. retrocausation.CAUSATION. return,
eternal.ETERNAL RETURN. revelation.PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. revisionary
metaphysics.METAPHYSICS. Rhazes.AL-RAZI. Richard Kilvington.KILVINGTON. Richard
Rufus, also called Richard of Cornwall (d. c.1260), English
philosopher-theologian who wrote some of the earliest commentaries on Aristotle
in the Latin West. His commentaries were not cursory summaries; they included
sustained philosophical discussions. Richard was a master of arts at Paris,
where he studied with Alexander of Hales; he was also deeply influenced by
Robert Grosseteste. He left Paris and joined the Franciscan order in 1238; he
was ordained in England. In 1256, he bece regent master of the Franciscan
studium at Oxford; according to Roger Bacon, he was the most influential
philosophical theologian at Oxford in the second half of the thirteenth
century. In addition to his Aristotle commentaries, Richard wrote two
commentaries on Peter Lombard’s Sentences (c.1250, c.1254). In the first of
these he borrowed freely from Robert Grosseteste, Alexander of Hales, and
Richard Fishacre; the second commentary was a critical condensation of the
lectures of his younger contemporary, St. Bonaventure, presented in Paris.
Richard Rufus was the first medieval proponent of the theory of impetus; his
views on projectile motion were cited by Franciscus Meyronnes. He also
advocated other arguments first presented by Johannes Philoponus. Against the
eternity of the world, he argued: (1) past time is necessarily finite, since it
has been traversed, and (2) the world is not eternal, since if the world had no
beginning, no more time would transpire before tomorrow than before today. He
also argued that if the world had not been created ex nihilo, the first cause
would be mutable. Robert Grosseteste cited one of Richard’s arguments against
the eternity of the world in his notes on Aristotle’s Physics. In theology,
Richard denied the validity of Anselm’s ontological argument, but, anticipating
Duns Scotus, he argued that the existence of an independent being could be
inferred from its possibility. Like Duns Scotus, he employs the formal
distinction as an explanatory tool; in presenting his own views, Duns Scotus
cited Richard’s definition of the formal distinction. Richard stated his
philosophical views briefly, even cryptically; his Latin prose style is
sometimes eccentric, characterized by interjections in which he addresses questions
to God, himself, and his readers. He was hesitant about the value of systematic
theology for the theologian, deferring to biblical exposition as the primary
forum for theological discussion. In systematic theology, he emphasized
Aristotelian philosophy and logic. He was a well-known logician; some scholars
believe he is the fous logician known as the Magister Abstractionum. Though he
borrowed freely from his contemporaries, he was a profoundly original
philosopher. ALEXANDER OF HALES,
BONAVENTURE, GROSSETESTE, PETER LOMBARD. R.W. Richard’s paradox.SEMANTIC
PARADOXES. Rickert, Heinrich.NEO-KANTIANISM. Ricoeur, Paul (b.1913), French
hermeneuticist and phenomenologist who has been a professor at several French
universities as well as the University of Naples, Yale University, and the
University of Chicago. He has received major prizes from France, Germany, and
Italy. He is the author of twenty-some volumes translated in a variety of
languages. ong his best-known books are Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and
the Involuntary; Freud and Philosophy: An Essay of Interpretation; The Conflict
of Interpretations: Essay in Hermeneutics; The Role of the Metaphor:
Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, Time and
Narrative; and Oneself as Another. His early studies with the French
existentialist Marcel resulted in a book-length study of Marcel’s work and
later a series of published dialogues with him. Ricoeur’s philosophical
enterprise is colored by a continuing tension between faith and reason. His
long-standing commitments to both the significance of the individual and the
Christian faith are reflected in his hermeneutical voyage, his commitment to
the Esprit movement, and his interest in the writings of Emmanuel Mounier. This
latter point is also seen in his claim of the inseparability of action and
disretributive justice Ricoeur, Paul 795
795 course in our quest for meaning. In our comprehension of both
history and fiction one must turn to the text to understand its plot as guideline
if we are to comprehend experience of any reflective sort. In the end there are
no metaphysical or epistemological grounds by which meaning can be verified,
and yet our nature is such that possibility must be present before us. Ricoeur
attempts his explanation through a hermeneutic phenomenology. The very
hermeneutics of existence that follows is itself limited by reason’s
questioning of experience and its attempts to transcend the limit through the
language of symbols and metaphors. Freedom and meaning come to be realized in
the actualization of an ethics that arises out of the very act of existing and
thus transcends the mere natural voluntary distinction of a formal ethic. It is
clear from his later work that he rejects any form of foundationalism including
phenomenology as well as nihilism and easy skepticism. Through a sort of
interdependent dialectic that goes beyond the more mechanical models of
Hegelianism or Marxism, the self understands itself and is understood by the
other in terms of its suffering and its moral actions. HEGEL, HERMENEUTICS, HUSSERL, MARCEL,
PHENOMENOLOGY. J.Bi. Riemann, G. F. B.NON-EUCLIDEAN GEOMETRY. right,
absolute.RIGHTS. right, prima facie.RIGHTS. right action.ETHICS. rightness,
objective.OBJECTIVE RIGHTNESS. rightness, subjective.
OBJECTIVE RIGHTNESS.
right of nature.HOBBES. rights, advantageous positions conferred on some
possessor by law, morals, rules, or other norms. There is no agreement on the
sense in which rights are advantages. Will theories hold that rights favor the
will of the possessor over the conflicting will of some other party; interest
theories maintain that rights serve to protect or promote the interests of the
right-holder. Hohfeld identified four legal advantages: liberties, claims,
powers, and immunities. The concept of a right arose in Roman jurisprudence and
was extended to ethics via natural law theory. Just as positive law, the law
posited by human lawmakers, confers legal rights, so the natural law confers
natural rights. Rights are classified by their specific sources in different
sorts of rules. Legal rights are advantageous positions under the law of a
society. Other species of institutional rights are conferred by the rules of
private organizations, of the moral code of a society, or even of some ge.
Those who identify natural law with the moral law often identify natural rights
with moral rights, but some limit natural rights to our most fundental rights
and contrast them with ordinary moral rights. Others deny that moral rights are
natural because they believe that they are conferred by the mores or positive
morality of one’s society. One always possesses any specific right by virtue of
possessing some status. Thus, rights are also classified by status. Civil
rights are those one possesses as a citizen; human rights are possessed by
virtue of being human. Presumably women’s rights, children’s rights, patients’
rights, and the rights of blacks as such are analogous. Human rights play very
much the se role in ethics once played by natural rights. This is partly
because ontological doubts about the existence of God undermine the acceptance
of any natural law taken to consist in divine commands, and epistemological
doubts about self-evident moral truths lead many to reject any natural law
conceived of as the dictates of reason. Although the Thomistic view that
natural rights are grounded on the nature of man is often advocated, most moral
philosophers reject its teleological conception of human nature defined by
essential human purposes. It seems simpler to appeal instead to fundental
rights that must be universal ong human beings because they are possessed
merely by virtue of one’s status as a human being. Human rights are still
thought of as natural in the very broad sense of existing independently of any
human action or institution. This explains how they can be used as an
independent standard in terms of which to criticize the laws and policies of
governments and other organizations. Since human rights are classified by
status rather than source, there is another species of human rights that are
institutional rather than natural. These are the human rights that have been
incorporated into legal systems by international agreements such as the
European Convention on Human Rights. It is sometimes said that while natural
rights were conceived as purely negative rights, such as the right not to be
arbitrarily imprisoned, human rights are conceived more broadly to include
positive social and economic rights, such as the Riemann, G. F. B. rights 796 796 right to social security or to an
adequate standard of living. But this is surely not true by definition.
Traditional natural law theorists such as Grotius and Locke spoke of natural
rights as powers and associated them with liberties, rather than with claims
against interference. And while modern declarations of human rights typically
include social and economic rights, they assume that these are rights in the se
sense that traditional political rights are. Rights are often classified by
their formal properties. For exple, the right not to be battered is a negative
right because it imposes a negative duty not to batter, while the creditor’s
right to be repaid is a positive right because it imposes a positive duty to
repay. The right to be repaid is also a passive right because its content is
properly formulated in the passive voice, while the right to defend oneself is
an active right because its content is best stated in the active voice. Again,
a right in rem is a right that holds against all second parties; a right in
person is a right that holds against one or a few others. This is not quite
Hart’s distinction between general and special rights, rights of everyone
against everyone, such as the right to free speech, and rights arising from
special relations, such as that between creditor and debtor or husband and
wife. Rights are conceptually contrasted with duties because rights are
advantages while duties are disadvantages. Still, many jurists and philosophers
have held that rights and duties are logical correlatives. This does seem to be
true of claim rights; thus, the creditor’s right to be repaid implies the
debtor’s duty to repay and vice versa. But the logical correlative of a liberty
right, such as one’s right to park in front of one’s house, is the absence of
any duty for one not to do so. This contrast is indicated by D. D. Raphael’s
distinction between rights of recipience and rights of action. Sometimes to say
that one has a right to do something is to say merely that it is not wrong for
one to act in this way. This has been called the weak sense of ‘a right’. More
often to assert that one has a right to do something does not imply that
exercising this right is right. Thus, I might have a right to refuse to do a
favor for a friend even though it would be wrong for me to do so. Finally, many
philosophers distinguish between absolute and prima facie rights. An absolute
right always holds, i.e., disadvantages some second party, within its scope; a
prima facie right is one that holds unless the ground of the right is
outweighed by some stronger contrary reason.
DUTY, HOHFELD, NATURAL LAW, PHILOSOPHY OF LAW, POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
C.We. rights, Hohfeldian.HOHFELD. rights, imperfect.GROTIUS. rights,
legal.RIGHTS. rights, natural.RIGHTS. rights, perfect.RIGHTS. rigid
designator.MEANING. rigorism, the view that morality consists in that single
set of simple or unqualified moral rules, discoverable by reason, which applies
to all human beings at all times. It is often said that Kant’s doctrine of the
categorical imperative is rigoristic. Two main objections to rigorism are (1)
some moral rules do not apply universally – e.g., ‘Promises should be kept’
applies only where there is an institution of promising; and (2) some rules
that could be universally kept are absurd – e.g., that everyone should stand on
one leg while the sun rises. Recent interpreters of Kant defend him against
these objections by arguing, e.g., that the “rules” he had in mind are general
guidelines for living well, which are in fact universal and practically
relevant, or that he was not a rigorist at all, seeing moral worth as issuing
primarily from the agent’s character rather than adherence to rules. R.C.
rigorous duty.DUTY. ring of Gyges, a ring that gives its wearer invisibility,
discussed in Plato’s Republic (II, 359b– 360d). Glaucon tells the story of a
man who discovered the ring and used it to usurp the throne to defend the claim
that those who behave justly do so only because they lack the power to act
unjustly. If they could avoid paying the penalty of injustice, Glaucon argues,
everyone would be unjust. PLATO,
SOCRATES. W.J.P. robot.COMPUTER THEORY. role responsibility.RESPONSIBILITY.
Rorty, Richard (b.1931), erican philosopher, notable for the breadth of his
philosophical and cultural interests. He was educated at the University of
Chicago and Yale and has taught at rights, Hohfeldian Rorty, Richard 797 797 Wellesley, Princeton, the University of
Virginia, and Stanford. His early work was primarily in standard areas of
analytic philosophy such as the philosophy of mind, where, for exple, he
developed an important defense of eliminative materialism. In 1979, however, he
published Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, which was both hailed and
denounced as a fundental critique of analytic philosophy. Both the praise and
the abuse were often based on misconceptions, but there is no doubt that Rorty
questioned fundental presuppositions of many Anglo-erican philosophers and
showed affinities for Continental alternatives to analytic philosophy. At root,
however, Rorty’s position is neither analytic (except in its stylistic clarity)
nor Continental (except in its cultural breadth). His view is, rather,
pragmatic, a contemporary incarnation of the distinctively erican
philosophizing of Jes, Peirce, and Dewey. On Rorty’s reading, pragmatism
involves a rejection of the representationalism that has dominated modern
philosophy from Descartes through logical positivism. According to
representationalism, we have direct access only to ideas that represent the
world, not to the world itself. Philosophy has the privileged role of
determining the criteria for judging that our representations are adequate to
reality. A main thrust of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is to discredit
representationalism, first by showing how it has functioned as an unjustified
presupposition in classical modern philosophers such as Descartes, Locke, and
Kant, and second by showing how analytic philosophers such as Wilfrid Sellars
and Quine have revealed the incoherence of representationalist assumptions in
contemporary epistemology. Since, on Rorty’s view, representationalism defines
the epistemological project of modern philosophy, its failure requires that we
abandon this project and, with it, traditional pretensions to a privileged
cognitive role for philosophy. Rorty sees no point in seeking a
non-representationalist basis for the justification or the truth of our
knowledge claims. It is enough to accept as justified beliefs those on which
our epistemic community agrees and to use ‘true’ as an honorific term for
beliefs that we see as “justified to the hilt.” Rorty characterizes his
positive position as “liberal ironism.” His liberalism is of a standard sort,
taking as its basic value the freedom of all individuals: first, their freedom
from suffering, but then also freedom to form their lives with whatever values
they find most compelling. Rorty distinguishes the “public sphere” in which we
all share the liberal commitment to universal freedom from the “private
spheres” in which we all work out our own specific conception of the good. His
ironism reflects his realization that there is no grounding for public or
private values other than our deep (but contingent) commitment to them and his
appreciation of the multitude of private values that he does not himself happen
to share. Rorty has emphasized the importance of literature and literary
criticism – as opposed to traditional philosophy – for providing the citizens
of a liberal society with appropriate sensitivities to the needs and values of
others. ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY; CONTINENTAL
PHILOSOPHY; PRAGMATISM;
QUINE; SELLARS, WILFRID.
G.G. Roscelin de Compiègne (c.1050–c.1125), French philosopher and logician who
bece embroiled in theological controversy when he applied his logical teachings
to the doctrine of the Trinity. Since almost nothing survives of his written
work, we must rely on hostile accounts of his views by Anselm of Canterbury and
Peter Abelard, both of whom openly opposed his positions. Perhaps the most
notorious view Roscelin is said to have held is that universals are merely the
puffs of air produced when a word is pronounced. On this point he opposed views
current ong many theologians that a universal has an existence independent of
language, and somehow is what many different particulars are. Roscelin’s
aversion to any proposal that different things can be some one thing is
probably what led him in his thinking about the three persons of God to a
position that sounded suspiciously like the heresy of tritheism. Roscelin also
evidently held that the qualities of things are not entities distinct from the
subjects that possess them. This indicates that Roscelin probably denied that
terms in the Aristotelian categories other than substance signified anything
distinct from substances. Abelard, the foremost logician of the twelfth
century, studied under Roscelin around 1095 and was undoubtedly influenced by
him on the question of universals. Roscelin’s view that universals are
linguistic entities remained an important option in medieval thought. Otherwise
his positions do not appear to have had much currency in the ensuing
decades.
ABSTRACT ENTITY,
METAPHYSICS. M.M.T. Rosenzweig, Franz (1886–1929), German phiRoscelin de
Compiègne Rosenzweig, Franz 798 798
losopher and Jewish theologian known as one of the founders of religious
existentialism. His early relation to Judaism was tenuous, and at one point he
ce close to converting to Christianity. A religious experience in a synagogue
made him change his mind and return to Judaism. His chief philosophic works are
a two-volume study, Hegel and the State (1920), and his masterpiece, The Star
of Redemption (1921). Rosenzweig’s experience in World War I caused him to
reject absolute idealism on the ground that it cannot account for the privacy
and finality of death. Instead of looking for a unifying principle behind
existence, Rosenzweig starts with three independent realities “given” in
experience: God, the self, and the world. Calling his method “radical
empiricism,” he explains how God, the self, and the world are connected by
three primary relations: creation, revelation, and redemption. In revelation,
God does not communicate verbal statements but merely a presence that calls for
love and devotion from worshipers.
EXISTENTIALISM, JEWISH
PHILOSOPHY. K.See. Rosmini-Serbati, Antonio (1797–1855), Italian philosopher,
Catholic priest, counselor to Pope Pius IX, and supporter of the supremacy of
the church over civil government (Neo-Guelphism). Rosmini had two major
concerns: the objectivity of human knowledge and the synthesis of philosophical
thought within the tradition of Catholic thought. In his Nuovo saggio
sull’origine delle idee (“New Essay on the Origin of Ideas,” 1830), he
identifies the universal a priori intuitive component of all human knowledge
with the idea of being that gives us the notion of a possible or ideal being.
Everything in the world is known by intellectual perception, which is the
synthesis of sensation and the idea of being. Except for the idea of being,
which is directly given by God, all ideas derive from abstraction. The
objectivity of human knowledge rests on its universal origin in the idea of
being. The harmony between philosophy and religion comes from the fact that all
human knowledge is the result of divine revelation. Rosmini’s thought was
influenced by Augustine and Aquinas, and stimulated by the attempt to find a
solution to the contrasting needs of rationalism and empiricism. P.Gar.
Ross, W(illi) D(avid)
(1877–1971), British Aristotelian scholar and moral philosopher. Born in
Edinburgh and educated at the University of Edinburgh and at Balliol College,
Oxford, he bece a fellow of Merton College, then a fellow, tutor, and
eventually provost at Oriel College. He was vice-chancellor of Oxford University
(1941–44) and president of the British Academy (1936–40). He was knighted in
1938 in view of national service. Ross was a distinguished classical scholar:
he edited the Oxford translations of Aristotle (1908–31) and translated the
Metaphysics and the Ethics himself. His Aristotle (1923) is a judicious
exposition of Aristotle’s work as a whole. Kant’s Ethical Theory (1954) is a
commentary on Kant’s The Groundwork of Ethics. His major contribution to
philosophy was in ethics: The Right and the Good (1930) and Foundations of
Ethics(1939). The view he expressed there was controversial in English-speaking
countries for ten years or so. He held that ‘right’ and ‘good’ are empirically
indefinable terms that ne objective properties the presence of which is known
intuitively by persons who are mature and educated. We first cognize them in
particular instances, then arrive at general principles involving them by
“intuitive induction.” (He thought every ethical theory must admit at least one
intuition.) The knowledge of moral principles is thus rather like knowledge of
the principles of geometry. ‘Right’ (‘dutiful’) applies to acts, in the sense
of what an agent brings about (and there is no duty to act from a good motive,
and a right act can have a bad motive); ‘morally good’ applies primarily to the
desires that bring about action. He castigated utilitarianism as absorbing all
duties into enhancing the wellbeing of everyone affected, whereas in fact we
have strong special obligations to keep promises, make reparation for injuries,
repay services done, distribute happiness in accord with merit, benefit
individuals generally (and he concedes this is a weighty matter) and ourselves
(only in respect of knowledge and virtue), and not injure others (normally a
stronger obligation than that to benefit). That we have these “prima facie”
duties is self-evident, but they are only prima facie in the sense that they
are actual duties only if there is no stronger conflicting prima facie duty;
and when prima facie duties conflict, what one ought to do is what satisfies
all of them best – although which this is is a matter of judgment, not
self-evidence. (He conceded, however, in contrast to his general critique of
utilitarianism, that public support of these prima facie principles with their
intuitive strength can be justified on utilitarian grounds.) To meet various
counterexples Ross introduced complications, such as that a promise is not
binding if disRosmini-Serbati, Antonio Ross, W(illi) D(avid) 799 799 charge of it will not benefit the
promisee (providing this was an implicit understanding), and it is less binding
if made long ago or in a casual manner. Only four states of affairs are good in
themselves: desire to do one’s duty (virtue), knowledge, pleasure, and the distribution
of happiness in accordance with desert. Of these, virtue is more valuable than
any ount of knowledge or pleasure. In Foundations of Ethics he held that virtue
and pleasure are not good in the se sense: virtue is “admirable” but pleasure
only a “worthy object of satisfaction” (so ‘good’ does not ne just one
property).
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
(1712–78), Swiss-born French philosopher, essayist, novelist, and musician,
best known for his theories on social freedom and societal rights, education,
and religion. Born in Geneva, he was largely self-educated and moved to France
as a teenager. Throughout much of his life he moved between Paris and the
provinces with several trips abroad (including a Scottish stay with Hume) and a
return visit to Geneva, where he reconverted to Protestantism from his earlier
conversion to Catholicism. For a time he was a friend of Diderot and other
philosophes and was asked to contribute articles on music for the Encyclopedia.
Rousseau’s work can be seen from at least three perspectives. As social
contract theorist, he attempts to construct a hypothetical state of nature to
explain the current human situation. This evolves a form of philosophical
anthropology that gives us both a theory of human nature and a series of
pragmatic claims concerning social organization. As a social commentator, he
speaks of both practical and ideal forms of education and social organization.
As a moralist, he continually attempts to unite the individual and the citizen
through some form of universal political action or consent. In Discourse on the
Origin and Foundation of Inequality ong Mankind (1755), Rousseau presents us
with an almost idyllic view of humanity. In nature humans are first seen as
little more than animals except for their special species sympathy. Later,
through an explanation of the development of reason and language, he is able to
suggest how humans, while retaining this sympathy, can, by distancing
themselves from nature, understand their individual selves. This leads to
natural community and the closest thing to what Rousseau considers humanity’s
perfect moment. Private property quickly follows on the division of labor, and
humans find themselves alienated from each other by the class divisions
engendered by private property. Thus man, who was born in freedom, now finds
himself in chains. The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right (1762)
has a more bitious goal. With an account of the practical role of the
legislator and the introduction of the concept of the general will, Rousseau
attempts to give us a foundation for good government by presenting a solution
to the conflicts between the particular and the universal, the individual and
the citizen, and the actual and the moral. Individuals, freely agreeing to a
social pact and giving up their rights to the community, are assured of the
liberties and equality of political citizenship found in the contract. It is
only through being a citizen that the individual can fully realize his freedom
and exercise his moral rights and duties. While the individual is naturally
good, he must always guard against being dominated or dominating. Rousseau
finds a solution to the problems of individual freedoms and interests in a
superior form of moral/political action that he calls the general will. The
individual as citizen substitutes “I must” for “I will,” which is also an “I
shall” when it expresses assent to the general will. The general will is a
universal force or statement and thus is more noble than any particular will.
In willing his own interest, the citizen is at the se time willing what is
communally good. The particular and the universal are united. The individual
human participant realizes himself in realizing the good of all. As a practical
political commentator Rousseau knew that the universal and the particular do
not always coincide. For this he introduced the idea of the legislator, which
allows the individual citizen to realize his fulfillment as social being and to
exercise his individual rights through universal consent. In moments of
difference between the majority will and the general will the legislator will
instill the correct moral/political understanding. This will be represented in
the laws. While sovereignty rests with the citizens, Rousseau does not require
that political action be direct. Although all government should be democratic,
various forms of government from representative democracy (preferable in small
societies) to strong monarchies (preferable in large nation-states) may be
acceptable. To shore up the unity and stability of individual societies,
Rousseau suggests a sort of civic religion to which all citizens subscribe and
in which all members Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 800 800 participate. His earlier writings on
education and his later practical treatises on the governments of Poland and
Corsica reflect related concerns with natural and moral development and with
historical and geographical considerations.
SOCIAL CONTRACT. J.Bi.
Royce, Josiah (1855–1916), erican philosopher best known for his pragmatic
idealism, his ethics of loyalty, and his theory of community. Educated at
Berkeley, at Johns Hopkins, and in Germany, he taught philosophy at Harvard
from 1882. Royce held that a concept of the absolute or eternal was needed to
account for truth, ultimate meaning, and reality in the face of very real evil
in human experience. Seeking to reconcile individuals with the Absolute, he
postulated, in The World and the Individual (1899,1901), Absolute Will and
Thought as an expression of the concrete and differentiated individuality of
the world. Royce saw the individual self as both moral and sinful, developing
through social interaction, community experience, and communal and
self-interpretation. Self is constituted by a life plan, by loyalty to an
ultimate goal. Yet selflimitation and egoism, two human sins, work against
achievement of individual goals, perhaps rendering life a senseless failure.
The self needs saving and this is the message of religion, argues Royce (The
Religious Aspects of Philosophy, 1885; The Sources of Religious Insight, 1912).
For Royce, the instrument of salvation is the community. In The Philosophy of
Loyalty (1908), he develops an ethics of loyalty to loyalty, i.e., the
extension of loyalty throughout the human community. In The Problem of
Christianity (1913), Royce presents a doctrine of community that overcomes the
individualism–collectivism dilemma and allows a genuine blending of individual
and social will. Community is built through interpretation, a mediative process
that reconciles two ideas, goals, and persons, bringing common meaning and
understanding. Interpretation involves respect for selves as dynos of ideas and
purposes, the will to interpret, dissatisfaction with partial meanings and
narrowness of view, reciprocity, and mutuality. In this work, the Absolute is a
“Community of Interpretation and Hope,” in which there is an endlessly
accumulating series of interpretations and significant deeds. An individual
contribution thus is not lost but becomes an indispensable element in the
divine life. ong Royce’s influential students were C. I. Lewis, Willi Ernest
Hocking, Norbert Wiener, Santayana, and T. S. Eliot. J.A.K.K. Rufus,
Richard.RICHARD RUFUS. rule, primary.HART. rule, secondary.HART. rule of
addition.DISJUNCTION INTRODUCTION. rule of conjunction.CONJUNCTION
INTRODUCTION. rule of detachment.
rule of law, the largely
formal or procedural properties of a well-ordered legal system. Commonly, these
properties are thought to include: a prohibition of arbitrary power (the
lawgiver is also subject to the laws); laws that are general, prospective,
clear, and consistent (capable of guiding conduct); and tribunals (courts) that
are reasonably accessible and fairly structured to hear and determine legal
claims. Contemporary discussions of the rule of law focus on two major
questions: (1) to what extent is conformity to the rule of law essential to the
very idea of a legal system; and (2) what is the connection between the rule of
law and the substantive moral value of a legal system?
Russell, Bertrand (Arthur
Willi) (1872–1970), British philosopher, logician, social reformer, and man of
letters, one of the founders of analytic philosophy. Born into an aristocratic
political fily, Russell always divided his interests between politics and
philosophy. Orphaned at four, he was brought up by his grandmother, who
educated him at home with the help of tutors. He studied mathematics at Cbridge
from 1890 to 1893, when he turned to philosophy. At home he had absorbed J. S.
Mill’s liberalism, but not his empiricism. At Cbridge he ce under the influence
of neo-Hegelianism, especially the idealism of McTaggart, Ward (his tutor), and
Bradley. His earliest logical views were influenced most by Bradley, especially
Bradley’s rejection of psychologism. But, like Ward and McTaggart, he rejected
Bradley’s metaphysical monism in favor of pluralism (or monadism). Even as an
idealist, he held that scientific knowledge was the best available and that
philosophy should be built around it. Through many subsequent changes, this
belief about science, his pluralism, and his anti-psychologism remained
constant. In 1895, he conceived the idea of an idealist encyclopedia of the
sciences to be developed by the use of transcendental arguments to establish
the conditions under which the special sciences are possible. Russell’s first
philosophical book, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry (1897), was part of
this project, as were other (mostly unfinished and unpublished) pieces on
physics and arithmetic written at this time (see his Collected Papers, vols.
1–2). Russell claimed, in contrast to Kant, to use transcendental arguments in
a purely logical way compatible with his anti-psychologism. In this case,
however, it should be both possible and preferable to replace them by purely
deductive arguments. Another problem arose in connection with asymmetrical
relations, which led to contradictions if treated as internal relations, but
which were essential for any treatment of mathematics. Russell resolved both
problems in 1898 by abandoning idealism (including internal relations and his
Kantian methodology). He called this the one real revolution in his philosophy.
With his Cbridge contemporary Moore, he adopted an extreme Platonic realism,
fully stated in The Principles of Mathematics (1903) though anticipated in A
Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz (1900). Russell’s work on the
sciences was by then concentrated on pure mathematics, but the new philosophy
yielded little progress until, in 1900, he discovered Peano’s symbolic logic,
which offered hope that pure mathematics could be treated without Kantian
intuitions or transcendental arguments. On this basis Russell propounded
logicism, the claim that the whole of pure mathematics could be derived deductively
from logical principles, a position he ce to independently of Frege, who held a
similar but more restricted view but whose work Russell discovered only later.
Logicism was announced in The Principles of Mathematics; its development
occupied Russell, in collaboration with Whitehead, for the next ten years.
Their results were published in Principia Mathematica (1910–13, 3 vols.), in
which detailed derivations were given for Cantor’s set theory, finite and
transfinite arithmetic, and elementary parts of measure theory. As a
demonstration of Russell’s logicism, Principia depends upon much prior
arithmetization of mathematics, e.g. of analysis, which is not explicitly
treated. Even with these allowances much is still left out: e.g., abstract
algebra and statistics. Russell’s unpublished papers (Papers, vols. 4–5),
however, contain logical innovations not included in Principia, e.g.,
anticipations of Church’s lbda-calculus. On Russell’s extreme realism,
everything that can be referred to is a term that has being (though not
necessarily existence). The combination of terms by means of a relation results
in a complex term, which is a proposition. Terms are neither linguistic nor
psychological. The first task of philosophy is the theoretical analysis of propositions
into their constituents. The propositions of logic are unique in that they
remain true when any of their terms (apart from logical constants) are replaced
by any other terms. In 1901 Russell discovered that this position fell prey to
self-referential paradoxes. For exple, if the combination of any number of
terms is a new term, the combination of all terms is a term distinct from any
term. The most fous such paradox is called Russell’s paradox. Russell’s
solution was the theory of types, which banned self-reference by stratifying
terms and expressions into complex hierarchies of disjoint subclasses. The
expression ‘all terms’, e.g., is then meaningless unless restricted to terms of
specified type(s), and the combination of terms of a given type is a term of
different type. A simple version of the theory appeared in Principles of
Mathematics (appendix A), but did not eliminate all the paradoxes. Russell
developed a more elaborate version that did, in “Mathematical Logic as Based on
the Theory of Types” (1908) and in Principia. From 1903 to 1908 Russell sought
to preserve his earlier account of logic by finding other ways to avoid the
paradoxes – including a well-developed substitutional theory of classes and
relations (posthumously published in Essays in Analysis, 1974, and Papers, vol.
5). Other costs of type theory for Russell’s logicism included the vastly
increased complexity of the resulting sysRussell, Bertrand (Arthur Willi)
Russell, Bertrand (Arthur Willi) 802
802 tem and the admission of the problematic axiom of reducibility. Two
other difficulties with Russell’s extreme realism had important consequences:
(1) ‘I met Quine’ and ‘I met a man’ are different propositions, even when Quine
is the man I met. In the Principles, the first proposition contains a man,
while the second contains a denoting concept that denotes the man. Denoting
concepts are like Fregean senses; they are meanings and have denotations. When
one occurs in a proposition the proposition is not about the concept but its
denotation. This theory requires that there be some way in which a denoting
concept, rather than its denotation, can be denoted. After much effort, Russell
concluded in “On Denoting” (1905) that this was impossible and eliminated
denoting concepts as intermediaries between denoting phrases and their
denotations by means of his theory of descriptions. Using firstorder predicate
logic, Russell showed (in a broad, though not comprehensive range of cases) how
denoting phrases could be eliminated in favor of predicates and quantified
variables, for which logically proper nes could be substituted. (These were nes
of objects of acquaintance – represented in ordinary language by ‘this’ and
‘that’. Most nes, he thought, were disguised definite descriptions.) Similar
techniques were applied elsewhere to other kinds of expression (e.g. class nes)
resulting in the more general theory of incomplete symbols. One important
consequence of this was that the ontological commitments of a theory could be
reduced by reformulating the theory to remove expressions that apparently
denoted problematic entities. (2) The theory of incomplete symbols also helped
solve extreme realism’s epistemic problems, nely how to account for knowledge
of terms that do not exist, and for the distinction between true and false
propositions. First, the theory explained how knowledge of a wide range of
items could be achieved by knowledge by acquaintance of a much narrower range.
Second, propositional expressions were treated as incomplete symbols and
eliminated in favor of their constituents and a propositional attitude by
Russell’s multiple relation theory of judgment. These innovations marked the
end of Russell’s extreme realism, though he remained a Platonist in that he
included universals ong the objects of acquaintance. Russell referred to all
his philosophy after 1898 as logical atomism, indicating thereby that certain
categories of items were taken as basic and items in other categories were
constructed from them by rigorous logical means. It depends therefore upon
reduction, which bece a key concept in early analytic philosophy. Logical
atomism changed as Russell’s logic developed and as more philosophical
consequences were drawn from its application, but the label is now most often
applied to the modified realism Russell held from 1905 to 1919. Logic was
central to Russell’s philosophy from 1900 onward, and much of his fertility and
importance as a philosopher ce from his application of the new logic to old
problems. In 1910 Russell bece a lecturer at Cbridge. There his interests
turned to epistemology. In writing a popular book, Problems of Philosophy
(1912), he first ce to appreciate the work of the British empiricists,
especially Hume and Berkeley. He held that empirical knowledge is based on
direct acquaintance with sense-data, and that matter itself, of which we have
only knowledge by description, is postulated as the best explanation of
sense-data. He soon bece dissatisfied with this idea and proposed instead that
matter be logically constructed out of sensedata and unsensed sensibilia,
thereby obviating dubious inferences to material objects as the causes of
sensations. This proposal was inspired by the successful constructions of
mathematical concepts in Principia. He planned a large work, “Theory of Knowledge,”
which was to use the multiple relation theory to extend his account from
acquaintance to belief and inference (Papers, vol. 7). However, the project was
abandoned as incomplete in the face of Wittgenstein’s attacks on the multiple
relation theory, and Russell published only those portions dealing with
acquaintance. The construction of matter, however, went ahead, at least in
outline, in Our Knowledge of the External World (1914), though the only
detailed constructions were undertaken later by Carnap. On Russell’s account,
material objects are those series of sensibilia that obey the laws of physics.
Sensibilia of which a mind is aware (sense-data) provide the experiential basis
for that mind’s knowledge of the physical world. This theory is similar, though
not identical, to phenomenalism. Russell saw the theory as an application of
Ockh’s razor, by which postulated entities were replaced by logical
constructions. He devoted much time to understanding modern physics, including
relativity and quantum theory, and in The Analysis of Matter (1927) he
incorporated the fundental ideas of those theories into his construction of the
physical world. In this book he abandoned sensibilia as fundental constituents
of the world in favor Russell, Bertrand (Arthur Willi) Russell, Bertrand
(Arthur Willi) 803 803 of events,
which were “neutral” because intrinsically neither physical nor mental. In 1916
Russell was dismissed from Cbridge on political grounds and from that time on
had to earn his living by writing and public lecturing. His popular lectures,
“The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” (1918), were a result of this. These
lectures form an interim work, looking back on the logical achievements of
1905–10 and emphasizing their importance for philosophy, while taking stock of
the problems raised by Wittgenstein’s criticisms of the multiple relation
theory. In 1919 Russell’s philosophy of mind underwent substantial changes,
partly in response to those criticisms. The changes appeared in “On
Propositions: What They Are and How They Mean” (1919) and The Analysis of Mind
(1921), where the influence of contemporary trends in psychology, especially
behaviorism, is evident. Russell gave up the view that minds are ong the
fundental constituents of the world, and adopted neutral monism, already
advocated by Mach, Jes, and the erican New Realists. On Russell’s neutral
monism, a mind is constituted by a set of events related by subjective temporal
relations (simultaneity, successiveness) and by certain special (“mnemic”) causal
laws. In this way he was able to explain the apparent fact that “Hume’s
inability to perceive himself was not peculiar.” In place of the multiple
relation theory Russell identified the contents of beliefs with images
(“imagepropositions”) and words (“word-propositions”), understood as certain
sorts of events, and analyzed truth (qua correspondence) in terms of
resemblance and causal relations. From 1938 to 1944 Russell lived in the United
States, where he wrote An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940) and his popular
A History of Western Philosophy (1945). His philosophical attention turned from
metaphysics to epistemology and he continued to work in this field after he
returned in 1944 to Cbridge, where he completed his last major philosophical
work, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948). The frework of Russell’s
early epistemology consisted of an analysis of knowledge in terms of justified
true belief (though it has been suggested that he unintentionally anticipated
Edmund Gettier’s objection to this analysis), and an analysis of epistemic
justification that combined fallibilism with a weak empiricism and with a
foundationalism that made room for coherence. This frework was retained in An
Inquiry and Human Knowledge, but there were two sorts of changes that
attenuated the foundationalist and empiricist elements and accentuated the
fallibilist element. First, the scope of human knowledge was reduced. Russell
had already replaced his earlier Moorean consequentialism about values with
subjectivism. (Contrast “The Elements of Ethics,” 1910, with, e.g., Religion
and Science, 1935, or Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954.)
Consequently, what had been construed as self-evident judgments of intrinsic
value ce to be regarded as non-cognitive expressions of desire. In addition,
Russell now reversed his earlier belief that deductive inference can yield new
knowledge. Second, the degree of justification attainable in human knowledge
was reduced at all levels. Regarding the foundation of perceptual beliefs, Russell
ce to admit that the object-knowledge (“acquaintance with a sensedatum” was
replaced by “noticing a perceptive occurrence” in An Inquiry) that provides the
non-inferential justification for a perceptual belief is buried under layers of
“interpretation” and unconscious inference in even the earliest stages of
perceptual processes. Regarding the superstructure of inferentially justified
beliefs, Russell concluded in Human Knowledge that unrestricted induction is
not generally truthpreserving (anticipating Goodman’s “new riddle of
induction”). Consideration of the work of Reichenbach and Keynes on probability
led him to the conclusion that certain “postulates” are needed “to provide the
antecedent probabilities required to justify inductions,” and that the only
possible justification for believing these postulates lies, not in their
self-evidence, but in the resultant increase in the overall coherence of one’s
total belief system. In the end, Russell’s desire for certainty went
unsatisfied, as he felt himself forced to the conclusion that “all human
knowledge is uncertain, inexact, and partial. To this doctrine we have not
found any limitation whatever.” Russell’s strictly philosophical writings of
1919 and later have generally been less influential than his earlier writings.
His influence was eclipsed by that of logical positivism and ordinary language
philosophy. He approved of the logical positivists’ respect for logic and
science, though he disagreed with their metaphysical agnosticism. But his
dislike of ordinary language philosophy was visceral. In My Philosophical
Development (1959), he accused its practitioners of abandoning the attempt to
understand the world, “that grave and important task which philosophy
throughout the ages has hitherto pursued.”
Russian nihilism, a form
of nihilism, a phenomenon mainly of Russia in the 1860s, which, in contrast to
the general cultural nihilism that Nietzsche later criticized (in the 1880s) as
a “dead-end” devaluing of all values, was futureoriented and “instrumental,”
exalting possibility over actuality. Russian nihilists urged the “annihilation”
– figurative and literal – of the past and present, i.e., of realized social
and cultural values and of such values in process of realization, in the ne of
the future, i.e., for the sake of social and cultural values yet to be
realized. Bakunin, as early as 1842, had stated the basic nihilist theme: “the
negation of what exists . . . for the benefit of the future which does not yet
exist.” The bestknown literary exemplar of nihilism in Russia is the character
Bazarov in Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons (1862). Its most articulate
spokesman was Dmitri Pisarev (1840–68), who shared Bazarov’s cultural
anti-Romanticism, philosophical anti-idealism, and unquestioned trust in the
power of natural science to solve social and moral problems. Pisarev
proclaimed, “It is precisely in the [spread-eagled, laboratory] frog that the
salvation . . . of the Russian people is to be found.” And he formulated what
may serve as the manifesto of Russian nihilism: “What can be broken should be
broken; what will stand the blow is fit to live; what breaks into smithereens
is rubbish; in any case, strike right and left, it will not and cannot do any
harm.”
Russian philosophy, the
philosophy produced by Russian thinkers, both in Russia and in the countries to
which they emigrated, from the mideighteenth century to the present. There was
no Renaissance in Russia, but in the early eighteenth century Peter the Great,
in opening a “window to the West,” opened Russia up to Western philosophical
influences. The beginnings of Russian speculation date from that period, in the
dialogues, fables, and poems of the anti-Enlightenment thinker Gregory
Skovoroda (1722–94) and in the social tracts, metaphysical treatises, and poems
of the Enlightenment thinker Alexander Radishchev (1749–1802). Until the last
quarter of the nineteenth century the most original and forceful Russian
thinkers stood outside the academy. Since then, both in Russia and in Western
exile, a number of the most important Russian philosophers – including Berdyaev
and Lev Shestov (1866– 1938) – have been university professors. The
nineteenth-century thinkers, though universityeducated, lacked advanced
degrees. The only university professor ong them, Peter Lavrov (1823–1900),
taught mathematics and science rather than philosophy (during the 1850s). If we
compare Russian philosophy to German philosophy of this period, with its galaxy
of university professors – Wolff, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Dilthey – the
contrast is sharp. However, if we compare Russian philosophy to English or
French philosophy, the contrast fades. No professors of philosophy appear in
the line from Francis Bacon through Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Benth, and
J. S. Mill, to Spencer. And in France Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, Rousseau,
and Comte were all non-professors. True to their non-professional, even “ateur”
status, Russian philosophers until the late nineteenth century paid little
attention to the more technical disciplines: logic, epistemology, philosophy of
language, and philosophy of science. They focused instead on philosophical
anthropology, ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of history,
and philosophy of religion. In Russia, more than in any other Western cultural
tradition, speculation, fiction, and poetry have been linked. On the one hand,
major novelists such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and major poets such as
Pasternak and Brodsky, have engaged in wide-ranging philosophical reflection.
On the other hand, philosophers such as Skovoroda, Alexei Khomyakov (1804–60),
and Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900) were gifted poets, while thinkers such as
Herzen, Konstantin Leontyev (1831–91), and the anti-Leninist Marxist Alexander
Bogdanov (1873–1928) made their literary mark with novels, short stories, and
memoirs. Such Russian thinkers as Vasily Rozanov (1856–1919) and Shestov,
although they wrote no belles lettres, were celebrated in literary circles for
their sparkling essayistic and aphoristic styles. Certain preoccupations of
nineteenth-century Russian thinkers – especially Pyotr Chaadaev (1794–1856)
during the 1820s and 1830s, the Slavophiles and Westernizers during the 1840s
and 1850s, and the Populists during the 1860s and 1870s – might appear to be distinctive
but in fact were not. The controversial questions of Russia’s relation to
Western Europe and of Russell’s paradox Russian philosophy 805 805 Russia’s “special path” to modernity
have their counterparts in the reflections of thinkers in Spain (“Spain and
Europe”), Germany (the Sonderweg – a term of which the Russian osobyi put’ is a
translation), and Poland (“the Polish Question”). The content of Russian
philosophy may be characterized in general terms as tending toward utopianism,
maximalism, moralism, and soteriology. To take the last point first:
Hegelianism was received in Russia in the 1830s not only as an allembracing
philosophical system but also as a vehicle of secular salvation. In the 1860s
Darwinism was similarly received, as was Marxism in the 1890s. Utopianism
appears at the historical and sociopolitical level in two of Solovyov’s
characteristic doctrines: his early “free theocracy,” in which the spiritual
authority of the Roman pope was to be united with the secular authority of the Russian
tsar; and his later ecumenical project of reuniting the Eastern (Russian
Orthodox) and Western (Roman Catholic) churches in a single “universal
[vselenskaia] church” that would also incorporate the “Protestant principle” of
free philosophical and theological inquiry. Maximalism appears at the
individual and religious level in Shestov’s claim that God, for whom alone “all
things are possible,” can cause what has happened not to have happened and, in
particular, can restore irrecoverable human loss, such as that associated with
disease, deformity, madness, and death. Maximalism and moralism are united at
the cosmic and “scientific-technological” level in Nikolai Fyodorov’s
(1829–1903) insistence on the overriding moral obligation of all men (“the sons”)
to join the common cause of restoring life to “the fathers,” those who gave
them life rather than, as sanctioned by the “theory of progress,” pushing them,
figuratively if not literally, into the grave. Certain doctrinal emphases and
assumptions link Russian thinkers from widely separated points on the political
and ideological spectrum: (1) Russian philosophers were nearly unanimous in
dismissing the notorious CartesianHumean “problem of other minds” as a
nonproblem. Their convictions about human community and conciliarity
(sobornost’), whether religious or secular, were too powerful to permit Russian
thinkers to raise serious doubts as to whether their moaning and bleeding
neighbor was “really” in pain. (2) Most Russian thinkers – the Westernizers
were a partial exception – viewed key Western philosophical positions and
formulations, from the Socratic “know thyself” to the Cartesian cogito, as
overly individualistic and overly intellectualistic, as failing to take into
account the wholeness of the human person. (3) Both such anti-Marxists as
Herzen (with his “philosophy of the act”) and Fyodorov (with his “projective”
common task) and the early Russian Marxists were in agreement about the
unacceptability of the “Western” dichotomy between thought and action. But when
they stressed the unity of theory and practice, a key question remained: Who is
to shape this unity? And what is its form? The threadbare MarxistLeninist
“philosophy” of the Stalin years paid lip service to the freedom involved in
forging such a unity. Stalin in fact imposed crushing restraints upon both
thought and action. Since 1982, works by and about the previously abused or
neglected religious and speculative thinkers of Russia’s past have been widely
republished and eagerly discussed. This applies to Fyodorov, Solovyov,
Leontyev, Rozanov, Berdyaev, Shestov, and the Husserlian Shpet, ong
others. BAKUNIN, BERDYAEV,
Ryle, Gilbert (1900–76),
English analytic philosopher known especially for his contributions to the
philosophy of mind and his attacks on Cartesianism. His best-known work is the
masterpiece The Concept of Mind (1949), an attack on what he calls “Cartesian
dualism” and a defense of a type of logical behaviorism. This dualism he dubs
“the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine,” the Machine being the body, which is
physical and publicly observable, and the Ghost being the mind conceived as a
private or secret arena in which episodes of sense perception, consciousness,
and inner perception take place. A person, then, is a combination of such a
mind and a body, with the mind operating the body through exercises of will
called “volitions.” Ryle’s attack on this doctrine is both sharply focused and
multifarious. He finds that it rests on a category mistake, nely, assimilating
statements about mental processes to the se category as statements about
physical processes. This is a mistake in the logic of mental statements and
mental concepts and leads to the mistaken metaphysical theory that a person is
composed of two separate and distinct (though somehow related) entities, a mind
and a body. It is true that statements about the physical are statements about
things and their changes. But statements about the mental are not, and in particular are not about a
thing called “the mind.” These two types of statements do not belong to the se
category. To show this, Ryle deploys a variety of arguments, including
arguments alleging the impossibility of causal relations between mind and body
and arguments alleging vicious infinite regresses. To develop his positive view
on the nature of mind, Ryle studies the uses (and hence the logic) of mental
terms and finds that mental statements tell us that the person performs
observable actions in certain ways and has a disposition to perform other
observable actions in specifiable circumstances. For exple, to do something
intelligently is to do something physical in a certain way and to adjust one’s
behavior to the circumstances, not, as the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine
would have it, to perform two actions, one of which is a mental action of
thinking that eventually causes a separate physical action. Ryle buttresses
this position with many acute and subtle analyses of the uses of mental terms.
Much of Ryle’s other work concerns philosophical methodology, sustaining the
thesis (which is the backbone of The Concept of Mind) that philosophical
problems and doctrines often arise from conceptual confusion, i.e., from
mistakes about the logic of language. Important writings in this vein include
the influential article “Systematically Misleading Expressions” and the book
Dilemmas (1954). Ryle was also interested in Greek philosophy throughout his
life, and his last major work, Plato’s Progress, puts forward novel hypotheses
about changes in Plato’s views, the role of the Academy, the purposes and uses
of Plato’s dialogues, and Plato’s relations with the rulers of Syracuse.
Saadiah Gaon (882–942),
Jewish exegete, philosopher, liturgist, grmarian, and lexicographer. Born in
the Fayyum in Egypt, Saadiah wrote his first Hebrew dictionary by age twenty.
He removed to Tiberias, probably fleeing the backlash of his polemic against
the Karaite (biblicist, anti-Talmudic) sect. There he mastered the inductive
techniques of semantic analysis pioneered by Muslim MuÅtazilites in defending
their rationalistic monotheism and voluntaristic theodicy. He learned
philologically from the Masoretes and liturgical poets, and philosophically
from the MuÅtazilite-influenced Jewish metaphysician Daud al-Muqmif of Raqqa in
Iraq, and Isaac Israeli of Qayrawan in Tunisia, a Neoplatonizing physician,
with whom the young philosopher attempted a correspondence. But his sense of
system, evidenced in his pioneering chronology, prayerbook, and scheme of
tropes, and nurtured by Arabic versions of Plato (but seemingly not much
Aristotle), allowed him to outgrow and outshine his mentors. He ce to
prominence by successfully defending the traditional Hebrew calendar, using
astronomical, mathematical, and rabbinic arguments. Called to Baghdad, he bece
Gaon (Hebrew, ‘Eminence’) or head of the ancient Talmudic academy of Pumpedita,
then nearly defunct. His commentaries on rabbinic property law and his letters
to Jewish communities as far away as Spain refurbished the authority of the
academy, but a controversy with the Exilarch, secular head of Mesopotian Jewry,
led to his deposition and six years in limbo, deprived of his judicial
authority. He delved into scientific cosmology, translated many biblical books
into Arabic with philosophic commentaries and thematic introductions, and
around 933 completed The Book of Critically Chosen Beliefs and Convictions, the
first Jewish philosophical summa. Unusual ong medieval works for a lengthy
epistemological introduction, its ten Arabic treatises defend and define
creation, monotheism, human obligation and virtue, theodicy, natural
retribution, resurrection, immortality and recompense, Israel’s redemption, and
the good life. Saadiah argues that no single good suffices for human happiness;
each in isolation is destructive. The Torah prepares the optimal blend of the
appetitive and erotic, procreative, civilizational, ascetic, political,
intellectual, pious, and tranquil. Following al-Rhazi (d. 925 or 932), Saadiah
argues that since destruction always overcomes organization in this world,
sufferings will always outweigh pleasures; therefore (as in rabbinic and
MuÅtazilite theodicy) God must be assumed to right the balances in the
hereafter. Indeed, justice is the object of creation – not simply that the
righteous be rewarded but that all should earn their deserved requital: the
very light that is sown for the righteous is the fire that torments the wicked.
But if requital and even recompense must be earned, this life is much more than
an anteroom. Authenticity becomes a value in itself: the innocent are not told
directly that their sufferings are a trial, or their testing would be invalid.
Only by enduring their sufferings without interference can they demonstrate the
qualities that make them worthy of the highest reward. Movingly reconciled with
the Exilarch, Saadiah ended his life as Gaon. His voluntarism, naturalism, and
rationalism laid philosophical foundations for Maimonides, and his inductive
exegesis bece a cornerstone of critical hermeneutics.
JEWISH PHILOSOPHY. L.E.G.
sage.SHENG. Saint Petersburg paradox, a puzzle about gbling that motivated the
distinction between expected return and expected utility. Daniel Bernoulli
published it in a St. Petersburg journal in 1738. It concerns a gble like this:
it pays $2 if heads appears on the first toss of a coin, $4 if heads does not
appear until the second toss, $8 if heads does not appear until the third toss,
and so on. The expected return from the gble is (½)2 ! (¼)4 ! (1 /8)8 ! . . . ,
or 1 ! 1 ! 1 ! ..., i.e., it is infinite. But no one would pay much for the
gble. So it seems that expected returns do not govern rational preferences.
Bernoulli argued that expected utilities govern rational preferences. He also
held that the utility of wealth is proportional to the log of the ount of
wealth. Given his assumptions, the gble has finite 808 S 808 expected utility, and should not be
preferred to large sums of money. However, a twentieth-century version of the
paradox, attributed to Karl Menger, reconstructs the gble, putting utility payoffs
in place of monetary payoffs, so that the new gble has infinite expected
utility. Since no one would trade much utility for the new gble, it also seems
that expected utilities do not govern rational preferences. The resolution of
the paradox is under debate.
Saint-Simon, Comte de,
title of Claude-Henri de Rouvroy (1760–1825), French social reformer. An
aristocrat by birth, he initially joined the ranks of the enlightened and
liberal bourgeoisie. His Newtonian Letters to an Inhabitant of Geneva (1803)
and Introduction to Scientific Works of the Nineteenth Century (1808) chpioned
Condorcet’s vision of scientific and technological progress. With Auguste
Comte, he shared a positivistic philosophy of history: the triumph of science
over metaphysics. Written in wartime, The Reorganization of European Society
(1814) urged the creation of a European parlientary system to secure peace and
unity. Having moved from scientism to pacifism, Saint-Simon moved further to
industrialism. In 1817, under the influence of two theocratic thinkers, de
Maistre and Bonald, Saint-Simon turned away from classical economic liberalism
and repudiated laissez-faire capitalism. The Industrial System (1820) drafts
the progr for a hierarchical state, a technocratic society, and a planned
economy. The industrial society of the future is based on the principles of
productivity and cooperation and led by a rational and efficient class, the
industrialists (artists, scientists, and technicians). He argued that the
association of positivism with unselfishness, of techniques of rational
production with social solidarity and interdependency, would remedy the plight
of the poor. Industrialism prefigures socialism, and socialism paves the way
for the rule of the law of love, the eschatological age of The New Christianity
(1825). This utopian treatise, which reveals Saint-Simon’s alternative to
reactionary Catholicism and Protestant individualism, bece the Bible of the
Saint-Simonians, a sectarian school of utopian socialists. J.-L.S. Sakti, in Hindu
thought, force, power, or energy, personified as the divine consort of the god
Siva. Sakti is viewed as the feminine active divine aspect (as contrasted with
the masculine passive divine aspect), which affects the creation, maintenance,
and dissolution of the universe, and possesses intelligence, will, knowledge,
and action as modes.
sadhi, Sanskrit term
meaning ‘concentration’, ‘absorption’, ‘superconscious state’, ‘altered state
of consciousness’. In India’s philosophical tradition this term was made fous
by its use in the Yoga system of Patañjali (second century B.C.). In this
system the goal was to attain the self’s freedom, so that the self, conceived
as pure consciousness in its true nature, would not be limited by the material
modes of existence. It was believed that through a series of yogic techniques
the self is freed from its karmic fetters and liberated to its original state
of self-luminous consciousness, known as sadhi. The Indian philosophical
systems had raised and debated many epistemological and metaphysical questions
regarding the nature of consciousness, the concept of mind, and the idea of the
self. They also wondered whether a yogi who has attained sadhi is within the
confines of the conventional moral realm. This issue is similar to Nietzsche’s
idea of the transvaluation of values.
NIETZSCHE. D.K.C. sanantara-pratyaya, in Buddhism, a causal term meaning
‘immediately antecedent (anantara) and similar (sa) condition’. According to
Buddhist causal theory, every existent is a continuum of momentary events of
various kinds. These momentary events may be causally connected to one another
in a variety of ways; one of these is denoted by the term sanantarapratyaya.
This kind of causal connection requires that every momentary event have, as a
necessary condition for its existence, an immediately preceding event of the se
kind. So, e.g., ong the necessary conditions for the occurrence of a moment of
sensation in some continuum must be the occurrence of an immediately preceding
moment of sensation in that se continuum. P.J.G. satha, in Buddhism,
tranquillity or calm. The term is used to describe both one kind of
meditational practice and the states of consciousness produced by it. To
cultivate tranquillity or calmness is to reduce the mind’s level of affect and,
Saint-Simon satha 809 809 finally, to
produce a state of consciousness in which emotion is altogether absent. This
condition is taken to have salvific significance because emotional disturbance
of all kinds is thought to hinder clear perception and understanding of the way
things are; reduction of affect therefore aids accurate cognition. The
techniques designed to foster this reduction are essentially
concentrative.
ssara (Sanskrit, ‘going
around’), in Hindu thought, the ceaseless rounds of rebirth that constitute the
human predicent. Ssara speaks of the relentless cycle of coming and going in
transmigration of the soul from body to body in this and other worlds. It is
the manifestation of karma, for one’s deeds bear fruition in the timing,
status, form, and nature of the phenomenal person in future lives. Ordinary
individuals have little prospect of release and in some systems the
relationship ong karma, rebirth, and ssara is a highly mechanical cosmic law of
debt and credit which affirms that human deeds produce their own reward or
punishment. For theists the Deity is the ultimate controller of ssara and can
break the cycle, adjust it, or, by the god’s kindness or grace, save one from
future births regardless of one’s actions.
AVATAR. R.N.Mi. Sanches, Francisco (c.1551–1623), Portugueseborn
philosopher and physician. Raised in southern France, he took his medical
degree at the University of Montpellier. After a decade of medical practice he
was professor of philosophy at the University of Toulouse and later professor
of medicine there. His most important work, Quod nihil scitur(That Nothing Is
Known, 1581), is a classic of skeptical argumentation. Written at the se time
that his cousin, Montaigne, wrote the “Apology for Raimund Sebond,” it
devastatingly criticized the Aristotelian theory of knowledge. He began by
declaring that he did not even know if he knew nothing. Then he exined the
Aristotelian view that science consists of certain knowledge gained by
demonstrations from true definitions. First of all, we do not possess such
definitions, since all our definitions are just arbitrary nes of things. The
Aristotelian theory of demonstration is useless, since in syllogistic reasoning
the conclusion has to be part of the evidence for the premises. E.g., how can
one know that all men are mortal unless one knows that Socrates is mortal?
Also, anything can be proven by syllogistic reasoning if one chooses the right
premises. This does not produce real knowledge. Further we cannot know anything
through its causes, since one would have to know the causes of the causes, and
the causes of these, ad infinitum. Sanches also attacked the Platonic theory of
knowledge, since mathematical knowledge is about ideal rather than real
objects. Mathematics is only hypothetical. Its relevance to experience is not
known. True science would consist of perfect knowledge of a thing. Each
particular would be understood in and by itself. Such knowledge can be attained
only by God. We cannot study objects one by one, since they are all
interrelated and interconnected. Our faculties are also not reliable enough.
Hence genuine knowledge cannot be attained by humans. What we can do, using
“scientific method” (a term first used by Sanches), is gather careful empirical
information and make cautious judgments about it. His views were well known in
the seventeenth century, and may have inspired the “mitigated skepticism” of
Gassendi and others. SKEPTICISM. R.H.P.
sanction, anything whose function is to penalize or reward. It is useful to
distinguish between social sanctions, legal sanctions, internal sanctions, and
religious sanctions. Social sanctions are extralegal pressures exerted upon the
agent by others. For exple, others might distrust us, ostracize us, or even
physically attack us, if we behave in certain ways. Legal sanctions include
corporal punishment, imprisonment, fines, withdrawal of the legal rights to run
a business or to leave the area, and other penalties. Internal sanctions may
include not only guilt feelings but also the sympathetic pleasures of helping
others or the gratified conscience of doing right. Divine sanctions, if there
are any, are rewards or punishments given to us by a god while we are alive or
after we die. There are important philosophical questions concerning sanctions.
Should law be defined as the rules the breaking of which elicits punishment by
the state? Could there be a moral duty to behave in a given way if there were
no social sanctions concerning such behavior? If not, then a conventionalist
account of moral duty seems unavoidable. And, to what extent does the combined
effect of external and internal sanctions make rational egoism (or prudence or
self-interest) coincide with morality? B.W.H. Shita sanction 810 810 Sankara.SHANKARA. Sankhya-Yoga, a
system of Hindu thought that posits two sorts of reality, immaterial (purusha)
and material (prakrti). Prakrti, a physical stuff composed of what is
lightweight and finegrained (sattva), what is heavy and coarse (tas), and what
is active (rajas), is in some sense the source of matter, force, space, and
time. Sankhya physical theory explains the complex by reference to the
properties of its components. The physical universe everlastingly oscillates
between states in which the three elements exist unmixed and states in which
they mingle; when they mingle, they compose physical bodies some of which
incarnate bits of purusha. When the basic elements mingle, transmigration
occurs. Pursha is inherently passive, and mental properties belong only to the
composite of prakrti and purusha, leading critics to ask what, when the
physical elements are separated, individuates one mind from another. The answer
is that one bit of purusha has one transmigratory history and another bit has
another history. Critics (e.g., Nyaya-Vaishesika philosophers) were not
satisfied with this answer, which allowed no intrinsic distinctions between
bits of non-incarnate purusha. The dialectic of criticism led to Advaita
Vedanta (for which all purusha distinctions are illusory) and other varieties
of Vedanta (Dvaita and Visistadvaita) for which minds have inherent, not merely
embodied, consciousness. Sankhya claims that there can be no emergent
properties (properties not somehow a reshuffling of prior properties), so the
effect must in some sense preexist in the cause.
Santayana, George
(1863–1952), Spanisherican philosopher and writer. Born in Spain, he arrived in
the United States as a child, received his education at Harvard, and rose to
professor of philosophy there. He first ce to prominence for his view,
developed in The Sense of Beauty (1896), that beauty is objectified pleasure.
His The Life of Reason (5 vols., 1905), a celebrated expression of his
naturalistic vision, traces human creativity in ordinary life, society, art,
religion, and science. He denied that his philosophy ever changed, but the
mature expression of his thought, in Skepticism and Animal Faith (1923) and The
Realms of Being (4 vols., 1927–40), is deliberately ontological and lacks the
phenomenological emphasis of the earlier work. Human beings, according to
Santayana, are animals in a material world contingent to the core. Reflection
must take as its primary datum human action aimed at eating and fleeing. The
philosophy of animal faith consists of disentangling the beliefs tacit in such
actions and yields a realism concerning both the objects of immediate
consciousness and the objects of belief. Knowledge is true belief rendered in
symbolic terms. As symbolism, it constitutes the hauntingly beautiful worlds of
the senses, poetry, and religion; as knowledge, it guides and is tested by
successful action. Santayana had been taught by Willi Jes, and his insistence
on the primacy of action suggests a close similarity to the views of Dewey. He
is, nevertheless, not a pragmatist in any ordinary sense: he views nature as
the fully formed arena of human activity and experience as a flow of isolated,
private sentience in this alien world. His deepest sympathy is with Aristotle,
though he agrees with Plato about the mind-independent existence of Forms and
with Schopenhauer about the dimness of human prospects. His mature four-realm
ontology turns on the distinction between essence and matter. Essences are
forms of definiteness. They are infinite in number and encompass everything
possible. Their eternity makes them causally inefficacious: as possibilities,
they cannot accomplish their own actualization. Matter, a surd and formless
force, generates the physical universe by selecting essences for embodiment.
Truth is the realm of being created by the intersection of matter and form: it
is the eternal record of essences that have been, are being, and will be given
actuality in the history of the world. Spirit or consciousness cannot be
reduced to the motions of the physical organism that give rise to it. It is
constituted by a sequence of acts or intuitions whose objects are essences but
whose time-spanning, synthetic nature renders them impotent. Organic
selectivity is the source of values. Accordingly, the good of each organism is
a function of its nature. Santayana simply accepts the fact that some of these
goods are incommensurable and the tragic reality that they may be incompatible,
as well. Under favorable circumstances, a life of reason or of maximal
harmonized satisfactions is possible for a while. The finest achievement of
human beings, however, is the spiritual life in which we overcome animal
partiality and thus all valuation in order to enjoy the intuition of eternal
essences. Santayana identifies such spirituality with the best that religion
and sound philosophy can offer. It does not help us escape finitude and death,
but enables us Sankara Santayana, George 811
811 in this short life to transcend care and to intuit the eternal.
Santayana’s exquisite vision has gained him many admirers but few followers.
His system is a self-consistent and sophisticated synthesis of elements, such
as materialism and Platonism, that have hitherto been thought impossible to
reconcile. His masterful writing makes his books instructive and pleasurable,
even if many of his characteristic views engender resistance ong philosophers.
J.La. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, broadly, the claim that one’s perception,
thought, and behavior are influenced by one’s language. The hypothesis was ned
after Benjin Lee Whorf (1897– 1941) and his teacher Edward Sapir (1884– 1939).
We may discern different versions of this claim by distinguishing degrees of
linguistic influence, the highest of which is complete and unalterable
determination of the fundental structures of perception, thought, and behavior.
In the most radical form, the hypothesis says that one’s reality is constructed
by one’s language and that differently structured languages give rise to
different realities, which are incommensurable.
Sartre, Jean-Paul
(1905–80), French philosopher and writer, the leading advocate of
existentialism during the years following World War II. The heart of his
philosophy was the precious notion of freedom and its concomitant sense of
personal responsibility. He insisted, in an interview a few years before his
death, that he never ceased to believe that “in the end one is always
responsible for what is made of one,” only a slight revision of his earlier,
bolder slogan, “man makes himself.” To be sure, as a student of Hegel, Marx,
Husserl, and Heidegger – and because of his own physical frailty and the
tragedies of the war – Sartre had to be well aware of the many constraints and
obstacles to human freedom, but as a Cartesian, he never deviated from
Descartes’s classical portrait of human consciousness as free and distinct from
the physical universe it inhabits. One is never free of one’s “situation,”
Sartre tells us, though one is always free to deny (“negate”) that situation
and to try to change it. To be human, to be conscious, is to be free to
imagine, free to choose, and responsible for one’s lot in life. As a student,
Sartre was fascinated by Husserl’s new philosophical method, phenomenology. His
first essays were direct responses to Husserl and applications of the phenomenological
method. His essay on The Imagination in 1936 established the groundwork for
much of what was to follow: the celebration of our remarkable freedom to
imagine the world other than it is and (following Kant) the way that this
ability informs all of our experience. In The Transcendence of the Ego (1937)
he reconsidered Husserl’s central idea of a “phenomenological reduction” (the
idea of exining the essential structures of consciousness as such) and argued
(following Heidegger) that one cannot exine consciousness without at the se
time recognizing the reality of actual objects in the world. In other words,
there can be no such “reduction.” In his novel Nausea (1938), Sartre made this
point in a protracted exple: his bored and often nauseated narrator confronts a
gnarled chestnut tree in the park and recognizes with a visceral shock that its
presence is simply given and utterly irreducible. In The Transcendence of the
Ego Sartre also reconsiders the notion of the self, which Husserl (and so many earlier
philosophers) had identified with consciousness. But the self, Sartre argues,
is not “in” consciousness, much less identical to it. The self is out there “in
the world, like the self of another.” In other words, the self is an ongoing
project in the world with other people; it is not simply self-awareness or
self-consciousness as such (“I think, therefore I ”). This separation of self
and consciousness and the rejection of the self as simply self-consciousness
provide the frework for Sartre’s greatest philosophical treatise, L’être et le
néant (Being and Nothingness, 1943). Its structure is unabashedly Cartesian,
consciousness (“being-for-itself” or pour soi) on the one side, the existence
of mere things (“being-in-itself” or en soi) on the other. (The phraseology
comes from Hegel.) But Sartre does not fall into the Cartesian trap of
designating these two types of being as separate “substances.” Instead, Sartre
describes consciousness as “nothing’ – “not a thing” but an activity, “a wind
blowing from nowhere toward the world.” Sartre often resorts to visceral
metaphors when developing this theme (e.g., “a worm coiled in the heart of
being”), but much of what he is arguing is filiar to philosophical readers in
the more metaphor-free work of Kant, who also warned against the follies
(“paralogisms”) of understanding consciousness as itself a (possible) object of
consciousness rather than as the activity of constituting the objects of
consciousness. (As the lens of a cera can never see itself – and in a mirror
only sees a reflection of itself – conSapir-Whorf hypothesis Sartre, Jean-Paul
812 812 sciousness can never view
itself as consciousness and is only aware of itself – “for itself” – through
its experience of objects.) Ontologically, one might think of “nothingness” as
“no-thing-ness,” a much less outrageous suggestion than those that would make
it an odd sort of a thing. It is through the nothingness of consciousness and
its activities that negation comes into the world, our ability to imagine the
world other than it is and the inescapable necessity of imagining ourselves
other than we seem to be. And because consciousness is nothingness, it is not
subject to the rules of causality. Central to the argument of L’être et le
néant and Sartre’s insistence on the primacy of human freedom is his insistence
that consciousness cannot be understood in causal terms. It is always
self-determining and, as such, “it always is what it is not, and is not what it
is” – a playful paradox that refers to the fact that we are always in the
process of choosing. Consciousness is “nothing,” but the self is always on its
way to being something. Throughout our lives we accumulate a body of facts that
are true of us – our “facticity” – but during our lives we remain free to envision
new possibilities, to reform ourselves and to reinterpret our facticity in the
light of new projects and bitions – our “transcendence.” This indeterminacy
means that we can never be anything, and when we try to establish ourselves as
something particular – whether a social role (policeman, waiter) or a certain
character (shy, intellectual, cowardly) – we are in “bad faith.” Bad faith is
erroneously viewing ourselves as something fixed and settled (Sartre utterly
rejects Freud and his theory of the unconscious determination of our
personalities and behavior), but it is also bad faith to view oneself as a
being of infinite possibilities and ignore the always restrictive facts and
circumstances within which all choices must be made. On the one hand, we are always
trying to define ourselves; on the other hand we are always free to break away
from what we are, and always responsible for what we have made of ourselves.
But there is no easy resolution or “balance” between facticity and freedom,
rather a kind of dialectic or tension. The result is our frustrated desire to
be God, to be both in-itself and for-itself. But this is not so much blasphemy
as an expression of despair, a form of ontological original sin, the
impossibility of being both free and what we want to be. Life for Sartre is yet
more complicated. There is a third basic ontological category, on a par with
the being-in-itself and being-for-itself and not derivative of them. He calls
it “being-for-others.” To say that it is not derivative is to insist that our
knowledge of others is not inferred, e.g. by some argument by analogy, from the
behavior of others, and we ourselves are not wholly constituted by our
self-determinations and the facts about us. Sartre gives us a brutal but filiar
everyday exple of our experience of being-for-others in what he calls “the
look” (le regard). Someone catches us “in the act” of doing something
humiliating, and we find ourselves defining ourselves (probably also resisting
that definition) in their terms. In his Saint Genet (1953), Sartre describes
such a conversion of the ten-year-old Jean Genet into a thief. So, too, we tend
to “catch” one another in the judgments we make and define one another in terms
that are often unflattering. But these judgments become an essential and
ineluctible ingredient in our sense of ourselves, and they too lead to
conflicts indeed, conflicts so basic and so frustrating that in his play Huis
clos (No Exit, 1943) Sartre has one of his characters utter the fous line,
“Hell is other people.” In his later works, notably his Critique of Dialectical
Reason (1958–59), Sartre turned increasingly to politics and, in particular,
toward a defense of Marxism on existentialist principles. This entailed
rejecting materialist determinism, but it also required a new sense of
solidarity (or what Sartre had wistfully called, following Heidegger, Mitsein
or “being with others”). Thus in his later work he struggled to find a way of
overcoming the conflict and insularity or the rather “bourgeois” consciousness
he had described in Being and Nothingness. Not surprisingly (given his constant
political activities) he found it in revolutionary engagement. Consonant with
his rejection of bourgeois selfhood, Sartre turned down the 1964 Nobel prize
for literature.
sat/chit/ananda, also
saccidananda, three Sanskrit terms combined to refer to the Highest Reality as
‘existence, intelligence, bliss’. The later thinkers of Advaita Vedanta, such
as Shankara, used the term to denote the Absolute, Brahman, a state of oneness
of being, of pure consciousness and of absolute value or freedom. These are not
to be taken as attributes or accidents that qualify Brahman but terms that
express its essential nature as experienced by human beings. Sat (being,
existence) is also saty (truth), affirming that Brahman is experienced as being
itself, not a being over against another. Chit is pure consciousness,
sat/chit/ananda sat/chit/ananda 813
813 consciousness without object, and ananda is the experience of
unlimited freedom and universal potentiality as well as satisfaction and the
bliss that transcends both all that is pleasurable in the world and release
from the bondage of ssara. Hindu theists understand sat/chit/ananda as the
qualities of the supreme god. ADVAITA,
BRAHMAN, VEDANTA. R.N.Mi. satisfaction, an auxiliary semantic notion introduced
by Tarski in order to give a recursive definition of truth for languages
containing quantifiers. Intuitively, the satisfaction relation holds between
formulas containing free variables (such as ‘Building(x) & Tall(x)’) and
objects or sequences of objects (such as the Empire State Building) if and only
if the formula “holds of” or “applies to” the objects. Thus, ‘Building(x) &
Tall(x)’, is satisfied by all and only tall buildings, and ‘-Tall(x1) & Taller(x1,
x2)’ is satisfied by any pair of objects in which the first object
(corresponding to ‘x1’) is not tall, but nonetheless taller than the second
(corresponding to ‘x2’). Satisfaction is needed when defining truth for
languages with sentences built from formulas containing free variables, because
the notions of truth and falsity do not apply to these “open” formulas. Thus,
we cannot characterize the truth of the sentences ‘Dx (Building(x) &
Tall(x))’ (‘Some building is tall’) in terms of the truth or falsity of the
open formula ‘Building(x) & Tall(x)’, since the latter is neither true nor
false. But note that the sentence is true if and only if the formula is
satisfied by some object. Since we can give a recursive definition of the
notion of satisfaction for (possibly open) formulas, this enables us to use
this auxiliary notion in defining truth.
SEMANTIC PARADOXES, TARSKI, TRUTH. J.Et. satisfaction conditions.SEARLE.
satisfiable, having a common model, a structure in which all the sentences in
the set are true; said of a set of sentences. In modern logic, satisfiability
is the semantic analogue of the syntactic, proof-theoretic notion of
consistency, the unprovability of any explicit contradiction. The completeness
theorem for first-order logic, that all valid sentences are provable, can be
formulated in terms of satisfiability: syntactic consistency implies
satisfiability. This theorem does not necessarily hold for extensions of
first-order logic. For any sound proof system for secondorder logic there will
be an unsatisfiable set of sentences without there being a formal derivation of
a contradiction from the set. This follows from Gödel’s incompleteness theorem.
One of the central results of model theory for first-order logic concerns
satisfiability: the compactness theorem, due to Gödel in 1936, says that if
every finite subset of a set of sentences is satisfiable the set itself is
satisfiable. It follows immediately from his completeness theorem for
first-order logic, and gives a powerful method to prove the consistency of a
set of sentences.
COMPACTNESS THEOREM,
COMPLETENESS, GÖDEL’S INCOMPLETENESS THEOREMS, MODEL THEORY, PROOF THEORY.
Z.G.S. satisfice, to choose or do the good enough rather than the most or the
best. ‘Satisfice’, an obsolete variant of ‘satisfy’, has been adopted by
economist Herbert Simon and others to designate nonoptimizing choice or action.
According to some economists, limitations of time or information may make it
impossible or inadvisable for an individual, firm, or state body to attempt to
maximize pleasure, profits, market share, revenues, or some other desired
result, and satisficing with respect to such results is then said to be
rational, albeit less than ideally rational. Although many orthodox economists
think that choice can and always should be conceived in maximizing or
optimizing terms, satisficing models have been proposed in economics,
evolutionary biology, and philosophy. Biologists have sometimes conceived
evolutionary change as largely consisting of “good enough” or satisficing
adaptations to environmental pressures rather than as proceeding through
optimal adjustments to such pressures, but in philosophy, the most frequent
recent use of the idea of satisficing has been in ethics and rational choice
theory. Economists typically regard satisficing as acceptable only where there
are unwanted constraints on decision making; but it is also possible to see
satisficing as entirely acceptable in itself, and in the field of ethics, it
has recently been argued that there may be nothing remiss about moral
satisficing, e.g., giving a good ount to charity, but less than one could give.
It is possible to formulate satisficing forms of utilitarianism on which
actions are morally right (even) if they contribute merely positively and/or in
some large way, rather than maximally, to overall net human happiness. Benth’s
original formulation of the principle of utility and Popper’s negative
utilitarianism are both exples of satisficing utilitarianism in this sense –
and it should be noted that satisficing utilitarianism has the putative
advantage over satisfaction satisfice 814
814 optimizing forms of allowing for supererogatory degrees of moral
excellence. Moreover, any moral view that treats moral satisficing as
permissible makes room for moral supererogation in cases where one optimally
goes beyond the merely acceptable. But since moral satisficing is less than
optimal moral behavior, but may be more meritorious than certain behavior that
(in the se circumstances) would be merely permissible, some moral satisficing
may actually count as supererogatory. In recent work on rational individual
choice, some philosophers have argued that satisficing may often be acceptable
in itself, rather than merely second-best. Even Simon allows that an
entrepreneur may simply seek a satisfactory return on investment or share of
the market, rather than a maximum under one of these headings. But a number of
philosophers have made the further claim that we may sometimes, without
irrationality, turn down the readily available better in the light of the
goodness and sufficiency of what we already have or are enjoying. Independently
of the costs of taking a second dessert, a person may be entirely satisfied
with what she has eaten and, though willing to admit she would enjoy that extra
dessert, turn it down, saying “I’m just fine as I .” Whether such exples really
involve an acceptable rejection of the (momentarily) better for the good enough
has been disputed. However, some philosophers have gone on to say, even more
strongly, that satisficing can sometimes be rationally required and optimizing
rationally unacceptable. To keep on seeking pleasure from food or sex without
ever being thoroughly satisfied with what one has enjoyed can seem compulsive
and as such less than rational. If one is truly rational about such goods, one
isn’t insatiable: at some point one has had enough and doesn’t want more, even
though one could obtain further pleasure. The idea that satisficing is
sometimes a requirement of practical reason is reminiscent of Aristotle’s view
that moderation is inherently reasonable – rather than just a necessary means
to later enjoyments and the avoidance of later pain or illness, which is the
way the Epicureans conceived moderation. But perhaps the greatest advocate of
satisficing is Plato, who argues in the Philebus that there must be measure or
limit to our (desire for) pleasure in order for pleasure to count as a good
thing for us. Insatiably to seek and obtain pleasure from a given source is to
gain nothing good from it. And according to such a view, satisficing moderation
is a necessary precondition of human good and flourishing, rather than merely
being a rational restraint on the accumulation of independently conceived
personal good or well-being. DECISION
THEORY, HEDONISM, RATIONALITY, UTILITARIANISM. M.A.Sl. saturated.FREGE.
Saussure, Ferdinand de (1857–1913), Swiss linguist and founder of the school of
structural linguistics. His work in linguistics was a major influence on the
later development of French structuralist philosophy, as well as structural
anthropology, structuralist literary criticism, and modern semiology. He
pursued studies in linguistics largely under Georg Curtius at the University of
Leipzig, along with such future Junggrmatiker (neogrmarians) as Leskien and
Brugmann. Following the publication of his important Mémoire sur le système
primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européenes (1879), Saussure left
for Paris, where he associated himself with the Société Linguistique and taught
comparative grmar. In 1891, he returned to Switzerland to teach Sanskrit,
comparative grmar, and general linguistics at the University of Geneva. His
major work, the Course in General Linguistics (1916), was assembled from
students’ notes and his original lecture outlines after his death. The Course
in General Linguistics argued against the prevalent historical and comparative
philological approaches to language by advancing what Saussure termed a
scientific model for linguistics, one borrowed in part from Durkheim. Such a
model would take the “social fact” of language (la langue) as its object, and
distinguish this from the variety of individual speech events (la parole), as
well as from the collectivity of speech events and grmatical rules that form
the general historical body of language as such (le langage). Thus, by
separating out the unique and accidental elements of practiced speech, Saussure
distinguished language (la langue) as the objective set of linguistic elements
and rules that, taken as a system, governs the language use specific to a given
community. It was the systematic coherency and generality of language, so
conceived, that inclined Saussure to approach linguistics principally in terms
of its static or synchronic dimension, rather than its historical or diachronic
dimension. For Saussure, the system of language is a “treasury” or “depository”
of signs, and the basic unit of the linguistic sign is itself two-sided, having
both a phonemic component (“the signifier”) and a semantic component (“the
signified”). He terms saturated Saussure, Ferdinand de 815 815 the former the “acoustical” or “sound”
image – which may, in turn, be represented graphically, in writing – and the
latter the “concept” or “meaning.” Saussure construes the signifier to be a
representation of linguistic sounds in the imagination or memory, i.e., a
“psychological phenomenon,” one that corresponds to a specifiable range of
material phonetic sounds. Its distinctive property consists in its being
readily differentiated from other signifiers in the particular language. It is
the function of each signifier, as a distinct entity, to convey a particular
meaning – or “signified” concept – and this is fixed purely by conventional
association. While the relation between the signifier and signified results in
what Saussure terms the “positive” fact of the sign, the sign ultimately
derives its linguistic value (its precise descriptive determination) from its
position in the system of language as a whole, i.e., within the paradigmatic
and syntagmatic relations that structurally and functionally differentiate it.
Signifiers are differentially identified; signifiers are arbitrarily associated
with their respective signified concepts; and signs assume the determination
they do only through their configuration within the system of language as a
whole: these facts enabled Saussure to claim that language is largely to be
understood as a closed formal system of differences, and that the study of
language would be principally governed by its autonomous structural
determinations. So conceived, linguistics would be but a part of the study of
social sign systems in general, nely, the broader science of what Saussure
termed semiology. Saussure’s insights would be taken up by the subsequent Geneva,
Prague, and Copenhagen schools of linguistics and by the Russian formalists,
and would be further developed by the structuralists in France and elsewhere,
as well as by recent semiological approaches to literary criticism, social
anthropology, and psychoanalysis.
MEANING, PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, STRUCTURALISM, THEORY OF SIGNS. D.Al.
scalar implicature.IMPLICATURE. scepticism.SKEPTICISM. Schadenfreude.
VALUE. Scheler, Max
(1874–1928), German phenomenologist, social philosopher, and sociologist of knowledge.
Born in Munich, he studied in Jena; when he returned to Munich in 1907 he ce in
contact with phenomenology, especially the realist version of the early Husserl
and his Munich School followers. Scheler’s first works were phenomenological
studies in ethics leading to his ultimate theory of value: he described the
moral feelings of sympathy and resentment and wrote a criticism of Kantian
formalism and rationalism, Formalism in Ethics and a Non-Formal Ethics of Value
(1913). During the war, he was an ardent nationalist and wrote essays in
support of the war that were also philosophical criticisms of modern culture,
opposed to “Anglo-Saxon” naturalism and rational calculation. Although he later
embraced a broader notion of community, such criticisms of modernity remained
constant themes of his writings. His conversion to Catholicism after the war
led him to apply phenomenological description to religious phenomena and
feelings, and he later turned to themes of anthropology and natural science.
The core of Scheler’s phenomenological method is his conception of the
objectivity of essences, which, though contained in experience, are a priori
and independent of the knower. For Scheler, values are such objective, though
non-Platonic, essences. Their objectivity is intuitively accessible in
immediate experience and feelings, as when we experience beauty in music and do
not merely hear certain sounds. Scheler distinguished between valuations or
value perspectives on the one hand, which are historically relative and
variable, and values on the other, which are independent and invariant. There
are four such values, the hierarchical organization of which could be both
immediately intuited and established by various public criteria like duration
and independence: pleasure, vitality, spirit, and religion. Corresponding to
these values are various personalities who are not creators of value but their
discoverers, historical disclosers, and exemplars: the “artist of consumption,”
the hero, the genius, and the saint. A similar hierarchy of values applies to
forms of society, the highest of which is the church, or a Christian community
of solidarity and love. Scheler criticizes the leveling tendencies of
liberalism for violating this hierarchy, leading to forms of resentment,
individualism, and nationalism, all of which represent the false ordering of
values. HUSSERL, KANT, NATURALISM,
PHENOMENOLOGY. J.Bo. Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph (1775– 1854), German
philosopher whose metorscalar implicature Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph
816 816 phoses encompass the entire
history of German idealism. A Schwabian, Schelling first studied at Tübingen,
where he befriended Hölderlin and Hegel. The young Schelling was an
enthusiastic exponent of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre and devoted several early
essays to its exposition. After studying science and mathematics at Leipzig, he
joined Fichte at Jena in 1798. Meanwhile, in such writings as Philosophische
Briefe über Dogmatismus und Kritizismus (“Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and
Criticism,” 1795), Schelling betrayed growing doubts concerning Fichte’s
philosophy (above all, its treatment of nature) and a lively interest in
Spinoza. He then turned to constructing a systematic Naturphilosophie
(philosophy of nature) within the context of which nature would be treated more
holistically than by either Newtonian science or transcendental idealism. Of
his many publications on this topic, two of the more important are Ideen zu
einer Philosophie der Natur (“Ideas concerning a Philosophy of Nature,” 1797)
and Von der Weltseele (“On the World-Soul,” 1798). Whereas transcendental
idealism attempts to derive objective experience from an initial act of free
self-positing, Schelling’s philosophy of nature attempts to derive
consciousness from objects. Beginning with “pure objectivity,” the
Naturphilosophie purports to show how nature undergoes a process of unconscious
self-development, culminating in the conditions for its own
self-representation. The method of Naturphilosophie is fundentally a priori: it
begins with the concept of the unity of nature and accounts for its diversity
by interpreting nature as a system of opposed forces or “polarities,” which
manifest themselves in ever more complex levels of organization (Potenzen). At
Jena, Schelling ce into contact with Tieck, Novalis, and the Schlegel brothers
and bece interested in art. This new interest is evident in his System des
transzendentalen Idealismus (1800), which describes the path from pure
subjectivity (self-consciousness) to objectivity (the necessary positing of the
Not-I, or of nature). The most innovative and influential portion of this
treatise, which is otherwise closely modeled on Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, is
its conclusion, which presents art as the concrete accomplishment of the
philosophical task. In aesthetic experience the identity between the subjective
and the objective, the ideal and the real, becomes an object to the
experiencing I itself. For Schelling, transcendental idealism and
Naturphilosophie are two complementary sides or subdivisions of a larger, more
encompassing system, which he dubbed the System of Identity or Absolute
Idealism and expounded in a series of publications, including the Darstellung
meines Systems der Philosophie (“Presentation of My System of Philosophy,”
1801), Bruno (1802), and Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums
(“Lectures on the Method of Academic Study,” 1803). The most distinctive
feature of this system is that it begins with a bald assertion of the unity of
thought and being, i.e., with the bare idea of the self-identical “Absolute,”
which is described as the first presupposition of all knowledge. Since the
identity with which this system commences transcends every conceivable
difference, it is also described as the “point of indifference.” From this
undifferentiated or “indifferent” starting point, Schelling proceeds to a
description of reality as a whole, considered as a differentiated system within
which unity is maintained by various synthetic relationships, such as substance
and attribute, cause and effect, attraction and repulsion. Like his philosophy
of nature, Schelling’s System of Identity utilizes the notion of various
hierarchically related Potenzen as its basic organizing principle. The obvious
question concerns the precise relationship between the “indifferent” Absolute
and the real system of differentiated elements, a question that may be said to
have set the agenda for Schelling’s subsequent philosophizing. From 1803 to
1841 Schelling was in Bavaria, where he continued to expound his System of
Identity and to explore the philosophies of art and nature. The most
distinctive feature of his thought during this period, however, was a new
interest in religion and in the theosophical writings of Boehme, whose influence
is prominent in the Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der
menschlichen Freiheit (“Philosophical Investigations concerning the Nature of
Human Freedom,” 1809), a work often interpreted as anticipating existentialism.
He also worked on a speculative interpretation of human history, Die Weltalter,
which remained unpublished, and lectured regularly on the history of
philosophy. In 1841 Schelling moved to Berlin, where he lectured on his new
philosophy of revelation and mythology, which he now characterized as “positive
philosophy,” in contradistinction to the purely “negative” philosophy of Kant,
Fichte, and Hegel. Some scholars have interpreted these posthumously published
lectures as representing the culmination both of Schelling’s own protracted
philosophical development and of German idealism as a whole. FICHTE, HEGEL, KANT. D.Br. Schelling,
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 817 817 schema.THEMA. schemata.KANT. schematic
form.LOGICAL FORM. scheme, also schema (plural: schemata), a metalinguistic fre
or template used to specify an infinite set of sentences, its instances, by
finite means, often taken with a side condition on how its blanks or
placeholders are to be filled. The sentence ‘Either Abe argues or it is not the
case that Abe argues’ is an instance of the excluded middle scheme for English:
‘Either . . . or it is not the case that . . .’, where the two blanks are to be
filled with one and the se (well-formed declarative) English sentence. Since
first-order number theory cannot be finitely axiomatized, the mathematical
induction scheme is used to effectively specify an infinite set of axioms: ‘If
zero is such that . . . and the successor of every number such that . . . is
also such that . . . , then every number is such that . . .’, where the four
blanks are to be filled with one and the se arithmetic open sentence, such as
‘it precedes its own successor’ or ‘it is finite’. ong the best-known is
Tarski’s scheme T: ‘. . . is a true sentence if and only if . . .’, where the
second blank is filled with a sentence and the first blank by a ne of the
sentence. CONVENTION T, LOGICAL FORM,
METALANGUAGE, OPEN FORMULA, PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS, TARSKI. J.Cor. Schiller,
Johann Christoph Friedrich von (1759– 1805), German poet, dratist, and
philosopher. Along with his colleagues Reinhold and Fichte, he participated in
systematically revising Kant’s transcendental idealism. Though Schiller’s
bestknown theoretical contributions were to aesthetics, his philosophical bitions
were more general, and he proposed a novel solution to the problem of the
systematic unity, not merely of the critical philosophy, but of human nature.
His most substantial philosophical work, Briefe über die äesthetische Erziehung
des Menschen (“Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man,” 1794/95), exines the
relationship between natural necessity and practical freedom and addresses two
problems raised by Kant: How can a creature governed by natural necessity and
desire ever become aware of its own freedom and thus capable of autonomous
moral action? And how can these two sides of human nature – the natural,
sensuous side and the rational, supersensuous one – be reconciled? In
contradistinction both to those who subordinate principles to feelings (“savages”)
and to those who insist that one should strive to subordinate feelings to
principles (“barbarians”), Schiller posited an intermediary realm between the
sphere of nature and that of freedom, as well as a third basic human drive
capable of mediating between sensuous and rational impulses. This third impulse
is dubbed the “play impulse,” and the intermediary sphere to which it pertains
is that of art and beauty. By cultivating the play impulse (i.e., via
“aesthetic education”) one is not only freed from bondage to sensuality and
granted a first glimpse of one’s practical freedom, but one also becomes
capable of reconciling the rational and sensuous sides of one’s own nature.
This idea of a condition in which opposites are simultaneously cancelled and
preserved, as well as the specific project of reconciling freedom and
necessity, profoundly influenced subsequent thinkers such as Schelling and
Hegel and contributed to the development of German idealism. FICHTE, IDEALISM, KANT, NEO-KANTIANISM,
SCHELLING. D.Br. Schlegel, Friedrich von (1772–1829), German literary critic
and philosopher, one of the principal representatives of German Romanticism. In
On the Study of Greek Poetry (1795), Schlegel laid the foundations for the
distinction of classical and Romantic literature and a pronounced consciousness
of literary modernity. Together with his brother August Wilhelm, he edited the
Athenaeum (1798–1800), the main theoretical organ of German Romanticism, fous
for its collection of fragments as a new means of critical communication.
Schlegel is the originator of the Romantic theory of irony, a non-dialectical
form of philosophizing and literary writing that takes its inspiration from
Socratic irony and combines it with Fichte’s thought process of affirmation and
negation, “self-creation” and “self-annihilation.” Closely connected wih
Schlegel’s theory of irony is his theory of language and understanding
(hermeneutics). Critical reflection on language promotes an ironic awareness of
the “necessity and impossibility of complete communication” (Critical
Fragments, No. 108); critical reflection on understanding reveals the ount of
incomprehensibility, of “positive not-understanding” involved in every act of
understanding (On Incomprehensibility, 1800). Schlegel’s writings were
essential for the rise of historical consciousness in German Romanticism. His
On Ancient and Modern Literature (1812) is reputed to represent the first
literary history in a modern and broadly comparative fashion. His Philosophy of
History (1828), together with his Philosophy of Life (1828) schema Schlegel,
Friedrich von 818 818 and Philosophy
of Language (1829), confront Hegel’s philosophy from the point of view of a
Christian and personalistic type of philosophizing. Schlegel converted to
Catholicism in 1808. FICHTE. E.Beh.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1768–1834), German philosopher, a “critical realist”
working ong post-Kantian idealists. In philosophy and science he presupposed
transcendental features, noted in his dialectic lectures, and advocated integrative
but historically contingent, empirical functions. Both develop, but, contra
Hegel, not logically. Schleiermacher was a creator of modern general
hermeneutics; a father of modern theological and religious studies; an advocate
of women’s rights; the cofounder, with Humboldt, of the University at Berlin
(1808–10), where he taught until 1834; and the classic translator of Plato into
German. Schleiermacher has had an undeservedly minor place in histories of
philosophy. Appointed chiefly to theology, he published less philosophy, though
he regularly lectured, in tightly argued discourse, in Greek philosophy,
history of philosophy, dialectic, hermeneutics and criticism, philosophy of
mind (“psychology”), ethics, politics, aesthetics, and philosophy of education.
From the 1980s, his collected writings and large correspondence began to appear
in a forty-volume critical edition and in the larger Schleiermacher Studies and
Translations series. Brilliant, newly available pieces from his twenties on
freedom, the highest good, and values, previously known only in fragments but
essential for understanding his views fully, were ong the first to appear. Much
of his outlook was formed before he bece prominent in the early Romantic circle
(1796–1806), distinguishable by his markedly religious, consistently liberal
views. HERMENEUTICS. T.N.T. Schlick,
Moritz.VIENNA CIRCLE. Scholasticism, a set of scholarly and instructional
techniques developed in Western European schools of the late medieval period,
including the use of commentary and disputed question. ‘Scholasticism’ is
derived from Latin scholasticus, which in the twelfth century meant the master
of a school. The Scholastic method is usually presented as beginning in the law
schools – notably at Bologna – and as being then transported into theology and
philosophy by a series of masters including Abelard and Peter Lombard. Within
the new universities of the thirteenth century the standardization of the
curriculum and the enormous prestige of Aristotle’s work (despite the suspicion
with which it was initially greeted) contributed to the entrenchment of the
method and it was not until the educational reforms of the beginning of the
sixteenth century that it ceased to be dominant. There is, strictly speaking,
no such thing as Scholasticism. As the term was originally used it presupposed
that a single philosophy was taught in the universities of late medieval
Europe, but there was no such philosophy. The philosophical movements working
outside the universities in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
and the “neo-Scholastics” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
all found such a presupposition useful, and their influence led scholars to
assume it. At first this generated efforts to find a common core in the
philosophies taught in the late medieval schools. More recently it has led to
efforts to find methods characteristic of their teaching, and to an extension
of the term to the schools of late antiquity and of Byzantium. Both ong the
opponents of the schools in the seventeenth century and ong the
“neoScholastics,” ‘Scholasticism’ was supposed to designate a doctrine whose
core was the doctrine of substance and accidents. As portrayed by Descartes and
Locke, the Scholastics accepted the view that ong the components of a thing
were a substantial form and a number of real accidental forms, many of which
corresponded to perceptible properties of the thing – its color, shape,
temperature. They were also supposed to have accepted a sharp distinction between
natural and unnatural motion.
NEO-SCHOLASTICISM. C.G.Norm. Scholastic method.SCHOLASTICISM. School of
Laws.CHINESE LEGALISM. School of Nes, also called, in Chinese, ming chia, a
loosely associated group of Chinese philosophers of the Warring States period
(403– 221 B.C.), also known as pien che (Dialecticians or Sophists). The most
fous were Hui Shih and Kung-sun Lung Tzu. Though interested in the relation
between nes and reality, the Sophists addressed such issues as relativity,
perspectivism, space, time, causality, essentialism, universalism, and
particularism. Perhaps more important than their subject matter, however, was
their methodology. As their ne suggests, the Sophists Schleiermacher, Friedrich
School of Nes 819 819 delighted in
language ges and logical puzzles. They used logic and rational argument not
only as a weapon to defeat their philosophical opponents but as a tool to
sharpen rational argumentation itself. Paradoxes such as ‘I go to Yüeh today
but arrive yesterday’ and ‘A white horse is not a horse’ continue to stimulate
philosophical discussion today. Yet frustrated Confucian, Taoist, and Legalist
contemporaries chided Sophists for wasting their time on abstractions and
puzzles, and for succumbing to intellectualism for its own sake. As
Confucianism emerged to become the state ideology, the School of Nes
disappeared sometime in the early Han dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 220); having been
in important measure co-opted by the leading interpreter of Confucianism of the
period, Hsün Tzu. CHINESE PHILOSOPHY,
HSÜN TZU, KUNG-SUN LUNG TZU. R.P.P. & R.T.A. Schopenhauer, Arthur
(1788–1860), German philosopher. Born in Danzig and schooled in Germany,
France, and England during a welltraveled childhood, he bece acquainted through
his novelist mother with Goethe, Schlegel, and the brothers Grimm. He studied
medicine at the University of Göttingen and philosophy at the University of
Berlin; received the doctorate from the University of Jena in 1813; and lived
much of his adult life in Frankfurt, where he died. Schopenhauer’s
dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
(1813), lays the groundwork for all of his later philosophical work. The world
of representation (equivalent to Kant’s phenomenal world) is governed by “the
principle of sufficient reason”: “every possible object . . . stands in a
necessary relation to other objects, on the one hand as determined, on the
other as determining” (The World as Will and Representation). Thus, each object
of consciousness can be explained in terms of its relations with other objects.
The systematic statement of Schopenhauer’s philosophy appeared in The World as
Will and Representation (1818). His other works are On Vision and Colors
(1815), “On the Will in Nature” (1836), conjoined with “On the Foundation of
Morality” in The Two Fundental Problems of Ethics (1841); the second edition of
The World as Will and Representation, which included a second volume of essays
(1844); an enlarged and revised edition of On the Fourfold Root of the Principle
of Sufficient Reason (1847); and Parerga and Paralipomena, a series of essays
(1851). These are all consistent with the principal statement of his thought in
The World as Will and Representation. The central postulate of Schopenhauer’s
system is that the fundental reality is will, which he equates with the Kantian
thing-in-itself. Unlike Kant, Schopenhauer contends that one can immediately
know the thing-in-itself through the experience of an inner, volitional reality
within one’s own body. Every phenomenon, according to Schopenhauer, has a
comparable inner reality. Consequently, the term ‘will’ can extend to the inner
nature of all things. Moreover, because number pertains exclusively to the
phenomenal world, the will, as thing-initself, is one. Nevertheless, different
types of things manifest the will to different degrees. Schopenhauer accounts
for these differences by invoking Plato’s Ideas (or Forms). The Ideas are the
universal prototypes for the various kinds of objects in the phenomenal world. Taken
collectively, the Ideas constitute a hierarchy. We usually overlook them in
everyday experience, focusing instead on particulars and their practical
relationships to us. However, during aesthetic experience, we recognize the
universal Idea within the particular; simultaneously, as aesthetic beholders,
we become “the universal subject of knowledge.” Aesthetic experience also
quiets the will within us. The complete silencing of the will is, for
Schopenhauer, the ideal for human beings, though it is rarely attained. Because
will is the fundental metaphysical principle, our lives are dominated by
willing – and, consequently, filled with struggle, conflict, and
dissatisfaction. Inspired by Buddhism, Schopenhauer contends that all of life
is suffering, which only an end to desire can permanently eliminate (as opposed
to the respite of aesthetic experience). This is achieved only by the saint,
who rejects desire in an inner act termed “denial of the will to live.” The
saint fully grasps that the se will motivates all phenomena and, recognizing
that nothing is gained through struggle and competition, achieves
“resignation.” Such a person achieves the ethical ideal of all religions –
compassion toward all beings, resulting from the insight that all are,
fundentally, one. KANT, PLATO. K.M.H.
Schröder-Bernstein theorem, the theorem that mutually dominant sets are
equinumerous. A set A is said to be dominated by a set B if and only if each
element of A can be mapped to a unique element of B in such a way that no two elements
of A are mapped to the se element of B (posSchopenhauer, Arthur
Schröder-Bernstein theorem 820 820
sibly with some elements of B left over). Intuitively, if A is dominated by B,
then B has at least as many members as A. Given this intuition, one would
expect that if A is dominated by B and B is dominated by A, then A and B are
equinumerous (i.e., A can be mapped to B as described above with no elements of
B left over). This is the Schröder-Bernstein theorem. Stated in terms of
cardinal numbers, the theorem says that if k m l and l m k, then k % l. Despite
the simplicity of the theorem’s statement, its proof is non-trivial. SET THEORY. P.Mad. Schrödinger, Erwin
(1887–1961), Austrian physicist best known for five papers published in 1926,
in which he discovered the Schrödinger wave equation and created modern wave
mechanics. For this achievement, he was awarded the Nobel prize in physics
(shared with Paul Dirac) in 1933. Like Einstein, Schrödinger was a resolute but
ultimately unsuccessful critic of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum
mechanics. Schrödinger defended the view (which he derived from Boltzmann) that
theories should give a picture, continuous in space and time, of the real
processes that produce observable phenomena. Schrödinger’s realistic philosophy
of science played an important role in his discovery of wave mechanics.
Although his physical interpretation of the psi function was soon abandoned,
his approach to quantum mechanics survives in the theories of Louis de Broglie
and David Bohm. QUANTUM MECHANICS. M.C.
Schrödinger cat paradox.QUANTUM MECHANICS. Schrödinger equation.QUANTUM
MECHANICS. Schulze, Gottlob Ernst (1761–1833), German philosopher today known
mainly as an acute and influential early critic of Kant and Reinhold. He taught
at Wittenberg, Helmstedt, and Göttingen; one of his most important students was
Schopenhauer, whose view of Kant was definitely influenced by Schulze’s
interpretation. Schulze’s most important work was his Aenesidemus, or “On the
Elementary Philosophy Put Forward by Mr. Reinhold in Jena. Together with a
Defense of Skepticism” (1792). It fundentally changed the discussion of Kantian
philosophy. Kant’s earliest critics had accused him of being a skeptic like
Hume. Kantians, like Reinhold, had argued that critical philosophy was not only
opposed to skepticism, but also contained the only possible refutation of
skepticism. Schulze tried to show that Kantianism could not refute skepticism,
construed as the doctrine that doubts the possibility of any knowledge
concerning the existence or non-existence of “things-in-themselves,” and he
argued that Kant and his followers begged the skeptic’s question by
presupposing that such things exist and causally interact with us. Schulze’s
Aenesidemus had a great impact on Fichte and Hegel, and it also influenced
neoKantianism. M.K. science, philosophy of.PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. scientia
media.MIDDLE KNOWLEDGE. scientia universalis.LEIBNIZ. scientific
behaviorism.BEHAVIORISM. scientific determinism.DETERMINISM. scientific realism,
the view that the subject matter of scientific research and scientific theories
exists independently of our knowledge of it, and that the goal of science is
the description and explanation of both observable and unobservable aspects of
the world. Scientific realism is contrasted with logical empiricism and social
constructivism. Early arguments for scientific realism simply stated that, in
light of the impressive products and methods of science, realism is the only
philosophy that does not make the success of science a miracle. Formulations of
scientific realism focus on the objects of theoretical knowledge: theories,
laws, and entities. One especially robust argument for scientific realism (due
to Putn and Richard Boyd) is that the instrumental reliability of scientific
methodology in the mature sciences (such as physics, chemistry, and some areas
of biology) can be explained adequately only if we suppose that theories in the
mature sciences are at least approximately true and their central theoretical
terms are at least partially referential (Putn no longer holds this view). More
timid versions of scientific realism do not infer approximate truth of mature
theories. For exple, Ian Hacking’s “entity realism” (1983) asserts that the
instrumental manipulation of postulated entities to produce further effects
gives us legitimate grounds for ontological commitment to theoretical entities,
but not to laws or theories. Paul Humphreys’s “austere realism” (1989) states
that only theoretical commitment to unobserved structures or dispositions could
Schrödinger, Erwin scientific realism 821
821 explain the stability of observed outcomes of scientific inquiry.
Distinctive versions of scientific realism can be found in works by Richard
Boyd (1983), Philip Kitcher (1993), Richard Miller (1987), Willi Newton-Smith
(1981), and J. D. Trout (1998). Despite their differences, all of these
versions of realism are distinguished – against logical empiricism – by their
commitment that knowledge of unobservable phenomena is not only possible but
actual. As well, all of the arguments for scientific realism are abductive;
they argue that either the approximate truth of background theories or the
existence of theoretical entities and laws provides the best explanation for some
significant fact about the scientific theory or practice. Scientific realists
address the difference between real entities and merely useful constructs,
arguing that realism offers a better explanation for the success of science. In
addition, scientific realism recruits evidence from the history and practice of
science, and offers explanations for the success of science that are designed
to honor the dynic and uneven character of that evidence. Most arguments for
scientific realism cohabit with versions of naturalism. Anti-realist opponents
argue that the realist move from instrumental reliability to truth is
question-begging. However, realists reply that such formal criticisms are
irrelevant; the structure of explanationist arguments is inductive and their
principles are a posteriori.
EXPLANATION, METAPHYSICS, PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM.
J.D.T. scientific relativism.THEORY-LADEN. scope, the “part” of the sentence
(or proposition) to which a given term “applies” under a given interpretation
of the sentence. If the sentence ‘Abe does not believe Ben died’ is interpreted
as expressing the proposition that Abe believes that it is not the case that
Ben died, the scope of ‘not’ is ‘Ben died’; interpreted as “It is not the case
that Abe believes that Ben died,” the scope is the rest of the sentence, i.e.,
‘Abe believes Ben died’. In the first case we have narrow scope, in the second
wide scope. If ‘Every number is not even’ is interpreted with narrow scope, it
expresses the false proposition that every number is non-even, which is
logically equivalent to the proposition that no number is even. Taken with wide
scope it expresses the truth that not every number is even, which is equivalent
to the truth that some number is non-even. Under normal interpretations of the
sentences, ‘hardened’ has narrow scope in ‘Carl is a hardened recidivist’,
whereas ‘alleged’ has wide scope in ‘Dan is an alleged criminal’. Accordingly,
‘Carl is a hardened recidivist’ logically implies ‘Carl is a recidivist’,
whereas ‘Dan is an alleged criminal’, being equivalent to ‘Allegedly, Dan is a
criminal’, does not imply ‘Dan is a criminal’. Scope considerations are useful
in analyzing structural biguity and in understanding the difference between the
grmatical form of a sentence and the logical form of a proposition it
expresses. In a logically perfect language grmatical form mirrors logical form,
there is no scope biguity, and the scope of a given term is uniquely determined
by its context. BIGUITY; CONVERSE;
CONVERSE, OUTER AND INNER; RELATION; STRUCTURAL BIGUITY. J.Cor. scope
biguity.BIGUITY. scope of operators.BIGUITY, SCOPE. Scotistic realism.DUNS
SCOTUS. Scottigena.ERIGENA. Scottish common sense philosophy, a comprehensive
philosophical position developed by Reid in the latter part of the eighteenth
century. Reid’s views were propagated by a succession of Scottish popularizers,
of whom the most successful was Dugald Stewart. Through them common sense
doctrine bece nearly a philosophical orthodoxy in Great Britain during the first
half of the nineteenth century. Brought to the United States through the
colleges in Princeton and Philadelphia, common sensism continued to be widely
taught until the later nineteenth century. The early Reidians Beattie and
Oswald were, like Reid himself, read in Germany by Kant and others; and Reid’s
views were widely taught in post-Napoleonic France. The archenemy for the
common sense theorists was Hume. Reid saw in his skepticism the inevitable
outcome of Descartes’s thesis, accepted by Locke, that we do not perceive
external objects directly, but that the immediate object of perception is
something in the mind. Against this he argued that perception involves both
sensation and certain intuitively known general truths or principles that
together yield knowledge of external objects. He also argued that there are
many other intuitively known general principles, including moral principles,
available to all normal humans. As a result he scientific relativism Scottish
common sense philosophy 822 822 thought
that whenever philosophical argument results in conclusions that run counter to
common sense, the philosophy must be wrong. Stewart made some changes in Reid’s
acute and original theory, but his main achievement was to propagate it through
eloquent classes and widely used textbooks. Common sensism, defending the
considered views of the ordinary man, was taken by many to provide a defense of
the Christian religious and moral status quo. Reid had argued for free will,
and presented a long list of self-evident moral axioms. If this might be
plausibly presented as part of the common sense of his time, the se could not
be said for some of the religious doctrines that Oswald thought equally
self-evident. Reid had not given any rigorous tests for what might count as
selfevident. The easy intuitionism of later common sensists was a natural
target for those who, like J. S. Mill, thought that any appeal to self-evidence
was simply a way of justifying vested interest. Whewell, in both his philosophy
of science and his ethics, and Sidgwick, in his moral theory, acknowledged
debts to Reid and tried to eliminate the abuses to which his method was open.
But in doing so they transformed common sensism beyond the limits within which
Reid and those shaped by him operated.
HUME, MOORE, REID, SIDGWICK. J.B.S. Scotus, John Duns.DUNS SCOTUS.
script.COGNITIVE SCIENCE. sea battle.ARISTOTLE.
Searle, John R. (b.1932),
erican philosopher of language and mind (D. Phil., Oxford) influenced by Frege,
Wittgenstein, and J. L. Austin; a founder of speech act theory and an important
contributor to debates on intentionality, consciousness, and institutional
facts. Language.
In Speech Acts: An Essay
in the Philosophy of Language (1969), Searle brings together modified versions
of Frege’s distinctions between the force (F) and content (P) of a sentence,
and between singular reference and predication, Austin’s analysis of speech
acts, and Grice’s analysis of speaker meaning.
Searle explores the
hypothesis that the semantics of a natural language can be regarded as a
conventional realization of underlying constitutive rules and that
illocutionary acts are acts performed in accordance with these rules.
Expression and Meaning (1979) extends this analysis to non-literal and indirect
illocutionary acts, and attempts to explain Donnellan’s referential-attributive
distinction in these terms and proposes an influential taxonomy of five basic
types of illocutionary acts based on the illocutionary point or purpose of the
act, and word-to-world versus world-toword direction of fit. Language and mind.
Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (1983) forms the foundation
for the earlier work on speech acts. Now the semantics of a natural language is
seen as the result of the mind (intrinsic intentionality) imposing conditions
of satisfaction or aboutness on objects (expressions in a language), which have
intentionality only derivatively. Perception and action rather than belief are
taken as fundental. Satisfaction conditions are essentially Fregean (i.e.
general versus singular) and internal – meaning is in the head, relative to a
background of non-intentional states, and relative to a network of other
intentional states. The philosophy of language becomes a branch of the
philosophy of mind. Mind. “Minds, Brains and Progrs” (1980) introduced the fous
“Chinese room” argument against strong artificial intelligence – the view that
appropriately progrming a machine is sufficient for giving it intentional
states. Suppose a monolingual English-speaker is working in a room producing
Chinese answers to Chinese questions well enough to mimic a Chinesespeaker, but
by following an algorithm written in English. Such a person does not understand
Chinese nor would a computer computing the se algorithm. This is true for any
such algorithms because they are syntactically individuated and intentional
states are semantically individuated. The Rediscovery of the Mind (1992)
continues the attack on the thesis that the brain is a digital computer, and
develops a non-reductive “biological naturalism” on which intentionality, like
the liquidity of water, is a high-level feature, which is caused by and
realized in the brain. Society. The Construction of Social Reality (1995)
develops his realistic worldview, starting with an independent world of
particles and forces, up through evolutionary biological systems capable of
consciousness and intentionality, to institutions and social facts, which are
created when persons impose status-features on things, which are collectively recognized
and accepted. DIRECTION OF FIT,
INTENTIONALScotus, John Duns Searle, John R. 823 823 ITY, MEANING, PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE,
SPEECH ACT THEORY. R.M.H. second actualization.ARISTOTLE. secondarily
evaluative word.PRESCRIPTIVISM. secondary process.FREUD. secondary
qualities.QUALITIES. secondary rule.HART. secondary substance.ARISTOTLE. second
imposition.IMPOSITION. second intention.IMPOSITION. second law of
thermodynics.ENTROPY. secondness.PEIRCE. second-order.ORDER. second-order
logic, the logic of languages that contain, in addition to variables ranging
over objects, variables ranging over properties, relations, functions, or
classes of those objects. A model, or interpretation, of a formal language
usually contains a domain of discourse. This domain is what the language is
about, in the model in question. Variables that range over this domain are
called first-order variables. If the language contains only first-order
variables, it is called a first-order language, and it is within the purview of
first-order logic. Some languages also contain variables that range over
properties, relations, functions, or classes of members of the domain of
discourse. These are second-order variables. A language that contains
first-order and second-order variables, and no others, is a secondorder
language. The sentence ‘There is a property shared by all and only prime
numbers’ is straightforwardly rendered in a second-order language, because of
the (bound) variable ranging over properties. There are also properties of properties,
relations of properties, and the like. Consider, e.g., the property of
properties expressed by ‘P has an infinite extension’ or the relation expressed
by ‘P has a smaller extension than Q’. A language with variables ranging over
such items is called thirdorder. This construction can be continued, producing
fourth-order languages, etc. A language is called higher-order if it is at
least second-order. Deductive systems for second-order languages are obtained
from those for first-order languages by adding straightforward extensions of
the axioms and rules concerning quantifiers that bind first-order variables.
There may also be an axiom scheme of comprehension: DPEx(Px S F(x)), one
instance for each formula F that does not contain P free. The scheme “asserts”
that every formula determines the extension of a property. If the language has
variables ranging over functions, there may also be a version of the axiom of
choice: ER(ExDyRxy P DfExRxfx). In standard semantics for second-order logic, a
model of a given language is the se as a model for the corresponding
first-order language. The relation variables range over every relation over the
domain-of-discourse, the function variables range over every function from the
domain to the domain, etc. In non-standard, or Henkin semantics, each model
consists of a domain-ofdiscourse and a specified collection of relations,
functions, etc., on the domain. The latter may not include every relation or
function. The specified collections are the range of the second-order variables
in the model in question. In effect, Henkin semantics regards second-order
languages as multi-sorted, first-order languages. FORMAL LOGIC, FORMAL SEMANTICS, PHILOSOPHY OF
LOGIC. S.Sha. second potentiality.ARISTOTLE. second Thomism.THOMISM. secundum
quid, in a certain respect, or with a qualification. Fallacies can arise from
confusing what is true only secundum quid with what is true simpliciter
(‘without qualification’, ‘absolutely’, ‘on the whole’), or conversely. Thus a
strawberry is red simpliciter (on the whole). But it is black, not red, with
respect to its seeds, secundum quid. By ignoring the distinction, one might
mistakenly infer that the strawberry is both red and not red. Again, a certain
thief is a good cook, secundum quid; but it does not follow that he is good
simpliciter (without qualification). Aristotle was the first to recognize the
fallacy secundum quid et simpliciter explicitly, in his Sophistical
Refutations. On the basis of some exceptionally enigmatic remarks in the se work,
the liar paradox was often regarded in the Middle Ages as an instance of this
fallacy. PARADOX. P.V.S. security
strategy.MAXIMIN STRATEGY. seeing, epistemic.DRETSKE. second actualization
seeing, epistemic 824 824 seeing,
non-epistemic.DRETSKE. selection.PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY. self, bundle theory
of.BUNDLE THEORY. self-consciousness.DE DICTO, KNOWLEDGE BY ACQUAINTANCE,
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. self-control.AKRASIA. self-deception, (1) purposeful action
to avoid unpleasant truths and painful topics (about oneself or the world); (2)
unintentional processes of denial, avoidance, or biased perception; (3) mental
states resulting from such action or processes, such as ignorance, false
belief, wishful thinking, unjustified opinions, or lack of clear awareness. Thus,
parents tend to exaggerate the virtues of their children; lovers disregard
clear signs of unreciprocated affection; overeaters rationalize away the need
to diet; patients dying of cancer pretend to themselves that their health is
improving. In some contexts ‘self-deception’ is neutral and implies no
criticism. Deceiving oneself can even be desirable, generating a vital lie that
promotes happiness or the ability to cope with difficulties. In other contexts
‘self-deception’ has negative connotations, suggesting bad faith, false
consciousness, or what Joseph Butler called “inner hypocrisy” – the refusal to
acknowledge our wrongdoing, character flaws, or onerous responsibilities.
Existentialist philosophers, like Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and most notably Sartre
(Being and Nothingness, 1943), denounced self-deception as an inauthentic
(dishonest, cowardly) refusal to confront painful though significant truths,
especially about freedom, responsibility, and death. Herbert Fingarette,
however, argued that self-deception is morally biguous – neither clearly
bleworthy nor clearly faultless – because of how it erodes capacities for
acting rationally (Self-Deception, 1969). The idea of intentionally deceiving
oneself seems paradoxical. In deceiving other people I usually know a truth
that guides me as I state the opposite falsehood, intending thereby to mislead
them into believing the falsehood. Five difficulties seem to prevent me from
doing anything like that to myself. (1) With interpersonal deception, one
person knows something that another person does not. Yet self-deceivers know
the truth all along, and so it seems they cannot use it to make themselves
ignorant. One solution is that self-deception occurs over time, with the
initial knowledge becoming gradually eroded. Or perhaps selfdeceivers only
suspect rather than know the truth, and then disregard relevant evidence. (2)
If consciousness implies awareness of one’s own conscious acts, then a
conscious intention to deceive myself would be self-defeating, for I would
remain conscious of the truth I wish to flee. Sartre’s solution was to view
self-deception as spontaneous and not explicitly reflected upon. Freud’s
solution was to conceive of self-deception as unconscious repression. (3) It
seems that self-deceivers believe a truth that they simultaneously get
themselves not to believe, but how is that possible? Perhaps they keep one of
two conflicting beliefs unconscious or not fully conscious. (4) Self-deception
suggests willfully creating beliefs, but that seems impossible since beliefs
cannot voluntarily be chosen. Perhaps beliefs can be indirectly manipulated by
selectively ignoring and attending to evidence. (5) It seems that one part of a
person (the deceiver) manipulates another part (the victim), but such extreme
splits suggest multiple personality disorders rather than self-deception.
Perhaps we are composed of “subselves” – relatively unified clusters of
elements in the personality. Or perhaps at this point we should jettison
interpersonal deception as a model for understanding self-deception. AKRASIA, FREUD, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. M.W.M.
self-determination, the autonomy possessed by a community when it is
politically independent; in a strict sense, territorial sovereignty. Within
international law, the principle of self-determination appears to grant every
people a right to be self-determining, but there is controversy over its
interpretation. Applied to established states, the principle calls for
recognition of state sovereignty and non-intervention in internal affairs. By
providing for the self-determination of subordinate communities, however, it
can generate demands for secession that conflict with existing claims of
sovereignty. Also, what non-self-governing groups qualify as beneficiaries? The
national interpretation of the principle treats cultural or national units as
the proper claimants, whereas the regional interpretation confers the right of
self-determination upon the populations of well-defined regions regardless of
cultural or national affiliations. This difference reflects the roots of the
principle in the doctrines of nationalism and popular sovereignty,
respectively, but comseeing, non-epistemic self-determination 825 825 plicates its application. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. T.K. self-evidence, the
property of being self-evident. Only true propositions (or truths) are
self-evident, though false propositions can appear to be self-evident. It is
widely held that a true proposition is self-evident if and only if one would be
justified in believing it if one adequately understood it. Some would also
require that self-evident propositions are known if believed on the basis of
such an understanding. Some self-evident propositions are obvious, such as the
proposition that all stags are male, but others are not, since it may take
considerable reflection to achieve an adequate understanding of them. That
slavery is wrong and that there is no knowledge of falsehoods are perhaps
exples of the latter. Not all obvious propositions are self-evident, e.g., it
is obvious that a stone will fall if dropped, but adequate understanding of
that claim does not by itself justify one in believing it. An obvious
proposition is one that immediately seems true for anyone who adequately
understands it, but its obviousness may rest on wellknown and commonly accepted
empirical facts, not on understanding. All analytic propositions are
self-evident but not all self-evident propositions are analytic. The
propositions that if A is older than B, then B is younger than A, and that no
object can be red and green all over at the se time and in the se respects, are
arguably self-evident but not analytic. All self-evident propositions are
necessary, for one could not be justified in believing a contingent proposition
simply in virtue of understanding it. However, not all necessary propositions
are self-evident, e.g., that water is H2O and that temperature is the measure
of the molecular activity in substances are necessary but not self-evident. A
proposition can appear to be selfevident even though it is not. For instance,
the proposition that all unmarried adult males are bachelors will appear
self-evident to many until they consider that the pope is such a male. A
proposition may appear self-evident to some but not to others, even though it must
either have or lack the property of being self-evident. Self-evident
propositions are knowable non-empirically, or a priori, but some propositions
knowable a priori are not self-evident, e.g., certain conclusions of long and
difficult chains of mathematical reasoning.
ANALYTIC –SYNTHETIC DISTINCTION, A PRIORI, KANT, NECESSITY, RATIONALISM.
B.R. self-interest theory.PARFIT. self-justification.EPISTEMOLOGY.
self-love.BUTLER, EGOISM. self-organizing system.COMPUTER THEORY.
self-presenting, in the philosophy of Meinong, having the ability – common to
all mental states – to be immediately present to our thought. In Meinong’s
view, no mental state can be presented to our thought in any other way – e.g.,
indirectly, via a Lockean “idea of reflection.” The only way to apprehend a
mental state is to experience or “live through” it. The experience involved in
the apprehension of an external object has thus a double presentational
function: (1) via its “content” it presents the object to our thought; (2) as
its own “quasi-content” it presents itself immediately to our thought. In the
contemporary era, Roderick Chisholm has based his account of empirical
knowledge in part on a related concept of the self-presenting. (In Chisholm’s
sense – the definition of which we omit here – all self-presenting states are
mental, but not conversely; for instance, being depressed because of the death
of one’s spouse would not be self-presenting.) In Chisholm’s epistemology,
self-presenting states are a source of certainty in the following way: if F is
a self-presenting state, then to be certain that one is in state F it is
sufficient that one is, and believes oneself to be in state F. BRENTANO, MEINONG, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. R.Ke.
self-reference, paradoxes of.RUSSELL, TYPE THEORY. self-referential
incoherence, an internal defect of an assertion or theory, which it possesses
provided that (a) it establishes some requirement that must be met by
assertions or theories, (b) it is itself subject to this requirement, and (c)
it fails to meet the requirement. The most fous exple is logical positivism’s
meaning criterion, which requires that all meaningful assertions be either
tautological or empirically verifiable, yet is itself neither. A possible early
exple is found in Hume, whose own writings might have been consigned to the
fles had librarians followed his counsel to do so with volumes that contain
neither “abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number” nor “experimental
reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence.” Bold defiself-evidence
self-referential incoherence 826 826
ance was shown by Wittgenstein, who, realizing that the propositions of the
Tractatus did not “picture” the world, advised the reader to “throw away the
ladder after he has climbed up it.” An epistemological exple is furnished by
any foundationalist theory that establishes criteria for rational acceptability
that the theory itself cannot meet.
HUME, LOGICAL POSITIVISM. W.Has. self-reproducing automaton, a formal
model of self-reproduction of a kind introduced by von Neumann. He worked with
an intuitive robot model and then with a well-defined cellular automaton model.
Imagine a class of robotic automata made of robot parts and operating in an
environment of such parts. There are computer parts (switches, memory elements,
wires), input-output parts (sensing elements, display elements), action parts
(grasping and moving elements, joining and cutting elements), and straight bars
(to maintain structure and to employ in a storage tape). There are also energy
sources that enable the robots to operate and move around. These five
categories of parts are sufficient for the construction of robots that can make
objects of various kinds, including other robots. These parts also clearly
suffice for making a robot version of any finite automaton. Sensing and acting
parts can then be added to this robot so that it can make an indefinitely
expandable storage tape from straight bars. (A “blank tape” consists of bars
joined in sequence, and the robot stores information on this tape by attaching
bars or not at the junctions.) If its finite automaton part can execute progrs
and is sufficiently powerful, such a robot is a universal computing robot (cf.
a universal Turing machine). A universal computing robot can be augmented to
form a universal constructing robot – a robot that can construct any robot,
given its description. Let r be any robot with an indefinitely expandable tape,
let F(r) be the description of its finite part, and let T(r) be the information
on its tape. Now take a universal computing robot and augment it with sensing
and acting devices and with progrs so that when F(r) followed by T(r) is
written on its tape, this augmented universal computer performs as follows.
First, it reads the description F(r), finds the needed parts, and constructs
the finite part of r. Second, it makes a blank tape, attaches it to the finite
part of r, and then copies the information T(r) from its own tape onto the new
tape. This augmentation of a universal computing robot is a universal constructor.
For when it starts with the information F(r),T(r) written on its tape, it will
construct a copy of r with T(r) on its tape. Robot self-reproduction results
from applying the universal constructor to itself. Modify the universal
constructor slightly so that when only a description F(r) is written on its
tape, it constructs the finite part of r and then attaches a tape with F(r)
written on it. Call this version of the universal constructor Cu. Now place
Cu’s description F(Cu) on its own tape and start it up. Cu first reads this
description and constructs a copy of the finite part of itself in an empty
region of the cellular space. Then it adds a blank tape to the new construction
and copies F(Cu) onto it. Hence Cu with F(Cu) on its tape has produced another
copy of Cu with F(Cu) on its tape. This is automaton self-reproduction. This
robot model of self-reproduction is very general. To develop the logic of
self-reproduction further, von Neumann first extended the concept of a finite
automaton to that of an infinite cellular automaton consisting of an array or
“space” of cells, each cell containing the se finite automaton. He chose an
infinite checkerboard array for modeling self-reproduction, and he specified a
particular twenty-nine-state automaton for each square (cell). Each automaton
is connected directly to its four contiguous neighbors, and communication
between neighbors takes one or two time-steps. The twenty-nine states of a cell
fall into three categories. There is a blank state to represent the passivity
of an empty area. There are twelve states for switching, storage, and
communication, from which any finite automaton can be constructed in a
sufficiently large region of cells. And there are sixteen states for simulating
the activities of construction and destruction. Von Neumann chose these
twenty-nine states in such a way that an area of non-blank cells could compute
and grow, i.e., activate a path of cells out to a blank region and convert the
cells of that region into a cellular automaton. A specific cellular automaton
is embedded in this space by the selection of the initial states of a finite
area of cells, all other cells being left blank. A universal computer consists
of a sufficiently powerful finite automaton with a tape. The tape is an indefinitely
long row of cells in which bits are represented by two different cell states.
The finite automaton accesses these cells by means of a construction arm that
it extends back and forth in rows of cells contiguous to the tape. When
activated, this finite automaton will execute progrs stored on its tape.
self-reproducing automaton self-reproducing automaton 827 827 A universal constructor results from
augmenting the universal computer (cf. the robot model). Another construction
arm is added, together with a finite automaton controller to operate it. The
controller sends signals into the arm to extend it out to a blank region of the
cellular space, to move around that region, and to change the states of cells
in that region. After the universal constructor has converted the region into a
cellular automaton, it directs the construction arm to activate the new
automaton and then withdraw from it. Cellular automaton selfreproduction
results from applying the universal constructor to itself, as in the robot
model. Cellular automata are now studied extensively by humans working
interactively with computers as abstract models of both physical and organic
systems. (See Arthur W. Burks, “Von Neumann’s Self-Reproducing Automata,” in
Papers of John von Neumann on Computers and Computer Theory, edited by Willi
Aspray and Arthur Burks, 1987.) The study of artificial life is an outgrowth of
computer simulations of cellular automata and related automata. Cellular
automata organizations are sometimes used in highly parallel computers. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, ARTIFICIAL LIFE,
COMPUTER THEORY, TURING MACHINE. A.W.B. Sellars, Roy Wood.NEW REALISM. Sellars,
Wilfrid (1912–89), erican philosopher, son of Roy Wood Sellars, and one of the
great systematic philosophers of the century. His most influential and
representative works are “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” (1956) and
“Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man” (1960). The Sellarsian system may
be outlined as follows. The myth of the given. Thesis (1): Classical empiricism
(foundationalism) maintains that our belief in the commonsense, objective world
of physical objects is ultimately justified only by the way that world presents
itself in sense experience. Thesis (2): It also typically maintains that sense
experience (a) is not part of that world and (b) is not a form of conceptual
cognition like thinking or believing. Thesis (3): From (1) and (2a) classical
empiricism concludes that our knowledge of the physical world is inferred from
sense experience. Thesis (4): Since inferences derive knowledge from knowledge,
sense experience itself must be a form of knowledge. Theses (1)–(4)
collectively are the doctrine of the given. Each thesis taken individually is
plausible. However, Sellars argues that (2b) and (4) are incompatible if, as he
thinks, knowledge is a kind of conceptual cognition. Concluding that the
doctrine of the given is false, he maintains that classical empiricism is a
myth. The positive system. From an analysis of theoretical explanation in the
physical sciences, Sellars concludes that postulating theoretical entities is
justified only if theoretical laws – nomological generalizations referring to
theoretical entities – are needed to explain particular observable phenomena
for which explanation in terms of exceptionless observation laws is
unavailable. While rejecting any classical empiricist interpretation of
observation, Sellars agrees that some account of non-inferential knowledge is
required to make sense of theoretical explanation thus conceived. He thinks
that utterances made in direct response to sensory stimuli (observational
reports) count as non-inferential knowledge when (a) they possess authority,
i.e., occur in conditions ensuring that they reliably indicate some physical
property (say, shape) in the environment and are accepted by the linguistic
community as possessing this quality; and (b) the utterer has justified belief
that they possess this authority. Sellars claims that some perceptual
conditions induce ordinary people to make observation reports inconsistent with
established explanatory principles of the commonsense frework. We thus might
tend to report spontaneously that an object is green seen in daylight and blue
seen indoors, and yet think it has not undergone any process that could change
its color. Sellars sees in such conflicting tendencies vestiges of a primitive
conceptual frework whose tensions have been partially resolved by introducing
the concept of sense experiences. These experiences count as theoretical
entities, since they are postulated to account for observational phenomena for
which no exceptionless observation laws exist. This exple may serve as a
paradigm for a process of theoretical explanation occurring in the frework of
commonsense beliefs that Sellars calls the manifest image, a process that
itself is a model for his theory of the rational dynics of conceptual change in
both the manifest image and in science – the scientific image. Because the
actual process of conceptual evolution in Homo sapiens may not fit this pattern
of rational dynics, Sellars treats these dynics as occurring within certain
hypothetical ideal histories (myths) of the way in which, from certain
conSellars, Roy Wood Sellars, Wilfrid 828
828 ceptually primitive beginnings, one might have come to postulate the
requisite theoretical explanations. The manifest image, like the proto-theories
from which it arose, is itself subject to various tensions ultimately resolved
in the scientific image. Because this latter image contains a metaphysical theory
of material objects and persons that is inconsistent with that of its
predecessor frework, Sellars regards the manifest image as replaced by its
successor. In terms of the Peircean conception of truth that Sellars endorses,
the scientific image is the only true image. In this sense Sellars is a
scientific realist. There is, however, also an important sense in which Sellars
is not a scientific realist: despite discrediting classical empiricism, he
thinks that the intrinsic nature of sense experience gives to conceptualization
more than simply sensory stimulus yet less than the content of knowledge
claims. Inspired by Kant, Sellars treats the manifest image as a Kantian
phenomenal world, a world that exists as a cognitive construction which, though
lacking ideal factual truth, is guided in part by intrinsic features of sense
experience. This is not (analytic) phenomenalism, which Sellars rejects.
Moreover, the special methodological role for sense experience has effects even
within the scientific image itself. Theories of mind, perception, and
semantics. Mind: In the manifest image thoughts are private episodes endowed
with intentionality. Called inner speech, they are theoretical entities whose
causal and intentional properties are modeled, respectively, on inferential and
semantic properties of overt speech. They are introduced within a behaviorist
proto-theory, the Rylean frework, to provide a theoretical explanation for
behavior normally accompanied by linguistically overt reasons. Perception: In
the manifest image sense experiences are sense impressions – states of persons
modeled on two-dimensional, colored physical replicas and introduced in the
theoretical language of the adverbial theory of perception to explain why it
can look as if some perceptible quality is present when it is not. Semantics:
The meaning of a simple predicate p in a language L is the role played in L by
p defined in terms of three sets of linguistic rules: language entry rules,
intralinguistic rules, and language departure rules. This account also supports
a nominalist treatment of abstract entities. Identification of a role for a
token of p in L can be effected demonstratively in the speaker’s language by
saying that p in L is a member of the class of predicates playing the se role
as a demonstrated predicate. Thus a speaker of English might say that ‘rot’ in
German plays the semantic role ‘red’ has in English. Sellars sees science and
metaphysics as autonomous strands in a single web of philosophical inquiry.
Sellarsianism thus presents an important alternative to the view that what is
fundentally real is determined by the logical structure of scientific language
alone. Sellars also sees ordinary language as expressing a commonsense frework
of beliefs constituting a kind of proto-theory with its own methods,
metaphysics, and theoretical entities. Thus, he also presents an important
alternative to the view that philosophy concerns not what is ultimately real,
but what words like ‘real’ ultimately mean in ordinary language. EPISTEMOLOGY, METAPHYSICAL REALISM, ORDINARY
LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY. T.V. semantic atomism.SEMANTIC HOLISM. semantic
completeness.COMPLETENESS. semantic compositionality.MEANING. semantic
consequence.MODAL LOGIC. semantic consistency.CONSISTENCY. semantic holism, a metaphysical
thesis about the nature of representation on which the meaning of a symbol is
relative to the entire system of representations containing it. Thus, a
linguistic expression can have meaning only in the context of a language; a
hypothesis can have significance only in the context of a theory; a concept can
have intentionality only in the context of the belief system. Holism about
content has profoundly influenced virtually every aspect of contemporary
theorizing about language and mind, not only in philosophy, but in linguistics,
literary theory, artificial intelligence, psychology, and cognitive science.
Contemporary semantic holists include Davidson, Quine, Gilbert Harman, Hartry
Field, and Searle. Because semantic holism is a metaphysical and not a semantic
thesis, two theorists might agree about the semantic facts but disagree about
semantic holism. So, e.g., nothing in Tarski’s writings determines whether the
semantic facts expressed by the theorems of an absolute truth semantic atomism
semantic holism 829 829 theory are
holistic or not. Yet Davidson, a semantic holist, argued that the correct form
for a semantic theory for a natural language L is an absolute truth theory for
L. Semantic theories, like other theories, need not wear their metaphysical
commitments on their sleeves. Holism has some startling consequences. Consider
this. Franklin D. Roosevelt (who died when the United States still had just
forty-eight states) did not believe there were fifty states, but I do; semantic
holism says that what ‘state’ means in our mouths depends on the totality of
our beliefs about states, including, therefore, our beliefs about how many
states there are. It seems to follow that he and I must mean different things
by ‘state’; hence, if he says “Alaska is not a state” and I say “Alaska is a
state” we are not disagreeing. This line of argument leads to such surprising
declarations as that natural langauges are not, in general, intertranslatable
(Quine, Saussure); that there may be no fact of the matter about the meanings
of texts (Putn, Derrida); and that scientific theories that differ in their
basic postulates are “empirically incommensurable” (Paul Feyerabend, Kuhn). For
those who find these consequences of semantic holism unpalatable, there are
three mutually exclusive responses: semantic atomism, semantic molecularism, or
semantic nihilism. Semantic atomists hold that the meaning of any
representation (linguistic, mental, or otherwise) is not determined by the
meaning of any other representation. Historically, Anglo-erican philosophers in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries thought that an idea of an X was about
X’s in virtue of this idea’s physically resembling X’s. Resemblance theories
are no longer thought viable, but a number of contemporary semantic atomists
still believe that the basic semantic relation is between a concept and the
things to which it applies, and not one ong concepts themselves. These
philosophers include Dretske, Dennis Stpe, Fodor, and Ruth Millikan. Semantic
molecularism, like semantic holism, holds that the meaning of a representation
in a language L is determined by its relationships to the meanings of other
expressions in L, but, unlike holism, not by its relationships to every other
expression in L. Semantic molecularists are committed to the view, contrary to
Quine, that for any expression e in a language L there is an in-principle way
of distinguishing between those representations in L the meanings of which
determine the meaning of e and those representations in L the meanings of which
do not determine the meaning of e. Traditionally, this inprinciple delimitation
is supported by an analytic/synthetic distinction. Those representations in L
that are meaning-constituting of e are analytically connected to e and those
that are not meaning-constituting are synthetically connected to e. Meaning
molecularism seems to be the most common position ong those philosophers who
reject holism. Contemporary meaning molecularists include Michael Devitt,
Dummett, Ned Block, and John Perry. Semantic nihilism is perhaps the most
radical response to the consequences of holism. It is the view that, strictly
speaking, there are no semantic properties. Strictly speaking, there are no
mental states; words lack meanings. At least for scientific purposes (and
perhaps for other purposes as well) we must abandon the notion that people are
moral or rational agents and that they act out of their beliefs and desires.
Semantic nihilists include ong their ranks Patricia and Paul Churchland,
Stephen Stich, Dennett, and, sometimes, Quine.
ANALYTIC–SYNTHETIC DISTINCTION, MEANING, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. E.L.
semantic molecularism.SEMANTIC HOLISM. semantic nihilism.SEMANTIC HOLISM.
semantic paradoxes, a collection of paradoxes involving the semantic notions of
truth, predication, and definability. The liar paradox is the oldest and most
widely known of these, having been formulated by Eubulides as an objection to
Aristotle’s correspondence theory of truth. In its simplest form, the liar
paradox arises when we try to assess the truth of a sentence or proposition
that asserts its own falsity, e.g.: (A) Sentence (A) is not true. It would seem
that sentence (A) cannot be true, since it can be true only if what it says is
the case, i.e., if it is not true. Thus sentence (A) is not true. But then,
since this is precisely what it claims, it would seem to be true. Several
alternative forms of the liar paradox have been given their own nes. The
postcard paradox, also known as a liar cycle, envisions a postcard with
sentence (B) on one side and sentence (C) on the other: (B) The sentence on the
other side of this card is true. semantic molecularism semantic paradoxes
830 830 (C) The sentence on the other
side of this card is false. Here, no consistent assignment of truth-values to
the pair of sentences is possible. In the preface paradox, it is imagined that
a book begins with the claim that at least one sentence in the book is false.
This claim is unproblematically true if some later sentence is false, but if
the remainder of the book contains only truths, the initial sentence appears to
be true if and only if false. The preface paradox is one of many exples of
contingent liars, claims that can either have an unproblematic truth-value or
be paradoxical, depending on the truth-values of various other claims (in this
case, the remaining sentences in the book). Related to the preface paradox is
Epimenedes’ paradox: Epimenedes, himself from Crete, is said to have claimed
that all Cretans are liars. This claim is paradoxical if interpreted to mean
that Cretans always lie, or if interpreted to mean they sometimes lie and if no
other claim made by Epimenedes was a lie. On the former interpretation, this is
a simple variation of the liar paradox; on the latter, it is a form of contingent
liar. Other semantic paradoxes include Berry’s paradox, Richard’s paradox, and
Grelling’s paradox. The first two involve the notion of definability of
numbers. Berry’s paradox begins by noting that nes (or descriptions) of
integers consist of finite sequences of syllables. Thus the three-syllable
sequence ‘twenty-five’ nes 25, and the seven-syllable sequence ‘the sum of
three and seven’ nes ten. Now consider the collection of all sequences of
(English) syllables that are less than nineteen syllables long. Of these, many
are nonsensical (‘bababa’) and some make sense but do not ne integers
(‘artichoke’), but some do (‘the sum of three and seven’). Since there are only
finitely many English syllables, there are only finitely many of these
sequences, and only finitely many integers ned by them. Berry’s paradox arises
when we consider the eighteen-syllable sequence ‘the smallest integer not
neable in less than nineteen syllables’. This phrase appears to be a perfectly
well-defined description of an integer. But if the phrase nes an integer n,
then n is neable in less than nineteen syllables, and hence is not described by
the phrase. Richard’s paradox constructs a similarly paradoxical description
using what is known as a diagonal construction. Imagine a list of all finite
sequences of letters of the alphabet (plus spaces and punctuation), ordered as
in a dictionary. Prune this list so that it contains only English definitions
of real numbers between 0 and 1. Then consider the definition: “Let r be the
real number between 0 and 1 whose kth decimal place is ) if the kth decimal
place of the number ned by the kth member of this list is 1, and 0 otherwise’.
This description seems to define a real number that must be different from any
number defined on the list. For exple, r cannot be defined by the 237th member
of the list, because r will differ from that number in at least its 237th
decimal place. But if it indeed defines a real number between 0 and 1, then
this description should itself be on the list. Yet clearly, it cannot define a
number different from the number defined by itself. Apparently, the definition
defines a real number between 0 and 1 if and only if it does not appear on the
list of such definitions. Grelling’s paradox, also known as the paradox of heterologicality,
involves two predicates defined as follows. Say that a predicate is
“autological” if it applies to itself. Thus ‘polysyllabic’ and ‘short’ are
autological, since ‘polysyllabic’ is polysyllabic, and ‘short’ is short. In
contrast, a predicate is “heterological” if and only if it is not autological.
The question is whether the predicate ‘heterological’ is heterological. If our
answer is yes, then ‘heterological’ applies to itself – and so is autological,
not heterological. But if our answer is no, then it does not apply to itself –
and so is heterological, once again contradicting our answer. The semantic
paradoxes have led to important work in both logic and the philosophy of
language, most notably by Russell and Tarski. Russell developed the rified
theory of types as a unified treatment of all the semantic paradoxes. Russell’s
theory of types avoids the paradoxes by introducing complex syntactic
conditions on formulas and on the definition of new predicates. In the
resulting language, definitions like those used in formulating Berry’s and
Richard’s paradoxes turn out to be ill-formed, since they quantify over
collections of expressions that include themselves, violating what Russell
called the vicious circle principle. The theory of types also rules out, on
syntactic grounds, predicates that apply to themselves, or to larger
expressions containing those very se predicates. In this way, the liar paradox
and Grelling’s paradox cannot be constructed within a language conforming to
the theory of types. Tarski’s attention to the liar paradox made two fundental
contributions to logic: his development of semantic techniques for defining the
truth predicate for formalized languages and his semantic paradoxes semantic
paradoxes 831 831 proof of Tarski’s theorem.
Tarskian semantics avoids the liar paradox by starting with a formal language,
call it L, in which no semantic notions are expressible, and hence in which the
liar paradox cannot be formulated. Then using another language, known as the
metalanguage, Tarski applies recursive techniques to define the predicate
true-in-L, which applies to exactly the true sentences of the original language
L. The liar paradox does not arise in the metalanguage, because the sentence
(D) Sentence (D) is not true-in-L. is, if expressible in the metalanguage,
simply true. (It is true because (D) is not a sentence of L, and so a fortiori
not a true sentence of L.) A truth predicate for the metalanguage can then be
defined in yet another language, the metetalanguage, and so forth, resulting in
a sequence of consistent truth predicates. Tarski’s theorem uses the liar
paradox to prove a significant result in logic. The theorem states that the
truth predicate for the first-order language of arithmetic is not definable in
arithmetic. That is, if we devise a systematic way of representing sentences of
arithmetic by numbers, then it is impossible to define an arithmetical
predicate that applies to all and only those numbers that represent true
sentences of arithmetic. The theorem is proven by showing that if such a
predicate were definable, we could construct a sentence of arithmetic that is
true if and only if it is not true: an arithmetical version of sentence (A),
the liar paradox. Both Russell’s and Tarski’s solutions to the semantic
paradoxes have left many philosophers dissatisfied, since the solutions are
basically prescriptions for constructing languages in which the paradoxes do
not arise. But the fact that paradoxes can be avoided in artificially
constructed languages does not itself give a satisfying explanation of what is
going wrong when the paradoxes are encountered in natural language, or in an
artificial language in which they can be formulated. Most recent work on the
liar paradox, following Kripke’s “Outline of a Theory of Truth” (1975), looks
at languages in which the paradox can be formulated, and tries to provide a
consistent account of truth that preserves as much as possible of the intuitive
notion.
semiosis (from Greek
semeiosis, ‘observation of signs’), the relation of signification involving the
three relata of sign, object, and mind. Semiotic is the science or study of
semiosis. The semiotic of John of Saint Thomas and of Peirce includes two
distinct components: the relation of signification and the classification of
signs. The relation of signification is genuinely triadic and cannot be reduced
to the sum of its three subordinate dyads: sign-object, sign-mind, object-mind.
A sign represents an object to a mind just as A gives a gift to B. Semiosis is
not, as it is often taken to be, a mere compound of a sign-object dyad and a
sign-mind dyad because these dyads lack the essential intentionality that
unites mind with object; similarly, the gift relation involves not just A
giving and B receiving but, crucially, the intention uniting A and B. semantics
semiosis 832 832 In the Scholastic
logic of John of Saint Thomas, the sign-object dyad is a categorial relation
(secundum esse), that is, an essential relation, falling in Aristotle’s
category of relation, while the sign-mind dyad is a transcendental relation
(secundum dici), that is, a relation only in an analogical sense, in a manner
of speaking; thus the formal rationale of semiosis is constituted by the
sign-object dyad. By contrast, in Peirce’s logic, the sign-object dyad and the
sign-mind dyad are each only potential semiosis: thus, the hieroglyphs of
ancient Egypt were merely potential signs until the discovery of the Rosetta
Stone, just as a road-marking was a merely potential sign to the driver who
overlooked it. Classifications of signs typically follow from the logic of
semiosis. Thus John of Saint Thomas divides signs according to their relations
to their objects into natural signs (smoke as a sign of fire), customary signs
(napkins on the table as a sign that dinner is imminent), and stipulated signs
(as when a neologism is coined); he also divides signs according to their
relations to a mind. An instrumental sign must first be cognized as an object
before it can signify (e.g., a written word or a symptom); a formal sign, by
contrast, directs the mind to its object without having first been cognized
(e.g., percepts and concepts). Formal signs are not that which we cognize but
that by which we cognize. All instrumental signs presuppose the action of formal
signs in the semiosis of cognition. Peirce similarly classified signs into
three trichotomies according to their relations with (1) themselves, (2) their
objects, and (3) their interpretants (usually minds); and Charles Morris, who
followed Peirce closely, called the relationship of signs to one another the
syntactical dimension of semiosis, the relationship of signs to their objects
the semantical dimension of semiosis, and the relationship of signs to their
interpreters the pragmatic dimension of semiosis. JOHN OF SAINT THOMAS, PEIRCE, THEORY OF
SIGNS. J.B.M. semiotic.THEORY OF SIGNS. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus.STOICISM.
sensa.PERCEPTION. sensationalism, the belief that all mental states –
particularly cognitive states – are derived, by composition or association,
from sensation. It is often joined to the view that sensations provide the only
evidence for our beliefs, or (more rarely) to the view that statements about
the world can be reduced, without loss, to statements about sensation. Hobbes
was the first important sensationalist in modern times. “There is no conception
in man’s mind,” he wrote, “which hath not at first, totally, or by parts, been
begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are derived from that original.”
But the belief gained prominence in the eighteenth century, due largely to the
influence of Locke. Locke himself was not a sensationalist, because he took the
mind’s reflection on its own operations to be an independent source of ideas.
But his distinction between simple and complex ideas was used by
eighteenthcentury sensationalists such as Condillac and Hartley to explain how
conceptions that seem distant from sense might nonetheless be derived from it.
And to account for the particular ways in which simple ideas are in fact
combined, Condillac and Hartley appealed to a second device described by Locke:
the association of ideas. “Elementary” sensations – the building blocks of our
mental life – were held by the sensationalists to be non-voluntary, independent
of judgment, free of interpretation, discrete or atomic, and infallibly known.
Nineteenth-century sensationalists tried to account for perception in terms of
such building blocks; they struggled particularly with the perception of space
and time. Late nineteenth-century critics such as Ward and Jes advanced
powerful arguments against the reduction of perception to sensation.
Perception, they claimed, involves more than the passive reception (or
recombination and association) of discrete pellets of incorrigible information.
They urged a change in perspective – to a functionalist viewpoint more closely
allied with prevailing trends in biology – from which sensationalism never
fully recovered. EMPIRICISM, HOBBES,
PERCEPTION. K.P.W. sense.MEANING. sense, direct.OBLIQUE CONTEXT. sense, indirect.OBLIQUE
CONTEXT. sense-data.PERCEPTION. sense-datum theory.PHENOMENALISM. sense
qualia.QUALIA. senses, special.FACULTY PSYCHOLOGY. semiotic senses, special
833 833 sensibilia (singular:
sensibile), as used by Russell, those entities that no one is (at the moment)
perceptually aware of, but that are, in every other respect, just like the
objects of perceptual awareness. If one is a direct realist and believes that
the objects one is aware of in sense perception are ordinary physical objects,
then sensibilia are, of course, just physical objects of which no one is (at
the moment) aware. Assuming (with common sense) that ordinary objects continue
to exist when no one is aware of them, it follows that sensibilia exist. If,
however, one believes (as Russell did) that what one is aware of in ordinary
sense perception is some kind of idea in the mind, a so-called sense-datum,
then sensibilia have a problematic status. A sensibile then turns out to be an
unsensed sense-datum. On some (the usual) conceptions of sense-data, this is
like an unfelt pain, since a sense-datum’s existence (not as a sense-datum, but
as anything at all) depends on our (someone’s) perception of it. To exist (for
such things) is to be perceived (see Berkeley’s “esse est percipii“). If, however,
one extends the notion of sense-datum (as Moore was inclined to do) to whatever
it is of which one is (directly) aware in sense perception, then sensibilia may
or may not exist. It depends on what – physical objects or ideas in the mind –
we are directly aware of in sense perception (and, of course, on the empirical
facts about whether objects continue to exist when they are not being
perceived). If direct realists are right, horses and trees, when unobserved,
are sensibilia. So are the front surfaces of horses and trees (things Moore
once considered to be sensedata). If the direct realists are wrong, and what we
are perceptually aware of are “ideas in the mind,” then whether or not
sensibilia exist depends on whether or not such ideas can exist apart from any
mind. PERCEPTION, RUSSELL. F.D. sensible
intuition.KANT. sensibles, common.ARISTOTLE, SENSUS COMMUNIS. sensibles,
proper.ARISTOTLE. sensibles, special.ARISTOTLE, FACULTY PSYCHOLOGY. sensorium,
the seat and cause of sensation in the brain of humans and other animals. The
term is not part of contemporary psychological parlance; it belongs to
prebehavioral, prescientific psychology, especially of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Only creatures possessed of a sensorium were thought
capable of bodily and perceptual sensations. Some thinkers believed that the
sensorium, when excited, also produced muscular activity and motion. G.A.G.
sensum.PERCEPTION. sensus communis, a cognitive faculty to which the five
senses report. It was first argued for in Aristotle’s On the Soul II.1–2,
though the term ‘common sense’ was first introduced in Scholastic thought.
Aristotle refers to properties such as magnitude that are perceived by more
than one sense as common sensibles. To recognize common sensibles, he claims,
we must possess a single cognitive power to compare such qualities, received
from the different senses, to one another. Augustine says the “inner sense”
judges whether the senses are working properly, and perceives whether the
animal perceives (De libero arbitrio II.3–5). Aquinas (In De anima II, 13.370)
held that it is also by the common sense that we perceive we live. He says the
common sense uses the external senses to know sensible forms, preparing the
sensible species it receives for the operation of the cognitive power, which
recognizes the real thing causing the sensible species. AQUINAS, ARISTOTLE. J.Lo. sentence,
basic.FOUNDATIONALISM. sentential calculus.FORMAL LOGIC. sentential connective,
also called sentential operator, propositional connective, propositional
operator, a word or phrase, such as ‘and’, ‘or’, or ‘if . . . then’, that is
used to construct compound sentences from atomic – i.e., non-compound –
sentences. A sentential connective can be defined formally as an expression
containing blanks, such that when the blanks are replaced with sentences the
result is a compound sentence. Thus, ‘if ——— then ———’ and ‘——— or ———’ are
sentential connectives, since we can replace the blanks with sentences to get
the compound sentences ‘If the sky is clear then we can go swimming’ and ‘We
can go swimming or we can stay home’. Classical logic makes use of
truth-functional connectives only, for which the truth-value of the compound
sentence can be determined uniquely by the truth-value of the sentences that
replace the blanks. The standard truth-functional sensibilia sentential
connective 834 834 connectives are
‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’, ‘if . . . then’, and ‘if and only if’. There are many
non-truth-functional connectives as well, such as ‘it is possible that ———’ and
‘——— because ———’. FORMAL LOGIC,
OPERATOR, TRUTH TABLE. V.K. sentential operator.SENTENTIAL CONNECTIVE.
sentiment.SENTIMENTALISM. sentimentalism, the theory, prominent in the
eighteenth century, that epistemological or moral relations are derived from
feelings. Although sentimentalism and sensationalism are both empiricist
positions, the latter view has all knowledge built up from sensations,
experiences impinging on the senses. Sentimentalists may allow that ideas
derive from sensations, but hold that some relations between them are derived
internally, that is, from sentiments arising upon reflection. Moral
sentimentalists, such as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume, argued that the
virtue or vice of a character trait is established by approving or disapproving
sentiments. Hume, the most thoroughgoing sentimentalist, also argued that all
beliefs about the world depend on sentiments. On his analysis, when we form a
belief, we rely on the mind’s causally connecting two experiences, e.g., fire and
heat. But, he notes, such causal connections depend on the notion of necessity
– that the two perceptions will always be so conjoined – and there is nothing
in the perceptions themselves that supplies that notion. The idea of necessary
connection is instead derived from a sentiment: our feeling of expectation of
the one experience upon the other. Likewise, our notions of substance (the
unity of experiences in an object) and of self (the unity of experiences in a
subject) are sentimentbased. But whereas moral sentiments do not purport to
represent the external world, these metaphysical notions of necessity,
substance, and self are “fictions,” creations of the imagination purporting to
represent something in the outside world.
HUME, HUTCHESON, MORAL SENSE THEORY, SENSATIONALISM, SHAFTESBURY. E.S.R.
separation, axiom of.AXIOM OF COMPREHENSION, SET THEORY. separation of law and
morals.HART. sequent calculus.CUT-ELIMINATION THEOREM. set.SET THEORY. set,
singleton.SET THEORY. set, well-ordered.SET-THEORETIC PARADOXES. set-theoretic
paradoxes, a collection of paradoxes that reveal difficulties in certain
central notions of set theory. The best-known of these are Russell’s paradox,
Burali-Forti’s paradox, and Cantor’s paradox. Russell’s paradox, discovered in
1901 by Bertrand Russell, is the simplest (and so most problematic) of the
set-theoretic paradoxes. Using it, we can derive a contradiction directly from
Cantor’s unrestricted comprehension schema. This schema asserts that for any
formula P(x) containing x as a free variable, there is a set {x _ P(x)} whose
members are exactly those objects that satisfy P(x). To derive the
contradiction, take P(x) to be the formula x 1 x, and let z be the set {x _ x 2
x} whose existence is guaranteed by the comprehension schema. Thus z is the set
whose members are exactly those objects that are not members of themselves. We
now ask whether z is, itself, a member of z. If the answer is yes, then we can
conclude that z must satisfy the criterion of membership in z, i.e., z must not
be a member of z. But if the answer is no, then since z is not a member of
itself, it satisfies the criterion for membership in z, and so z is a member of
z. All modern axiomatizations of set theory avoid Russell’s paradox by
restricting the principles that assert the existence of sets. The simplest
restriction replaces unrestricted comprehension with the separation schema.
Separation asserts that, given any set A and formula P(x), there is a set {x 1
A _ P(x)}, whose members are exactly those members of A that satisfy P(x). If
we now take P(x) to be the formula x 2 x, then separation guarantees the
existence of a set zA % {x 1 A _ x 2 x}. We can then use Russell’s reasoning to
prove the result that zA cannot be a member of the original set A. (If it were
a member of A, then we could prove that it is a member of itself if and only if
it is not a member of itself. Hence it is not a member of A.) But this result
is not problematic, and so the paradox is avoided. The Burali-Forte paradox and
Cantor’s paradox are sometimes known as paradoxes of size, since they show that
some collections are too large to be considered sets. The Burali-Forte paradox,
discovered by Cesare Burali-Forte, is concerned with the set of all ordinal
numbers. In Cantor’s set theory, an ordinal number can be sentential operator
set-theoretic paradoxes 835 835
assigned to any well-ordered set. (A set is wellordered if every subset of the
set has a least element.) But Cantor’s set theory also guarantees the existence
of the set of all ordinals, again due to the unrestricted comprehension schema.
This set of ordinals is well-ordered, and so can be associated with an ordinal
number. But it can be shown that the associated ordinal is greater than any
ordinal in the set, hence greater than any ordinal number. Cantor’s paradox
involves the cardinality of the set of all sets. Cardinality is another notion
of size used in set theory: a set A is said to have greater cardinality than a
set B if and only if B can be mapped one-to-one onto a subset of A but A cannot
be so mapped onto B or any of its subsets. One of Cantor’s fundental results
was that the set of all subsets of a set A (known as the power set of A) has
greater cardinality than the set A. Applying this result to the set V of all
sets, we can conclude that the power set of V has greater cardinality than V.
But every set in the power set of V is also in V (since V contains all sets),
and so the power set of V cannot have greater cardinality than V. We thus have
a contradiction. Like Russell’s paradox, both of these paradoxes result from
the unrestricted comprehension schema, and are avoided by replacing it with
weaker set-existence principles. Various principles stronger than the
separation schema are needed to get a reasonable set theory, and many
alternative axiomatizations have been proposed. But the lesson of these
paradoxes is that no setexistence principle can entail the existence of the
Russell set, the set of all ordinals, or the set of all sets, on pain of
contradiction. SEMANTIC PARADOXES, SET
THEORY. J.Et. set-theoretic reflection principles.REFLECTION PRINCIPLES. set
theory, the study of collections, ranging from filiar exples like a set of
encyclopedias or a deck of cards to mathematical exples like the set of natural
numbers or the set of points on a line or the set of functions from a set A to
another set B. Sets can be specified in two basic ways: by a list (e.g., {0, 2,
4, 6, 8}) and as the extension of a property (e.g., {x _ x is an even natural
number less than 10}, where this is read ‘the set of all x such that x is an
even natural number less than 10’). The most fundental relation in set theory
is membership, as in ‘2 is a member of the set of even natural numbers’ (in
symbols: 2 1 {x _ x is an even natural number}). Membership is determinate,
i.e., any candidate for membership in a given set is either in the set or not
in the set, with no room for vagueness or biguity. A set’s identity is
completely determined by its members or elements (i.e., sets are extensional
rather than intensional). Thus {x _ x is human} is the se set as {x _ x is a
featherless biped} because they have the se members. The smallest set possible
is the empty or null set, the set with no members. (There cannot be more than
one empty set, by extensionality.) It can be specified, e.g., as {x _ x &
x}, but it is most often symbolized as / or { }. A set A is called a subset of
a set B and B a superset of A if every member of A is also a member of B; in
symbols, A 0 B. So, the set of even natural numbers is a subset of the set of
all natural numbers, and any set is a superset of the empty set. The union of
two sets A and B is the set whose members are the members of A and the members
of B – in symbols, A 4 B % {x _ x 1 A or x 1 B} – so the union of the set of even
natural numbers and the set of odd natural numbers is the set of all natural
numbers. The intersection of two sets A and B is the set whose members are
common to both A and B – in symbols, A 3 B % {x _ x 1 A and x 1 B} – so the
intersection of the set of even natural numbers and the set of prime natural
numbers is the singleton set {2}, whose only member is the number 2. Two sets
whose intersection is empty are called disjoint, e.g., the set of even natural
numbers and the set of odd natural numbers. Finally, the difference between a
set A and a set B is the set whose members are members of A but not members of
B – in symbols, A – B % {x _ x 1 A and x 2 B} – so the set of odd numbers
between 5 and 20 minus the set of prime natural numbers is {9, 15}. By extensionality,
the order in which the members of a set are listed is unimportant, i.e., {1, 2,
3} % {2, 3, 1}. To introduce the concept of ordering, we need the notion of the
ordered pair of a and b – in symbols, (a, b) or . All that is essential to ordered
pairs is that two of them are equal only when their first entries are equal and
their second entries are equal. Various sets can be used to simulate this
behavior, but the version most commonly used is the Kuratowski ordered pair:
(a, b) is defined to be {{a}, {a, b}}. On this definition, it can indeed be
proved that (a, b) % (c, d) if and only if a % c and b % d. The Cartesian
product of two sets A and B is the set of all ordered pairs whose first entry
is in A and whose second entry is B – in symbols, A $ B % {x _ x % (a, b) for
some a 1 A and some b 1 B}. This set-theoretic reflection principles set theory
836 836 se technique can be used to
form ordered triples – (a, b, c) % ((a, b), c); ordered fourtuples – (a, b, c,
d) % ((a, b, c), d); and by extension, ordered n-tuples for all finite n. Using
only these simple building blocks, (substitutes for) all the objects of
classical mathematics can be constructed inside set theory. For exple, a
relation is defined as a set of ordered pairs – so the successor relation ong
natural numbers becomes {(0, 1), (1, 2), (2, 3) . . . } – and a function is a
relation containing no distinct ordered pairs of the form (a, b) and (a, c) –
so the successor relation is a function. The natural numbers themselves can be
identified with various sequences of sets, the most common of which are finite
von Neumann ordinal numbers: /, {/}, {/, {/}, {/}, {/}, {/, {/}}}, . . . . (On
this definition, 0 % /, 1 % {/}, 2 % {/, {/}}, etc., each number n has n
members, the successor of n is n 4 {n}, and n ‹ m if and only if n 1 m.)
Addition and multiplication can be defined for these numbers, and the Peano
axioms proved (from the axioms of set theory; see below). Negative, rational,
real, and complex numbers, geometric spaces, and more esoteric mathematical
objects can all be identified with sets, and the standard theorems about them
proved. In this sense, set theory provides a foundation for mathematics.
Historically, the theory of sets arose in the late nineteenth century. In his
work on the foundations of arithmetic, Frege identified the natural numbers
with the extensions of certain concepts; e.g., the number two is the set of all
concepts C under which two things fall – in symbols, 2 % {x _ x is a concept,
and there are distinct things a and b which fall under x, and anything that
falls under x is either a or b}. Cantor was led to consider complex sets of
points in the pursuit of a question in the theory of trigonometric series. To
describe the properties of these sets, Cantor introduced infinite ordinal
numbers after the finite ordinals described above. The first of these, w, is
{0, 1, 2, . . .}, now understood in von Neumann’s terms as the set of all
finite ordinals. After w, the successor function yields w ! 1 % w 4 {w} % {0,
1, 2, . . . n, n + 1, . . . , w}, then w ! 2 % (w ! 1) ! 1 % {0, 1, 2, . . . ,
w , w ! 1}, w ! 3 % (w ! 2) ! 1 % {0, 1, 2, . . . , w, w ! 1, w ! 2}, and so
on; after all these comes w ! w % {0, 1, 2, . . . , w, w ! 1, w ! 2, . . . , (w
! n), (w ! n) ! 1, . . .}, and the process begins again. The ordinal numbers
are designed to label the positions in an ordering. Consider, e.g., a
reordering of the natural numbers in which the odd numbers are placed after the
evens: 0, 2, 4, 6, . . . 1, 3, 5, 7, . . . . The number 4 is in the third
position of this sequence, and the number 5 is in the (w + 2nd). But finite
numbers also perform a cardinal function; they tell us how many so-andso’s
there are. Here the infinite ordinals are less effective. The natural numbers
in their usual order have the se structure as w, but when they are ordered as
above, with the evens before the odds, they take on the structure of a much
larger ordinal, w ! w. But the answer to the question, How many natural numbers
are there? should be the se no matter how they are arranged. Thus, the
transfinite ordinals do not provide a stable measure of the size of an infinite
set. When are two infinite sets of the se size? On the one hand, the infinite
set of even natural numbers seems clearly smaller than the set of all natural
numbers; on the other hand, these two sets can be brought into one-to-one
correspondence via the mapping that matches 0 to 0, 1 to 2, 2 to 4, 3 to 6, and
in general, n to 2n. This puzzle had troubled mathematicians as far back as
Galileo, but Cantor took the existence of a oneto-one correspondence between
two sets A and B as the definition of ‘A is the se size as B’. This coincides
with our usual understanding for finite sets, and it implies that the set of
even natural numbers and the set of all natural numbers and w ! 1 and w! 2 and
w ! w and w ! w and many more all have the se size. Such infinite sets are
called countable, and the number of their elements, the first infinite cardinal
number, is F0. Cantor also showed that the set of all subsets of a set A has a
size larger than A itself, so there are infinite cardinals greater than F0,
nely F1, F2, and so on. Unfortunately, the early set theories were prone to
paradoxes. The most fous of these, Russell’s paradox, arises from consideration
of the set R of all sets that are not members of themselves: is R 1 R? If it
is, it isn’t, and if it isn’t, it is. The Burali-Forti paradox involves the set
W of all ordinals: W itself qualifies as an ordinal, so W 1 W, i.e., W ‹ W.
Similar difficulties surface with the set of all cardinal numbers and the set
of all sets. At fault in all these cases is a seemingly innocuous principle of
unlimited comprehension: for any property P, there is a set {x _ x has P}. Just
after the turn of the century, Zermelo undertook to systematize set theory by
codifying its practice in a series of axioms from which the known derivations
of the paradoxes could not be carried out. He proposed the axioms of
extensionality (two sets with the se members are the se); pairing (for any a
and b, there is a set {a, b}); separation (for any set A and property P, there
set theory set theory 837 837 is a set
{x _ x 1 A and x has P}); power set (for any set A, there is a set {x _ x0 A});
union (for any set of sets F, there is a set {x _ x 1 A for some A 1 F} – this
yields A 4 B, when F % {A, B} and {A, B} comes from A and B by pairing);
infinity (w exists); and choice (for any set of non-empty sets, there is a set
that contains exactly one member from each). (The axiom of choice has a vast number
of equivalents, including the well-ordering theorem – every set can be
well-ordered – and Zorn’s lemma – if every chain in a partially ordered set has
an upper bound, then the set has a maximal element.) The axiom of separation
limits that of unlimited comprehension by requiring a previously given set A
from which members are separated by the property P; thus troublesome sets like
Russell’s that attempt to collect absolutely all things with P cannot be
formed. The most controversial of Zermelo’s axioms at the time was that of
choice, because it posits the existence of a choice set – a set that “chooses”
one from each of (possibly infinitely many) non-empty sets – without giving any
rule for making the choices. For various philosophical and practical reasons,
it is now accepted without much debate. Fraenkel and Skolem later formalized
the axiom of replacement (if A is a set, and every member a of A is replaced by
some b, then there is a set containing all the b’s), and Skolem made both
replacement and separation more precise by expressing them as schemata of
first-order logic. The final axiom of the contemporary theory is foundation,
which guarantees that sets are formed in a series of stages called the
iterative hierarchy (begin with some non-sets, then form all possible sets of
these, then form all possible sets of the things formed so far, then form all
possible sets of these, and so on). This iterative picture of sets built up in
stages contrasts with the older notion of the extension of a concept; these are
sometimes called the mathematical and the logical notions of collection,
respectively. The early controversy over the paradoxes and the axiom of choice
can be traced to the lack of a clear distinction between these at the time.
Zermelo’s first five axioms (all but choice) plus foundation form a system
usually called Z; ZC is Z with choice added. Z plus replacement is ZF, for
Zermelo-Fraenkel, and adding choice makes ZFC, the theory of sets in most
widespread use today. The consistency of ZFC cannot be proved by standard
mathematical means, but decades of experience with the system and the strong
intuitive picture provided by the iterative conception suggest that it is.
Though ZFC is strong enough for all standard mathematics, it is not enough to
answer some natural set-theoretic questions (e.g., the continuum problem). This
has led to a search for new axioms, such as large cardinal assumptions, but no
consensus on these additional principles has yet been reached. CANTOR, CLASS, CONTINUUM PROBLEM, GÖDEL’S
INCOMPLETENESS THEOREMS, PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS, SETTHEORETIC PARADOXES.
P.Mad. seven emotions (the).KOREAN PHILOSOPHY. Seven Worthies of the Bboo
Grove.NEOTAOISM. Sextus Empiricus (third century A.D.), Greek Skeptic
philosopher whose writings are the chief source of our knowledge about the
extreme Skeptic view, Pyrrhonism. Practically nothing is known about him as a
person. He was apparently a medical doctor and a teacher in a Skeptical school,
probably in Alexandria. What has survived are his Hypotoposes, Outlines of
Pyrrhonism, and a series of Skeptical critiques, Against the Dogmatists,
questioning the premises and conclusions in many disciplines, such as physics,
mathematics, rhetoric, and ethics. In these works, Sextus summarized and
organized the views of Skeptical arguers before him. The Outlines starts with
an attempt to indicate what Skepticism is, to explain the terminology employed
by the Skeptics, how Pyrrhonian Skepticism differs from other so-called
Skeptical views, and how the usual answers to Skepticism are rebutted. Sextus
points out that the main Hellenistic philosophies, Stoicism, Epicureanism, and
Academic Skepticism (which is presented as a negative dogmatism), claimed that
they would bring the adherent peace of mind, ataraxia. Unfortunately the
dogmatic adherent would only become more perturbed by seeing the Skeptical
objections that could be brought against his or her view. Then, by suspending
judgment, epoche, one would find the tranquillity being sought. Pyrrhonian
Skepticism is a kind of mental hygiene or therapy that cures one of dogmatism
or rashness. It is like a purge that cleans out foul matter as well as itself.
To bring about this state of affairs there are sets of Skeptical arguments that
should bring one to suspense of judgment. The first set are the ten tropes of
the earlier Skeptic, Anesidemus. The next are the five tropes about causality.
And lastly are the tropes about the criterion of knowledge. The ten tropes
stress the variability of sense experience ong men seven emotions (the) Sextus
Empiricus 838 838 and animals, ong
men, and within one individual. The varying and conflicting experiences present
conflicts about what the perceived object is like. Any attempt to judge beyond
appearances, to ascertain that which is non-evident, requires some way of
choosing what data to accept. This requires a criterion. Since there is
disagreement about what criterion to employ, we need a criterion of a
criterion, and so on. Either we accept an arbitrary criterion or we get into an
infinite regress. Similarly if we try to prove anything, we need a criterion of
what constitutes a proof. If we offer a proof of a theory of proof, this will
be circular reasoning, or end up in another infinite regress. Sextus devotes
most of his discussion to challenging Stoic logic, which claimed that evident
signs could reveal what is non-evident. There might be signs that suggested
what is temporarily non-evident, such as smoke indicating that there is a fire,
but any supposed linkage between evident signs and what is non-evident can be
challenged and questioned. Sextus then applies the groups of Skeptical
arguments to various specific subjects – physics, mathematics, music, grmar,
ethics – showing that one should suspend judgment on any knowledge claims in
these areas. Sextus denies that he is saying any of this dogmatically: he is
just stating how he feels at given moments. He hopes that dogmatists sick with
a disease, rashness, will be cured and led to tranquillity no matter how good
or bad the Skeptical arguments might be.
SKEPTICISM, SKEPTICS, STOICISM. R.H.P. Shaftesbury, Lord, in full, Third
Earl of Shaftesbury, title of Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671– 1713), English
philosopher and politician who originated the moral sense theory. He was born
at Wimborne St. Giles, Dorsetshire. As a Country Whig he served in the House of
Commons for three years and later, as earl, monitored meetings of the House of
Lords. Shaftesbury introduced into British moral philosophy the notion of a
moral sense, a mental faculty unique to human beings, involving reflection and
feeling and constituting their ability to discern right and wrong. He sometimes
represents the moral sense as analogous to a purported aesthetic sense, a
special capacity by which we perceive, through our emotions, the proportions
and harmonies of which, on his Platonic view, beauty is composed. For
Shaftesbury, every creature has a “private good or interest,” an end to which
it is naturally disposed by its constitution. But there are other goods as well
– notably, the public good and the good (without qualification) of a sentient
being. An individual creature’s goodness is defined by the tendency of its
“natural affections” to contribute to the “universal system” of nature of which
it is a part – i.e., their tendency to promote the public good. Because human
beings can reflect on actions and affections, including their own and others’,
they experience emotional responses not only to physical stimuli but to these
mental objects as well (e.g., to the thought of one’s compassion or kindness).
Thus, they are capable of perceiving – and acquiring through their actions – a
particular species of goodness, nely, virtue. In the virtuous person, the
person of integrity, natural appetites and affections are in harmony with each
other (wherein lies her private good) and in harmony with the public interest.
Shaftesbury’s attempted reconciliation of selflove and benevolence is in part a
response to the egoism of Hobbes, who argued that everyone is in fact motivated
by self-interest. His defining morality in terms of psychological and public
harmony is also a reaction to the divine voluntarism of his former tutor,
Locke, who held that the laws of nature and morality issue from the will of
God. On Shaftesbury’s view, morality exists independently of religion, but
belief in God serves to produce the highest degree of virtue by nurturing a
love for the universal system. Shaftesbury’s theory led to a general refinement
of eighteenth-century ideas about moral feelings; a theory of the moral sense
emerged, whereby sentiments are – under certain conditions – perceptions of, or
constitutive of, right and wrong. In addition to several essays collected in
three volumes under the title Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times
(second edition, 1714), Shaftesbury also wrote stoical moral and religious
meditations reminiscent of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. His ideas on moral
sentiments exercised considerable influence on the ethical theories of
Hutcheson and Hume, who later worked out in detail their own accounts of the
moral sense. HOBBES, HUME, HUTCHESON,
MORAL SENSE THEORY. E.S.R. shanism.KOREAN PHILOSOPHY. shan, o, Chinese terms
for ‘good’ and ‘evil’, respectively. These are primary concerns for Chinese
philosophers: the Confucianists wanted to do good and get rid of evil, while
the Taoists wanted to go beyond good and evil. In fact the Shaftesbury shan, o
839 839 Taoists presupposed that man
has the ability to reach a higher level of spirituality. Chinese philosophers often
discussed shan and o in relation to human nature. Mencius believed that nature
is good; his opponent Kao Tzu, nature is neither good nor evil; Hsün Tzu,
nature is evil; and Yang Hsiung, nature is both good and evil. Most Chinese
philosophers believed that man is able to do good; they also accepted evil as
something natural that needed no explanation.
CONFUCIANISM, HSÜN TZU, MENCIUS, TAOISM, YANG HSIUNG. S.-h.L. shang ti,
Chinese term meaning ‘high ancestor’, ‘God’. Shang ti – synonymous with t’ien,
in the sense of a powerful anthropomorphic entity – is responsible for such
things as the political fortunes of the state. Some speculate that shang ti was
originally only a Shang deity, later identified by the Chou conquerors with
their t’ien. The term shang ti is also used as a translation of ‘God’. T’IEN. B.W.V.N. Shang Yang, also called Lord
Shang (d. 338 B.C.), Chinese statesman. A prime minister of Ch’in and prominent
Legalist, he emphasized the importance of fa (law, or more broadly, impartial
standards for punishment and reward) to the sociopolitical order. Shang Yang
maintained that agriculture and war were the keys to a strong state. However,
humans are self-interested rational actors. Their interest to avoid hard work
and the risk of death in battle is at odds with the ruler’s desire for a strong
state. Accordingly, the ruler must rely on harsh punishments and positive
rewards to ensure the cooperation of the people. CHINESE LEGALISM. R.P.P. & R.T.A. Shankara,
also transliterated Sankara and Skara (A.D. 788–820), Indian philosopher who
founded Advaita Vedanta Hinduism. His major works are the Brahma-Sutra-Bhafya
(a commentary on Badarayana’s Brahma Sutras) and his Gita-Bhayfa (a commentary
on the Bhagavad Gita). He provides a vigorous defense of mind–body dualism, of
the existence of a plurality of minds and mind-independent physical objects,
and of monotheism. Then, on the basis of appeal to sruti (scripture) – i.e.,
the Vedas and Upanishads – and an esoteric enlightenment experience (moksha),
he relegates dualism, realism, and theism to illusion (the level of appearance)
in favor of a monism that holds that only nirguna or qualityless Brahman exists
(the level of reality). Some interpreters read this distinction between levels
metaphysically rather than epistemologically, but this is inconsistent with
Shankara’s monism. ADVAITA, VEDANTA.
K.E.Y. Shao Yung (1011–77), Chinese philosopher, a controversial Neo-Confucian
figure. His Huangchi ching-shih (“Ultimate Principles Governing the World”)
advances a numerological interpretation of the I-Ching. Shao noticed that the
IChing expresses certain cosmological features in numerical terms. He concluded
that the cosmos itself must be based on numerical relationships and that the
I-Ching is its cipher, which is why the text can be used to predict the future.
One of Shao’s charts of the I-Ching’s hexagrs ce to the attention of Leibniz,
who noticed that, so arranged, they can be construed as describing the numbers
0–63 in binary expression. Shao probably was not aware of this, and Leibniz
interpreted Shao’s arrangement in reverse order, but they shared the belief
that certain numerical sequences revealed the structure of the cosmos. P.J.I.
Sheffer stroke, also called alternative denial, a binary truth-functor represented
by the symbol ‘_’, the logical force of which can be expressed contextually in
terms of ‘-’ and ‘&’ by the following definition: p_q % Df -(p & q).
The importance of the Sheffer stroke lies in the fact that it by itself can
express any well-formed expression of truth-functional logic. Thus, since {-,7}
forms an expressively complete set, defining -p as p_p and p 7 q as (p_p)
_(q_q) provides for the possibility of a further reduction of primitive
functors to one. This system of symbols is commonly called the stroke notation.
I.Bo. shen, Chinese term meaning ‘spirit’, ‘spiritual’, ‘numinous’, ‘demonic’.
In early texts, shen is used to mean various nature spirits, with emphasis on
the efficacy of spirits to both know and accomplish (hence one seeks their
advice and aid). Shen ce to describe the operations of nature, which
accomplishes its ends with “spiritual” efficacy. In texts like the Chuang Tzu,
Hsün Tzu, and I-Ching, shen no longer refers to an entity but to a state of
resonance with the cosmos. In such a state, the sage can tap into the
“spiritual” nature of an event, situation, person, or text and successfully
read, react to, and guide the course of events. P.J.I. sheng, Chinese term
meaning ‘the sage’, ‘sagehood’. This is the Chinese concept of extraordishang
ti sheng 840 840 nary human attainment
or perfection. Philosophical Taoism focuses primarily on sheng as complete
attunement or adaptability to the natural order of events as well as irregular
occurrences and phenomena. Classical Confucianism focuses, on the other hand,
on the ideal unity of Heaven (t’ien) and human beings as having an ethical
significance in resolving human problems. Neo-Confucianism tends to focus on
sheng as a realizable ideal of the universe as a moral community. In Chang
Tsai’s words, “Heaven is my father and Earth is my mother, and even such a
small creature as I finds an intimate place in their midst. . . . All people
are my brothers and sisters, and all things are my companions.” In
Confucianism, sheng (the sage) is often viewed as one who possesses
comprehensive knowledge and insights into the ethical significance of things,
events, and human affairs. This ideal of sheng contrasts with chün-tzu, the
paradigmatic individual who embodies basic ethical virtues (jen, li, i, and
chih), but is always liable to error, especially in responding to changing
circumstances of human life. For Confucius, sheng (sagehood) is more like an
abstract, supreme ideal of a perfect moral personality, an imagined vision
rather than a possible objective of the moral life. He once remarked that he
could not ever hope to meet a sheng-jen (a sage), but only a chün-tzu. For his
eminent followers, on the other hand, e.g., Mencius, Hsün Tzu, and the
Neo-Confucians, sheng is a humanly attainable ideal. CONFUCIANISM, MENCIUS. A.S.C. Shen Pu-hai
(d.337 B.C.), Chinese Legalist philosopher who emphasized shu, pragmatic
methods or techniques of bureaucratic control whereby the ruler checked the
power of officials and ensured their subordination. These techniques included
impartial application of publicly promulgated positive law, appointment based
on merit, mutual surveillance by officials, and most importantly hsing ming –
the assignment of punishment and reward based on the correspondence between
one’s official title or stipulated duties (ming) and one’s performance (hsing).
Law for Shen Pu-hai was one more pragmatic means to ensure social and
bureaucratic order. HSING, MING. R.P.P.
& R.T.A. Shen Tao, also called Shen Tzu (350?–275? B.C.), Chinese philosopher
associated with Legalism, Taoism, and the Huang–Lao school. Depicted in the
Chuang Tzu as a simple-minded naturalist who believed that one only had to
abandon knowledge to follow tao (the Way), Shen Tao advocated rule by law where
laws were to be impartial, publicly promulgated, and changed only if necessary
and then in accordance with tao. His main contribution to Legalist theory is
the notion that the ruler must rely on shih (political purchase, or the power
held by virtue of his position). Shen’s law is the pragmatic positive law of
the Legalists rather than the natural law of Huang–Lao. HUANG–LAO, TAOISM. R.P.P. & R.T.A.
Shepherd, Mary (d.1847), Scottish philosopher whose main philosophical works
are An Essay on the Relation of Cause and Effect (1824) and Essays on the
Perception of an External Universe (1827). The first addresses what she takes
to be the skeptical consequences of Hume’s account of causation, but a second
target is the use Willi Lawrence (1783–1867) made of Hume’s associative account
of causation to argue that mental functions are reducible to physiological
ones. The second work focuses on Hume’s alleged skepticism with regard to the
existence of the external world, but she is also concerned to distinguish her
position from Berkeley’s. Shepherd was drawn into a public controversy with
John Fearn, who published some remarks she had sent him on a book of his,
together with his extensive reply. Shepherd replied in an article in Fraser’s
magazine (1832), “Lady Mary Shepherd’s Metaphysics,” which deftly refuted
Fearn’s rather condescending attack.
BERKELEY, HUME. M.At. Sherwood, Willi, also called Willi Shyreswood
(1200/10–1266/71), English logician who taught logic at Oxford and at Paris
between 1235 and 1250. He was the earliest of the three great “summulist”
writers, the other two (whom he influenced strongly) being Peter of Spain and
Lbert of Auxerre (fl. 1250). His main works are Introductiones in Logic,
Syncategoremata, De insolubilibus, and Obligationes (some serious doubts have
recently arisen about the authorship of the latter work). Since M. Grabmann
published Sherwood’s Introductiones in 1937, historians of logic have paid
considerable attention to this seminal medieval logician. While the first four
chapters of Introductiones offer the basic ideas of Aristotle’s Organon, and
the last chapter neatly lays out the Sophistical Refutations, the fifth tract
expounds the fous doctrine of the properties of terms: signification,
supposition, conjunction, and appellation – hence the label ‘terminist’ for
this sort of logic. These Shen Pu-hai Sherwood, Willi 841 841 logico-semantic discussions, together
with the discussions of syncategorematic words, constitute the logica moderna,
as opposed to the more strictly Aristotelian contents of the earlier logica
vetus and logica nova. The doctrine of properties of terms and the analysis of
syncategorematic terms, especially those of ‘all’, ‘no’ and ‘nothing’, ‘only’,
‘not’, ‘begins’ and ‘ceases’, ‘necessarily’, ‘if’, ‘and’, and ‘or’, may be said
to constitute Sherwood’s philosophy of logic. He not only distinguishes
categorematic (descriptive) and syncategorematic (logical) words but also shows
how some terms are used categorematically in some contexts and
syncategorematically in others. He recognizes the importance of the order of
words and of the scope of logical functors; he also anticipates the variety of
composite and divided senses of propositions. Obligationes, if indeed his,
attempts to state conditions under which a formal disputation may take place.
De Insolubilibus deals with paradoxes of self-reference and with ways of
solving them. Understanding Sherwood’s logic is important for understanding the
later medieval developments of logica moderna down to Ockh. I.Bo. shih1,
Chinese term meaning ‘strategic advantage’. Shih was the key and defining idea
in the Militarist philosophers, later appropriated by some of the other
classical schools, including the Legalists (Han Fei Tzu) and the Confucians
(Hsün Tzu). Like ritual practices (li) and speaking (yen), shih is a level of
discourse through which one actively cultivates the leverage and influence of
one’s particular place. In the Military texts, the most filiar metaphor for
shih is the taut trigger on the drawn crossbow, emphasizing advantageous position,
timing, and precision. Shih (like immanental order generally) begins from the
full consideration of the concrete detail. The business of war or effective
government does not occur as some independent and isolated event, but unfolds
within a broad field of unique natural, social, and political conditions
proceeding according to a general pattern that can not only be anticipated but
manipulated to one’s advantage. It is the changing configuration of these
specific conditions that determines one’s place and one’s influence at any
point in time, and gives one a defining disposition. Shih includes intangible
forces such as morale, opportunity, timing, psychology, and logistics. CHINESE LEGALISM, CONFUCIANISM. R.P.P. &
R.T.A. shih2, Chinese term meaning ‘scholar-knight’ and ‘service’. In the
service of the rulers of the “central states” of preimperial China, shih were a
lower echelon of the official nobility responsible for both warfare and matters
at court, including official documentation, ritual protocol, and law. Most of
the early philosophers, trained in the “six arts” of rites, music, archery,
charioteering, writing, and counting, belonged to this stratum. Without
hereditary position, they lived by their wits and their professional skills,
and were responsible for both the intellectual vigor and the enormous social
mobility of Warring States China (403–221 B.C.). SHEN PU-HAI. R.P.P. & R.T.A. ship of
Theseus, the ship of the Greek hero Theseus, which, according to Plutarch
(“Life of Theseus,” 23), the Athenians preserved by gradually replacing its
timbers. A classic debate ensued concerning identity over time. Suppose a
ship’s timbers are replaced one by one over a period of time; at what point, if
any, does it cease to be the se ship? What if the ship’s timbers, on removal,
are used to build a new ship, identical in structure with the first: which ship
has the best claim to be the original ship?
IDENTITY, INDIVIDUATION, PERSONAL IDENTITY. W.J.P. Shpet, Gustav Gustavovich
(1879–1937), leading Russian phenomenologist and highly regarded student and
friend of Husserl. He played a major role in the development of phenomenology
in Russia prior to the revolution. Graduating from Kiev University in 1906,
Shpet accompanied his mentor Chelpanov to Moscow in 1907, commencing graduate
studies at Moscow University (M.A., 1910; Ph.D., 1916). He attended Husserl’s
seminars at Göttingen during 1912–13, out of which developed a continuing
friendship between the two, recorded in correspondence extending through 1918.
In 1914 Shpet published a meditation, Iavlenie i smysl (Appearance and Sense),
inspired by Husserl’s Logical Investigations and, especially, Ideas I, which
had appeared in 1913. Between 1914 and 1927 he published six additional books
on such disparate topics as the concept of history, Herzen, Russian philosophy,
aesthetics, ethnic psychology, and language. He founded and edited the
philosophical yearbook Mysl’ i slovo (Thought and Word) between 1918 and 1921,
publishing an important article on skepticism in it. He was arrested in 1935
and sentenced to internal exile. Under these conditions he completed a fine new
shih1 Shpet, Gustav Gustavovich 842 842
translation of Hegel’s Phenomenology into Russian, which was published in 1959.
He was executed in November 1937.
HUSSERL, RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY. P.T.G. shriek operator.APPENDIX OF SPECIAL
SYMBOLS. shu1, Chinese term for ‘technique of statecraft’. Such techniques were
advocated by Shen Pu-hai and the other Legalist philosophers as instruments of
the ruler in power that would guarantee the stable and efficient operations of
government. The best-known shu include (1) “accountability” (hsing-ming): the
duties and obligations of office are clearly articulated, and at intervals a
comparison is made between stipulated responsibilities (ming) and performance
(hsing); (2) “doing nothing” (wu-wei): the engine of state is constructed so
that the ministers are integral, functioning components guided by clearly
promulgated laws (fa), while the ruler stands aloof as the embodiment of the
authority of government, thereby receiving credit for successes and deflecting
ble back to the officials; (3) “showing nothing” (wu-hsien): by secreting the
royal person, concealing all likes and dislikes, and proffering no opinion, the
ruler not only shields his limitations from public scrutiny, but further
encourages a personal mystique as an ideal invested with a superlative degree
of all things worthwhile. R.P.P. & R.T.A. shu2.CHUNG, SHU. Shyreswood,
Willi.SHERWOOD. Sidgwick, Henry (1838–1900), English philosopher, economist,
and educator. Best known for The Methods of Ethics(1874), he also wrote the
still valuable Outlines of the History of Ethics (1886), as well as studies of
economics, politics, literature, and alleged psychic phenomena. He was deeply
involved in the founding of the first college for women at Cbridge University,
where he was a professor. In the Methods Sidgwick tried to assess the
rationality of the main ways in which ordinary people go about making moral
decisions. He thought that our common “methods of ethics” fall into three main
patterns. One is articulated by the philosophical theory known as intuitionism.
This is the view that we can just see straight off either what particular act
is right or what binding rule or general principle we ought to follow. Another
common method is spelled out by philosophical egoism, the view that we ought in
each act to get as much good as we can for ourselves. The third widely used
method is represented by utilitarianism, the view that we ought in each case to
bring about as much good as possible for everyone affected. Can any or all of
the methods prescribed by these views be rationally defended? And how are they
related to one another? By fring his philosophical questions in these terms, Sidgwick
made it centrally important to exine the chief philosophical theories of
morality in the light of the commonsense morals of his time. He thought that no
theory wildly at odds with commonsense morality would be acceptable.
Intuitionism, a theory originating with Butler, transmitted by Reid, and most
systematically expounded during the Victorian era by Whewell, was widely held
to be the best available defense of Christian morals. Egoism was thought by
many to be the clearest pattern of practical rationality and was frequently
said to be compatible with Christianity. And J. S. Mill had argued that
utilitarianism was both rational and in accord with common sense. But whatever
their relation to ordinary morality, the theories seemed to be seriously at odds
with one another. Exining all the chief commonsense precepts and rules of
morality, such as that promises ought to be kept, Sidgwick argued that none is
truly self-evident or intuitively certain. Each fails to guide us at certain
points where we expect it to answer our practical questions. Utilitarianism, he
found, could provide a complicated method for filling these gaps. But what
ultimately justifies utilitarianism is certain very general axioms seen
intuitively to be true. ong them are the principles that what is right in one
case must be right in any similar case, and that we ought to aim at good
generally, not just at some particular part of it. Thus intuitionism and
utilitarianism can be reconciled. When taken together they yield a complete and
justifiable method of ethics that is in accord with common sense. What then of
egoism? It can provide as complete a method as utilitarianism, and it also
involves a self-evident axiom. But its results often contradict those of
utilitarianism. Hence there is a serious problem. The method that instructs us
to act always for the good generally and the method that tells one to act
solely for one’s own good are equally rational. Since the two methods give
contradictory directions, while each method rests on self-evident axioms, it
shriek operator Sidgwick, Henry 843 843
seems that practical reason is fundentally incoherent. Sidgwick could see no
way to solve the problem. Sidgwick’s bleak conclusion has not been generally
accepted, but his Methods is widely viewed as one of the best works of moral
philosophy ever written. His account of classical utilitarianism is
unsurpassed. His discussions of the general status of morality and of
particular moral concepts are enduring models of clarity and acumen. His
insights about the relations between egoism and utilitarianism have stimulated
much valuable research. And his way of fring moral problems, by asking about
the relations between commonsense beliefs and the best available theories, has
set much of the agenda for twentiethcentury ethics. BUTLER, EGOISM, INTUITION, UTILITARIANISM.
J.B.S. Siger of Brabant (c.1240–84), French philosopher, an activist in the
philosophical and political struggles both within the arts faculty and between
arts and theology at Paris during the 1260s and 1270s. He is usually regarded
as a leader of a “radical Aristotelianism” that owed much to Liber de causis,
to Avicenna, and to Averroes. He taught that everything originates through a
series of emanations from a first cause. The world and each species (including
the human species) are eternal. Human beings share a single active intellect.
There is no good reason to think that Siger advanced the view that there was a
double truth, one in theology and another in natural philosophy. It is difficult
to distinguish Siger’s own views from those he attributes to “the Philosophers”
and thus to know the extent to which he held the heterodox views he taught as
the best interpretation of the prescribed texts in the arts curriculum. In any
case, Siger was summoned before the French Inquisition in 1276, but fled Paris.
He was never convicted of heresy, but it seems that the condemnations at Paris
in 1277 were partially directed at his teaching. He was stabbed to death by his
clerk in Orvieto (then the papal seat) in 1284.
signifier, a vocal sound
or a written symbol. The concept owes its modern formulation to the Swiss
linguist Saussure. Rather than using the older conception of sign and referent,
he divided the sign itself into two interrelated parts, a signifier and a
signified. The signified is the concept and the signifier is either a vocal
sound or writing. The relation between the two, according to Saussure, is
entirely arbitrary, in that signifiers tend to vary with different languages.
We can utter or write ‘vache’, ‘cow’, or ‘vaca’, depending on our native
language, and still come up with the se signified (i.e., concept). SAUSSURE, SEMIOSIS. M.Ro. signs, theory
of.THEORY OF SIGNS. silhak.KOREAN PHILOSOPHY. similarity, exact.IDENTITY.
Simmel, Georg (1858–1918), German philosopher and one of the founders of
sociology as a distinct discipline. Born and educated in Berlin, he was a
popular lecturer at its university. But the unorthodoxy of his interests and
unprofessional writing style probably kept him from being offered a regular
professorship until 1914, and then only at the provincial university of
Strasbourg. He died four years later. His writings ranged from conventional
philosophical topics – with books on ethics, philosophy of history, education,
religion, and the philosophers Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche – to books on
Rembrandt, Goethe, and the philosophy of money. He wrote numerous essays on
various artists and poets, on different cities, and on such themes as love,
adventure, she, and on being a stranger, as well as on many specifically
sociological topics. Simmel was regarded as a Kulturphilosoph who meditated on
his themes in an insightful and digressive rather than scholarly and systematic
style. Though late in life he sketched a unifying Lebensphilosophie (philosophy
of life) that considers all works and structures of culture as products of
different forms of human experience, Simmel has remained of interest primarily
for a multiplicity of insights into specific topics. .
Simplicius (sixth century
A.D.), Greek Neoplatonist philosopher born in Cilicia on the southeast coast of
modern Turkey. His surviving works are extensive commentaries on Aristotle’s On
the Heavens, Physics, and Categories, and on the Encheiridion of Epictetus. The
authenticity of the commentary on Aristotle’s On the Soul attributed to
Simplicius has been disputed. He studied with monius in Alexandria, and with
Dascius, the last known head of the Platonist school in Athens. Justinian
closed the school in 529. Two or three years later a group of philosophers,
including Dascius and Simplicius, visited the court of the Sassanian king
Khosrow I (Chosroes) but soon returned to the Byzantine Empire under a
guarantee of their right to maintain their own beliefs. It is generally agreed
that most, if not all, of Simplicius’s extant works date from the period after
his stay with Khosrow. But there is no consensus about where Simplicius spent
his last years (both Athens and Harran have been proposed recently), or whether
he resumed teaching philosophy; his commentaries, unlike most of the others
that survive from that period, are scholarly treatises rather than classroom
expositions. Simplicius’s Aristotle commentaries are the most valuable extant
works in the genre. He is our source for many of the fragments of the
preSocratic philosophers, and he frequently invokes material from now-lost
commentaries and philosophical works. He is a deeply committed Neoplatonist,
convinced that there is no serious conflict between the philosophies of Plato
and Aristotle. The view of earlier scholars that his Encheiridion commentary
embodies a more moderate Platonism associated with Alexandria is now generally
rejected. Simplicius’s virulent defense of the eternity of the world in
response to the attack of the Christian John Philoponus illustrates the
intellectual vitality of paganism at a time when the Mediterranean world had
been officially Christian for about three centuries.
COMMENTARIES ON
ARISTOTLE. I.M. simplification, rule of.CONJUNCTION ELIMINATION. simulation
theory, the view that one represents the mental activities and processes of
others by mentally simulating them, i.e., generating similar activities and
processes in oneself. By simulating them, one can anticipate their product or
outcome; or, where this is already known, test hypotheses about their starting
point. For exple, one anticipates the product of another’s theoretical or
practical inferences from given premises by making inferences from the se
premises oneself; or, knowing what the product is, one retroduces the premises.
In the case of practical reasoning, to reason from the se premises would
typically require indexical adjustments, such as shifts in spatial, temporal,
and personal “point of view,” to place oneself in the other’s physical and
epistemic situation insofar as it differs from one’s own. One may also
compensate for the other’s reasoning capacity and level of expertise, if
possible, or modify one’s character and outlook as an actor might, to fit the
other’s background. Such adjustments, even when insufficient for making
decisions in the role of the other, allow one to discriminate between action
options likely to be attractive or unattractive to the agent. One would be
prepared for the former actions and surprised by the latter. The simulation
theory is usually considered an alternative to an assumption (sometimes called
the “theory theory”) that underlies much recent philosophy of mind: that our
commonsense understanding of people rests on a speculative theory, a “folk psychology”
that posits mental states, events, and processes as unobservables that explain
behavior. Some hold that the simulation theory undercuts the debate between
philosophers who consider folk psychology a respectable theory and those (the
eliminative materialists) who reject it. Unlike earlier writing on empathic
understanding and historical reenactment, discussions of the simulation theory
often appeal to empirical findings, particularly experimental results in
developmental psychology. They also theorize about the mechanism that would
accomplish simulation: presumably one that calls up computational resources
ordinarily used for engagement with the world, but runs them off-line, so that
their output is not “endorsed” or acted upon and their inputs are not limited
to those that would regulate one’s own behavior. Although simulation theorists
agree that the ascription of mental states to others relies chiefly on
simulation, they differ on the nature of selfascription. Some (especially
Robert Gordon and simple supposition simulation theory 845 845 Jane Heal, who independently proposed
the theory) give a non-introspectionist account, while others (especially
Goldman) lean toward a more traditional introspectionist account. The
simulation theory has affected developmental psychology as well as branches of
philosophy outside the philosophy of mind, especially aesthetics and philosophy
of the social sciences. Some philosophers believe it sheds light on traditional
topics such as the problem of other minds, referential opacity, broad and
narrow content, and the peculiarities of self-knowledge.
singular term, an
expression, such as ‘Zeus’, ‘the President’, or ‘my favorite chair’, that can
be the grmatical subject of what is semantically a subject-predicate sentence.
By contrast, a general term, such as ‘table’ or ‘sw’ is one that can serve in
predicative position. It is also often said that a singular term is a word or
phrase that could refer or ostensibly refer, on a given occasion of use, only
to a single object, whereas a general term is predicable of more than one
object. Singular terms are thus the expressions that replace, or are replaced
by, individual variables in applications of such quantifier rules as universal
instantiation and existential generalization or flank ‘%’ in identity
statements.
THEORY OF DESCRIPTIONS.
G.F.S. Sinn.FREGE. sinsign.PEIRCE. Sittlichkeit.HEGEL. situation ethics, a kind
of anti-theoretical, caseby-case applied ethics in vogue largely in some
European and erican religious circles for twenty years or so following World
War II. It is characterized by the insistence that each moral choice must be
determined by one’s particular context or situation – i.e., by a consideration
of the outcomes that various possible courses of action might have, given one’s
situation. To that degree, situation ethics has affinities to both act
utilitarianism and traditional casuistry. But in contrast to utilitarianism,
situation ethics rejects the idea that there are universal or even fixed moral
principles beyond various indeterminate commitments or ideals (e.g., to
Christian love or humanism). In contrast to traditional casuistry, it rejects
the effort to construct general guidelines from a case or to classify the
salient features of a case so that it can be used as a precedent. The
anti-theoretical stance of situation ethics is so thoroughgoing that writers
identified with the position have not carefully described its connections to
consequentialism, existentialism, intuitionism, personalism, pragmatism, relativism,
or any other developed philosophical view to which it appears to have some
affinity.
Siva, one of the great
gods of Hinduism (with Vishnu and Brahman), auspicious controller of karma and
ssara, destroyer but also giver of life. He is worshiped in Saivism with his
consort Sakti. A variety of deities are regarded in Saivism as forms of Siva,
with the consequence that polytheism is moved substantially toward monotheism.
K.E.Y. six emotions (the).CH’ING. skepticism, in the most common sense, the refusal
to grant that there is any knowledge or justification. Skepticism can be either
partial or total, either practical or theoretical, and, if theoretical, either
moderate or radical, and either of knowledge or of justification. Skepticism is
partial iff (if and only if) it is restricted to particular fields of beliefs
or propositions, and total iff not thus restricted. And if partial, it may be
highly restricted, as is the skepticism for which religion is only opium, or
much more general, as when not only is religion simulator, universal skepticism
846 846 called opium, but also history
bunk and metaphysics meaningless. Skepticism is practical iff it is an attitude
of deliberately withholding both belief and disbelief, accompanied perhaps (but
not necessarily) by commitment to a recommendation for people generally, that
they do likewise. (Practical skepticism can of course be either total or
partial, and if partial it can be more or less general.) Skepticism is
theoretical iff it is a commitment to the belief that there is no knowledge
(justified belief) of a certain kind or of certain kinds. Such theoretical
skepticism comes in several varieties. It is moderate and total iff it holds
that there is no certain superknowledge (superjustified belief) whatsoever, not
even in logic or mathematics, nor through introspection of one’s present
experience. It is radical and total iff it holds that there isn’t even any
ordinary knowledge (justified belief) at all. It is moderate and partial, on
the other hand, iff it holds that there is no certain superknowledge
(superjustified belief) of a certain specific kind K or of certain specific
kinds K1, . . . , Kn (less than the totality of such kinds). It is radical and
partial, finally, iff it holds that there isn’t even any ordinary knowledge
(justified belief) at all of that kind K or of those kinds K1, . . . , Kn.
Greek skepticism can be traced back to Socrates’ epistemic modesty. Suppressed
by the prolific theoretical virtuosity of Plato and Aristotle, such modesty reasserted
itself in the skepticism of the Academy led by Arcesilaus and later by
Carneades. In this period began a long controversy pitting Academic Skeptics
against the Stoics Zeno and (later) Chrysippus, and their followers. Prolonged
controversy, sometimes heated, softened the competing views, but before
agreement congealed Anesidemus broke with the Academy and reclaimed the
arguments and tradition of Pyrrho, who wrote nothing, but whose Skeptic
teachings had been preserved by a student, Timon (in the third century B.C.).
After enduring more than two centuries, neoPyrrhonism was summarized, c.200
A.D., by Sextus Empiricus (Outlines of Pyrrhonism and Adversus mathematicos).
Skepticism thus ended as a school, but as a philosophical tradition it has been
influential long after that, and is so even now. It has influenced strongly not
only Cicero (Academica and De natura deorum), St. Augustine (Contra
academicos), and Montaigne (“Apology for Raimund Sebond”), but also the great
historical philosophers of the Western tradition, from Descartes through Hegel.
Both on the Continent and in the Anglophone sphere a new wave of skepticism has
built for decades, with logical positivism, deconstructionism, historicism,
neopragmatism, and relativism, and the writings of Foucault (knowledge as a
mask of power), Derrida (deconstruction), Quine (indeterminacy and
eliminativism), Kuhn (incommensurability), and Rorty (solidarity over
objectivity, edification over inquiry). At the se time a rising tide of books
and articles continues other philosophical traditions in metaphysics,
epistemology, ethics, etc. It is interesting to compare the cognitive
disengagement recommended by practical skepticism with the affective
disengagement dear to stoicism (especially in light of the epistemological
controversies that long divided Academic Skepticism from the Stoa, giving rise
to a rivalry dominant in Hellenistic philosophy). If believing and favoring are
positive, with disbelieving and disfavoring their respective negative
counterparts, then the magnitude of our happiness (positive) or unhappiness
(negative) over a given matter is determined by the product of our
belief/disbelief and our favoring/disfavoring with regard to that se matter.
The fear of unhappiness may lead one stoically to disengage from affective
engagement, on either side of any matter that escapes one’s total control. And
this is a kind of practical affective “skepticism.” Similarly, if believing and
truth are positive, with disbelieving and falsity their respective negative counterparts,
then the magnitude of our correctness (positive) or error (negative) over a
given matter is determined by the product of our belief/disbelief and the
truth/falsity with regard to that se matter (where the positive or negative
magnitude of the truth or falsity at issue may be determined by some measure of
“theoretical importance,” though alternatively one could just assign all truths
a value of !1 and all falsehoods a value of †1). The fear of error may lead one
skeptically to disengage from cognitive engagement, on either side of any
matter that involves risk of error. And this is “practical cognitive
skepticism.” We wish to attain happiness and avoid unhappiness. This leads to
the disengagement of the stoic. We wish to attain the truth and avoid error.
This leads to the disengagement of the skeptic, the practical skeptic. Each
opts for a conservative policy, but one that is surely optional, given just the
reasoning indicated. For in avoiding unhappiness the stoic also forfeits a
corresponding possibility of happiness. And in avoiding error the skeptic also
forfeits a corresponding possibility to grasp a truth. These twin policies
appeal to conservatism in our nature, and will reasonably preskepticism
skepticism 847 847 vail in the lives of
those committed to avoiding risk as a parount objective. For this very desire
must then be given its due, if we judge it rational. Skepticism is instrumental
in the birth of modern epistemology, and modern philosophy, at the hands of
Descartes, whose skepticism is methodological but sophisticated and well
informed by that of the ancients. Skepticism is also a main force, perhaps the
main force, in the broad sweep of Western philosophy from Descartes through
Hegel. Though preeminent in the history of our subject, skepticism since then
has suffered decades of neglect, and only in recent years has reclaimed much
attention and even applause. Some recent influential discussions go so far as
to grant that we do not know we are not dreing. But they also insist one can still
know when there is a fire before one. The key is to analyze knowledge as a kind
of appropriate responsiveness to its object truth: what is required is that the
subject “track” through his belief the truth of what he believes. (S tracks the
truth of P iff: S would not believe P if P were false.) Such an analysis of
tracking, when conjoined with the view of knowledge as tracking, enables one to
explain how one can know about the fire even if for all one knows it is just a
dre. The crucial fact here is that even if P logically entails Q, one may still
be able to track the truth of P though unable to track the truth of Q. (Nozick,
Philosophical Explanations, 1981.) Many problems arise in the literature on
this approach. One that seems especially troubling is that though it enables us
to understand how contingent knowledge of our surroundings is possible, the
tracking account falls short of enabling an explanation of how such knowledge
on our part is actual. To explain how one knows that there is a fire before one
(F), according to the tracking account one presumably would invoke one’s
tracking the truth of F. But this leads deductively almost immediately to the
claim that one is not dreing: Not D. And this is not something one can know,
according to the tracking account. So how is one to explain one’s justification
for making that claim? Most troubling of all here is the fact that one is now
cornered by the tracking account into making combinations of claims of the
following form: I quite sure that p, but
I have no knowledge at all as to whether p. And this seems incoherent. A
Cartesian dre argument that has had much play in recent discussions of
skepticism is made explicit (by Barry Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical
Scepticism, 1984) as follows. One knows that if one knows F then one is not
dreing, in which case if one really knows F then one must know one is not
dreing. However, one does not know one is not dreing. So one does not know F.
Q.E.D. And why does one fail to know one is not dreing? Because in order to
know it one would need to know that one has passed some test, some empirical
procedure to determine whether one is dreing. But any such supposed test – say,
pinching oneself – could just be part of a dre, and dreing one passes the test
would not suffice to show one was not dreing. However, might one not actually
be witnessing the fire, and passing the test – and be doing this in wakeful
life, not in a dre – and would that not be compatible with one’s knowing of the
fire and of one’s wakefulness? Not so, according to the argument, since in
order to know of the fire one needs prior knowledge of one’s wakefulness. But
in order to know of one’s wakefulness one needs prior knowledge of the results
of the test procedure. But this in turn requires prior knowledge that one is
awake and not dreing. And we have a vicious circle. We might well hold that it
is possible to know one is not dreing even in the absence of any positive test
result, or at most in conjunction with coordinate (not prior) knowledge of such
a positive indication. How in that case would one know of one’s wakefulness?
Perhaps one would know it by believing it through the exercise of a reliable
faculty. Perhaps one would know it through its coherence with the rest of one’s
comprehensive and coherent body of beliefs. Perhaps both. But, it may be urged,
if these are the ways one might know of one’s wakefulness, does not this answer
commit us to a theory of the form of A below? (A) The proposition that p is
something one knows (believes justifiably) if and only if one satisfies
conditions C with respect to it. And if so, are we not caught in a vicious
circle by the question as to how we know – what justifies us in believing – (A)
itself? This is far from obvious, since the requirement that we must submit to
some test procedure for wakefulness and know ourselves to test positively,
before we can know ourselves to be awake, is itself a requirement that seems to
lead equally to a principle such as (A). At least it is not evident why the
proposal of the externalist or of the coherentist as to how we know we are
awake should be any more closely related to a general principle like (A) than
is the (foundationalist?) notion skepticism skepticism 848 848 that in order to know we are awake we
need epistemically prior knowledge that we test positive in a way that does not
presuppose already acquired knowledge of the external world. The problem of how
to justify the likes of (A) is a descendant of the (in)fous “problem of the
criterion,” reclaimed in the sixteenth century and again in this century (by
Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, 1966, 1977, and 1988) but much used already by
the Skeptics of antiquity under the title of the diallelus. About explanations
of our knowledge or justification in general of the form indicated by (A), we
are told that they are inadequate in a way revealed by exples like the
following. Suppose we want to know how we know anything at all about the
external world, and part of the answer is that we know the location of our
neighbor by knowing the location of her car (in her driveway). Surely this
would be at best the beginning of an answer that might be satisfactory in the
end (if recursive, e.g.), but as it stands it cannot be satisfactory without
supplementation. The objection here is based on a comparison between two
appeals: the appeal of a theorist of knowledge to a principle like (A) in the
course of explaining our knowledge or justification in general, on one side;
and the appeal to the car’s location in explaining our knowledge of facts about
the external world, on the other side. This comparison is said to be fatal to
the bition to explain our knowledge or justification in general. But are the
appeals relevantly analogous? One important difference is this. In the exple of
the car, we explain the presence, in some subject S, of a piece of knowledge of
a certain kind (of the external world) by appeal to the presence in S of some
other piece of knowledge of the very se kind. So there is an immediate problem
if it is our aim to explain how any knowledge of the sort in question ever
comes to be (unless the explication is just beginning, and is to turn recursive
in due course). Now of course (A) is theoretically bitious, and in that respect
the theorist who gives an answer of the form of (A) is doing something similar
to what must be done by the protagonist in our car exple, someone who is
attempting to provide a general explanation of how any knowledge of a certain
kind comes about. Nevertheless, there is also an important difference, nely
that the theorist whose aim it is to give a general account of the form of (A)
need not attribute any knowledge whatsoever to a subject S in explaining how
that subject comes to have a piece of knowledge (or justified belief). For
there is no need to require that the conditions C appealed to by principle (A)
must be conditions that include attribution of any knowledge at all to the
subject in question. It is true that in claiming that (A) itself meets
conditions C, and that it is this which explains how one knows (A), we do
perhaps take ourselves to know (A) or at least to be justified in believing it.
But if so, this is the inevitable lot of anyone who seriously puts forward any
explanation of anything. And it is quite different from a proposal that part of
what explains how something is known or justifiably believed includes a claim
to knowledge or justified belief of the very se sort. In sum, as in the case of
one’s belief that one is awake, the belief in something of the form of (A) may
be said to be known, and in so saying one does not commit oneself to adducing
an ulterior reason in favor of (A), or even to having such a reason in reserve.
One is of course committed to being justified in believing (A), perhaps even to
having knowledge that (A). But it is not at all clear that the only way to be
justified in believing (A) is by way of adduced reasons in favor of (A), or
that one knows (A) only if one adduces strong enough reasons in its favor. For
we often know things in the absence of such adduced reasons. Thus consider
one’s knowledge through memory of which door one used to come into a room that
has more than one open door. Returning finally to (A), in its case the
explanation of how one knows it may, once again, take the form of an appeal to
the justifying power of intellectual virtues or of coherence – or both. Recent
accounts of the nature of thought and representation undermine a tradition of
wholesale doubt about nature, whose momentum is hard to stop, and threatens to
leave the subject alone and restricted to a solipsism of the present moment.
But there may be a way to stop skepticism early – by questioning the
possibility of its being sensibly held, given what is required for meaningful
language and thought. Consider our grasp of observable shape and color
properties that objects around us might have. Such grasp seems partly
constituted by our discriminatory abilities. When we discern a shape or a color
we do so presumably in terms of a distinctive impact that such a shape or color
has on us. We are put systematically into a certain distinctive state X when we
are appropriately related, in good light, with our eyes open, etc., to the
presence in our environment of that shape or color. What makes one’s
distinctive state one of thinking of sphericity rather than something else, is
said to be that it is a state tied by systematic causal relations to skepticism
skepticism 849 849 the presence of
sphericity in one’s normal environment. A light now flickers at the end of the
skeptic’s tunnel. In doubt now is the coherence of traditional skeptical
reflection. Indeed, our predecessors in earlier centuries may have moved in the
wrong direction when they attempted a reduction of nature to the mind. For
there is no way to make sense of one’s mind without its contents, and there is
no way to make sense of how one’s mind can have such contents except by appeal
to how one is causally related to one’s environment. If the very existence of
that environment is put in doubt, that cuts the ground from under one’s ability
reasonably to characterize one’s own mind, or to feel any confidence about its
contents. Perhaps, then, one could not be a “brain in a vat.” Much contemporary
thought about language and the requirements for meaningful language thus
suggests that a lot of knowledge must already be in place for us to be able to
think meaningfully about a surrounding reality, so as to be able to question
its very existence. If so, then radical skepticism answers itself. For if we
can so much as understand a radical skepticism about the existence of our
surrounding reality, then we must already know a great deal about that
reality.
Sceptics, those ancient
thinkers who developed sets of arguments to show either that no knowledge is
possible (Academic Skepticism) or that there is not sufficient or adequate
evidence to tell if any knowledge is possible. If the latter is the case then
these thinkers advocated suspending judgment on all question concerning
knowledge (Pyrrhonian Skepticism). Academic Skepticism gets its ne from the
fact that it was formulated in Plato’s Academy in the third century B.C.,
starting from Socrates’ statement, “All I know is that I know nothing.” It was
developed by Arcesilaus (c.268–241) and Carneades (c.213–129), into a series of
arguments, directed principally against the Stoics, purporting to show that
nothing can be known. The Academics posed a series of problems to show that
what we think we know by our senses may be unreliable, and that we cannot be
sure about the reliability of our reasoning. We do not possess a guaranteed
standard or criterion for ascertaining which of our judgments is true or false.
Any purported knowledge claim contains some element that goes beyond immediate
experience. If this claim constituted knowledge we would have to know something
that could not possibly be false. The evidence for the claim would have to be
based on our senses and our reason, both of which are to some degree
unreliable. So the knowledge claim may be false or doubtful, and hence cannot
constitute genuine knowledge. So, the Academics said that nothing is certain.
The best we can attain is probable information. Carneades is supposed to have
developed a form of verification theory and a kind of probabilism, similar in
some ways to that of modern pragmatists and positivists. Academic Skepticism
dominated the philosophizing of Plato’s Academy until the first century B.C.
While Cicero was a student there, the Academy turned from Skepticism to a kind
of eclectic philosophy. Its Skeptical arguments have been preserved in Cicero’s
works, Academia and De natura deorum, in Augustine’s refutation in his Contra
academicos, as well as in the summary presented by Diogenes Laertius in his
lives of the Greek philosophers. Skeptical thinking found another home in the
school of the Pyrrhonian Skeptics, probably connected with the Methodic school
of medicine in Alexandria. The Pyrrhonian movement traces its origins to Pyrrho
of Elis (c.360–275 B.C.) and his student Timon (c.315–225 B.C.). The stories
about Pyrrho indicate that he was not a theoretician but a practical doubter
who would not make any judgments that went beyond immediate experience. He is
supposed to have refused to judge if what appeared to be chariots might strike
him, and he was often rescued by his students because he would not make any
commitments. His concerns were apparently ethical. He sought to avoid
unhappiness that might result from accepting any value theory. If the theory
was at all doubtful, accepting it might lead to mental anguish. The theoretical
formulation of Pyrrhonian Skepticism is attributed to Aenesidemus (c.100– 40
B.C.). Pyrrhonists regarded dogmatic philosophers and Academic Skeptics as
asserting too much, the former saying that something can be known and the
latter that nothing can be known. The Pyrrhonists suspended judgments on all
questions on which there was any conflicting evidence, including whether or not
anything could be known. The Pyrrhonists used some of the se kinds of arguments
developed by Arcesilaus and skepticism, moral Skeptics 850 850 Carneades. Aenesidemus and those who
followed after him organized the arguments into sets of “tropes” or ways of
leading to suspense of judgment on various questions. Sets of ten, eight, five,
and two tropes appear in the only surviving writing of the Pyrrhonists, the
works of Sextus Empiricus, a third-century A.D. teacher of Pyrrhonism. Each set
of tropes offers suggestions for suspending judgment about any knowledge claims
that go beyond appearances. The tropes seek to show that for any claim,
evidence for and evidence against it can be offered. The disagreements ong
human beings, the variety of human experiences, the fluctuation of human
judgments under differing conditions, illness, drunkenness, etc., all point to
the opposition of evidence for and against each knowledge claim. Any criterion
we employ to sift and weigh the evidence can also be opposed by
countercriterion claims. Given this situation, the Pyrrhonian Skeptics sought
to avoid committing themselves concerning any kind of question. They would not
even commit themselves as to whether the arguments they put forth were sound or
not. For them Skepticism was not a statable theory, but rather an ability or
mental attitude for opposing evidence for and against any knowledge claim that
went beyond what was apparent, that dealt with the non-evident. This opposing
produced an equipollence, a balancing of the opposing evidences, that would
lead to suspending judgment on any question. Suspending judgment led to a state
of mind called “ataraxia,” quietude, peace of mind, or unperturbedness. In such
a state the Skeptic was no longer concerned or worried or disturbed about
matters beyond appearances. The Pyrrhonians averred that Skepticism was a cure
for a disease called “dogmatism” or rashness. The dogmatists made assertions
about the non-evident, and then bece disturbed about whether these assertions
were true. The disturbance bece a mental disease or disorder. The Pyrrhonians,
who apparently were medical doctors, offered relief by showing the patient how
and why he should suspend judgment instead of dogmatizing. Then the disease
would disappear and the patient would be in a state of tranquillity, the peace
of mind sought by Hellenistic dogmatic philosophers. The Pyrrhonists, unlike
the Academic Skeptics, were not negative dogmatists. The Pyrrhonists said
neither that knowledge is possible nor that it is impossible. They remained
seekers, while allowing the Skeptical arguments and the equipollence of
evidences to act as a purge of dogmatic assertions. The purge eliminates all
dogmas as well as itself. After this the Pyrrhonist lives undogmatically,
following natural inclinations, immediate experience, and the laws and customs
of his society, without ever judging or committing himself to any view about
them. In this state the Pyrrhonist would have no worries, and yet be able to
function naturally and according to law and custom. The Pyrrhonian movement
disappeared during the third century A.D., possibly because it was not
considered an alternative to the powerful religious movements of the time. Only
scant traces of it appear before the Renaissance, when the texts of Sextus and
Cicero were rediscovered and used to formulate a modern skeptical view by such
thinkers as Montaigne and Charron.
SEXTUS EMPIRICUS,
SKEPTICISM. R.H.P. Skolem, Thoralf (1887–1963), Norwegian mathematician. A
pioneer of mathematical logic, he made fundental contributions to recursion
theory, set theory (in particular, the proposal and formulation in 1922 of the
axiom of replacement), and model theory. His most important results for the
philosophy of mathematics are the (Downward) Löwenheim-Skolem theorem (1919,
1922), whose first proof involved putting formulas into Skolem normal form; and
a demonstration (1933–34) of the existence of models of (first-order)
arithmetic not isomorphic to the standard model. Both results exhibit the
extreme non-categoricity that can occur with formulations of mathematical
theories in firstorder logic, and caused Skolem to be skeptical about the use of
formal systems, particularly for set theory, as a foundation for mathematics.
The existence of non-standard models is actually a consequence of the
completeness and first incompleteness theorems (Gödel, 1930, 1931), for these
together show that there must be sentences of arithmetic (if consistent) that
are true in the standard model, but false in some other, nonisomorphic model.
However, Skolem’s result describes a general technique for constructing such
models. Skolem’s theorem is now more easily proved using the compactness
theorem, an easy consequence of the completeness theorem. The Löwenheim-Skolem
theorem produces a similar problem of characterization, the Skolem paradox,
pointed out by Skolem in 1922. Roughly, this says that if first-order set theory
has a model, it must also have a countable model whose continuum is a countable
set, and thus apparently non-standard. This does not contraSkolem, Thoralf
Skolem, Thoralf 851 851 dict Cantor’s
theorem, which merely demands that the countable model contain as an element no
function that maps its natural numbers one-toone onto its continuum, although
there must be such a function outside the model. Although usually seen as
limiting first-order logic, this result is extremely fruitful technically,
providing one basis of the proof of the independence of the continuum
hypothesis from the usual axioms of set theory given by Gödel in 1938 and Cohen
in 1963. This connection between independence results and the existence of
countable models was partially foreseen by Skolem in 1922.
slippery slope argument,
an argument that an action apparently unobjectionable in itself would set in
motion a train of events leading ultimately to an undesirable outcome. The
metaphor portrays one on the edge of a slippery slope, where taking the first
step down will inevitably cause sliding to the bottom. For exple, it is
sometimes argued that voluntary euthanasia should not be legalized because this
will lead to killing unwanted people, e.g. the handicapped or elderly, against
their will. In some versions the argument aims to show that one should
intervene to stop an ongoing train of events; e.g., it has been argued that
suppressing a Communist revolution in one country was necessary to prevent the
spread of Communism throughout a whole region via the so-called domino effect.
Slippery slope arguments with dubious causal assumptions are often classed as
fallacies under the general heading of the fallacy of the false cause. This
argument is also sometimes called the wedge argument. There is some
disagreement concerning the breadth of the category of slippery slope
arguments. Some would restrict the term to arguments with evaluative
conclusions, while others construe it more broadly so as to include other
sorites arguments.
Smart, J(ohn) J(ieson)
C(arswell) (b.1920), British-born Australian philosopher whose ne is associated
with three doctrines in particular: the mind–body identity theory, scientific
realism, and utilitarianism. A student of Ryle’s at Oxford, he rejected logical
behaviorism in favor of what ce to be known as Australian materialism. This is
the view that mental processes – and, as Armstrong brought Smart to see, mental
states – cannot be explained simply in terms of behavioristic dispositions. In
order to make good sense of how the ordinary person talks of them we have to
see them as brain processes – and states – under other nes. Smart developed
this identity theory of mind and brain, under the stimulus of his colleague, U.
T. Place, in “Sensations and Brain Processes” (Philosophical Review, 1959). It
bece a mainstay of twentieth-century philosophy. Smart endorsed the materialist
analysis of mind on the grounds that it gave a simple picture that was
consistent with the findings of science. He took a realist view of the claims
of science, rejecting phenomenalism, instrumentalism, and the like, and he
argued that commonsense beliefs should be maintained only so far as they are
plausible in the light of total science. Philosophy and Scientific Realism
(1963) gave forceful expression to this physicalist picture of the world, as
did some later works. He attracted attention in particular for his argument
that if we take science seriously then we have to endorse the four-dimensional
picture of the universe and recognize as an illusion the experience of the
passing of time. He published a number of defenses of utilitarianism, the best
known being his contribution to J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Willis,
Utilitarianism, For and Against (1973). He gave new life to act utilitarianism
at a time when utilitarians were few and most were attached to rule
utilitarianism or other restricted forms of the doctrine.
Smith, Ad (1723–90),
Scottish economist and philosopher, a founder of modern political economy and a
major contributor to ethics and the psychology of morals. His first published
work was The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). This book immediately made him
fous, and earned the praise of thinkers of the stature of Hume, Burke, and
Kant. It sought to answer two questions: Wherein does virtue consist, and by
means of what psychological principles do we deterSkolem-Löwenheim theorem
Smith, Ad 852 852 mine this or that to
be virtuous or the contrary? His answer to the first combined ancient Stoic and
Aristotelian views of virtue with modern views derived from Hutcheson and
others. His answer to the second built on Hume’s theory of sympathy – our
ability to put ourselves imaginatively in the situation of another – as well as
on the notion of the “impartial spectator.” Smith throughout is skeptical about
metaphysical and theological views of virtue and of the psychology of morals.
The self-understanding of reasonable moral actors ought to serve as the moral
philosopher’s guide. Smith’s discussion ranges from the motivation of wealth to
the psychological causes of religious and political fanaticism. Smith’s second
published work, the immensely influential An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes
of the Wealth of Nations (1776), attempts to explain why free economic,
political, and religious markets are not only more efficient, when properly
regulated, but also more in keeping with nature, more likely to win the
approval of an impartial spectator, than monopolistic alternatives. Taken
together, Smith’s two books attempt to show how virtue and liberty can
complement each other. He shows full awareness of the potentially dehumanizing
force of what was later called “capitalism,” and sought remedies in schemes for
liberal education and properly organized religion. Smith did not live to
complete his system, which was to include an analysis of “natural
jurisprudence.” We possess student notes of his lectures on jurisprudence and
on rhetoric, as well as several impressive essays on the evolution of the
history of science and on the fine arts.
social action, a subclass
of human action involving the interaction ong agents and their mutual
orientation, or the action of groups. While all intelligible actions are in
some sense social, social actions must be directed to others. Talcott Parsons
(1902–79) captured what is distinctive about social action in his concept of
“double contingency,” and similar concepts have been developed by other
philosophers and sociologists, including Weber, Mead, and Wittgenstein. Whereas
in monological action the agents’ fulfilling their purposes depends only on
contingent facts about the world, the success of social action is also
contingent on how other agents react to what the agent does and how that agent
reacts to other agents, and so on. An agent successfully communicates, e.g., not
merely by finding some appropriate expression in an existing symbol system, but
also by understanding how other agents will understand him. Ge theory describes
and explains another type of double contingency in its analysis of the
interdependency of choices and strategies ong rational agents. Ges are also
significant in two other respects. First, they exemplify the cognitive
requirements for social interaction, as in Mead’s analysis of agents’
perspective taking: as a subject (“I”), I
an object for others (“me”), and can take a third-person perspective
along with others on the interaction itself (“the generalized other”). Second,
ges are regulated by shared rules and mediated through symbolic meanings;
Wittgenstein’s private language argument establishes that rules cannot be
followed “privately.” Some philosophers, such as Peter Winch, conclude from
this argument that rule-following is a basic feature of distinctively social
action. Some actions are social in the sense that they can only be done in groups.
Individualists (such as Weber, Jon Elster, and Raimo Tuomela) believe that
these can be analyzed as the sum of the actions of each individual. But holists
(such as Marx, Durkheim, and Margaret Gilbert) reject this reduction and argue
that in social actions agents must see themselves as members of a collective
agent. Holism has stronger or weaker versions: strong holists, such as Durkheim
and Hegel, see the collective subject as singular, the collective consciousness
of a society. Weak holists, such as Gilbert and Habermas, believe that social
actions have plural, rather than singular, collective subjects. Holists
generally establish the plausibility of their view by referring to larger
contexts and sequences of action, such as shared symbol systems or social
institutions. Explanations of social actions thus refer not only to the mutual
expectations of agents, but also to these larger causal contexts, shared
meanings, and mechanisms of coordination. Theories of social action must then
explain the emergence of social order, and proposals range from Hobbes’s
coercive authority to Talcott Parsons’s value consensus about shared goals ong
the members of groups.
social biology, the
understanding of social behavior, especially human social behavior, from a
biological perspective; often connected with the political philosophy of social
Darwinism. social action social biology 853
853 Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species highlighted the significance of
social behavior in organic evolution, and in the Descent of Man, he showed how
significant such behavior is for humans. He argued that it is a product of
natural selection; but it was not until 1964 that the English biologist Willi
Hilton showed precisely how such behavior could evolve, nely through “kin
selection” as an aid to the biological wellbeing of close relatives. Since
then, other models of explanation have been proposed, extending the theory to
non-relatives. Best known is the self-describing “reciprocal altruism.” Social
biology bece notorious in 1975 when Edward O. Wilson published a major treatise
on the subject: Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Accusations of sexism and
racism were leveled because Wilson suggested that Western social systems are
biologically innate, and that in some respects males are stronger, more
aggressive, more naturally promiscuous than females. Critics argued that all
social biology is in fact a manifestation of social Darwinism, a
nineteenthcentury philosophy owing more to Herbert Spencer than to Charles
Darwin, supposedly legitimating extreme laissez-faire economics and an
unbridled societal struggle for existence. Such a charge is extremely serious,
for as Moore pointed out in his Principia Ethica (1903), Spencer surely commits
the naturalistic fallacy, inasmuch as he is attempting to derive the way that
the world ought to be from the way that it is. Naturally enough, defenders of
social biology, or “sociobiology” as it is now better known, denied vehemently
that their science is mere right-wing ideology by another ne. They pointed to many
who have drawn very different social conclusions on the basis of biology. Best
known is the Russian anarchist Kropotkin, who argued that societies are
properly based on a biological propensity to mutual aid. With respect to
contemporary debate, it is perhaps fairest to say that sociobiology,
particularly that pertaining to humans, did not always show sufficient
sensitivity toward all societal groups – although certainly there was never the
crude racism of the fascist regimes of the 1930s. However, recent work is far
more careful in these respects. Now, indeed, the study of social behavior from
a biological perspective is one of the most exciting and forward-moving
branches of the life sciences.
social choice theory, the
theory of the rational action of a group of agents. Important social choices
are typically made over alternative means of collectively providing goods.
These might be goods for individual members of the group, or more
characteristically, public goods, goods such that no one can be excluded from
enjoying their benefits once they are available. Perhaps the most central
aspect of social choice theory concerns rational individual choice in a social
context. Since what is rational for one agent to do will often depend on what
is rational for another to do and vice versa, these choices take on a strategic
dimension. The prisoner’s dilemma illustrates how it can be very difficult to
reconcile individual and collectively rational decisions, especially in
non-dynic contexts. There are many situations, particularly in the provision of
public goods, however, where simple prisoner’s dilemmas can be avoided and more
manageable coordination problems remain. In these cases, individuals may find
it rational to contractually or conventionally bind themselves to courses of
action that lead to the greater good of all even though they are not
straightforwardly utility-maximizing for particular individuals. Establishing
the rationality of these contracts or conventions is one of the leading
problems of social choice theory, because coordination can collapse if a
rational agent first agrees to cooperate and then reneges and becomes a free
rider on the collective efforts of others. Other forms of uncooperative
behaviors such as violating rules established by society or being deceptive
about one’s preferences pose similar difficulties. Hobbes attempted to solve
these problems by proposing that people would agree to submit to the authority
of a sovereign whose punitive powers would make uncooperative behavior an unattractive
option. It has also been argued that cooperation is rational if the concept of
rationality is extended beyond utility-maximizing in the right way. Other
arguments stress benefits beyond selfinterest that accrue to cooperators.
Another major aspect of social choice theory concerns the rational action of a
powerful central authority, or social planner, whose mission is to optimize the
social good. Although the central planner may be instituted by rational
individual choice, this part of the theory simply assumes the institution. The
planner’s task of making a onetime allocation of resources to the production of
various commodities is tractable if social good or social utility is known as a
function of various commodities. When the planner must take into account
dynical considerations, the technical social choice theory social choice theory
854 854 problems are more difficult.
This economic growth theory raises important ethical questions about
intergenerational conflict. The assumption of a social analogue of the
individual utility functions is particularly worrisome. It can be shown
formally that taking the results of majority votes can lead to intransitive
social orderings of possible choices and it is, therefore, a generally
unsuitable procedure for the planner to follow. Moreover, under very general
conditions there is no way of aggregating individual preferences into a
consistent social choice function of the kind needed by the planner.
social constructivism,
also called social constructionism, any of a variety of views which claim that
knowledge in some area is the product of our social practices and institutions,
or of the interactions and negotiations between relevant social groups. Mild
versions hold that social factors shape interpretations of the world. Stronger
versions maintain that the world, or some significant portion of it, is somehow
constituted by theories, practices, and institutions. Defenders often move from
mild to stronger versions by insisting that the world is accessible to us only
through our interpretations, and that the idea of an independent reality is at
best an irrelevant abstraction and at worst incoherent. (This philosophical
position is distinct from, though distantly related to, a view of the se ne in
social and developmental psychology, associated with such figures as Piaget and
Lev Vygotsky, which sees learning as a process in which subjects actively
construct knowledge.) Social constructivism has roots in Kant’s idealism, which
claims that we cannot know things in themselves and that knowledge of the world
is possible only by imposing pre-given categories of thought on otherwise
inchoate experience. But where Kant believed that the categories with which we
interpret and thus construct the world are given a priori, contemporary
constructivists believe that the relevant concepts and associated practices
vary from one group or historical period to another. Since there are no
independent standards for evaluating conceptual schemes, social constructivism
leads naturally to relativism. These views are generally thought to be present
in Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which argues that
observation and methods in science are deeply theory-dependent and that
scientists with fundentally different assumptions (or paradigms) effectively
live in different worlds. Kuhn thus offers a view of science in opposition to
both scientific realism (which holds that theory-dependent methods can give us
knowledge of a theory-independent world) and empiricism (which draws a sharp
line between theory and observation). Kuhn was reluctant to accept the
apparently radical consequences of his views, but his work has influenced
recent social studies of science, whose proponents frequently embrace both
relativism and strong constructivism. Another influence is the principle of
symmetry advocated by David Bloor and Barry Barnes, which holds that
sociologists should explain the acceptance of scientific views in the se way
whether they believe those views to be true or to be false. This approach is
elaborated in the work of Harry Collins, Steve Woolgar, and others.
Constructivist themes are also prominent in the work of feminist critics of
science such as Sandra Harding and Donna Haraway, and in the complex views of
Bruno Latour. Critics, such as Richard Boyd and Philip Kitcher, while
applauding the detailed case studies produced by constructivists, claim that
the positive arguments for constructivism are fallacious, that it fails to
account satisfactorily for actual scientific practice, and that like other
versions of idealism and relativism it is only dubiously coherent.
social contract, an
agreement either between the people and their ruler, or ong the people in a
community. The idea of a social contract has been used in arguments that differ
in what they aim to justify or explain (e.g., the state, conceptions of
justice, morality), what they take the problem of justification to be, and
whether or not they presuppose a moral theory or purport to be a moral theory.
Traditionally the term has been used in arguments that attempt to explain the
nature of political obligation and/or the kind of responsibility that rulers
have to their subjects. Philosophers such as Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau,
and Kant argue that human beings would find life in a prepolitical “state of
nature” (a state that some argue is also presocietal) so difficult that they
would agree – either with one another or with a social constructivism social
contract 855 855 prospective ruler – to
the creation of political institutions that each believes would improve his or
her lot. Note that because the argument explains political or social cohesion
as the product of an agreement ong individuals, it makes these individuals
conceptually prior to political or social units. Marx and other socialist and
communitarian thinkers have argued against conceptualizing an individual’s
relationship to her political and social community in this way. Have social
contracts in political societies actually taken place? Hume ridicules the idea that
they are real, and questions what value makebelieve agreements can have as
explanations of actual political obligations. Although many social contract
theorists admit that there is almost never an explicit act of agreement in a
community, nonetheless they maintain that such an agreement is implicitly made
when members of the society engage in certain acts through which they give
their tacit consent to the ruling regime. It is controversial what actions
constitute giving tacit consent: Plato and Locke maintain that the acceptance
of benefits is sufficient to give such consent, but some have argued that it is
wrong to feel obliged to those who foist upon us benefits for which we have not
asked. It is also unclear how much of an obligation a person can be under if he
gives only tacit consent to a regime. How are we to understand the terms of a
social contract establishing a state? When the people agree to obey the ruler,
do they surrender their own power to him, as Hobbes tried to argue? Or do they
merely lend him that power, reserving the right to take it from him if and when
they see fit, as Locke maintained? If power is merely on loan to the ruler,
rebellion against him could be condoned if he violates the conditions of that
loan. But if the people’s grant of power is a surrender, there are no such
conditions, and the people could never be justified in taking back that power
via revolution. Despite controversies surrounding their interpretation, social
contract arguments have been important to the development of modern democratic
states: the idea of the government as the creation of the people, which they
can and should judge and which they have the right to overthrow if they find it
wanting, contributed to the development of democratic forms of polity in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. erican and French revolutionaries
explicitly acknowledged their debts to social contract theorists such as Locke
and Rousseau. In the twentieth century, the social contract idea has been used
as a device for defining various moral conceptions (e.g. theories of justice)
by those who find its focus on individuals useful in the development of
theories that argue against views (e.g. utilitarianism) that allow individuals
to be sacrificed for the benefit of the group.
social epistemology, the
study of the social dimensions or determinants of knowledge, or the ways in
which social factors promote or perturb the quest for knowledge. Some writers
use the term ‘knowledge’ loosely, as designating mere belief. On their view social
epistemology should simply describe how social factors influence beliefs,
without concern for the rationality or truth of these beliefs. Many historians
and sociologists of science, e.g., study scientific practices in the se spirit
that anthropologists study native cultures, remaining neutral about the
referential status of scientists’ constructs or the truth-values of their
beliefs. Others try to show that social factors like political or professional
interests are causally operative, and take such findings to debunk any
objectivist pretensions of science. Still other writers retain a normative,
critical dimension in social epistemology, but do not presume that social
practices necessarily undermine objectivity. Even if knowledge is construed as
true or rational belief, social practices might enhance knowledge acquisition.
One social practice is trusting the opinions of authorities, a practice that
can produce truth if the trusted authorities are genuinely authoritative. Such
trust may also be perfectly rational in a complex world, where division of
epistemic labor is required. Even a scientist’s pursuit of extra-epistemic
interests such as professional rewards may not be antithetical to truth in
favorable circumstances. Institutional provisions, e.g., judicial rules of
evidence, provide another exple of social factors. Exclusionary rules might
actually serve the cause of truth or accuracy in judgment if the excluded
evidence would tend to mislead or prejudice jurors.
social philosophy,
broadly the philosophy of socisocial Darwinism social philosophy 856 856 ety, including the philosophy of social
science (and many of its components, e.g., economics and history), political
philosophy, most of what we now think of as ethics, and philosophy of law. But
we may distinguish two narrower senses. In one, it is the conceptual theory of
society, including the theory of the study of society – the common part of all
the philosophical studies mentioned. In the other, it is a normative study, the
part of moral philosophy that concerns social action and individual involvement
with society in general. The central job of social philosophy in the first of
these narrower senses is to articulate the correct notion or concept of
society. This would include formulating a suitable definition of ‘society’; the
question is then which concepts are better for which purposes, and how they are
related. Thus we may distinguish “thin” and “thick” conceptions of society. The
former would identify the least that can be said before we cease talking about
society at all – say, a number of people who interact, whose actions affect the
behavior of their fellows. Thicker conceptions would then add such things as
community rules, goals, customs, and ideals. An important empirical question is
whether any interacting groups ever do lack such things and what if anything is
common to the rules, etc., that actual societies have. Descriptive social
philosophy will obviously border on, if not merge into, social science itself,
e.g. into sociology, social psychology, or economics. And some outlooks in
social philosophy will tend to ally with one social science as more
distinctively typical than others – e.g., the individualist view looks to
economics, the holist to sociology. A major methodological controversy concerns
holism versus individualism. Holism maintains that (at least some) social
groups must be studied as units, irreducible to their members: we cannot
understand a society merely by understanding the actions and motivations of its
members. Individualism denies that societies are “organisms,” and holds that we
can understand society only in that way. Classic German sociologists (e.g.,
Weber) distinguished between Gesellschaft, whose paradigm is the voluntary
association, such as a chess club, whose activities are the coordinated actions
of a number of people who intentionally join that group in order to pursue the
purposes that identify it; and Gemeinschaft, whose members find their
identities in that group. Thus, the French are not a group whose members teed
up with like-minded people to form French society. They were French before they
had separate individual purposes. The holist views society as essentially a
Gemeinschaft. Individualists agree that there are such groupings but deny that
they require a separate kind of irreducibly collective explanation: to
understand the French we must understand how typical French individuals behave
– compared, say, with the Germans, and so on. The methods of Western economics
typify the analytical tendencies of methodological individualism, showing how
we can understand large-scale economic phenomena in terms of the rational
actions of particular economic agents. (Cf. Ad Smith’s invisible hand thesis:
each economic agent seeks only his own good, yet the result is the
macrophenomenal good of the whole.) Another pervasive issue concerns the role
of intentional characterizations and explanations in these fields. Ordinary
people explain behavior by reference to its purposes, and they formulate these
in terms that rely on public rules of language and doubtless many other rules.
To understand society, we must hook onto the selfunderstanding of the people in
that society (this view is termed Verstehen). Recent work in philosophy of
science raises the question whether intentional concepts can really be
fundental in explaining anything, and whether we must ultimately conceive
people as in some sense material systems, e.g. as computer-like. Major
questions for the progr of replicating human intelligence in data-processing terms
(cf. artificial intelligence) are raised by the symbolic aspects of
interaction. Additionally, we should note the emergence of sociobiology as a
potent source of explanations of social phenomena. Normative social philosophy,
in turn, tends inevitably to merge into either politics or ethics, especially
the part of ethics dealing with how people ought to treat others, especially in
large groups, in relation to social institutions or social structures. This
contrasts with ethics in the sense concerned with how individual people may
attain the good life for themselves. All such theories allot major importance
to social relations; but if one’s theory leaves the individual wide freedom of
choice, then a theory of individually chosen goods will still have a distinctive
subject matter. The normative involvements of social philosophy have paralleled
the foregoing in important ways. Individualists have held that the good of a
society must be analyzed in terms of the goods of its individual members. Of
special importance has been the view that society must respect indisocial
philosophy social philosophy 857 857
vidual rights, blocking certain actions alleged to promote social good as a
whole. Organicist philosophers such as Hegel hold that it is the other way
around: the state or nation is higher than the individual, who is rightly
subordinated to it, and individuals have fundental duties toward the groups of
which they are members. Outrightly fascist versions of such views are unpopular
today, but more benign versions continue in modified form, notably by
communitarians. Socialism and especially communism, though focused originally
on economic aspects of society, have characteristically been identified with
the organicist outlook. Their extreme opposite is to be found in the
libertarians, who hold that the right to individual liberty is fundental in
society, and that no institutions may override that right. Libertarians hold
that society ought to be treated strictly as an association, a Gesellschaft,
even though they might not deny that it is ontogenetically Gemeinschaft. They
might agree that religious groups, e.g., cannot be wholly understood as
separate individuals. Nevertheless, the libertarian holds that religious and
cultural practices may not be interfered with or even supported by society.
Libertarians are strong supporters of free-market economic methods, and
opponents of any sort of state intervention into the affairs of individuals.
Social Darwinism, advocating the “survival of the socially fittest,” has sometimes
been associated with the libertarian view. Insofar as there is any kind of
standard view on these matters, it combines elements of both individualism and
holism. Typical social philosophers today accept that society has duties, not
voluntary for individual members, to support education, health, and some degree
of welfare for all. But they also agree that individual rights are to be
respected, especially civil rights, such as freedom of speech and religion. How
to combine these two apparently disparate sets of ideas into a coherent whole
is the problem. (John Rawls’s celebrated Theory of Justice, 1971, is a
contemporary classic that attempts to do just that.) .
Socinianism, an
unorthodox Christian religious movement originating in the sixteenth century
from the work of Italian reformer Laelius Socinus (“Sozzini” in Italian;
1525–62) and his nephew Faustus Socinus (1539–1603). Born in Siena of a
patrician fily, Laelius was widely read in theology. Influenced by the
evangelical movement in Italy, he made contact with noted Protestant reformers,
including Calvin and Melanchthon, some of whom questioned his orthodoxy. In
response, he wrote a confession of faith (one of a small number of his writings
to have survived). After Laelius’s death, his work was carried on by his
nephew, Faustus, whose writings (including On the Authority of Scripture, 1570;
On the Savior Jesus Christ, 1578; and On Predestination, 1578) expressed
heterodox views. Faustus believed that Christ’s nature was entirely human, that
souls did not possess immortality by nature (though there would be selective
resurrection for believers), that invocation of Christ in prayer was
permissible but not required, and he argued against predestination. After
publication of his 1578 writings, Faustus was invited to Transylvania and
Poland to engage in a dispute within the Reformed churches there. He decided to
make his permanent residence in Poland, which, through his tireless efforts,
bece the center of the Socinian movement. The most important document of this
movement was the Racovian Catechism, published in 1605 (shortly after Faustus’s
death). The Minor church of Poland, centered at Racov, bece the focal point of
the movement. Its academy attracted hundreds of students and its publishing
house produced books in many languages defending Socinian ideas. Socinianism,
as represented by the Racovian Catechism and other writings collected by
Faustus’s Polish disciples, involves the views of Laelius and especially
Faustus Socinus, aligned with the anti-Trinitarian views of the Polish Minor
church (founded in 1556). It accepts Christ’s message as the definitive
revelation of God, but regards Christ as human, not divine; rejects the natural
immortality of the soul, but argues for the selective resurrection of the
faithful; rejects the doctrine of the Trinity; emphasizes human free will
against predestinationism; defends pacifism and the separation of church and
state; and argues that reason – not creeds, dogmatic tradition, or church
authority – must be the final interpreter of Scripture. Its view of God is
temporalistic: God’s eternity is existence at all times, not timelessness, and
God knows future free actions only when they occur. (In these respects, the
Socinian view of God anticipates aspects of modern process theology.)
Socinianism was suppressed in Poland in 1658, but it had already spread to
other European social sciences, philosophy of the Socinianism 858 858 countries, including Holland (where it
appealed to followers of Arminius) and England, where it influenced the Cbridge
Platonists, Locke, and other philosophers, as well as scientists like Newton.
In England, it also influenced and was closely associated with the development
of Unitarianism. TRINITARIANISM. R.H.K.
Socinus, Faustus.SOCINIANISM. Socinus, Laelus.
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