H.
P. Grice, St. John’s, Oxford.
THESAVRVS
GRICEIANVUM
Compiled
by H. P. Grice’s Play Group -- Deposited at the Bodelian, Oxford.
abderites: the
Greek philosophers Leucippus and Democritus, the two earliest exponents of
atomism. Even though Abdera, in Thrace (northern Greece), was home to three
pre-Socratics – Leucippus, Democritus, and Protagoras – the term ‘Abderites’
and the phrase ‘School of Abdera’ are applied only to Leucippus and Democritus.
We can thus distinguish between early Greek atomism and Epicureanism, which is
the later version of atomism developed by Epicurus of Athens. This modern usage
is in one respect inapt: the corresponding Greek term, Abderites, -ai, was used
in antiquity as a synonym of ‘simpleton’ – not in disparagement of any of the
three philosophers of Abdera but as a regional slur.
abduction: canons
of reasoning for the discovery, as opposed to the justification, of scientific
hypotheses or theories. Reichenbach distinguished the context of justification
and the context of discovery, arguing that philosophy legitimately is concerned
only with the former, which concerns verification and confirmation, whereas the
latter is a matter for psychology. Thus he and other logical positivists
claimed there are inductive logics of justification but not logics for
discovery. Both hypotheticodeductive and Bayesian or other probabilistic
inductive logics of justification have been proposed. Close examination of
actual scientific practice increasingly reveals justificatory arguments and
procedures that call into question the adequacy of such logics. Norwood Russell
Hanson distinguished the reasons for accepting a specific hypothesis from the
reasons for suggesting that the correct hypothesis will be of a particular
kind. For the latter he attempted to develop logics of retroductive or
abductive reasoning that stressed analogical reasoning, but did not succeed in
convincing many that these logics were different in kind from logics of
justification. Today few regard the search for rigorous formal logics of
discovery as promising. Rather, the search has turned to looking for “logics”
in some weaker sense. Heuristic procedures, strategies for discovery, and the
like are explored. Others have focused on investigating rationality in the
growth of scientific knowledge, say, by exploring conditions under which
research traditions or programs are progressive or degenerating. Some have
explored recourse to techniques from cognitive science or artificial
intelligence. Claims of success generally are controversial.
abélard:
pierre abailard (1079–1144), French theologian whose writings, particularly
Theologia Christiana, constitute one of the more impressive attempts of the
medieval period to use logical techniques to explicate Christian dogmas. He was
born of a minor noble family in Brittany and studied logic and theology under
some of the most notable teachers of the early twelfth century, including
Roscelin, William of Champeaux, and Anselm of Laon. He rapidly eclipsed his
teachers in logic and attracted students from all over Europe. His forays into
theology were less enthusiastically received. Twice his views on the Trinity
were condemned as heretical. Abelard led a dramatic life punctuated by bitter
disputes with his opponents and a dangerous and celebrated love affair with
Héloïse (c.1117). Much of this story is told in his autobiographical work,
Historia calamitatum. Abelard’s two most important works in logic are his
Logica ingredientibus and his Dialectica. In these treatises and others he is
the first medieval Scholastic to make full use of Aristotle’s On Interpretation
and Boethius’s commentaries on it to produce a sophisticated theory of the
signification of words and sentences. The theory distinguishes the
signification of an expression both from what the expression names and the idea
in the mind of the speaker associated with the expression. Abelard allows a
role for mental images in thinking, but he carefully avoids claiming that these
are what words signify. In this he is very much aware of the pitfalls of
subjectivist theories of meaning. His positive doctrines on what words signify
tie in closely with his views on the signification of propositions and
universals. For Abelard propositions are sentences that are either true or
false; what they say (their dicta) is what they signify and these dicta are the
primary bearers of truth and falsity. Abelard developed a genuinely
propositional logic, the first since the Stoics. A universal, on the other
hand, is a common noun or adjective, and what it means is what the verb phrase
part of a proposition signifies. This is a sort of truncated dictum, which
Abelard variously called a status, nature, or property. Neither status nor
dicta are things, Abelard said, but they are mind-independent objects of
thought. Abelard was particularly devastating in his attacks on realist
theories of universals, but his view that universals are words was not meant to
deny the objectivity of our knowledge of the world. Abelard’s theories in logic
and ontology went far beyond the traditional ideas that had been handed down
from Aristotle through the mediation of the late ancient commentators, Boethius
in particular. They could have formed the basis of a fundamentally new
synthesis in Western logic, but when more of the Aristotelian corpus became
available in Western Europe during the twelfth century, concentration shifted
to assimilating this already fully elaborated system of ideas. Consequently,
Abelard’s influence on later Scholastic thought, though noticeable, is not
nearly as great as one might expect, given the acuteness and originality of his
insights.
abhidharma, the
analytical and systematic presentation of the major conceptual categories
constituting Buddhist doctrine; used as a label for both the texts that contain
such presentations and the content of what is presented. Early abhidharma texts
(up to about the second century A.D.) are catechetical in form, defining key
doctrinal terms schematically through question and answer; later works are more
discursive, often containing extensive discussions of controverted metaphysical
issues such as the existence of past objects or the nature of reference. The
goal of abhidharma is to make a complete inventory of existents and of the
relations that may hold among them.
abhinivesha, Sanskrit
word meaning ‘self-love’ or ‘will to live’. In Indian philosophy in general and
in the Sankhya-Yoga system in particular, abhinivesha was regarded as an aspect
of avidya (ignorance). Some other manifestations of avidya were said to be
fear, attachment, and aversion, all of which were thought to generate karmic
bondage and prevent one from attaining spiritual liberation. Lumped together
with these, abhinivesha obviously has a negative connotation, even though in
the Indian tradition it was not necessarily wrong, and even commendable at
times, to exhibit self-love and a healthy will to live and prosper in the
material world. So presumably the negative connotation of abhinivesha is an
indication that what may be otherwise permissible can be improper or morally
wrong if pursued in excess or for the wrong reason.
Abrabanel, Isaac ben
Judah (1437–1508), Spanish Jewish philosopher and statesman. On the periphery
between late medieval Spanish philosophy and Renaissance humanism, Abrabanel
concerned himself with traditional medieval Jewish subjects such as creation,
prophecy, and theodicy. His works include biblical commentaries as well as
philosophical and theological treatises; his most significant writings
constitute his critique of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, found in Rosh
Amanah (1505) and Mifalot Elohim (1503). In his criticism of the Aristotelians,
Abrabanel was influenced by Isaac Arama. Endorsing the rabbinic concept of
prophecy, Abrabanel attacks Maimonides’ naturalistic views of prophecy: he
argues that Moses is not to be distinguished from the other prophets and that
the knowledge of the prophets is not merely scientific and metaphysical, but
miraculously produced by God. This emphasis upon the miraculous as opposed to
the natural is developed in his theory of history and politics. His views about
the ideal state reflect humanist leanings. While Abrabanel does see the
civilized state of humans as a rebellion against God resulting from the fall,
he is interested in the best kind of government under these circumstances.
Accordingly, unity of society does not require a concentrated power but can be
achieved through a collective will. This kind of government, Abrabanel claims,
is advocated by the Torah and shown to be effective by the Italian republics of
the period. With the coming of the Messiah, humankind will realize its
spiritual potential, and when the corporeal universe vanishes, each soul will
be able to contemplate eternally the essence of God. Abrabanel’s political
views influenced later Jewish messianic movements, and his biblical
commenabhidharma Abrabanel, Isaac ben Judah 2 4065A- 2 taries, translated into Latin, influenced
later Christian humanist circles.
Abrabanel, Judah, also
called Leone Ebreo or Leo Hebraeus (c.1460–c.1523), Spanish Jewish philosopher,
poet, and physician. The oldest son of Isaac Abrabanel, Judah Abrabanel was,
philosophically, a representative of Italian Platonism. He wrote his
predominantly Neoplatonic philosophical work Dialoghi d’Amore (Dialogues of
Love) in 1535. The original Italian manuscript was translated into French,
Latin, Spanish, and Hebrew between 1551 and 1560. The interlocutors of this
Platonic-style dialogue, Sophia and Philo, explore the nature of cosmic love.
This love not only exists between God and creatures, but also operates in
matter and form, the four elements, and the entire universe; it reflects both
sensuous and intellectual beauty; in short it is transformed from a relation
between God and the universe into a fundamental force around which all things
are ordered. There is a mystical aspect to Abrabanel’s account of love, and it
is not surprising that reflections on mysticism, in addition to astrology,
astronomy, and aesthetics, emerge throughout the work. Although primarily
reflecting medieval Platonism and Neoplatonism, Abrabanel was also influenced
by Marcilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Maimonides, and Ibn Gabirol. His
dialogue was read by many philosophers, including Giordano Bruno and Spinoza.
His concept of love may be found in lyrical poetry of the period in Italy,
France, and Spain, as well as in Michelangelo’s Sonnets and Torquato Tasso’s
Minturno.
absolute, the, term used
by idealists to describe the one independent reality of which all things are an
expression. Kant used the adjective ‘absolute’ to characterize what is
unconditionally valid. He claimed that pure reason searched for absolute
grounds of the understanding that were ideals only, but that practical reason
postulated the real existence of such grounds as necessary for morality. This
apparent inconsistency led his successors to attempt to systematize his view of
reason. To do this, Schelling introduced the term ‘the Absolute’ for the
unconditioned ground (and hence identity) of subject and object. Schelling was
criticized by Hegel, who defined the Absolute as spirit: the logical necessity that
embodies itself in the world in order to achieve self-knowledge and freedom
during the course of history. Many prominent nineteenthcentury British and
American idealists, including Bosanquet, Royce, and Bradley, defended the
existence of a quasi-Hegelian absolute.
abstract entity, an
object lacking spatiotemporal properties, but supposed to have being, to exist,
or (in medieval Scholastic terminology) to subsist. Abstracta, sometimes
collected under the category of universals, include mathematical objects, such
as numbers, sets, and geometrical figures, propositions, properties, and
relations. Abstract entities are said to be abstracted from particulars. The
abstract triangle has only the properties common to all triangles, and none
peculiar to any particular triangles; it has no definite color, size, or
specific type, such as isosceles or scalene. Abstracta are admitted to an
ontology by Quine’s criterion if they must be supposed to exist (or subsist) in
order to make the propositions of an accepted theory true. Properties and
relations may be needed to account for resemblances among particulars, such as
the redness shared by all red things. Propositions as the abstract contents or
meanings of thoughts and expressions of thought are sometimes said to be
necessary to explain translation between languages, and other semantic
properties and relations. Historically, abstract entities are associated with
Plato’s realist ontology of Ideas or Forms. For Plato, these are the abstract
and only real entities, instantiated or participated in by spatiotemporal
objects in the world of appearance or empirical phenomena. Aristotle denied the
independent existence of abstract entities, and redefined a diluted sense of
Plato’s Forms as the Abrabanel, Judah abstract entity 3 4065A- 3 secondary substances that inhere in
primary substances or spatiotemporal particulars as the only genuine existents.
The dispute persisted in medieval philosophy between realist metaphysicians,
including Augustine and Aquinas, who accepted the existence of abstracta, and
nominalists, such as Ockham, who maintained that similar objects may simply be
referred to by the same name without participating in an abstract form. In
modern philosophy, the problem of abstracta has been a point of contention
between rationalism, which is generally committed to the existence of abstract
entities, and empiricism, which rejects abstracta because they cannot be
experienced by the senses. Berkeley and Hume argued against Locke’s theory of
abstract ideas by observing that introspection shows all ideas to be
particular, from which they concluded that we can have no adequate concept of
an abstract entity; instead, when we reason about what we call abstracta we are
actually thinking about particular ideas delegated by the mind to represent an
entire class of resemblant particulars, from which we may freely substitute
others if we mistakenly draw conclusions peculiar to the example chosen.
Abstract propositions were defended by Bolzano and Frege in the nineteenth century
as the meanings of thought in language and logic. Dispute persists about the
need for and nature of abstract entities, but many philosophers believe they
are indispensable in metaphysics.
Academy, the school
established by Plato around 385 B.C. at his property outside Athens near the
public park and gymnasium known by that name. Although it may not have
maintained a continuous tradition, the many and varied philosophers of the
Academy all considered themselves Plato’s successors, and all of them celebrated
and studied his work. The school survived in some form until A.D. 529, when it
was dissolved, along with the other pagan schools, by the Eastern Roman emperor
Justinian I. The history of the Academy is divided by some authorities into
that of the Old Academy (Plato, Speusippus, Xenocrates, and their followers)
and the New Academy (the Skeptical Academy of the third and second centuries
B.C.). Others speak of five phases in its history: Old (as before), Middle
(Arcesilaus), New (Carneades), Fourth (Philo of Larisa), and Fifth (Antiochus
of Ascalon). For most of its history the Academy was devoted to elucidating
doctrines associated with Plato that were not entirely explicit in the
dialogues. These “unwritten doctrines” were apparently passed down to his immediate
successors and are known to us mainly through the work of Aristotle: there are
two opposed first principles, the One and the Indefinite Dyad (Great and
Small); these generate Forms or Ideas (which may be identified with numbers),
from which in turn come intermediate mathematicals and, at the lowest level,
perceptible things (Aristotle, Metaphysics I.6). After Plato’s death in 347,
the Academy passed to his nephew Speusippus (c.407–339), who led the school
until his death. Although his written works have perished, his views on certain
main points, along with some quotations, were recorded by surviving authors.
Under the influence of late Pythagoreans, Speusippus anticipated Plotinus by
holding that the One transcends being, goodness, and even Intellect, and that
the Dyad (which he identifies with matter) is the cause of all beings. To
explain the gradations of beings, he posited gradations of matter, and this
gave rise to Aristotle’s charge that Speusippus saw the universe as a series of
disjointed episodes. Speusippus abandoned the theory of Forms as ideal numbers,
and gave heavier emphasis than other Platonists to the mathematicals.
Xenocrates (396–314), who once went with Plato to Sicily, succeeded Speusippus
and led the Academy till his own death. Although he was a prolific author,
Xenocrates’ works have not survived, and he is known only through the work of
other authors. He was induced by Aristotle’s objections to reject Speusippus’s
views on some points, and he developed theories that were a major influence on
Middle Platonism, as well as on Stoicism. In Xenocrates’ theory the One is
Intellect, and the Forms are ideas in the mind of this divine principle; the
One is not transcendent, but it resides in an intellectual space above the
heavens. While the One is good, the Dyad is evil, and the sublunary world is
identified with Hades. Having taken Forms to be mathematical entities, he had
no use for intermediate mathematicals. Forms he defined further as paradigmatic
causes of regular natural phenomena, and soul as self-moving number. Polemon
(c.350–267) led the Academy from 314 to 267, and was chiefly known for his fine
character, which set an example of self-control for his students. The Stoics
probably derived their concept of oikeiosis (an accommodation to nature) from
his teaching. After Polemon’s death, his colleague Crates led the Academy until
the accession of Arcesilaus. The New Academy arose when Arcesilaus became the
leader of the school in about 265 B.C. and turned the dialectical tradition of
Plato to the Skeptical aim of suspending belief. The debate between the New
Academy and Stoicism dominated philosophical discussion for the next century
and a half. On the Academic side the most prominent spokesman was Carneades
(c.213– 129 B.C.). In the early years of the first century B.C., Philo of
Larisa attempted to reconcile the Old and the New Academy. His pupil, the
former Skeptic Antiochus of Ascalon, was enraged by this and broke away to
refound the Old Academy in about 87 B.C. This was the beginning of Middle
Platonism (c.80 B.C.–A.D. 220). Antiochus’s school was eclectic in combining
elements of Platonism, Stoicism, and Aristotelian philosophy, and is known to
us mainly through Cicero’s Academica. Middle Platonism revived the main themes
of Speusippus and Xenocrates, but often used Stoic or neo-Pythagorean concepts
to explain them. The influence of the Stoic Posidonius (135–50/51 B.C.) was
strongly felt on the Academy in this period, and Platonism flourished at
centers other than the Academy in Athens, most notably in Alexandria, with
Eudorus (first century B.C.) and Philo of Alexandria (fl. A.D. 39). After the
death of Philo, the center of interest returned to Athens, where Plutarch of
Chaeronia (A.D. c.45–c.125) studied with Ammonius at the Academy, although
Plutarch spent most of his career at his home in nearby Boeotia. His many
philosophical treatises, which are rich sources for the history of philosophy,
are gathered under the title Moralia; his interest in ethics and moral
education led him to write the Parallel Lives (paired biographies of famous
Romans and Athenians), for which he is best known. After this period, the
Academy ceased to be the name for a species of Platonic philosophy, although
the school remained a center for Platonism, and was especially prominent under
the leadership of the Neoplatonist Proclus (c.410– 85). .
accident, a feature or
property of a substance (e.g., an organism or an artifact) without which the
substance could still exist. According to a common essentialist view of
persons, Socrates’ size, color, and integrity are among his accidents, while
his humanity is not. For Descartes, thinking is the essence of the soul, while
any particular thought a soul entertains is an accident. According to a common
theology, God has no accidents, since all truths about him flow by necessity
from his nature. These examples suggest the diversity of traditional uses of
the notion of accident. There is no uniform conception; but the Cartesian view,
according to which the accidents are modes of (ways of specifying) the essence
of a substance, is representative. An important ambiguity concerns the identity
of accidents: if Plato and Aristotle have the same weight, is that weight one
accident (say, the property of weighing precisely 70 kilograms) or two (one
accident for Plato, one for Aristotle)? Different theorists give different
answers (and some have changed their minds). Issues about accidents have become
peripheral in this century because of the decline of traditional concerns about
substance. But the more general questions about necessity and contingency are
very much alive.
accidentalism, the
metaphysical thesis that the occurrence of some events is either not
necessiaccent, fallacy of accidentalism 5 4065A- 5 tated or not causally determined or not
predictable. Many determinists have maintained that although all events are
caused, some nevertheless occur accidentally, if only because the causal laws
determining them might have been different. Some philosophers have argued that
even if determinism is true, some events, such as a discovery, could not have
been predicted, on grounds that to predict a discovery is to make the
discovery. The term may also designate a theory of individuation: that
individuals of the same kind or species are numerically distinct in virtue of
possessing some different accidental properties. Two horses are the same in
essence but numerically distinct because one of them is black, e.g., while the
other is white. Accidentalism presupposes the identity of indiscernibles but
goes beyond it by claiming that accidental properties account for numerical
diversity within a species. Peter Abelard criticized a version of accidentalism
espoused by his teacher, William of Champeaux, on the ground that accidental properties
depend for their existence on the distinct individuals in which they inhere,
and so the properties cannot account for the distinctness of the individuals.
accidie (also acedia),
apathy, listlessness, or ennui. This condition is problematic for the
internalist thesis that, necessarily, any belief that one morally ought to do
something is conceptually sufficient for having motivation to do it. Ann has
long believed that she ought, morally, to assist her ailing mother, and she has
dutifully acted accordingly. Seemingly, she may continue to believe this, even
though, owing to a recent personal tragedy, she now suffers from accidie and is
wholly lacking in motivation to assist her mother. AKRASIA,
acosmism, a term formed
in analogy to ‘atheism,’ meaning the denial of the ultimate reality of the
world. Ernst Platner used it in 1776 to describe Spinoza’s philosophy, arguing
that Spinoza did not intend to deny “the existence of the Godhead, but the
existence of the world.” Maimon, Fichte, Hegel, and others make the same claim.
By the time of Feuerbach it was also used to characterize a basic feature of
Christianity: the denial of the world or worldliness. .
action theory, the study
of the ontological structure of human action, the process by which it originates,
and the ways in which it is explained. Most human actions are acts of
commission: they constitute a class of events in which a subject (the agent)
brings about some change or changes. Thus, in moving one’s finger, one brings
it about that one’s finger moves. When the change brought about is an ongoing
process (e.g., the continuing appearance of words on a ), the behavior is
called an activity (writing). An action of omission occurs when an agent
refrains from performing an action of commission. Since actions of commission
are events, the question of their ontology is in part a matter of the general
ontology of change. An important issue here is whether what occurs when an
action is performed should be viewed as abstract or concrete. On the first approach,
actions are understood either as proposition-like entities (e.g., Booth’s
moving a finger), or as a species of universal – namely, an act-type (moving a
finger). What “occurred” when Booth moved his finger in Ford’s Theater on April
14, 1865, is held to be the abstract entity in question, and the entity is
viewed as repeatable: that is, precisely the same entity is held to have
occurred on every other occasion of Booth’s moving his finger. When actions are
viewed as concrete, on the other hand, Booth’s moving his finger in Ford’s
Theater is understood to be a non-repeatable particular, accidental property
action theory 6 4065A- 6 and the
movement of the finger counts as an acttoken, which instantiates the corresponding
acttype. Concrete actions are time-bound: each belongs to a single behavioral
episode, and other instantiations of the same act-type count as distinct
events. A second important ontological issue concerns the fact that by moving
his finger, Booth also fired a gun, and killed Lincoln. It is common for more
than one thing to be accomplished in a single exercise of agency, and how such
doings are related is a matter of debate. If actions are understood as abstract
entities, the answer is essentially foregone: there must be as many different
actions on Booth’s part as there are types exemplified. But if actions are
viewed as particulars the same token can count as an instance of more than one
type, and identity claims become possible. Here there is disagreement.
Fine-grained theories of act individuation tend to confine identity claims to
actions that differ only in ways describable through different modifications of
the same main verb – e.g., where Placido both sings and sings loudly.
Otherwise, different types are held to require different tokens: Booth’s action
of moving his finger is held to have generated or given rise to distinct
actions of firing the gun and killing Lincoln, by virtue of having had as
causal consequences the gun’s discharge and Lincoln’s death. The opposite,
coarse-grained theory, however, views these causal relations as grounds for
claiming Booth’s acts were precisely identical. On this view, for Booth to kill
Lincoln was simply for him to do something that caused Lincoln’s death – which
was in fact nothing more than to move his finger – and similarly for his firing
the gun. There is also a compromise account, on which Booth’s actions are
related as part to whole, each consisting in a longer segment of the causal
chain that terminates with Lincoln’s death. The action of killing Lincoln
consisted, on this view, in the entire sequence; but that of firing the gun
terminated with the gun’s discharge, and that of moving the finger with the
finger’s motion. When, as in Booth’s case, more than one thing is accomplished
in a single exercise of agency, some are done by doing others. But if all
actions were performed by performing others, an infinite regress would result.
There must, then, be a class of basic actions – i.e., actions fundamental to
the performance of all others, but not themselves done by doing something else.
There is disagreement, however, on which actions are basic. Some theories treat
bodily movements, such as Booth’s moving his finger, as basic. Others point out
that it is possible to engage in action but to accomplish less than a bodily
movement, as when one tries to move a limb that is restrained or paralyzed, and
fails. According to these accounts, bodily actions arise out of a still more
basic mental activity, usually called volition or willing, which is held to
constitute the standard means for performing all overt actions. The question of
how bodily actions originate is closely associated with that of what
distinguishes them from involuntary and reflex bodily events, as well as from
events in the inanimate world. There is general agreement that the crucial
difference concerns the mental states that attend action, and in particular the
fact that voluntary actions typically arise out of states of intending on the
part of the agent. But the nature of the relation is difficult, and there is
the complicating factor that intention is sometimes held to reduce to other
mental states, such as the agent’s desires and beliefs. That issue aside, it
would appear that unintentional actions arise out of more basic actions that
are intentional, as when one unintentionally breaks a shoelace by intentionally
tugging on it. But how intention is first translated into action is much more
problematic, especially when bodily movements are viewed as basic actions. One
cannot, e.g., count Booth’s moving his finger as an intentional action simply
because he intended to do so, or even on the ground (if it is true) that his
intention caused his finger to move. The latter might have occurred through a
strictly autonomic response had Booth been nervous enough, and then the moving
of the finger would not have counted as an action at all, much less as
intentional. Avoiding such “wayward causal chains” requires accounting for the
agent’s voluntary control over what occurs in genuinely intentional action – a
difficult task when bodily actions are held to be basic. Volitional accounts
have greater success here, since they can hold that movements are intentional
only when the agent’s intention is executed through volitional activity. But
they must sidestep another threatened regress: if we call for an activity of
willing to explain why Booth’s moving his finger counts as intentional action,
we cannot do the same for willing itself. Yet on most accounts volition does
have the characteristics of intentional behavior. Volitional theories of action
must, then, provide an alternative account of how mental activity can be
intentional. Actions are explained by invoking the agent’s reasons for
performing them. Characteristically, a reason may be understood to consist in a
positive attitude of the agent toward one or another action theory action
theory 7 4065A- 7 outcome, and a belief
to the effect that the outcome may be achieved by performing the action in
question. Thus Emily might spend the summer in France out of a desire to learn
French, and a belief that spending time in France is the best way to do so.
Disputed questions about reasons include how confident the agent must be that
the action selected will in fact lead to the envisioned outcome, and whether
obligation represents a source of motivation that can operate independently of
the agent’s desires. Frequently, more than one course of action is available to
an agent. Deliberation is the process of searching out and weighing the reasons
for and against such alternatives. When successfully concluded, deliberation
usually issues in a decision, by which an intention to undertake one of the
contemplated actions is formed. The intention is then carried out when the time
for action comes. Much debate has centered on the question of how reasons are
related to decisions and actions. As with intention, an agent’s simply having a
reason is not enough for the reason to explain her behavior: her desire to
learn French notwithstanding, Emily might have gone to France simply because
she was transferred there. Only when an agent does something for a reason does
the reason explain what is done. It is frequently claimed that this bespeaks a
causal relation between the agent’s strongest reason and her decision or
action. This, however, suggests a determinist stance on the free will problem,
leading some philosophers to balk. An alternative is to treat reason
explanations as teleological explanations, wherein an action is held to be
reasonable or justified in virtue of the goals toward which it was directed.
But positions that treat reason explanations as non-causal require an
alternative account of what it is to decide or act for one reason rather than
another.
action verb, a verb
applied to an agent and describing an activity, an action, or an attempt at or
a culmination of an action. Verbs applying to agents may be distinguished in
two basic ways: by whether they can take the progressive (continuous) form and
by whether or not there is a specific moment of occurrence/completion of the
action named by the verb. An activity verb is one describing something that
goes on for a time but with no inherent endpoint, such as ‘drive’, ‘laugh’, or
‘meditate’. One can stop doing such a thing but one cannot complete doing it.
Indeed, one can be said to have done it as soon as one has begun doing it. An
accomplishment verb is one describing something that goes on for a time toward
an inherent endpoint, such as ‘paint’ (a fence), ‘solve’ (a problem), or
‘climb’ (a mountain). Such a thing takes a certain time to do, and one cannot
be said to have done it until it has been completed. An achievement verb is one
describing either the culmination of an activity, such as ‘finish’ (a job) or
‘reach’ (a goal); the effecting of a change, such as ‘fire’ (an employee) or
‘drop’ (an egg); or undergoing a change, such as ‘hear’ (an explosion) or
‘forget’ (a name). An achievement does not go on for a period of time but may
be the culmination of something that does. Ryle singled out achievement verbs
and state verbs (see below) partly in order to disabuse philosophers of the
idea that what psychological verbs name must invariably be inner acts or
activities modeled on bodily actions or activities. A task verb is an activity
verb that implies attempting to do something named by an achievement verb. For
example, to seek is to attempt to find, to sniff is to attempt to smell, and to
treat is to attempt to cure. A state verb is a verb (not an action verb)
describing a condition, disposition, or habit rather than something that goes
on or takes place. Examples include ‘own’, ‘weigh’, ‘want’, ‘hate’, ‘frequent’,
and ‘teetotal’. These differences were articulated by Zeno Vendler in
Linguistics and Philosophy (1967). Taking them into account, linguists have
classified verbs (and verb phrases) into four main aspectual classes, which
they distinguish in respect to the availability and interpretation of the
simple present tense, of the perfect tenses, of the progressive construction,
and of various temporal adverbials, such as adverbs like ‘yesterday’,
‘finally’, and ‘often’, and prepositional phrases like ‘for a long time’ and
‘in a while’. Many verbs belong to more than one category by virtue of having
several related uses. For example, ‘run’ is both an activity and an
accomplishment verb, and ‘weigh’ is both a state and an accomplishment verb.
Linguists single out a class of causative verbs, such as ‘force’, ‘inspire’,
and ‘persuade’, some of which are achievement and some accomplishment verbs.
Such causative verbs as ‘break’, ‘burn’, and ‘improve’ have a correlative
intransitive use, so that, e.g., to break something is to cause it to break.
act(ion)-token action verb 8 4065A-
8
act-object psychology, also
called act-contentobject psychology, a philosophical theory that identifies in
every psychological state a mental act, a lived-through phenomenological
content, such as a mental image or description of properties, and an intended
object that the mental act is about or toward which it is directed by virtue of
its content. The distinction between the act, content, and object of thought
originated with Alois Höfler’s Logik (1890), written in collaboration with
Meinong. But the theory is historically most often associated with its
development in Kazimierz Twardowski’s Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der
Vorstellung (“On the Content and Object of Presentations,” 1894), despite
Twardowski’s acknowledgment of his debt to Höfler. Act-object psychology arose
as a reaction to Franz Brentano’s immanent intentionality thesis in his
influential Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (“Psychology from an
Empirical Standpoint,” 1874), in which Brentano maintains that intentionality
is “the mark of the mental,” by contrast with purely physical phenomena.
Brentano requires that intended objects belong immanently to the mental acts
that intend them – a philosophical commitment that laid Brentano open to
charges of epistemological idealism and psychologism. Yet Brentano’s followers,
who accepted the intentionality of thought but resisted what they came to see
as its detachable idealism and psychologism, responded by distinguishing the
act-immanent phenomenological content of a psychological state from its
act-transcendent intended object, arguing that Brentano had wrongly and
unnecessarily conflated mental content with the external objects of thought.
Twardowski goes so far as to claim that content and object can never be
identical, an exclusion in turn that is vigorously challenged by Husserl in his
Logische Untersuchungen (“Logical Investigations,” 1913, 1922), and by others
in the phenomenological tradition who acknowledge the possibility that a
self-reflexive thought can sometimes be about its own content as intended object,
in which content and object are indistinguishable. Act-object psychology
continues to be of interest to contemporary philosophy because of its relation
to ongoing projects in phenomenology, and as a result of a resurgence of study
of the concept of intentionality and qualia in philosophy of mind, cognitive
psychology, and Gegenstandstheorie, or existent and non-existent intended
object theory, in philosophical logic and semantics.
Adelard of Bath
(c.1070–c.1145), English Benedictine monk notable for his contributions to the
introduction of Arabic science in the West. After studying at Tours, he taught
at Laon, then spent seven years traveling in Italy, possibly Spain, and Cilicia
and Syria, before returning to England. In his dialogue On the Same and the
Different, he remarks, concerning universals, that the names of individuals,
species, and genera are imposed on the same essence regarded in different
respects. He also wrote Seventy-six Questions on Nature, based on Arabic
learning; works on the use of the abacus and the astrolabe; a work on falconry;
and translations of Abu Ma’shar’s Arabic active euthanasia Adelard of Bath 9
4065A- 9 Shorter Introduction to
Astronomy, al-Khwarizmi’s (fl. c.830) astronomical tables, and Euclid’s
Elements.
adhyatman (Sanskrit,
‘relating to or belonging to the self’), in early Hindu texts concerning such
topics as knowledge of the self, meditating on that which appertains to the
self, or spiritual exercise related to the self (adhyatma-yoga). Later, it
became a term for the Supreme Spirit, the Supreme Self, or the soul, which, in
Indian thought, is other than the ego. In monistic systems, e.g. Advaita
Vedanta, the adhyatman is the one Self that is the impersonal Absolute
(Brahman), a state of pure consciousness, ultimately the only Real. In dualist
systems, e.g. Dvaita Vedanta, it is the true self or soul of each individual.
Adorno, Theodor
Wiesengrund (1903–69), German philosopher and aesthetic theorist, one of the
main philosophers of the first generation of the Frankfurt School of critical
theory. With Horkheimer, Adorno gave philosophical direction to the Frankfurt
School and its research projects in its Institute for Social Research. An
accomplished musician and composer, Adorno first focused on the theory of culture
and art, working to develop a non-reductionist but materialist theory of art
and music in many essays from the 1930s. Under the influence of Walter
Benjamin, he turned toward developing a “micrological” account of cultural
artifacts, viewing them as “constellations” of social and historical forces. As
his collaboration with Horkheimer increased, Adorno turned to the problem of a
selfdefeating dialectic of modern reason and freedom. Under the influence of
the seemingly imminent victory of the Nazis in Europe, this analysis focused on
the “entwinement of myth and Enlightenment.” The Dialectic of Enlightenment
(1941) argues that instrumental reason promises the subject autonomy from the
forces of nature only to enslave it again by its own repression of its impulses
and inclinations. The only way around this self-domination is “non-identity
thinking,” found in the unifying tendencies of a non-repressive reason. This
self-defeating dialectic is represented by the striking image of Ulysses tied
to the mast to survive his encounter with the Sirens. Adorno initially hoped
for a positive analysis of the Enlightenment to overcome this genealogy of
modern reason, but it is never developed. Instead, he turned to an increasingly
pessimistic analysis of the growing reification of modern life and of the
possibility of a “totally administered society.” Adorno held that “autonomous
art” can open up established reality and negate the experience of reification.
Aesthetic Theory (1970) develops this idea of autonomous art in terms of
aesthetic form, or the capacity of the internal organization of art to
restructure existing patterns of meaning. Authentic works of art have a
“truth-value” in their capacity to bring to awareness social contradictions and
antinomies. In Negative Dialectics (1966) Adorno provides a more general
account of social criticism under the “fragmenting” conditions of modern
rationalization and domination. These and other writings have had a large
impact on cultural criticism, particularly through Adorno’s analysis of popular
culture and the “culture industry.”
CRITICAL THEORY, FRANKFURT SCHOOL. J.Bo. Advaita, also called Uttara
Mimamsa, in Hinduism, the non-dualistic form of Vedanta. Advaita Vedanta makes
an epistemological distinction (not a metaphysical one) between the level of
appearance and the level of reality. This marks off how things appear versus
how they are; there appear to be a multitude of distinct persons and physical
objects, and a personal deity, whereas there is only ineffable Brahman. This doctrine,
according to Advaita, is taught in the Upanishads and realized in an esoteric
enlightenment experience called moksha. The opposing evidence provided by all
experiences that (a) have a subject-consciousness-object structure (e.g.,
seeing a sunset) and evidence a distinction between what one experiences and
oneself, or (b) have a subject/content structure (e.g., feeling pain) and
evidence a distinction between oneself and one’s states, is dismissed on
adequacy, analytic Advaita 10 4065A- 10
the ground that these experiences involve “the making of distinctions.” Critics
claim that moksha itself, as an experience in which something allegedly is
learned or grasped, also must involve “the making of distinctions.”
aesthetic attitude, the
appropriate attitude or frame of mind for approaching art (or nature or other
objects or events) so that one might both appreciate its intrinsic perceptual
qualities, and as a result have an aesthetic experience. The aesthetic attitude
has been construed in many ways: (1) as disinterested, so that one’s experience
of the work is not affected by any interest in its possible practical uses, (2)
as a “distancing” of oneself from one’s own personal concerns, (3) as the
contemplation of an object, purely as an object of sensation, as it is in
itself, for its own sake, in a way unaffected by any cognition or knowledge one
may have of it. These different notions of aesthetic attitude have at times
been combined within a single theory. There is considerable doubt about whether
there is such a thing as an aesthetic attitude. There is neither any special
kind of action nor any special way of performing an ordinary action that
ensures that we see a work as it “really is,” and that results in our having an
aesthetic experience. Furthermore, there are no purely sensory experiences,
divorced from any cognitive content whatsoever. Criticisms of the notion of
aesthetic attitude have reinforced attacks on aesthetics as a separate field of
study within philosophy.
aesthetic formalism, the
view that in our interactions with works of art, form should be given primacy.
Rather than taking ‘formalism’ as the name of one specific theory in the arts,
it is better and more typical to take it to name that type of theory which
emphasizes the form of the artwork. Or, since emphasis on form is something
that comes in degrees, it is best to think of theories of art as ranged on a
continuum of more formalist and less formalist. It should be added that
theories of art are typically complex, including definitions of art,
recommendations concerning what we should attend to in art, analyses of the
nature of the aesthetic, recommendations concerning the making of aesthetic
evaluations, etc.; and each of these components may be more formalist or less
so. Those who use the concept of form mainly wish to contrast the artifact
itself with its relations to entities outside itself – with its representing
various things, its symbolizing various things, its being expressive of various
things, its being the product of various intentions of the artist, its evoking
various states in beholders, its standing in various relations of influence and
similarity to preceding, succeeding, and contemporary works, etc. There have
been some, however, who in emphasizing form have meant to emphasize not just
the artifact but the perceptible form or design of the artifact. Kant, e.g., in
his theory of aesthetic excellence, not only insisted that the only thing
relevant to determining the beauty of an object is its appearance, but within the
appearance, the form, the design: in visual art, not the colors but the design
that the colors compose; in music, not the timbre of the individual sounds but
the formal relationships among them. It comes as no surprise that theories of
music have tended to be much more formalist than theories of literature and
drama, with theories of the visual arts located in between. AESTHETICS. N.P.W. aesthetic property, a
property or quality such as being dainty, garish, graceful, balanced, charming,
majestic, trite, elegant, lifeless, ugly, or beautiful. By contrast,
non-aesthetic properties are properties that require no special sensitivity or
perceptiveness to perceive – such as a painting’s being predominantly blue, its
having a small red square in a corner or a kneeling figure in the foreground,
or that the music becomes louder at a given point. Sometimes it is argued that
a special perceptiveness or taste is needed to perceive a work’s aesthetic
qualities, and that this is a defining feature of a property’s being aesthetic.
A corollary of this view is that aesthetic qualities cannot be defined in terms
of non-aesthetic qualities, though some have held that aesthetic qualities
supervene on non-aesthetic qualities.
aesthetics, the branch of
philosophy that examines the nature of art and the character of our
adventitious ideas aesthetics 11 4065A-
11 experience of art and of the natural environment. It emerged as a
separate field of philosophical inquiry during the eighteenth century in
England and on the Continent. Recognition of aesthetics as a separate branch of
philosophy coincided with the development of theories of art that grouped
together painting, poetry, sculpture, music, and dance (and often landscape
gardening) as the same kind of thing, les beaux arts, or the fine arts.
Baumgarten coined the term ‘aesthetics’ in his Reflections on Poetry (1735) as
the name for one of the two branches of the study of knowledge, i.e., for the
study of sensory experience coupled with feeling, which he argued provided a different
type of knowledge from the distinct, abstract ideas studied by “logic.” He
derived it from the ancient Greek aisthanomai (‘to perceive’), and “the
aesthetic” has always been intimately connected with sensory experience and the
kinds of feelings it arouses. Questions specific to the field of aesthetics
are: Is there a special attitude, the aesthetic attitude, which we should take
toward works of art and the natural environment, and what is it like? Is there
a distinctive type of experience, an aesthetic experience, and what is it? Is
there a special object of attention that we can call the aesthetic object?
Finally, is there a distinctive value, aesthetic value, comparable with moral,
epistemic, and religious values? Some questions overlap with those in the
philosophy of art, such as those concerning the nature of beauty, and whether
there is a faculty of taste that is exercised in judging the aesthetic
character and value of natural objects or works of art. Aesthetics also
encompasses the philosophy of art. The most central issue in the philosophy of
art has been how to define ‘art’. Not all cultures have, or have had, a concept
of art that coincides with the one that emerged in Western Europe during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. What justifies our applying our concept
to the things people in these other cultures have produced? There are also many
pictures (including paintings), songs, buildings, and bits of writing, that are
not art. What distinguishes those pictures, musical works, etc., that are art
from those that are not? Various answers have been proposed that identify the
distinguishing features of art in terms of form, expressiveness, intentions of
the maker, and social roles or uses of the object. Since the eighteenth century
there have been debates about what kinds of things count as “art.” Some have
argued that architecture and ceramics are not art because their functions are
primarily utilitarian, and novels were for a long time not listed among the
“fine arts” because they are not embodied in a sensuous medium. Debates
continue to arise over new media and what may be new art forms, such as film,
video, photography, performance art, found art, furniture, posters, earthworks,
and computer and electronic art. Sculptures these days may be made out of dirt,
feces, or various discarded and mass-produced objects, rather than marble or
bronze. There is often an explicit rejection of craft and technique by
twentieth-century artists, and the subject matter has expanded to include the
banal and everyday, and not merely mythological, historical, and religious
subjects as in years past. All of these developments raise questions about the
relevance of the category of “fine” or “high” art. Another set of issues in
philosophy of art concerns how artworks are to be interpreted, appreciated, and
understood. Some views emphasize that artworks are products of individual
efforts, so that a work should be understood in light of the producer’s
knowledge, skill, and intentions. Others see the meaning of a work as
established by social conventions and practices of the artist’s own time, but
which may not be known or understood by the producer. Still others see meaning
as established by the practices of the users, even if they were not in effect
when the work was produced. Are there objective criteria or standards for
evaluating individual artworks? There has been much disagreement over whether
value judgments have universal validity, or whether there can be no disputing
about taste, if value judgments are relative to the tastes and interests of
each individual (or to some group of individuals who share the same tastes and
interests). A judgment such as “This is good” certainly seems to make a claim
about the work itself, though such a claim is often based on the sort of
feeling, understanding, or experience a person has obtained from the work. A
work’s aesthetic or artistic value is generally distinguished from simply
liking it. But is it possible to establish what sort(s) of knowledge or
experience(s) any given work should provide to any suitably prepared perceiver,
and what would it be to be suitably prepared? It is a matter of contention
whether a work’s aesthetic and artistic values are independent of its moral,
political, or epistemic stance or impact. Philosophy of art has also dealt with
the nature of taste, beauty, imagination, creativity, repreaesthetics
aesthetics 12 4065A- 12 sentation,
expression, and expressiveness; style; whether artworks convey knowledge or truth;
the nature of narrative and metaphor; the importance of genre; the ontological
status of artworks; and the character of our emotional responses to art. Work
in the field has always been influenced by philosophical theories of language
or meaning, and theories of knowledge and perception, and continues to be
heavily influenced by psychological and cultural theory, including versions of
semiotics, psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, feminism, and Marxism. Some
theorists in the late twentieth century have denied that the aesthetic and the “fine
arts” can legitimately be separated out and understood as separate, autonomous
human phenomena; they argue instead that these conceptual categories themselves
manifest and reinforce certain kinds of cultural attitudes and power
relationships. These theorists urge that aesthetics can and should be
eliminated as a separate field of study, and that “the aesthetic” should not be
conceived as a special kind of value. They favor instead a critique of the
roles that images (not only painting, but film, photography, and advertising),
sounds, narrative, and three-dimensional constructions have in expressing and
shaping human attitudes and experiences.
a fortiori argument, an
argument that moves from the premises that everything which possesses (a)
certain characteristic(s) will possess some further characteristic(s) and that
certain things possess the relevant characteristic(s) to an eminent degree to the
conclusion that a fortiori (even more so) these things will possess the further
characteristic(s). The second premise is often left implicit, so a fortiori
arguments are often enthymemes. An example of an a fortiori argument can be
found in Plato’s Crito: We owe gratitude and respect to our parents and so
should do nothing to harm them. Athenians owe even greater gratitude and
respect to the laws of Athens and so a fortiori should do nothing to harm those
laws.
African philosophy, the
philosophy produced by the preliterate cultures of Africa, distinctive in that
African philosophy in the traditional setting is unwritten. For someone who is
interested in studying, say, Chinese or Arabic philosophy, the written works of
the individual thinkers are available; African philosophy, by contrast (with
the exception of Ethiopian philosophy), has produced no written philosophical
works. The lack of written philosophical literature in Africa’s cultural past
is the outstanding reason for the persistent skepticism about the existence of
African philosophy often entertained by scholars. There are some who would
withhold the term ‘philosophy’ from African traditional thought and would
reserve that term for the philosophical works being written by individual
African philosophers today. There are others who, on the basis of (i) their own
conception of the nature of philosophy, (ii) their sense of the history of the
development of philosophical ideas in other cultures, (iii) their conviction
about the importance of the universal character of the human capacity to
wonder, or of the curiosity that leads some individuals in various cultures to
raise fundamental questions about human life and experience, or (iv) their
conviction that literacy is not a necessary condition for philosophizing, would
apply ‘philosophy’ to African traditional thought, even though some of them
would want to characterize it further as ethnophilosophy or folk philosophy.
Two assumptions made about the character of African traditional thought have
earned it those labels: one is the alleged communal (collective) subscription
to a ‘monolithic’ set of ideas or beliefs; the other is the alleged lack of
individualist elements in traditional thought. These assumptions have led some
scholars to believe that African thought is a system of ideas or beliefs
unanimously held by a whole tribe (ethnos), even though it may be argued that
thought as such is always the product of an individual intellect. An individual
may refine or build on the philosophical work of another individual, but the
product will still be an individual intellectual enterprise. What seems to have
happened in Africa is that due to lack of a doxographic tradition, the ideas of
unnamable (because unidentifiable) individuals that gained currency among the
wider community became part of the pool of communal thought, as if they were
the thought or a production of a whole ethnos, and expressed in its oral
literature: in proverbs, myths and folk tales, rituals, religious beliefs, art
symbols, customs, and traditions. These would, in fact, constitute the warp and
woof of the fabric of traditional philosophy in Africa. An extensive and
profound critical evaluation affirming the consequent African philosophy 13
4065A- 13 of concepts and values of
traditional thought can be the starting point of modern African philosophy. The
reason is that most of the traditional concepts, beliefs, and values have not
relaxed their grip on modern African life and thought. But the modern African
philosophy will also have to include the conceptual responses to the
circumstances, experiences, and problems of modern African societies. This
aspect of the philosophical enterprise will have to deal with the critical
analysis, interpretation, and assessment of the changes that traditional values
and ideas are going through in response to the pressures, both internal and
external, weighing heavily on them through the ethos of contemporary life.
Thus, African philosophy will not be a unique system, a windowless monad
impervious to external influences. But it is conceivable – perhaps expected –
that it will have some characteristics of its own. As to the central themes of
African philosophy, what one can appropriately do at this stage of its
development is indicate some of the persistent assumptions, beliefs, and values
embedded in African cultural and historical experiences. These would
undoubtedly include: supernaturalism – ideas about God and other spiritual
entities conceived in African ontologies, the dualistic or monistic perception
of the external world, the (alleged) religiosity or spirituality of the African
life, human destiny, and the moral life; personhood and communitarianism –
social and humanistic ethics, notions of the community and the common good, the
nature of the good life, the status of individuality in African socioethical
thought; political ideas – chiefship and traditional political authority,
traditional ideas of democracy, democratic thought in a communitarian
framework, consensual politics and decision making, political legitimacy,
corruption and political morality; and tradition and modernity – the notion of
culture, ethnicity and nationhood, the nature and development of national
culture and identity, the concept of development, technology, society, and
values. These themes and others have generated various ideas that must be
critically analyzed and evaluated by contemporary African philosophers, who
would in this way create a modern African philosophy with origins in the
comprehensive culture and many-sided experiences of the African, yet aspects of
which may be considered by other cultures to be worthwhile. Thanks to the
literary culture they have inherited, contemporary African philosophers,
through their own individual analyses and arguments, are in a position to contribute
to the emergence of a modern African philosophy that would naturally comprise a
multiplicity of individual philosophical ideas, arguments, and positions. K.G.
agama (Sanskrit, ‘what has come down’), an authoritative religious text of an
Indian sect. There are Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist agamas. The Hindu agamas fall
into three main classes: Vaifpava texts concerning the worship of Vishnu, Saiva
texts dealing with worship of Siva, and Tantric texts regarding worship of
Sakti. Saivism, e.g., has twenty-eight agamas. An agama may give instructions
regarding making temples or idols, offer meditation techniques, teach
philosophical doctrines, or commend methods of worship. The Mahayana Buddhist
term for the basic teachings of the Theravada Buddhist tradition is ‘agama’.
agape, unselfish love for
all persons. An ethical theory according to which such love is the chief
virtue, and actions are good to the extent that they express it, is sometimes
called agapism. Agape is the Greek word most often used for love in the New
Testament, and is often used in modern languages to signify whatever sort of
love the writer takes to be idealized there. In New Testament Greek, however,
it was probably a quite general word for love, so that any ethical ideal must
be found in the text’s substantive claims, rather than in the linguistic
meaning of the word. R.M.A. agathon, Greek word meaning ‘a good’ or ‘the good’.
From Socrates onward, agathon was taken to be a central object of philosophical
inquiry; it has frequently been assumed to be the goal of all rational action.
Plato in the simile of the sun in the Republic identified it with the Form of
the Good, the source of reality, truth, and intelligibility. Aristotle saw it
as eudaimonia, intellectual or practical virtue, a view that found its way, via
Stoicism and Neoplatonism, into Christianity. Modern theories of utility can be
seen as concerned with essentially the same Socratic question.
agent causation, the idea
that the primary cause of an event is a substance; more specifically, causation
by a substance, as opposed to an event. Thus a brick (a substance) may be said
to be the cause of the breaking of the glass. The expression is also used more
narrowly by Reid and others for agama agent causation 14 4065A- 14 the view that an action (or event) is
caused by an exertion of power by some agent endowed with will and
understanding. Thus, a person may be said to be the cause of her action of
opening the door. In this restricted sense (Reid called it “the strict and
proper sense”), an agent-cause must have the power to cause the action or event
and the power not to cause it. Moreover, it must be “up to” the agent whether
to cause the event or not to cause it. (It is not “up to” the brick whether to
cause or not to cause the breaking of the glass.) The restricted sense of agent
causation developed by Reid is closely tied to the view that the agent
possesses free will. Medieval philosophers distinguished the internal activity
of the agent from the external event produced by that activity. The former was
called “immanent causation” and the latter “transeunt causation.” These terms
have been adapted by Chisholm and others to mark the difference between agent
causation and event causation. The idea is that the internal activity is agentcaused
by the person whose activity it is; whereas the external event is event-caused
by the internal activity of the agent.
CAUSATION, FREE WILL PROBLEM. W.L.R. agent-neutral.
agnoiology (from Greek
agnoia, ‘ignorance’), the study of ignorance, its quality, and its conditions.
agnosticism (from Greek
a-, ‘not’, and gnastos, ‘known’), term invented by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1869
to denote the philosophical and religious attitude of those who claim that
metaphysical ideas can be neither proved nor disproved. Huxley wrote, “I
neither affirm nor deny the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing
it, but on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it. I have no a priori
objection to the doctrine.” Agnosticism is a form of skepticism applied to metaphysics,
especially theism. The position is sometimes attributed to Kant, who held that
we cannot have knowledge of God or immortality but must be content with faith.
Agnosticism should not be confused with atheism, the belief that no god exists.
Agriculture School.HSü
HSING. ahamkara (Sanskrit, ‘I-maker’, ‘I-crier’), in Hindu thought, the ego or
faculty that gives the sense of ‘I’ or individual personality; by extension,
egotism, pride, conceit. In the Sankhya and Yoga systems, it is the third
element of everchanging Nature evolving in creation. From it evolves the
remainder of the phenomenal world. Other than Nature, which includes the
individual intellect (buddhi), the faculty of perception (manas), the organs,
and the senses, is the unchanging individual self (puruca, Atman). The human
predicament results from the ignorant identification of oneself with Nature
rather than the true self. In earlier texts the cosmic sense of ahamkara
dominates as the means by which the Creator formulates Himself to create the
world. R.N.Mi. ahanta, Sanskrit word meaning ‘indestructible’, ‘unchangeable’,
‘eternal’. In traditional Hindu philosophical thought, the truly real was
thought to be indestructible and eternal. Thus, because the Upanishadic Brahman
and its subjective counterpart, the Atman, were regarded as the truly real,
they were thought to be unchangeable and eternal. The Hindu religious classic,
the Bhagavad Gita (probably written between the fifth and the second century
B.C.), made ahanta a well-known concept through the teachings of Krishna, who
advised Arjuna that even though one’s body may perish one’s soul is eternal and
indestructible, thus implying that the human soul contains the essence of the
divine reality. BHAGAVAD GITA, BRAHMAN.
D.K.C.
ahim . sa (Sanskrit), traditionally and
literally, nonviolence to living creatures; for modern Indian thinkers, a
positive sense of kindness to all creatures. To the Jains, ahimsa was a vow to
injure no living being (jiva) in thought, word, or deed. Many Buddhists practice
ahimsa as a precept that denies the existence of the ego, since injuring
another is an assertion of egoism. With the modern period, particularly Gandhi,
ahimsa was equated with self-sacrificial love for all beings. For Gandhi it was
the first vow of the satyagrahi, the one who “held onto Truth,” the nonviolent
resister.
aitia (Greek), cause.
Originally referring to responsibility for a crime, this Greek term came to be
used by philosophers to signify causality in a somewhat broader sense than the
English ‘cause’ – the traditional rendering of aitia – can convey. An aitia is
any answer to a why-question. According to Aristotle, how such questions ought
to be answered is a philosophical issue addressed differently by different
philosophers. He himself distinguishes four types of answers, and thus four
aitiai, by distinguishing different types of questions: (1) Why is the statue
heavy? Because it is made of bronze (material aitia). (2) Why did Persians
invade Athens? Because the Athenians had raided their territory (moving or
efficient aitia). (3) Why are the angles of a triangle equal to two right
angles? Because of the triangle’s nature (formal aitia). (4) Why did someone
walk after dinner? Because (or for the sake) of his health (final aitia). Only
the second of these would typically be called a cause in English. Though some
render aitia as ‘explanatory principle’ or ‘reason’, these expressions inaptly
suggest a merely mental existence; instead, an aitia is a thing or aspect of a
thing. ARISTOTLE, EXPLANATION. E.C.H.
akasa, Sanskrit word translated as ‘ether’ or ‘space’. Indian philosophical
systems recognized various ontological categories, including that of substance.
Akasa was thought of as a substance because it was believed to be the
substratum of sound. Because akasa was understood to transmit sound waves, the
term is better translated as ‘ether’ than ‘space’, but scholars are not
unanimous on this. Akasa, though extended in space, was viewed as a
non-material substance. It was thought of as all-pervading, infinite,
indivisible and imperceivable, being inferred from the sensed quality of sound.
D.K.C. akrasia, also spelled acrasia, Greek term for weakness of will. Akrasia
is a character flaw, also called incontinence, exhibited primarily in
intentional behavior that conflicts with the agent’s own values or principles.
Its contrary is enkrateia (strength of will, continence, self-control). Both
akrasia and enkrateia, Aristotle says, “are concerned with what is in excess of
the state characteristic of most people; for the continent abide by their
resolutions more, and the incontinent less, than most people can” (Nicomachean
Ethics 1152a25–27). These resolutions may be viewed as judgments that it would
be best to perform an action of a certain sort, or better to do one thing than
another. Enkrateia, on that view, is the power (kratos) to act as one judges
best in the face of competing motivation. Akrasia is a want or deficiency of
such power. (Aristotle himself limited the sphere of both states more strictly
than is now done, regarding both as concerned specifically with “pleasures and
pains and appetites and aversions arising through touch and taste”
[1150a9–10].) Philosophers are generally more interested in incontinent and
continent actions than in the corresponding states of character. Various
species of incontinent or akratic behavior may be distinguished, including
incontinent reasoning and akratic belief formation. The species of akratic
behavior that has attracted most attention is uncompelled, intentional action
that conflicts with a better or best judgment consciously held by the agent at
the time of action. If, e.g., while judging it best not to eat a second piece
of pie, you intentionally eat another piece, you act incontinently – provided
that your so acting is uncompelled (e.g., your desire for the pie is not irresistible).
Socrates denied that such action is possible, thereby creating one of the
Socratic paradoxes. In “unorthodox” instances of akratic action, a deed
manifests weakness of will even though it accords with the agent’s better
judgment. A boy who decides, against his better judgment, to participate in a
certain dangerous prank, might – owing to an avoidable failure of nerve – fail
to execute his decision. In such a case, some would claim, his failure to act
on his decision manifests weakness of will or akrasia. If, instead, he masters
his fear, his participating in the prank might manifest strength of will, even
though his so acting conflicts with his better judgment. The occurrence of
akratic actions seems to be a fact of life. Unlike many such (apparent) facts,
this one has received considerable philosophical scrutiny for nearly two and a
half millennia. A major source of the interest is clear: akratic action raises
difficult questions about the connection between thought and action, a
connection of paramount importance for most philosophical theories of the
explanation of intentional behavior. Insofar as moral theory does not float
free of evidence about the etiology of human behavior, the tough questions
arise there as well. Ostensible akratic action, then, occupies a philosophical
space in the intersection of the philosophy of mind and moral theory.
akcara (Sanskrit,
‘imperishable’), the highest reality in a variety of Hindu thought systems.
From earliest times it also meant ‘syllable’, reflecting the search for the
ultimate reality by Vedic priest-thinkers and the early primacy given to the
sacred utterance as the support of the ritual order of the universe, later
identified as the syllable Om. In later texts and the systematic thinkers it
refers to the highest reality, which may be a personal supreme being or an
impersonal absolute, such as the Highest Self (paramatman) of Shankara
(700–50). Non-technically, it can be used in any thought system of any entity
believed to be imperishable. R.N.Mi. alaya-vijñana, Sanskrit term meaning
literally ‘storehouse consciousness’, a category developed by Indian Buddhist
metaphysicians to solve some specific philosophical problems, notably those of
delayed karmic effect and causation at a temporal distance. The alaya-vijñana
“stores,” in unactualized but potential form, as “seeds,” the results of an
agent’s volitional actions. These karmic “seeds” may come to fruition at a
later time. Most Buddhists think of moments of consciousness (vijñana) as
intentional (having an object, being of something); the alaya-vijñana is an
exception, allowing for the continuance of consciousness when the agent is
apparently not conscious of anything (such as during dreamless sleep), and so
also for the continuance of potential for future action during those
times. BHAVANGA, VASANA. P.J.G. Albert
of Saxony (1316–90), terminist logician from lower Saxony who taught in the
arts faculty at Paris, 1351–62. He never finished his theology degree, as,
under the influence of Buridan and Nicholas of Oresme, he turned to
mathematics, physics, and logic. He was a founder of the University of Vienna
in 1365 and was bishop of Halberstadt from 1366. His works on logic include
Logic, Questions on the Posterior Analytics, Sophismata, Treatise on Obligations,
and Insolubilia. He also wrote questions on Aristotle’s physical works and on
John of Sacrobosco’s De Sphaera, and short treatises on squaring the circle and
on the ratio of the diameter to the side of a square. His work is competent but
rarely original. TERMINIST LOGIC. J.Lo.
Albert the Great.ALBERTUS MAGNUS. Albertus Magnus, also called Albert the Great
(c.1200–80), German Dominican philosophertheologian. As a Parisian master of
theology, he served on a commission that condemned the Talmud. He left Paris to
found the first Dominican studium generale in Germany at Cologne in 1248. From
1252 until old age, Albert was repeatedly asked to be an arbiter and
peacemaker. After serving briefly as bishop of Regensburg in 1260, he was
ordered to preach the crusade of 1263– 64 in Germany. He spent his last years
writing in Cologne. Albert contributed to philosophy chiefly as a commentator
on Aristotle, although he occasionally reached different conclusions from
Aristotle. Primarily, Albert was a theologian, as is evident from his extensive
commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences and his commentaries on the Old and New
Testaments. As a theologian, he customarily developed his thought by commenting
on traditional texts. For Albert, Aristotle offered knowledge ascertainable
using reason, just as Scripture, based on God’s word, tells of the
supernatural. Albert saw Aristotle’s works, many newly available, as an
encyclopedic compendium of information on the natural universe; included here
is the study of social and political conditions and ethical obligations, for
Aristotelian “natural knowledge” deals with human nature as well as natural
history. Aristotle is the Philosopher; however, unlike Holy Scripture, he must
be corrected in places. Like Holy Scripture, though, Aristotle is occasionally
obscure. To rectify these shortcomings one must rely on other authorities: in
the case of Holy Scripture, reference is to the church fathers and established
interpreters; in the case of Aristotle, to the Peripatetics. The term ‘Peripatetics’
extends to modern as well as ancient authors – al-Farabi, Avicenna (Ibn-Sina),
and Averroes (Ibn-Rushd), as well as Themistius and Alexander of Aphrodisias;
even Seneca, Maimonides, and “our” Boethius are included. For the most part,
Albert saw Plato through the eyes of Aristotle and Averroes, since apart from
the Timaeus very little of Plato’s work was available in Latin. Albert
considered the Liber de causis a work of Aristotle, supplemented by alFarabi,
Avicenna, and al-Ghazali and translated into Latin. When he commented on the
Liber de causis, Albert was not aware that this Neoplatonic work – which speaks
of the world emanating from the One as from a first cause – was based on
Proclus and ultimately on Plotinus. But Albert’s student, Aquinas, who had
better translations of Aristotle, recognized that the Liber de causis was not
an Aristotelian work. Albert’s metaphysics, which is expounded in his
commentaries on Aristotle’s Metaphysics and akcara Albertus Magnus 17 4065A- 17 on the Liber de causis, contains
profoundly contradictory elements. His inclination to synthesis led him to
attempt to reconcile these elements – as on social and ecclesiastical questions
he often sought peace through compromise. In his Metaphysics and Physics and in
his On the Heavens and On Generation and Corruption, Aristotle presented the
world as ever-changing and taught that an unmoved mover (“thought thinking
itself”) maintained everything in movement and animation by allowing its
spiritual nature to be seen in all its cold, unapproachable beauty. The Liber
de causis, on the other hand, develops the theory that the world emanates from
the One, causing everything in the world in its pantheistic creativity, so that
the caused world returns in mystic harmony to the One. Thus Albert’s
Aristotelian commentaries, begun in 1251–52, culminated in 1265 with his
commentary on a work whose pseudo-Aristotelian character he was unable to
recognize. Nevertheless, the Christian Neoplatonism that Albert placed on an
Aristotelian basis was to exert an influence for centuries. In natural
philosophy, Albert often arrived at views independent of Aristotle. According
to Aristotle’s Physics, motion belongs to no single category; it is incomplete
being. Following Avicenna and Averroes, Albert asks whether “becoming black,”
e.g. – which ceases when change ceases and blackness is finally achieved –
differs from blackness essentially (essentia) or only in its being (esse).
Albert establishes, contrary to Avicenna, that the distinction is only one of
being. In his discussions of place and space, stimulated by Avicenna, Albert
also makes an original contribution. Only two dimensions – width and breadth –
are essential to place, so that a fluid in a bottle is framed by the inner
surface of the bottle. According to Albert, the significance of the third
dimension, depth, is more modest, but nonetheless important. Consider a bucket
of water: its base is the essential part, but its round walls maintain the
cohesion of the water. For Aristotle, time’s material foundation is distinct
from its formal definition. Materially, the movement of the fixed stars is
basic, although time itself is neither movement nor change. Rather, just as
before and after are continuous in space and there are earlier and later moments
in movement as it proceeds through space, so time – being the number of motion
– has earlier and later moments or “nows.” The material of time consists of the
uninterrupted flow of the indivisible nows, while time’s form and essential
expression is number. Following al-Farabi and Avicenna, Albert’s interpretation
of these doctrines emphasizes not only the uninterrupted continuity of the flow
of “nows,” but also the quantity of time, i.e., the series of discrete,
separate, and clearly distinct numbers. Albert’s treatment of time did not lend
itself well to later consideration of time as a dimension; his concept of time
is therefore not well suited to accommodate our unified concept of space-time.
The use of the pseudo-Aristotelian De proprietatibus elementorum in De causis
proprietatum elementorum gave Albert’s worldview a strong astrological flavor.
At issue here is how the planets influence the earth and mankind. Particularly
important is the influence of Jupiter and Saturn on fire and the seas; when increased,
it could produce fiery conflagrations, and when circumscribed, floods. Albert
was encyclopedic: a scientist and scholar as well as a philosopher and
theologian. In addition to the works mentioned, he produced commentaries on
Pseudo-Dionysius, a Summa de creaturis, a Summa Theologica, and many other
treatises. Unlike other commentators, his exposition was continuous, an
extensive paraphrase; he provided a complete Latin and Christian philosophy.
Even in his lifetime, he was a named authority; according to Roger Bacon, his
views were often given as much weight as those of Aristotle, Avicenna, and
Averroes. His students or followers include Aquinas, Ulrich of Strassburg
(d.1278?), Theodoric of Freiberg (d.1310?), Giles of Lessines (d.1304?),
Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler (d.1361), Henry Suso (d.1366), and Jan van
Ruysbroeck (d.1381).
alchemy, a quasi-scientific practice and
mystical art, mainly ancient and medieval, that had two broad aims: to change
baser metals into gold and to develop the elixir of life, the means to
immortality. Classical Western alchemy probably originated in Egypt in the
first three centuries A.D. (with earlier Chinese and later Islamic and Indian
variants) and was practiced in earnest in Europe by such figures as Paracelsus
and Newton until the eighteenth century. Western alchemy addressed concerns of
practical metallurgy, but its philosophical significance derived from an early
Greek theory of the relations among the basic elements and from a
religious-allegorical Albinus alchemy 18 4065A- 18 understanding of the alchemical
transmutation of ores into gold, an understanding that treats this process as a
spiritual ascent from human toward divine perfection. The purification of crude
ores (worldly matter) into gold (material perfection) was thought to require a
transmuting agent, the philosopher’s stone, a mystical substance that, when
mixed with alcohol and swallowed, was believed to produce immortality
(spiritual perfection). The alchemical search for the philosopher’s stone, though
abortive, resulted in the development of ultimately useful experimental tools
(e.g., the steam pump) and methods (e.g., distillation). J.D.T. Alcinous.MIDDLE
PLATONISM. Alcmaeon of Croton.PRE-SOCRATICS. Alembert, Jean Le Rond
d’.D’ALEMBERT. alethic modalities, historically, the four central ways or modes
in which a given proposition might be true or false: necessity, contingency,
possibility, and impossibility. (The term ‘alethic’ derives from Greek
aletheia, ‘truth’.) These modalities, and their logical interconnectedness, can
be characterized as follows. A proposition that is true but possibly false is
contingently true (e.g., that Aristotle taught Alexander); one that is true and
not-possibly (i.e., “impossibly”) false is necessarily true (e.g., that red
things are colored). Likewise, a proposition that is false but possibly true is
contingently false (e.g., that there are no tigers); and one that is false and
not-possibly true is necessarily false (e.g., that seven and five are
fourteen). Though any one of the four modalities can be defined in terms of any
other, necessity and possibility are generally taken to be the more fundamental
notions, and most systems of alethic modal logic take one or the other as
basic. Distinct modal systems differ chiefly in regard to their treatment of
iterated modalities, as in the proposition It is necessarily true that it is
possibly true that it is possibly true that there are no tigers. In the weakest
of the most common systems, usually called T, every iterated modality is
distinct from every other. In the stronger system S4, iterations of any given
modality are redundant. So, e.g., the above proposition is equivalent to It is
necessarily true that it is possibly true that there are no tigers. In the
strongest and most widely accepted system S5, all iteration is redundant. Thus,
the two propositions above are both equivalent simply to It is possibly true
that there are no tigers. CONTINGENT,
MODAL LOGIC. C.M. Alexander, Samuel (1859–1938), Australianborn British philosopher.
Born in Sydney, he was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and taught for most
of his career at the University of Manchester. His aim, which he most fully
realized in Space, Time, and Deity (1920), was to provide a realistic account
of the place of mind in nature. He described nature as a series of levels of
existence where irreducible higher-level qualities emerge inexplicably when
lower levels become sufficiently complex. At its lowest level reality consists
of space-time, a process wherein points of space are redistributed at instants
of time and which might also be called pure motion. From complexities in
space-time matter arises, followed by secondary qualities, life, and mind.
Alexander thought that the still-higher quality of deity, which characterizes
the whole universe while satisfying religious sentiments, is now in the process
of emerging from mind. PHILOSOPHY OF
MIND. J.W.A. Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. A.D. c.200), Greek philosopher, one
of the foremost commentators on Aristotle in late antiquity. He exercised
considerable influence on later Greek, Arabic, and Latin philosophy through to
the Renaissance. On the problem of universals, Alexander endorses a brand of
conceptualism: although several particulars may share a single, common nature,
this nature does not exist as a universal except while abstracted in thought
from the circumstances that accompany its particular instantiations. Regarding
Aristotle’s notorious distinction between the “agent” and “patient” intellects
in On the Soul III.5, Alexander identifies the agent intellect with God, who,
as the most intelligible entity, makes everything else intelligible. As its own
self-subsistent object, this intellect alone is imperishable; the human
intellect, in contrast, perishes at death. Of Alexander’s many commentaries,
only those on Aristotle’s Metaphysics A–d, Prior Analytics I, Topics, On the
Senses, and Meterologics are extant. We also have two polemical treatises, On
Fate and On Mixture, directed against the Stoics; a psychological treatise, the
De anima (based on Aristotle’s); as well as an assortment of essays (including
the De intellectu) and his Problems and Solutions. Nothing is known of
Alexander’s life apart from his appointment by the emperor Severus to a chair
in Aristotelian philosophy between 198 and 209.
Alexander of
Hales(c.1185–1245), English Franciscan theologian, known as the Doctor
IrrefragaAlcinous Alexander of Hales 19 4065A-
19 bilis. The first to teach theology by lecturing on the Sentences of
Peter Lombard, Alexander’s emphasis on speculative theology initiated the
golden age of Scholasticism. Alexander wrote commentaries on the Psalms and the
Gospels; his chief works include his Glossa in quattuor libros sententiarum,
Quaestiones disputatatae antequam esset frater, and Quaestiones quodlibetales.
Alexander did not complete the Summa fratris Alexandri; Pope Alexander IV
ordered the Franciscans to complete the Summa Halesiana in 1255. Master of
theology in 1222, Alexander played an important role in the history of the
University of Paris, writing parts of Gregory IX’s Parens scientiarum (1231).
He also helped negotiate the peace between England and France in 1235–36. Later
in 1236 he gave up his position as canon of Lichfield and archdeacon of
Coventry to become a Franciscan, the first Franciscan master of theology; his
was the original Franciscan chair of theology at Paris. Among the Franciscans,
his most prominent disciples include St. Bonaventure, Richard Rufus of
Cornwall, and John of La Rochelle, to whom he resigned his chair in theology
near the end of his life. R.W. Alexandrian School, those Neoplatonic
philosophers contemporary with and subsequent to Proclus (A.D. 412–85) who
settled in Alexandria and taught there. They include Hermeias (fl. c.440),
Proclus’s fellow-student of Syrianus; Hermeias’s son Ammonius (either 435–517
or 445– 526); and Ammonius’s three pupils, John Philoponus (c.490–575),
Simplicius (writing after 532), and Asclepius (mid-sixth century). Later
Alexandrians include Olympiodorus (495/505– after 565) and the Christians Elias
(fl. c.540) and David (late sixth century). All these worked exclusively or
primarily on the exegesis of Aristotle. Damascius (c.456–540) also took
lectures from Ammonius at some time between 475 and 485, but in his doctrine he
belongs much more to the Athenian tradition. Simplicius, on the other hand,
while he moved to Athens to teach, remains more in the Alexandrian tradition.
Ever since Karl Praechter, who was influenced by a Hegelian view of historical
development, the Alexandrian Platonists have been seen as professing a simpler
form of metaphysics than the Athenian School, and deliberately avoiding
controversy with the powerful Christian establishment in Alexandria by
confining themselves largely to logic, mathematics, and the exegesis of
Aristotle. There is a certain manifest truth in this picture, but modern
scholarship (in particular Ilsetraut Hadot) has done much to show that even in
Ammonius’s commentaries on Aristotle there lurks distinctive Neoplatonic doctrine,
so that the contrast with the Athenian School has become somewhat blurred. The
School may be said to have come to an end with the departure of Stephanus to
take up the chair of philosophy in Constantinople in about 610. NEOPLATONISM. J.M.D. al-Farabi, Abu Nasr,
also called Abunaser, in Latin, Alpharabius (870–950), Islamic philosopher.
Born in Turkestan, he studied and taught in Baghdad when it was the cultural
capital of the Islamic world, responsive to the philosophical and scientific
legacy of late antiquity. AlFarabi was highly instrumental in effecting a
transition of Greek philosophy, last publicly known in its entirety in
sixth-century Alexandria, into Islamic culture. Despite ongoing opposition
because of philosophy’s identification with pagan and Christian authors,
al-Farabi succeeded in naturalizing Western philosophy in the Islamic world,
where it retained vitality for the next three hundred years. Al-Farabi became
known as “the second teacher,” after Aristotle the main source of philosophical
information. His summaries and interpretations of the teachings of Aristotle
and Plato were widely read, and his attempt at synthesizing their views was
very influential. Believing in the universal nature of truth and holding Plato
and Aristotle in the highest esteem, he minimized their differences and adopted
Neoplatonic teachings that incorporated elements of both traditions. Unlike the
first philosopher of the Islamic world, the ninth-century al-Kindi, al-Farabi
was in possession of full Arabic translations of many of the most important
texts of classical times and of some major Hellenistic commentaries on them.
His own commentaries and digests of the works of Plato and Aristotle made them
more accessible to later generations of scholars, even as his relatively
independent treatises established a high standard of logical rigor and subtlety
for later Muslim and Jewish philosophers. Avicenna found his Metaphysics
commentary indispensable for understanding Aristotle’s text, while Maimonides
recommended all his writings, calling them “pure flour.” Medieval Scholastic
thought, however, was more interested in Averroes and Avicenna than in
al-Farabi. Contemporary scholars such as Leo Strauss and Muhsin Mahdi have
emphasized the esoteric nature of al-Farabi’s writings, seen as critical for
understanding much of medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy. Al-Farabi’s main
interests lay in logic and politAlexandrian School al-Farabi, Abu Nasr 20
4065A- 20 ical theory. He understood
that the Organon was just that, a universal instrument for understanding and
improving reasoning and logical discourse. Against the traditional grammarians
of Islam, he argued for the value-free and neutral nature of Greek logic, while
against the theologians of Islam, the mutakallimun, he emphasized the
difference between their dialectical type of discourse and the preferred
demonstrative syllogism of the philosophers. Much of the responsibility for the
separation between Islamic theology and philosophy may be attributed to
al-Farabi, who avoided engaging religious dogmas and specifically Muslim
beliefs as much as possible. He was able to accommodate belief in prophecy and
revelation to a general theory of emanation, though he made no special claims
for the prophet of Islam. His general view of religion was that it was a
popular and symbolic representation of philosophical ideas, often designed by
philosophers. The influence of Plato’s Republic in this and other areas of
political philosophy is evident, though al-Farabi’s Principles of the Views of
the Citizens of the Best State manages to give an Islamic coloration to
Platonic teachings. Al-Farabi’s metaphysical beliefs are more problematical
still, and he was reputed to have disowned his earlier belief in the
immortality of the soul. ARABIC PHILOSOPHY.
A.L.I. algebra, Boolean.BOOLEAN ALGEBRA. algebra, full subset.BOOLEAN ALGEBRA.
al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid (1058–1111). Islamic philosopher, theologian, jurist, and
mystic. He was born in Khurasan and educated in Nishapur, then an intellectual
center of eastern Islam. He was appointed the head of a seminary, the newly
founded Nizamiyah of Baghdad, in which he taught law and theology with great
success. Yet his exposure to logic and philosophy led him to seek a certainty
in knowledge beyond that assumed by his profession. At first he attempted to
address his problem academically, but after five years in Baghdad he resigned,
left his family, and embarked on the mystic’s solitary quest for al-Haqq
(Arabic for ‘the truth’, ‘the True One’). As a Sufi he wandered for ten years
through many of Islam’s major cities and centers of learning, finally returning
to Nishapur and to teaching theology before his death. Al-Ghazali’s literary
and intellectual legacy is particularly rich and multifaceted. In the catholicity
of his work and the esteem in which he is held within Islam he may be compared
to Aquinas and Maimonides in the Christian and Jewish traditions respectively.
His Revivification of the Religious Sciences is considered to this day a major
theological compendium. His mystical treatises also have retained their
popularity, as has his much celebrated autobiography, The Deliverance from
Error. This book chronicles his lifelong quest for truth and certainty, and his
disappointment with the premises of dogmatic theology, both orthodox Sunni and
heterodox Shiite thought, as well as with the teachings of the philosophers.
The light of truth came to him, he believed, only through divine grace; he
considered his senses and reasoning powers all susceptible to error. It was
this pervasive sense of skepticism that led him, while still in Baghdad, to
investigate philosophy’s claims to knowledge. He first composed a summa of
philosophical teachings, based primarily on the views of Avicenna, and called
it The Intentions of the Philosophers. He later published a detailed and
penetrating critique of these views, The Incoherence of the Philosophers.
Averroes arose later in Muslim Spain to defend philosophy, particularly that of
Aristotle, calling his book The Incoherence of the Incoherence. Averroes’ work
was more appreciated in the West, however, which also preferred al-Ghazali’s
Intentions to his Incoherence. The former, shorn of its polemical purpose and
thus appearing as a philosophical summa, was translated by Dominicus Gundissalinus
as Logica et Philosophia Algazelis, giving al-Ghazali a reputation in the West
as at least a sometime advocate of philosophy. His attack upon the physics and
metaphysics of his day, which was an amalgam of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic
doctrines, was firmly rooted in Aristotelian logic, and anticipates Hume in
understanding the non-necessary nature of causal relationships. For al-Ghazali,
the world as a whole proceeds not by any eternal or logical necessity, but by
the will of God. That will is indefensible on philosophical grounds, he
believed, as is the philosophers’ notion of divine omniscience. Their god
cannot on their terms be related to the world, and is ultimately redundant
logically. What is regarded as miraculous becomes possible, once nature is
understood to have no autonomy or necessary entailments. ARABIC PHILOSOPHY, SUFISM. A.L.I. algorithm,
a clerical or effective procedure that can be applied to any of a class of
certain symbolic inputs and that will in a finite time and number of steps
eventuate in a result in a correalgebra, Boolean algorithm 21 4065A- 21 sponding symbolic output. A function for
which an algorithm (sometimes more than one) can be given is an algorithmic
function. The following are common examples: (a) given n, finding the nth prime
number; (b) differentiating a polynomial; (c) finding the greatest common
divisor of x and y (the Euclidean algorithm); and (d) given two numbers x, y,
deciding whether x is a multiple of y. When an algorithm is used to calculate
values of a numerical function, as in (a), (b), and (c), the function can also
be described as algorithmically computable, effectively computable, or just
computable. Algorithms are generally agreed to have the following properties –
which made them essential to the theory of computation and the development of
the Church-Turing thesis – (i) an algorithm can be given by a finite string of
instructions, (ii) a computation device (or agent) can carry out or compute in
accordance with the instructions, (iii) there will be provisions for computing,
storing, and recalling steps in a computation, (iv) computations can be carried
out in a discrete and stepwise fashion (in, say, a digital computer), and (v)
computations can be carried out in a deterministic fashion (in, say, a
deterministic version of a Turing machine).
CHURCH’s THESIS, COMPUTABILITY, COMPUTER THEORY. F.A. algorithmic
function.ALGORITHM. alienation.MARX. aliorelative.RELATION.
al-Kindi, Abu Yusuf, in Latin, Alkindus
(c.800– 70), Arab philosopher who was an early and prominent supporter of
philosophical studies among the Muslims. He combined a noble Arab lineage with
an influential position in the caliphate during a critical period for the
translation and propagation of Greek sciences in Arabic. Known as “the
philosopher of the Arabs,” he more than any other scholar of his generation was
responsible, as a patron, book collector, editor, and writer, for the
acceptance of philosophy, despite its foreign and non-Islamic Greek source.
Later writers surpassed him in knowledge of philosophy, and his numerous
epistles, treatises, and books were eventually left in limbo. Of the 250 titles
recorded in his name on an unusual variety of subjects, most are lost. About
forty survive in a poor state, full of uncertain readings and other textual
problems. Nevertheless, al-Kindi’s works provide ample evidence of his close
interest in Aristotle and to an extent Plato. Unlike later philosophers in the
Islamic world, he firmly believed he could combine literal Koranic religious doctrines
and Greek philosophical concepts. Among his best-known philosophical works is
On First Philosophy (English translation by A. Ivry, 1974), whose theme is that
the noblest part of philosophy is first philosophy, which is knowledge of the
First Truth and the First Cause. Al-Kindi includes an extended demonstration of
the finiteness of the universe, time, and motion and the consequent infinitude
of a creator who was their cause, who is the pure unity that is the ultimate
source of all else and yet who, in al-Kindi’s mind, brings the world into being
ex nihilo. In On the Number of Aristotle’s Books, he separates prophetic
knowledge from ordinary, discursive philosophy: prophets know intuitively
without effort or time. ARABIC
PHILOSOPHY. P.E.W. Allais’s paradox, a puzzle about rationality devised by
Maurice Allais (b. 1911). Leonard Savage (1917–71) advanced the sure-thing
principle, which states that a rational agent’s ranking of a pair of gambles
having the same consequence in a state S agrees with her ranking of any other
pair of gambles the same as the first pair except for having some other common
consequence in S. Allais devised an apparent counterexample with four gambles
involving a 100-ticket lottery. The table lists prizes in units of $100,000. Ticket
Numbers Gambles 1 2 – 11 12 – 100 A 5 5 5 B 0 25 5 C 5 5 0 D 0 25 0 Changing
A’s and B’s common consequence for tickets 12–100 from 5 to 0 yields C and D
respectively. Hence the sure-thing principle prohibits simultaneously
preferring A to B, and D to C. Yet most people have these preferences, which
seem coherent. This conflict generates the paradox. Savage presented the
sure-thing principle in The Foundations of Statistics (1954). Responding to
preliminary drafts of that work, Allais formulated his counterexample in “The
Foundations of a Positive Theory of Choice Involving Risk and a Criticism of
the Postulates and Axioms of the American School” (1952). DECISION THEORY, EMPIRICAL DECISION THEORY.
P.We. allegory of the cave.PLATO. algorithmic function allegory of the cave 22
4065A- 22 all-things-considered
reason.REASONS FOR ACTION. Alnwick, William of.WILLIAM OF ALNWICK.
Alpharabius.AL-FARABI. al-Razi, Abu Bakr, in Latin, Rhazes (c.854–925 or 932),
Persian physician, philosopher, and chemist. He headed the hospital in Rayy,
his birthplace, and later in Baghdad, often returning to Rayy, where he died. A
learned Galenist and critic of Galen, he brought the same empirical,
Hippocratic spirit to medicine that he had used in transmuting alchemy into a (Neoplatonically)
naturalistic art. His medical works, including the first treatise on smallpox,
drew on extensive (and compassionate) clinical experience and omnivorous
reading – both reading and observation preserved in the twenty-five-volume
Hawi, translated in 1279 as the Continens. al-Razi’s mildly ascetic ethics
springs from hedonic prudential considerations and from his atomism. In keeping
with the Epicureanism he might have imbibed from Galenic sources, he rejects
special prophecy as imposture, arguing that reason, God’s gift to all alike, is
sufficient guidance. (Only differences of interest and application separate the
subtle devices of artisans from those of intellectuals.) God, the world Soul,
time, space, and matter are all eternal substances. Nature originates from
Soul’s irrational desire for embodiment, which is her only way of learning that
her true homeland is the intellectual world. God’s gift of intelligence gave
order to the movements she stirred up at the creation, and allows her escape from
a world in which pains outweigh pleasures and death is surcease. For one who
engages in philosophy “creatively, diligently, and persistently” will
inevitably surpass his predecessors; and anyone who thinks independently is
assured of both progress and immortality. L.E.G. Alston, William P. (b.1921),
American philosopher widely acknowledged as one of the most important
contemporary epistemologists and one of the most important philosophers of
religion of the twentieth century. He is particularly known for his argument
that putative perception of God is epistemologically on all fours with putative
perception of everyday material objects. Alston graduated from Centenary
College in 1942 and the U.S. Army in 1946. A fine musician, he had to choose
between philosophy and music. Philosophy won out; he received his Ph.D. from
the University of Chicago and began his philosophical career at the University
of Michigan, where he taught for twenty-two years. Since 1980 he has taught at
Syracuse University. Although his dissertation and some of his early work were
on Whitehead, he soon turned to philosophy of language (Philosophy of Language,
1964). Since the early 1970s Alston has concentrated on epistemology and
philosophy of religion. In epistemology he has defended foundationalism
(although not classical foundationalism), investigated epistemic justification
with unusual depth and penetration, and called attention to important levels
distinctions. His chief works here are Epistemic Justification (1989), a
collection of essays; and The Reliability of Sense Perception (1993). His chief
work in philosophy of religion is Divine Nature and Human Language (1989), a
collection of essays on metaphysical and epistemological topics; and Perceiving
God (1991). The latter is a magisterial argument for the conclusion that
experiential awareness of God, more specifically perception of God, makes an
important contribution to the grounds of religious belief. In addition to this
scholarly work, Alston was a founder of the Society of Christian Philosophers,
a professional society with more than 1,100 members, and the founding editor of
Faith and Philosophy. EPISTEMOLOGY,
EVIDENTIALISM, FOUNDATIONALISM, JUSTIFICATION, PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. A.P. alternative,
relevant.CONTEXTUALISM. alternative denial.SHEFFER STROKE. Althusser, Louis
(1918–90), French Marxist philosopher whose publication in 1965 of two
collections of essays, Pour Marx (“For Marx”) and Lire le Capital (“Reading
Capital”), made him a sensation in French intellectual circles and attracted a
large international readership. The English translations of these texts in 1969
and 1970, respectively, helped shape the development of Marxist thought in the
English-speaking world throughout the 1970s. Drawing on the work of non-positivist
French historians and philosophers of science, especially Bachelard, Althusser
proclaimed the existence of an “epistemological break” in Marx’s work,
occurring in the mid-1840s. What preceded this break was, in Althusser’s view,
a prescientific theoretical humanism derived from Feuerbach and ultimately from
Hegel. What followed it, Althusser maintained, was a science of history a
all-things-considered reason Althusser, Louis 23 4065A- 23 development as monumental, potentially,
as the rise of the new sciences of nature in the seventh century. Althusser
argued that the nature and even the existence of this new kind of science had
yet to be acknowledged, even by Marx himself. It therefore had to be
reconstructed from Marx’s writings, Das Kapital especially, and also discerned
in the political practice of Lenin and other like-minded revolutionaries who
implicitly understood what Marx intended. Althusser did little, however, to
elaborate the content of this new science. Rather, he tirelessly defended it
programmatically against rival construals of Marxism. In so doing, he took
particular aim at neo-Hegelian and “humanistic” currents in the larger Marxist
culture and (implicitly) in the French Communist Party, to which he belonged
throughout his adult life. After 1968, Althusser’s influence in France faded.
But he continued to teach at l’École Normale Superieure and to write, making
important contributions to political theory and to understandings of “ideology”
and related concepts. He also faced increasingly severe bouts of mania and
depression. In 1980, in what the French courts deemed an episode of “temporary
insanity,” he strangled his wife. Althusser avoided prison, but spent much of
the 1980s in mental institutions. During this period he wrote two extraordinary
memoirs, L’avenir dure longtemps (“The Future Lasts Forever”) and Les faits
(“The Facts”), published posthumously in 1992.
BACHELARD, FEUERBACH, HEGEL, MARXISM, PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. A.L.
altruism.EGOISM.
ambiguity, a phonological (or orthographic)
form having multiple meanings (senses, characters, semantic representations)
assigned by the language system. A lexical ambiguity occurs when a lexical item
(word) is assigned multiple meanings by the language. It includes (a) homonymy,
i.e., distinct lexical items having the same sound or form but different senses
– ‘knight’/’night’, ‘lead’ (n.)/‘lead’ (v.), ‘bear’ (n.)/‘bear’ (v.); and (b)
polysemy, i.e., a single lexical item having multiple senses – ‘lamb’ (the
animal)/‘lamb’ (the flesh), ‘window’ (glass)/‘window’ (opening). The
distinction between homonymy and polysemy is problematic. A structural
ambiguity occurs when a phrase or sentence is correlated by the grammar of the
language with distinct constituent structures (phrase markers or sequences of phrase
markers). Example: ‘Competent women and men should apply’ – ‘[NP[NPCompetent
women] and men] . . .’ vs. ‘[NPCompetent[NPwomen and men]] . . .’, where ‘NP’
stands for ‘noun phrase’. A scope ambiguity is a structural ambiguity deriving
from alternative interpretations of scopes of operators (see below). Examples:
‘Walt will diet and exercise only if his doctor approves’ – sentence operator
scope: doctor’s approval is a necessary condition for both diet and exercise
(wide scope ‘only if’) vs. approval necessary for exercise but not for dieting
(wide scope ‘and’); ‘Bertie has a theory about every occurrence’ – quantifier
scope: one grand theory explaining all occurrences (‘a theory’ having wide
scope over ‘every occurrence’) vs. all occurrences explained by several
theories together (‘every occurrence’ having wide scope). The scope of an
operator is the shortest full subformula to which the operator is attached.
Thus, in `(A & B) C’, the scope of ‘&’ is ‘(A & B)’. For natural
languages, the scope of an operator is what it C-commands. (X C-commands Y in a
tree diagram provided the first branching node that dominates X also dominates
Y.) An occurrence of an operator has wide scope relative to that of another
operator provided the scope of the former properly includes scope of the
latter. Examples: in ‘~(A & B)’, ’-’ has wide scope over ‘&’; in ‘(Dx)
(Ey) Fxy’, the existential quantifier has wide scope over the universal
quantifier. A pragmatic ambiguity is duality of use resting on pragmatic
principles such as those which underlie reference and conversational
implicature; e.g., depending on contextual variables, ‘I don’t know that he’s
right’ can express doubt or merely the denial of genuine knowledge.
Ambrose, Saint, known as
Ambrose of Milan (c.339–97), Roman church leader and theologian. While bishop
of Milan (374–97), he not only led the struggle against the Arian heresy and
its political manifestations, but offered new models for preaching, for
Scriptural exegesis, and for hymnody. His works also contributed to medieval
Latin philosophy. Ambrose’s appropriation of Neoplatonic doctrines was
noteworthy in itself, and it worked powerfully on and through Augustine.
Ambrose’s commentary on the account of creation in Genesis, his Hexaemeron,
preserved for medieval readers many pieces of ancient natural history and even
some altruism Ambrose, Saint 24 4065A-
24 elements of physical explanation. Perhaps most importantly, Ambrose
engaged ancient philosophical ethics in the search for moral lessons that marks
his exegesis of Scripture; he also reworked Cicero’s De officiis as a treatise
on the virtues and duties of Christian living. M.D.J. Ammonius.
COMMENTARIES ON
ARISTOTLE. Ammonius Saccas (early third century A.D.), Platonist philosopher
who taught in Alexandria. He apparently served early in the century as the
teacher of the Christian philosopher Origen. He attracted the attention of
Plotinus, who came to the city in 232 in search of philosophical enlightenment
(Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 3). Ammonius (the epithet ‘Saccas’ seems to mean
‘the bagman’) was undoubtedly a charismatic figure, but it is not at all clear
what, if any, were his distinctive doctrines, though he seems to have been
influenced by Numenius. He wrote nothing, and may be thought of, in E. R. Dodds’s
words, as the Socrates of Neoplatonism.
analysis, the process of
breaking up a concept, proposition, linguistic complex, or fact into its simple
or ultimate constituents. That on which the analysis is done is called the
analysandum, and that which does the analysis is called the analysans. A number
of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, including Russell,
Moore, and (the early) Wittgenstein, have argued that philosophical analysis is
the proper method of philosophy. But the practitioners of analytic philosophy
have disagreed about what kind of thing is to be analyzed. For example, Moore
tried to analyze sense-data into their constituent parts. Here the analysandum
is a complex psychological fact, the having of a sense-datum. More commonly,
analytic philosophers have tried to analyze concepts or propositions. This is
conceptual analysis. Still others have seen it as their task to give an
analysis of various kinds of sentences – e.g., those involving proper names or
definite descriptions. This is linguistic analysis. Each of these kinds of
analysis faces a version of a puzzle that has come to be called the paradox of
analysis. For linguistic analyses, the paradox can be expressed as follows: for
an analysis to be adequate, the analysans must be synonymous with the
analysandum; e.g., if ‘male sibling’ is to analyze ‘brother’, they must mean
the same; but if they are synonymous, then ‘a brother is a male sibling’ is
synonymous with ‘a brother is a brother’; but the two sentences do not seem
synonymous. Expressed as a dilemma, the paradox is that any proposed analysis
would seem to be either inadequate (because the analysans and the analysandum
are not synonymous) or uninformative (because they are synonymous).
analytic philosophy, an umbrella
term currently used to cover a diverse assortment of philosophical techniques
and tendencies. As in the case of chicken-sexing, it is relatively easy to
identify analytic philosophy and philosophers, though difficult to say with any
precision what the criteria are. Analytic philosophy is sometimes called Oxford
philosophy or linguistic philosophy, but these labels are, at least,
misleading. Whatever else it is, analytic philosophy is manifestly not a
school, doctrine, or body of accepted propositions. Analytic philosophers tend
largely, though not exclusively, to be English-speaking academics whose
writings are directed, on the whole, to other English-speaking philosophers.
They are the intellectual heirs of Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein, philosophers
who self-consciously pursued “philosophical analysis” in the early part of the
twentieth century. Analysis, as practiced by Russell and Moore, concerned not
language per se, but concepts and propositions. In their eyes, while it did not
exhaust the domain of philosophy, analysis provided a vital tool for laying
bare the logical form of reality. Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus (1921), contended, though obliquely, that the structure of
language reveals the structure of the world; every meaningful sentence is
analyzable into atomic constituents that designate the finegrained constituents
of reality. This “Tractarian” view was one Wittgenstein was to renounce in his
later work, but it had considerable influence within the Vienna Circle in the
1920s, and in the subsequent development of logical positivism in the 1930s and
1940s. Carnap and Ayer, both exponents of positivism, held that the task of
philosophy was not to uncover elusive metaphysical truths, but to provide
analyses of scientific sentences. (Other sentences, those in ethics, for
instance, were thought to lack “cognitive significance.”) Their model was
Russell’s theory of descriptions, which provided a technique for analyzing away
apparent commitments to suspicious entities. Meanwhile, a number of former
proponents of analysis, influenced by Wittgenstein, had taken up what came to
be called ordinary language philosophy. Philosophers of this persuasion focused
on the role of words in the lives of ordinary speakers, hoping thereby to
escape long-standing philosophical muddles. These muddles resulted, they
thought, from a natural tendency, when pursuing philosophical theses, to be
misled by the grammatical form of sentences in which those questions were
posed. (A classic illustration might be Heidegger’s supposition that ‘nothing’
must designate something, though a very peculiar something.) Today, it is
difficult to find much unanimity in the ranks of analytic philosophers. There
is, perhaps, an implicit respect for argument and clarity, an evolving though
informal agreement as to what problems are and are not tractable, and a
conviction that philosophy is in some sense continuous with science. The
practice of analytic philosophers to address one another rather than the
broader public has led some to decry philosophy’s “professionalization” and to
call for a return to a pluralistic, community-oriented style of philosophizing.
Analytic philosophers respond by pointing out that analytic techniques and
standards have been well represented in the history of philosophy.
analytic–synthetic distinction, the
distinction, made famous by Kant, according to which an affirmative
subject-predicate statement (proposition, judgment) is called analytic if the
predicate concept is contained in the subject concept, and synthetic otherwise.
The statement ‘All red roses are red’ is analytic, since the concept ‘red’ is
contained in the concept ‘red roses’. ‘All roses are red’ is synthetic, since
the concept ‘red’ is not contained in the concept ‘roses’. The denial of an
affirmative subject-predicate statement entails a contradiction if it is
analytic. E.g., ‘Not all red roses are red’ entails ‘Some roses are both red
and not red’. One concept may be contained in another, in Kant’s sense, even
though the terms used to express them are not related as part to whole. Since
‘biped’ means ‘two-footed animal’, the concept ‘two-footed’ is contained in the
concept ‘biped’. It is accordingly analytic that all bipeds are two-footed. The
same analytic statement is expressed by the synonymous sentences ‘All bipeds
are two-footed’ and ‘All two-footed animals are two-footed’. Unlike statements,
sentences cannot be classified as analytic or synthetic except relative to an
interpretation. analytical jurisprudence analytic–synthetic distinction 26
4065A- 26 Witness ‘All Russian teachers
are Russian’, which in one sense expresses the analytic statement ‘All teachers
that are Russian are Russian’, and in another the synthetic statement ‘All
teachers of Russian are Russian’. Kant’s innovation over Leibniz and Hume lay
in separating the logicosemantic analytic–synthetic distinction from the
epistemological a priori–a posteriori distinction and from the
modalmetaphysical necessary–contingent distinction. It seems evident that any analytic
statement is a priori (knowable without empirical evidence) and necessary
(something that could not be false). The converse is highly controversial. Kant
and his rationalist followers maintain that some a priori and necessary
statements are synthetic, citing examples from logic (‘Contradictions are
impossible’, ‘The identity relation is transitive’), mathematics (‘The sum of 7
and 5 is 12’, ‘The straight line between two points is the shortest’), and
metaphysics (‘Every event is caused’). Empiricists like J. S. Mill, Carnap,
Ayer, and C. I. Lewis argue that such examples are either synthetic a
posteriori or analytic a priori. Philosophers since Kant have tried to clarify
the analytic–synthetic distinction, and generalize it to all statements. On one
definition, a sentence is analytic (on a given interpretation) provided it is
“true solely in virtue of the meaning or definition of its terms.” The truth of
any sentence depends in part on the meanings of its terms. `All emeralds are
green’ would be false, e.g., if ‘emerald’ meant ‘ruby’. What makes the sentence
synthetic, it is claimed, is that its truth also depends on the properties of
emeralds, namely, their being green. But the same holds for analytic sentences:
the truth of ‘All red roses are red’ depends on the properties of red roses,
namely, their being red. Neither is true solely in virtue of meaning. A more
adequate generalization defines an analytic statement as a formal logical
truth: one “true in virtue of its logical form,” so that all statements with
the same form are true. In terms of sentences under an interpretation, an
analytic truth is an explicit logical truth (one whose surface structure
represents its logical form) or one that becomes an explicit logical truth when
synonyms are substituted. The negative statement that tomorrow is not both
Sunday and not Sunday is analytic by this definition, because all statements of
the form : (p & - p) are true. Kant’s definition is obtained as a special
case by stipulating that the predicate of an affirmative subjectpredicate
statement is contained in the subject provided the statement is logically true.
On a third generalization, ‘analytic’ denotes any statement whose denial
entails a contradiction. Subject S contains predicate P provided being S entails
being P. Whether this is broader or narrower than the second generalization
depends on how ‘entailment’, ‘logical form’, and ‘contradiction’ are defined.
On some construals, ‘Red is a color’ counts as analytic on the third
generalization (its denial entails ‘Something is and is not a color’) but not
on the second (‘red’ and ‘colored’ are logically unstructured), while the
rulings are reversed for a counterfactual conditional like ‘If this were a red
rose it would be red’. Following Quine, many have denied any distinction
between analytic and synthetic statements. Some arguments presume the
problematic “true by meaning” definition. Others are that: (1) the distinction
cannot be defined without using related notions like ‘meaning’, ‘concept’, and
‘statement’, which are neither extensional nor definable in terms of behavior;
(2) some statements (like ‘All cats are animals’) are hard to classify as
analytic or synthetic; and (3) no statement (allegedly) is immune from
rejection in the face of new empirical evidence. If these arguments were sound,
however, the distinction between logical truths and others would seem equally
dubious, a conclusion seldom embraced. Some describe a priori truths, both
synthetic and analytic, as conceptual truths, on the theory that they are all
true in virtue of the nature of the concepts they contain. Conceptual truths
are said to have no “factual content” because they are about concepts rather
than things in the actual world. While it is natural to classify a priori
truths together, the proffered theory is questionable. As indicated above, all
truths hold in part because of the identity of their concepts, and in part
because of the nature of the objects they are about. It is a fact that all
emeralds are emeralds, and this proposition is about emeralds, not concepts.
A PRIORI, CONVENTIONALISM, NECESSITY,
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, QUINE. W.A.D. anamnesis.FORM, PLATO.
ananda.SAT/CHIT/ANANDA. ananke (Greek), necessity. The term was used by early
Greek philosophers for a constraining or moving natural force. In Parmenides
(frg. 8, line 30) ananke encompasses reality in limiting bonds; according to
Diogenes Laertius, Democrianamnesis ananke 27 4065A- 27 tus calls the vortex that generates the
cosmos ananke; Plato (Timaeus 47e ff.) refers to ananke as the irrational
element in nature, which reason orders in creating the physical world. As used
by Aristotle (Metaphysics V.5), the basic meaning of ‘necessary’ is ‘that which
cannot be otherwise’, a sense that includes logical necessity. He also
distinguishes (Physics II.9) between simple and hypothetical necessity
(conditions that must hold if something is to occur). ARISTOTLE, PARMENIDES. W.J.P.
anaphor.ANAPHORA. anaphora, a device of reference or cross-reference in which a
term (called an anaphor), typically a pronoun, has its semantic properties
determined by a term or noun phrase (called the anaphor’s antecedent) that
occurs earlier. Sometimes the antecedent is a proper name or other
independently referring expression, as in ‘Jill went up the hill and then she
came down again’. In such cases, the anaphor refers to the same object as its
antecedent. In other cases, the anaphor seems to function as a variable bound
by an antecedent quantifier, as in ‘If any miner bought a donkey, he is penniless’.
But anaphora is puzzling because not every example falls neatly into one of
these two groups. Thus, in ‘John owns some sheep and Harry vaccinates them’ (an
example due to Gareth Evans) the anaphor is arguably not bound by its
antecedent ‘some sheep’. And in ‘Every miner who owns a donkey beats it’ (a
famous type of case discovered by Geach), the anaphor is arguably neither bound
by ‘a donkey’ nor a uniquely referring expression. QUANTIFICATION, THEORY OF DESCRIPTIONS. M.M.
anarchism.KROPOTKIN, POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
anattavada, the Buddhist
doctrine of no-soul, attributed to the Buddha (sixth century B.C.). The
Buddha’s idea of dependent origination (pratityasamutpada) leads to a process
ontology of change where nothing is absolute, permanent, or substantive.
Accordingly, the Buddha taught that a person’s self consists of a bundle of
fleeting impressions, analyzed into five groups (skandhas), rather than a
substantive entity called the “soul.” The Buddha’s method of introspection to
find out whether we can be aware of a soullike substance inside us is
remarkably similar to David Hume’s. The Hindu philosophical schools objected to
anattavada because they thought it could not satisfactorily explain such issues
as personal identity, moral responsibility and karma, and rebirth. D.K.C.
Anaxagoras (c.500–428 B.C.), Greek philosopher who was the first of the
pre-Socratics to teach in Athens (c.480–450), where he influenced leading
intellectuals such as Pericles and Euripides. He left Athens when he was prosecuted
for impiety. Writing in response to Parmenides, he elaborated a theory of
matter according to which nothing comes into being or perishes. The ultimate
realities are stuffs such as water and earth, flesh and bone, but so are
contraries such as hot and cold, likewise treated as stuffs. Every phenomenal
substance has a portion of every elemental stuff, and there are no minimal
parts of anything, but matter takes on the phenomenal properties of whatever
predominates in the mixture. Anaxagoras posits an indefinite number of
elemental stuffs, in contrast to his contemporary Empedocles, who requires only
four elements; but Anaxagoras follows Parmenides more rigorously, allowing no
properties or substances to emerge that were not already present in the cosmos as
its constituents. Thus there is no ultimate gap between appearance and reality:
everything we perceive is real. In Anaxagoras’s cosmogony, an initial chaos of
complete mixture gives way to an ordered world when noûs (mind) begins a vortex
motion that separates cosmic masses of ether (the bright upper air), air,
water, and earth. Mind is finer than the stuffs and is found in living things,
but it does not mix with stuffs. Anaxagoras’s theory of mind provides the first
hint of a mind–matter dualism. Plato and Aristotle thought his assigning a
cosmic role to mind made him sound like “a sober man” among his contemporaries,
but they were disappointed that he did not exploit his idea to provide
teleological explanations of natural phenomena.
PRE-SOCRATICS. D.W.G.
Anaximander (c.612–545 B.C.), Greek philosopher and cosmologist, reputedly the
student and successor of Thales in the Milesian school. He described the cosmos
as originating from apeiron (the boundless) by a process of separating off; a
disk-shaped earth was formed, surrounded by concentric heavenly rings of fire
enclosed in air. At “breathing holes” in the air we see jets of fire, which are
the stars, moon, and sun. The earth stays in place because there is no reason
for it to tend one way or another. The seasons arise from alternating periods
where hot and dry or wet and anaphor Anaximander 28 4065A- 28 cold powers predominate, governed by a
temporal process (figuratively portrayed as the judgment of Time). Anaximander
drew a map of the world and explained winds, rain, and lightning by
naturalistic hypotheses. He also described the emergence of life in a way that
prefigures the theory of evolution. Anaximander’s interest in cosmology and
cosmogony and his brilliant conjectures set the major questions for later
preSocratics.
APEIRON, MILESIANS.
D.W.G. Anaximenes of Miletus (fl. c.545 B.C.), Greek philosopher, a
pre-Socratic who, following in the tradition of the Milesians Thales and
Anaximander, speculated about cosmology and meteorology. The source (arche) of
the cosmos is air (aer, originally mist), which by a process of rarefaction
becomes fire, and by a process of condensation becomes wind, clouds, water,
earth, and stones. Air is divine and causes life. The earth is flat and rides
on a cushion of air, while a heavenly firmament revolves about it like a felt
cap. Anaximenes also explained meteorological phenomena and earthquakes.
Although less innovative than his predecessor Anaximander, he made progress in
naturalistic explanations by appealing to a quantitative process of rarefaction
and condensation rather than to mythical processes involving quasi-personal
agents. D.W.G. ancestral(of a given relation R), the relation (also called the
transitive closure of R) that relates one given individual to a second if and
only if the first can be “reached” from the second by repeated “applications”
of the given relation R. The ancestor relation is the ancestral of the parent
relation since one person is an ancestor of a second if the first is a parent
of the second or the first is a parent of a parent of the second or the first
is a parent of a parent of a parent of the second, and so on. Frege discovered
a simple method of giving a materially adequate and formally correct definition
of the ancestral of a given relation in terms of the relation itself (plus
logical concepts). This method is informally illustrated as follows: in order
for one person A to be an ancestor of a second person B it is necessary and
sufficient for A to have every property that belongs to every parent of B and
that belongs to every parent of any person to whom it belongs. This and other
similar methods made possible the reduction of all numerical concepts to those
of zero and successor, which Frege then attempted to reduce to concepts of pure
logic. Frege’s definition of the ancestral has become a paradigm in modern
analytic philosophy as well as a historical benchmark of the watershed between
traditional logic and modern logic. It demonstrates the exactness of modern
logical analysis and, in comparison, the narrowness of traditional logic. FREGE, LOGICISM, RELATION. J.Cor.
ancient atomism, the
theory, originated by Leucippus and elaborated by Democritus, that the ultimate
realities are atoms and the void. The theory was later used by Epicurus as the
foundation for a philosophy stressing ethical concerns, Epicureanism. DEMOCRITUS, EPICUREANISM. D.W.G. Andronicus
of Rhodes (first century B.C.), Greek philosopher, a leading member of the
Lyceum who was largely responsible for establishing the canon of Aristotle’s
works still read today. He also edited the works of Theophrastus. At the time,
Aristotle was known primarily for his philosophical dialogues, only fragments
of which now survive; his more methodical treatises had stopped circulating
soon after his death. By producing the first systematic edition of Aristotle’s
corpus, Andronicus revived study of the treatises, and the resulting critical
debates dramatically affected the course of philosophy. Little is recorded
about Andronicus’s labors; but besides editing the texts and discussing titles,
arrangement, and authenticity, he sought to explicate and assess Aristotle’s
thought. In so doing, he and his colleagues initiated the exegetical tradition
of Aristotelian commentaries. Nothing he wrote survives; a summary account of
emotions formerly ascribed to him is spurious.
ARISTOTLE, COMMENTARIES ON ARISTOTLE, LYCEUM. V.C. & S.A.W.
Anesidemus.HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY, SKEPTICS. Angst, German term for a special
form of anxiety, an emotion seen by existentialists as both constituting and
revealing the human condition. Angst plays a key role in the writings of
Heidegger, whose concept is closely related to Kierkegaard’s angest and
Sartre’s angoisse. The concept is first treated in this distinctive way in
Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety (1844), where anxiety is described as “the
dizziness of freedom.” Anxiety here represents freedom’s self-awareness; it is
the psychological precondition for the individAnaximenes of Miletus Angst 29
4065A- AM 29 ual’s attempt to become autonomous, a
possibility that is seen as both alluring and disturbing. HEIDEGGER, KIERKEGAARD, SARTRE. C.S.E.
anhomoeomerous.
Anniceris (fl. c.320–280
B.C.), Greek philosopher. A pupil of Antipater, he established a separate branch
of the Cyrenaic school known as the Anniceraioi. He subscribed to typical
Cyrenaic hedonism, arguing that the end of each action should be one’s own
pleasure, since we can know nothing of others’ experiences. He tempered the
implications of hedonism with the claim that a wise man attaches weight to
respect for parents, patriotism, gratitude, and friendship, perhaps influencing
Epicurus in this regard. Anniceris also played down the Cyrenaic stress on the
intellect’s role in hedonistic practical rationality, taking the Aristotelian
view that cultivation of the right habits is indispensable. CYRENAICS. R.C. anomalism of the
mental.PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. anomalous monism.PHILOSOPHY OF MIND.
anomaly.PARADIGM. Anschauung.KANT. Anscombe, G(ertrude) E(lizabeth) M(argaret)
(b. 1919), English philosopher who has held positions at Oxford and Cambridge,
best known for her work in the philosophy of mind and for her editions and
translations of Wittgenstein’s later writings. Anscombe studied philosophy with
Wittgenstein and became closely associated with him, writing An Introduction to
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (1959). She is married to Peter Geach. Anscombe’s
first major work was Intention (1957). She argues that the concept of intention
is central to our understanding of ourselves as rational agents. The basic case
is that of the intentions with which we act. These are identified by the
reasons we give in answer to why-questions concerning our actions. Such reasons
usually form a hierarchy that constitutes a practical syllogism of which action
itself is the conclusion. Hence our intentions are a form of active practical
knowledge that normally leads to action. Anscombe compares the direction of fit
of this kind of knowledge with a shopping list’s relation to one’s purchases,
and contrasts it with the direction of fit characteristic of a list of these
purchases drawn up by an observer of the shopper. She maintains that the deep
mistake of modern (i.e., post-medieval) philosophy has been to think that all
knowledge is of this latter, observational, type. This conception of active
knowledge expressed through an agent’s intentions conflicts with the passive
conception of rationality characteristic of Hume and his followers, and
Anscombe develops this challenge in papers critical of the is–ought distinction
of Hume and his modern successors. In a famous paper, “Modern Moral Philosophy”
(1958), she also argues that ought-statements make sense only in the context of
a moral theology that grounds morality in divine commands. Since our culture
rejects this theology, it is no surprise that “modern moral philosophers”
cannot find much sense in them. We should therefore abandon them and return to
the older conceptions of practical rationality and virtue. These conceptions,
and the associated conception of natural law, provide the background to an
uncompromising defense of traditional Catholic morality concerning sexuality,
war, and the importance of the distinction between intention and foresight.
Anscombe has never been afraid of unpopular positions – philosophical and
ethical. Her three volumes of Collected Papers (1981) include a defense of
singular causation, an attack on the very idea of a subject of thought, and a
critique of pacifism. She is one of the most original and distinctive English
philosophers of her generation. ACTION
THEORY, DIRECTION OF FIT, HUME, INTENTION, NATURAL LAW, WITTGENSTEIN. T.R.B.
Anselm, Saint, called Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), Italian-born English
philosophical theologian. A Benedictine monk and the second Norman archbishop
of Canterbury, he is best known for his distinctive method – fides quaerens
intellectum; his “ontological” argument for the existence of God in his
treatise Proslogion; and his classic formulation of the satisfaction theory of
the Atonement in the Cur Deus homo. Like Augustine before him, Anselm is a
Christian Platonist in metaphysics. He argues that the most accessible proofs
of the existence of God are through value theory: in his treatise Monologion,
anhomoeomerous Anselm 30 4065A- AM 30 he deploys a cosmological argument,
showing the existence of a source of all goods, which is the Good per se and
hence supremely good; that same thing exists per se and is the Supreme Being.
In the Proslogion, Anselm begins with his conception of a being a greater than
which cannot be conceived, and mounts his ontological argument that a being a
greater than which cannot be conceived exists in the intellect, because even
the fool understands the phrase when he hears it; but if it existed in the intellect
alone, a greater could be conceived that existed in reality. This supremely
valuable object is essentially whatever it is – other things being equal – that
is better to be than not to be, and hence living, wise, powerful, true, just,
blessed, immaterial, immutable, and eternal per se; even the paradigm of
sensory goods – Beauty, Harmony, Sweetness, and Pleasant Texture, in its own
ineffable manner. Nevertheless, God is supremely simple, not compounded of a
plurality of excellences, but “omne et unum, totum et solum bonum,” a being a
more delectable than which cannot be conceived. Everything other than God has
its being and its well-being through God as efficient cause. Moreover, God is
the paradigm of all created natures, the latter ranking as better to the extent
that they more perfectly resemble God. Thus, it is better to be human than to
be horse, to be horse than to be wood, even though in comparison with God
everything else is “almost nothing.” For every created nature, there is a
that-for-which-it-ismade (ad quod factum est). On the one hand, Anselm thinks
of such teleology as part of the internal structure of the natures themselves:
a creature of type F is a true F only insofar as it is/does/exemplifies that
for which F’s were made; a defective F, to the extent that it does not. On the
other hand, for Anselm, the telos of a created nature is
that-for-which-God-made-it. Because God is personal and acts through reason and
will, Anselm infers that prior (in the order of explanation) to creation, there
was, in the reason of the maker, an exemplar, form, likeness, or rule of what
he was going to make. In De veritate Anselm maintains that such teleology gives
rise to obligation: since creatures owe their being and well-being to God as
their cause, so they owe their being and well-being to God in the sense of
having an obligation to praise him by being the best beings they can. Since
every creature is of some nature or other, each can be its best by being
that-for-which-God-made-it. Abstracting from impediments, non-rational natures
fulfill this obligation and “act rightly” by natural necessity; rational
creatures, when they exercise their powers of reason and will to fulfill God’s
purpose in creating them. Thus, the goodness of a creature (how good a being it
is) is a function of twin factors: its natural telos (i.e., what sort of
imitation of divine nature it aims for), and its rightness (in exercising its
natural powers to fulfill its telos). By contrast, God as absolutely
independent owes no one anything and so has no obligations to creatures. In De
casu diaboli, Anselm underlines the optimism of his ontology, reasoning that
since the Supreme Good and the Supreme Being are identical, every being is good
and every good a being. Two further conclusions follow. First, evil is a
privation of being, the absence of good in something that properly ought to
have it (e.g., blindness in normally sighted animals, injustice in humans or
angels). Second, since all genuine powers are given to enable a being to fulfill
its natural telos and so to be the best being it can, all genuine
(metaphysically basic) powers are optimific and essentially aim at goods, so
that evils are merely incidental side effects of their operation, involving
some lack of coordination among powers or between their exercise and the
surrounding context. Thus, divine omnipotence does not, properly speaking,
include corruptibility, passibility, or the ability to lie, because the latter
are defects and/or powers in other things whose exercise obstructs the
flourishing of the corruptible, passible, or potential liar. Anselm’s
distinctive action theory begins teleologically with the observation that
humans and angels were made for a happy immortality enjoying God, and to that
end were given the powers of reason to make accurate value assessments and will
to love accordingly. Anselm regards freedom and imputability of choice as
essential and permanent features of all rational beings. But freedom cannot be
defined as a power for opposites (the power to sin and the power not to sin),
both because neither God nor the good angels have any power to sin, and because
sin is an evil at which no metaphysically basic power can aim. Rather, freedom
is the power to preserve justice for its own sake. Choices and actions are
imputable to an agent only if they are spontaneous, from the agent itself.
Creatures cannot act spontaneously by the necessity of their natures, because
they do not have their natures from themselves but receive them from God. To
give them the opportunity to become just of themselves, God furnishes them with
two motivaAnselm Anselm 31 4065A-
AM 31 tional drives toward the
good: an affection for the advantageous (affectio commodi) or a tendency to
will things for the sake of their benefit to the agent itself; and an affection
for justice (affectio justitiae) or a tendency to will things because of their
own intrinsic value. Creatures are able to align these drives (by letting the
latter temper the former) or not. The good angels, who preserved justice by not
willing some advantage possible for them but forbidden by God for that time,
can no longer will more advantage than God wills for them, because he wills
their maximum as a reward. By contrast, creatures, who sin by refusing to delay
gratification in accordance with God’s will, lose both uprightness of will and
their affection for justice, and hence the ability to temper their pursuit of
advantage or to will the best goods. Justice will never be restored to angels
who desert it. But if animality makes human nature weaker, it also opens the
possibility of redemption. Anselm’s argument for the necessity of the
Incarnation plays out the dialectic of justice and mercy so characteristic of
his prayers. He begins with the demands of justice: humans owe it to God to
make all of their choices and actions conform to his will; failure to render
what was owed insults God’s honor and makes the offender liable to make
satisfaction; because it is worse to dishonor God than for countless worlds to
be destroyed, the satisfaction owed for any small sin is incommensurate with
any created good; it would be maximally indecent for God to overlook such a
great offense. Such calculations threaten certain ruin for the sinner, because
God alone can do/be immeasurably deserving, and depriving the creature of its
honor (through the eternal frustration of its telos) seems the only way to
balance the scales. Yet, justice also forbids that God’s purposes be thwarted
through created resistance, and it was divine mercy that made humans for a
beatific immortality with him. Likewise, humans come in families by virtue of
their biological nature (which angels do not share), and justice allows an
offense by one family member to be compensated by another. Assuming that all
actual humans are descended from common first parents, Anselm claims that the
human race can make satisfaction for sin, if God becomes human and renders to
God what Adam’s family owes. When Anselm insists that humans were made for
beatific intimacy with God and therefore are obliged to strive into God with
all of their powers, he emphatically includes reason or intellect along with
emotion and will. God, the controlling subject matter, is in part permanently
inaccessible to us (because of the ontological incommensuration between God and
creatures) and our progress is further hampered by the consequences of sin. Our
powers will function best, and hence we have a duty to follow right order in
their use: by submitting first to the holistic discipline of faith, which will
focus our souls and point us in the right direction. Yet it is also a duty not
to remain passive in our appreciation of authority, but rather for faith to
seek to understand what it has believed. Anselm’s works display a dialectical
structure, full of questions, objections, and contrasting opinions, designed to
stir up the mind. His quartet of teaching dialogues – De grammatico, De
veritate, De libertate arbitrii, and De casu diaboli as well as his last
philosophical treatise, De concordia, anticipate the genre of the Scholastic
question (quaestio) so dominant in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. His
discussions are likewise remarkable for their attention to modalities and
proper-versus-improper linguistic usage.
DIVINE ATTRIBUTES, FREE WILL PROBLEM, PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. M.M.A. An
Sich.HEGEL, KANT. antecedent.COUNTERFACTUALS. antecedent, fallacy of denying
the.FORMAL FALLACY. ante rem realism.PROPERTY. anthropology,
philosophical.PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY. anthroposophy.STEINER.
antilogism, an
inconsistent triad of propositions, two of which are the premises of a valid
categorical syllogism and the third of which is the contradictory of the
conclusion of this valid categorical syllogism. An antilogism is a special form
of antilogy or self-contradiction. INCONSISTENT
TRIAD. R.W.B. antinomianism, the view that one is not bound by moral law;
specifically, the view that Christians are by grace set free from the need to
observe moral laws. During the Reformation, antinomianism was believed by some
(but not An Sich antinomianism 32 4065A-
AM 32 Martin Luther) to follow
from the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone. JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH, LUTHER. W.L.R.
antinomy.KANT. Antiochus of Ascalon (c.130–c.68 B.C.), Greek philosopher and
the last prominent member of the New Academy. He played the major role in
ending its two centuries of Skepticism and helped revive interest in doctrines
from the Old Academy, as he called Plato, Aristotle, and their associates. The
impulse for this decisive shift came in epistemology, where the Skeptical
Academy had long agreed with Stoicism that knowledge requires an infallible
“criterion of truth” but disputed the Stoic claim to find this criterion in
“cognitive perception.” Antiochus’s teacher, Philo of Larissa, broke with this
tradition and proposed that perception need not be cognitive to qualify as
knowledge. Rejecting this concession, Antiochus offered new arguments for the
Stoic claim that some perception is cognitive, and hence knowledge. He also
proposed a similar accommodation in ethics, where he agreed with the Stoics
that virtue alone is sufficient for happiness but insisted with Aristotle that
virtue is not the only good. These and similar attempts to mediate fundamental
disputes have led some to label Antiochus an eclectic or syncretist; but some
of his proposals, especially his appeal to the Old Academy, set the stage for
Middle Platonism, which also sought to reconcile Plato and Aristotle. No works
by Antiochus survive, but his students included many eminent Romans, most
notably Cicero, who summarizes Antiochus’s epistemology in the Academica, his
critique of Stoic ethics in De finibus IV, and his purportedly Aristotelian
ethics in De finibus V.
Antipater.STOICISM.
Antiphon.SOPHISTS. anti-razor.OCKHAM’S RAZOR. anti-realism, rejection, in one
or another form or area of inquiry, of realism, the view that there are
knowable mind-independent facts, objects, or properties. Metaphysical realists
make the general claim that there is a world of mind-independent objects.
Realists in particular areas make more specific or limited claims. Thus moral
realists hold that there are mind-independent moral properties, mathematical
realists that there are mind-independent mathematical facts, scientific
realists that scientific inquiry reveals the existence of previously unknown
and unobservable mind-independent entities and properties. Antirealists deny
either that facts of the relevant sort are mind-independent or that knowledge
of such facts is possible. Berkeley’s subjective idealism, which claims that
the world consists only of minds and their contents, is a metaphysical
anti-realism. Constructivist anti-realists, on the other hand, deny that the
world consists only of mental phenomena, but claim that it is constituted by,
or constructed from, our evidence or beliefs. Many philosophers find
constructivism implausible or even incoherent as a metaphysical doctrine, but
much more plausible when restricted to a particular domain, such as ethics or
mathematics. Debates between realists and anti-realists have been particularly
intense in philosophy of science. Scientific realism has been rejected both by
constructivists such as Kuhn, who hold that scientific facts are constructed by
the scientific community, and by empiricists who hold that knowledge is limited
to what can be observed. A sophisticated version of the latter doctrine is Bas
van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism, which allows scientists free rein in
constructing scientific models, but claims that evidence for such models
confirms only their observable implications.
CONSTRUCTIVISM, DIRECT REALISM, MORAL REALISM, SCIENTIFIC REALISM.
P.Gas. Antisthenes.CYNICS. antisymmetrical.ORDERING, RELATION. antithesis.HEGEL.
apagoge.ARISTOTLE. apatheia.STOICISM. apeiron, Greek term meaning ‘the
boundless’ or ‘the unlimited’, which evolved to signify ‘the infinite’.
Anaximander introduced the term to philosophy by saying that the source of all
things was apeiron. There is some disagreement about whether he meant by this
the spatially antinomy apeiron 33 4065A-
AM 33 unbounded, the temporally
unbounded, or the qualitatively indeterminate. It seems likely that he intended
the term to convey the first meaning, but the other two senses also happen to
apply to the spatially unbounded. After Anaximander, Anaximenes declared as his
first principle that air is boundless, and Xenophanes made his flat earth
extend downward without bounds, and probably outward horizontally without limit
as well. Rejecting the tradition of boundless principles, Parmenides argued
that “what-is” must be held within determinate boundaries. But his follower
Melissus again argued that what-is must be boundless – in both time and space –
for it can have no beginning or end. Another follower of Parmenides, Zeno of
Elea, argued that if there are many substances, antinomies arise, including the
consequences that substances are both limited and unlimited (apeira) in number,
and that they are so small as not to have size and so large as to be unlimited
in size. Rejecting monism, Anaxagoras argued for an indefinite number of
elements that are each unlimited in size, and the Pythagorean Philolaus made
limiters (perainonta) and unlimiteds (apeira) the principles from which all
things are composed. The atomists Leucippus and Democritus conceived of a
boundless universe, partly full (of an infinite number of atoms) and partly
void; and in the universe are countless (apeiroi) worlds. Finally Aristotle
arrived at an abstract understanding of the apeiron as “the infinite,” claiming
to settle paradoxes about the boundless by allowing for real quantities to be
infinitely divisible potentially, but not actually (Physics III.4–8). The
development of the notion of the apeiron shows how Greek philosophers evolved
ever more abstract philosophical ideas from relatively concrete
conceptions. ARISTOTLE, PRE-SOCRATICS.
D.W.G. apellatio.PROPRIETATES TERMINORUM. apocatastasis (from Greek,
‘reestablishment’), the restoration of all souls, including Satan’s and his
minions’, in the kingdom of God. God’s goodness will triumph over evil, and
through a process of spiritual education souls will be brought to repentance
and made fit for divine life. The theory originates with Origen but was also held
by Gregory of Nyssa. In modern times F. D. Maurice (1805–72) and Karl Barth
(1886– 1968) held this position. GREGORY
OF NYSSA, ORIGEN. L.P.P. apodictic.HUSSERL, KANT. apodosis.COUNTERFACTUALS.
apophantic.HUSSERL. aporetic.APORIA. aporia (plural: aporiai), Greek term
meaning ‘puzzle’, ‘question for discussion’, ‘state of perplexity’. The
aporetic method – the raising of puzzles without offering solutions – is
typical of the elenchus in the early Socratic dialogues of Plato. These consist
in the testing of definitions and often end with an aporia, e.g., that piety is
both what is and what is not loved by the gods. Compare the paradoxes of Zeno,
e.g., that motion is both possible and impossible. In Aristotle’s dialectic,
the resolution of aporiai discovered in the views on a subject is an important
source of philosophical understanding. The beliefs that one should love oneself
most of all and that self-love is shameful, e.g., can be resolved with the
right understanding of ‘self’. The possibility of argument for two inconsistent
positions was an important factor in the development of Skepticism. In modern
philosophy, the antinomies that Kant claimed reason would arrive at in
attempting to prove the existence of objects corresponding to transcendental
ideas may be seen as aporiai. ELENCHUS.
R.C. a posteriori.A PRIORI. appearing, theory of.THEORY OF APPEARING.
appellation.SHERWOOD. apperception.KANT. application (of a
function).COMBINATORY LOGIC. applied ethics, the domain of ethics that includes
professional ethics, such as business ethics, engineering ethics, and medical
ethics, as well as practical ethics such as environmental ethics, which is
applied, and thus practical as opposed to theoretical, but not focused on any
one discipline. One of the major disputes among those who work in applied
ethics is whether or not there is a general and universal account of morality
applicable both to the ethical issues in the professions and to various
practical problems. Some philosophers believe that each of the professions or
each field of activity develops an ethical code for itself and that there need
be no apellatio applied ethics 34 4065A-
AM 34 close relationship between
(e.g.) business ethics, medical ethics, and environmental ethics. Others hold
that the same moral system applies to all professions and fields. They claim
that the appearance of different moral systems is simply due to certain
problems being more salient for some professions and fields than for others.
The former position accepts the consequence that the ethical codes of different
professions might conflict with one another, so that a physician in business
might find that business ethics would require one action but medical ethics
another. Engineers who have been promoted to management positions sometimes
express concern over the tension between what they perceive to be their
responsibility as engineers and their responsibility as managers in a business.
Many lawyers seem to hold that there is similar tension between what common
morality requires and what they must do as lawyers. Those who accept a
universal morality hold that these tensions are all resolvable because there is
only one common morality. Underlying both positions is the pervasive but false
view of common morality as providing a unique right answer to every moral
problem. Those who hold that each profession or field has its own moral code do
not realize that common morality allows for conflicts of duties. Most of those
who put forward moral theories, e.g., utilitarians, Kantians, and contractarians,
attempt to generate a universal moral system that solves all moral problems.
This creates a situation that leads many in applied ethics to dismiss
theoretical ethics as irrelevant to their concerns. An alternative view of a
moral theory is to think of it on the model of a scientific theory, primarily
concerned to describe common morality rather than generate a new improved
version. On this model, it is clear that although morality rules out many
alternatives as unacceptable, it does not provide unique right answers to every
controversial moral question. On this model, different fields and different
professions may interpret the common moral system in somewhat different ways.
For example, although deception is always immoral if not justified, what counts
as deception is not the same in all professions. Not informing a patient of an
alternative treatment counts as deceptive for a physician, but not telling a
customer of an alternative to what she is about to buy does not count as
deceptive for a salesperson. The professions also have considerable input into
what special duties are incurred by becoming a member of their profession.
Applied ethics is thus not the mechanical application of a common morality to a
particular profession or field, but an independent discipline that clarifies
and analyzes the practices in a field or profession so that common morality can
be applied.
a priori, prior to or
independent of experience; contrasted with ‘a posteriori’ (empirical). These
two terms are primarily used to mark a distinction between (1) two modes of
epistemic justification, together with derivative distinctions between (2)
kinds of propositions, (3) kinds of knowledge, and (4) kinds of argument. They
are also used to indicate a distinction between (5) two ways in which a concept
or idea may be acquired. (1) A belief or claim is said to be justified a priori
if its epistemic justification, the reason or warrant for thinking it to be
true, does not depend at all on sensory or introspective or other sorts of
experience; whereas if its justification does depend at least in part on such
experience, it is said to be justified a posteriori or empirically. This
specific distinction has to do only with the justification of the belief, and
not at all with how the constituent concepts are acquired; thus it is no
objection to a claim of a priori justificatory status for a particular belief
that experience is required for the acquisition of some of the constituent
concepts. It is clear that the relevant notion of experience includes sensory
and introspective experience, as well as such things as kinesthetic experience.
Equally clearly, to construe experience in the broadest possible sense of,
roughly, a conscious undergoing of any sort would be to destroy the point of
the distinction, since even a priori justification presumably involves some
sort of conscious process of awareness. The construal that is perhaps most
faithful to the traditional usage is that which construes experience as any
sort of cognitive input that derives, presumably causally, from features of the
actual world that may not hold in other possible worlds. Thus, e.g., such
things as clairvoyance or telepathy, if they were to exist, would count as
forms of experience and any knowledge resulting therefrom as a posteriori; but
the intuitive apprehension of properties or numbers or other sorts of abstract
entities that are the same in all possible worlds, would not. Understood in
this way, the concept of a priori justification is an essentially negative concept,
specifying as it does what the justification of the belief does not depend on,
but saying nothing a priori a priori 35 4065A-
AM 35 about what it does depend
on. Historically, the main positive conception was that offered by proponents
of rationalism (such as Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz), according to
which a priori justification derives from the intuitive apprehension of
necessary facts pertaining to universals and other abstract entities. (Although
Kant is often regarded as a rationalist, his restriction of substantive a
priori knowledge to the world of appearances represents a major departure from
the main rationalist tradition.) In contrast, proponents of traditional
empiricism, if they do not repudiate the concept of a priori justification
altogether (as does Quine), typically attempt to account for such justification
by appeal to linguistic or conceptual conventions. The most standard
formulation of this empiricist view (a development of the view of Hume that all
a priori knowledge pertains to “relations of ideas”) is the claim (typical of
logical positivism) that all a priori knowable claims or propositions are
analytic. (A rationalist would claim in opposition that at least some a priori
claims or propositions are synthetic.) (2) A proposition that is the content of
an a priori justified belief is often referred to as an a priori proposition
(or an a priori truth). This usage is also often extended to include any
proposition that is capable of being the content of such a belief, whether it
actually has this status or not. (3) If, in addition to being justified a
priori or a posteriori, a belief is also true and satisfies whatever further
conditions may be required for it to constitute knowledge, that knowledge is
derivatively characterized as a priori or a posteriori (empirical),
respectively. (Though a priori justification is often regarded as by itself
guaranteeing truth, this should be regarded as a further substantive thesis,
not as part of the very concept of a priori justification.) Examples of
knowledge that have been classically regarded as a priori in this sense are
mathematical knowledge, knowledge of logical truths, and knowledge of necessary
entailments and exclusions of commonsense concepts (‘Nothing can be red and
green all over at the same time’, ‘If A is later than B and B is later than C,
then A is later than C’); but many claims of metaphysics, ethics, and even
theology have also been claimed to have this status. (4) A deductively valid
argument that also satisfies the further condition that each of the premises
(or sometimes one or more particularly central premises) are justified a priori
is referred to as an a priori argument. This label is also sometimes applied to
arguments that are claimed to have this status, even if the correctness of this
claim is in question. (5) In addition to the uses just catalogued that derive
from the distinction between modes of justification, the terms ‘a priori’ and
‘a posteriori’ are also employed to distinguish two ways in which a concept or
idea might be acquired by an individual person. An a posteriori or empirical
concept or idea is one that is derived from experience, via a process of
abstraction or ostensive definition. In contrast, an a priori concept or idea
is one that is not derived from experience in this way and thus presumably does
not require any particular experience to be realized (though the explicit
realization of such a concept might still require experience as a “trigger”).
The main historical account of such concepts, again held mainly by
rationalists, construes them as innate, either implanted in the mind by God or,
in the more contemporary version of the claim held by Chomsky, Fodor, and
others, resulting from evolutionary development. Concepts typically regarded as
having this sort of status include the concepts of substance, causation, God,
necessity, infinity, and many others. Empiricists, in contrast, typically hold
that all concepts are derived from experience.
a priori argument.A
PRIORI. a priori justification.A PRIORI, JUSTIFICATION.
A-proposition.SYLLOGISM. Apuleius of Madaura.MIDDLE PLATONISM.
Aquinas, Saint Thomas
(1225–74), Italian philosopher-theologian, the most influential thinker of the
medieval period. He produced a powerful philosophical synthesis that combined
Aristotelian and Neoplatonic elements within a Christian context in an original
and ingenious way. Life and works. Thomas was born at Aquino castle in
Roccasecca, Italy, and took early schooling at the Benedictine Abbey of Monte
Cassino. He then studied liberal arts and philosophy at the University of
Naples (1239–44) and joined the Dominican order. While going to Paris for
further studies as a Dominican, he was detained by his family for about a year.
Upon being released, he studied with the Dominicans at Paris, perhaps
privately, until 1248, when he journeyed to a priori argument Aquinas, Saint
Thomas 36 4065A- AM 36 Cologne to work under Albertus Magnus.
Thomas’s own report (reportatio) of Albertus’s lectures on the Divine Names of
Dionysius and his notes on Albertus’s lectures on Aristotle’s Ethics date from
this period. In 1252 Thomas returned to Paris to lecture there as a bachelor in
theology. His resulting commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard dates from
this period, as do two philosophical treatises, On Being and Essence (De ente
et essentia) and On the Principles of Nature (De principiis naturae). In 1256
he began lecturing as master of theology at Paris. From this period (1256–59)
date a series of scriptural commentaries, the disputations On Truth (De
veritate), Quodlibetal Questions VII–XI, and earlier parts of the Summa against
the Gentiles (Summa contra gentiles; hereafter SCG). At different locations in
Italy from 1259 to 1269, Thomas continued to write prodigiously, including,
among other works, the completion of the SCG; a commentary on the Divine Names;
disputations On the Power of God (De potentia Dei) and On Evil (De malo); and
Summa of Theology (Summa theologiae; hereafter ST), Part I. In January 1269, he
resumed teaching in Paris as regent master and wrote extensively until
returning to Italy in 1272. From this second Parisian regency date the
disputations On the Soul (De anima) and On Virtues (De virtutibus); continuation
of ST; Quodlibets I–VI and XII; On the Unity of the Intellect against the
Averroists (De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas); most if not all of his
commentaries on Aristotle; a commentary on the Book of Causes (Liber de
causis); and On the Eternity of the World (De aeternitate mundi). In 1272
Thomas returned to Italy where he lectured on theology at Naples and continued
to write until December 6, 1273, when his scholarly work ceased. He died three
months later en route to the Second Council of Lyons. Doctrine. Aquinas was
both a philosopher and a theologian. The greater part of his writings are
theological, but there are many strictly philosophical works within his corpus,
such as On Being and Essence, On the Principles of Nature, On the Eternity of the
World, and the commentaries on Aristotle and on the Book of Causes. Also
important are large sections of strictly philosophical writing incorporated
into theological works such as the SCG, ST, and various disputations. Aquinas
clearly distinguishes between strictly philosophical investigation and
theological investigation. If philosophy is based on the light of natural
reason, theology (sacra doctrina) presupposes faith in divine revelation. While
the natural light of reason is insufficient to discover things that can be made
known to human beings only through revelation, e.g., belief in the Trinity,
Thomas holds that it is impossible for those things revealed to us by God
through faith to be opposed to those we can discover by using human reason. For
then one or the other would have to be false; and since both come to us from
God, God himself would be the author of falsity, something Thomas rejects as
abhorrent. Hence it is appropriate for the theologian to use philosophical
reasoning in theologizing. Aquinas also distinguishes between the orders to be
followed by the theologian and by the philosopher. In theology one reasons from
belief in God and his revelation to the implications of this for created
reality. In philosophy one begins with an investigation of created reality
insofar as this can be understood by human reason and then seeks to arrive at
some knowledge of divine reality viewed as the cause of created reality and the
end or goal of one’s philosophical inquiry (SCG II, c. 4). This means that the
order Aquinas follows in his theological Summae (SCG and ST) is not the same as
that which he prescribes for the philosopher (cf. Prooemium to Commentary on
the Metaphysics). Also underlying much of Aquinas’s thought is his acceptance
of the difference between theoretical or speculative philosophy (including
natural philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics) and practical philosophy.
Being and analogy. For Aquinas the highest part of philosophy is metaphysics,
the science of being as being. The subject of this science is not God, but
being, viewed without restriction to any given kind of being, or simply as
being (Prooemium to Commentary on Metaphysics; In de trinitate, qu. 5, a. 4).
The metaphysician does not enjoy a direct vision of God in this life, but can
reason to knowledge of him by moving from created effects to awareness of him
as their uncreated cause. God is therefore not the subject of metaphysics, nor
is he included in its subject. God can be studied by the metaphysician only
indirectly, as the cause of the finite beings that fall under being as being,
the subject of the science. In order to account for the human intellect’s
discovery of being as being, in contrast with being as mobile (studied by
natural philosophy) or being as quantified (studied by mathematics), Thomas
appeals to a special kind of intellectual operation, a negative judgment,
technically named by him “separation.” Through this operation one discovers
that being, in order to be realized as such, need not be material and changAquinas,
Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Thomas 37 4065A-
AM 37 ing. Only as a result of
this judgment is one justified in studying being as being. Following Aristotle
(and Averroes), Thomas is convinced that the term ‘being’ is used in various
ways and with different meanings. Yet these different usages are not unrelated
and do enjoy an underlying unity sufficient for being as being to be the
subject of a single science. On the level of finite being Thomas adopts and
adapts Aristotle’s theory of unity by reference to a first order of being. For
Thomas as for Aristotle this unity is guaranteed by the primary referent in our
predication of being – substance. Other things are named being only because
they are in some way ordered to and dependent on substance, the primary
instance of being. Hence being is analogous. Since Thomas’s application of
analogy to the divine names presupposes the existence of God, we shall first
examine his discussion of that issue. The existence of God and the “five ways.”
Thomas holds that unaided human reason, i.e., philosophical reason, can
demonstrate that God exists, that he is one, etc., by reasoning from effect to
cause (De trinitate, qu. 2, a. 3; SCG I, c. 4). Best-known among his many
presentations of argumentation for God’s existence are the “five ways.” Perhaps
even more interesting for today’s student of his metaphysics is a brief
argument developed in one of his first writings, On Being and Essence (c.4).
There he wishes to determine how essence is realized in what he terms “separate
substances,” i.e., the soul, intelligences (angels of the Christian tradition),
and the first cause (God). After criticizing the view that created separate
substances are composed of matter and form, Aquinas counters that they are not
entirely free from composition. They are composed of a form (or essence) and an
act of existing (esse). He immediately develops a complex argument: (1) We can
think of an essence or quiddity without knowing whether or not it actually
exists. Therefore in such entities essence and act of existing differ unless
(2) there is a thing whose quiddity and act of existing are identical. At best
there can be only one such being, he continues, by eliminating multiplication
of such an entity either through the addition of some difference or through the
reception of its form in different instances of matter. Hence, any such being
can only be separate and unreceived esse, whereas esse in all else is received
in something else, i.e., essence. (3) Since esse in all other entities is therefore
distinct from essence or quiddity, existence is communicated to such beings by
something else, i.e., they are caused. Since that which exists through
something else must be traced back to that which exists of itself, there must
be some thing that causes the existence of everything else and that is
identical with its act of existing. Otherwise one would regress to infinity in
caused causes of existence, which Thomas here dismisses as unacceptable. In qu.
2, a. 1 of ST I Thomas rejects the claim that God’s existence is self-evident
to us in this life, and in a. 2 maintains that God’s existence can be
demonstrated by reasoning from knowledge of an existing effect to knowledge of
God as the cause required for that effect to exist. The first way or argument (art.
3) rests upon the fact that various things in our world of sense experience are
moved. But whatever is moved is moved by something else. To justify this,
Thomas reasons that to be moved is to be reduced from potentiality to
actuality, and that nothing can reduce itself from potency to act; for it would
then have to be in potency (if it is to be moved) and in act at the same time
and in the same respect. (This does not mean that a mover must formally possess
the act it is to communicate to something else if it is to move the latter; it
must at least possess it virtually, i.e., have the power to communicate it.)
Whatever is moved, therefore, must be moved by something else. One cannot
regress to infinity with moved movers, for then there would be no first mover
and, consequently, no other mover; for second movers do not move unless they
are moved by a first mover. One must, therefore, conclude to the existence of a
first mover which is moved by nothing else, and this “everyone understands to
be God.” The second way takes as its point of departure an ordering of
efficient causes as indicated to us by our investigation of sensible things. By
this Thomas means that we perceive in the world of sensible things that certain
efficient causes cannot exercise their causal activity unless they are also
caused by something else. But nothing can be the efficient cause of itself,
since it would then have to be prior to itself. One cannot regress to infinity
in ordered efficient causes. In ordered efficient causes, the first is the
cause of the intermediary, and the intermediary is the cause of the last
whether the intermediary is one or many. Hence if there were no first efficient
cause, there would be no intermediary and no last cause. Thomas concludes from
this that one must acknowledge the existence of a first efficient cause, “which
everyone names God.” The third way consists of two major parts. Some Aquinas,
Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Thomas 38 4065A-
AM 38 textual variants have
complicated the proper interpretation of the first part. In brief, Aquinas
appeals to the fact that certain things are subject to generation and
corruption to show that they are “possible,” i.e., capable of existing and not
existing. Not all things can be of this kind (revised text), for that which has
the possibility of not existing at some time does not exist. If, therefore, all
things are capable of not existing, at some time there was nothing whatsoever.
If that were so, even now there would be nothing, since what does not exist can
only begin to exist through something else that exists. Therefore not all
beings are capable of existing and not existing. There must be some necessary
being. Since such a necessary, i.e., incorruptible, being might still be caused
by something else, Thomas adds a second part to the argument. Every necessary
being either depends on something else for its necessity or it does not. One
cannot regress to infinity in necessary beings that depend on something else
for their necessity. Therefore there must be some being that is necessary of
itself and that does not depend on another cause for its necessity, i.e., God.
The statement in the first part to the effect that what has the possibility of
not existing at some point does not exist has been subject to considerable
dispute among commentators. Moreover, even if one grants this and supposes that
every individual being is a “possible” and therefore has not existed at some
point in the past, it does not easily follow from this that the totality of
existing things will also have been nonexistent at some point in the past.
Given this, some interpreters prefer to substitute for the third way the more
satisfactory versions found in SCG I (ch. 15) and SCG II (ch. 15). Thomas’s
fourth way is based on the varying degrees of perfection we discover among the
beings we experience. Some are more or less good, more or less true, more or
less noble, etc., than others. But the more and less are said of different
things insofar as they approach in varying degrees something that is such to a
maximum degree. Therefore there is something that is truest and best and
noblest and hence that is also being to the maximum degree. To support this
Thomas comments that those things that are true to the maximum degree also
enjoy being to the maximum degree; in other words he appeals to the
convertibility between being and truth (of being). In the second part of this
argument Thomas argues that what is supremely such in a given genus is the
cause of all other things in that genus. Therefore there is something that is
the cause of being, goodness, etc., for all other beings, and this we call God.
Much discussion has centered on Thomas’s claim that the more and less are said
of different things insofar as they approach something that is such to the maximum
degree. Some find this insufficient to justify the conclusion that a maximum
must exist, and would here insert an appeal to efficient causality and his
theory of participation. If certan entities share or participate in such a
perfection only to a limited degree, they must receive that perfection from
something else. While more satisfactory from a philosophical perspective, such
an insertion seems to change the argument of the fourth way significantly. The
fifth way is based on the way things in the universe are governed. Thomas
observes that certain things that lack the ability to know, i.e., natural
bodies, act for an end. This follows from the fact that they always or at least
usually act in the same way to attain that which is best. For Thomas this indicates
that they reach their ends by “intention” and not merely from chance. And this
in turn implies that they are directed to their ends by some knowing and
intelligent being. Hence some intelligent being exists that orders natural
things to their ends. This argument rests on final causality and should not be
confused with any based on order and design. Aquinas’s frequently repeated
denial that in this life we can know what God is should here be recalled. If we
can know that God exists and what he is not, we cannot know what he is (see,
e.g., SCG I, c. 30). Even when we apply the names of pure perfections to God,
we first discover such perfections in limited fashion in creatures. What the
names of such perfections are intended to signify may indeed be free from all
imperfection, but every such name carries with it some deficiency in the way in
which it signifies. When a name such as ‘goodness’, for instance, is signified
abstractly (e.g., ‘God is goodness’), this abstract way of signifying suggests
that goodness does not subsist in itself. When such a name is signified
concretely (e.g., ‘God is good’), this concrete way of signifying implies some
kind of composition between God and his goodness. Hence while such names are to
be affirmed of God as regards that which they signify, the way in which they
signify is to be denied of him. This final point sets the stage for Thomas to
apply his theory of analogy to the divine names. Names of pure perfections such
as ‘good’, ‘true’, ‘being’, etc., cannot be applied to God with Aquinas, Saint
Thomas Aquinas, Saint Thomas 39 4065A-
AM 39 exactly the same meaning
they have when affirmed of creatures (univocally), nor with entirely different
meanings (equivocally). Hence they are affirmed of God and of creatures by an analogy
based on the relationship that obtains between a creature viewed as an effect
and God its uncaused cause. Because some minimum degree of similarity must
obtain between any effect and its cause, Thomas is convinced that in some way a
caused perfection imitates and participates in God, its uncaused and
unparticipated source. Because no caused effect can ever be equal to its
uncreated cause, every perfection that we affirm of God is realized in him in a
way different from the way we discover it in creatures. This dissimilarity is
so great that we can never have quidditative knowledge of God in this life
(know what God is). But the similarity is sufficient for us to conclude that
what we understand by a perfection such as goodness in creatures is present in
God in unrestricted fashion. Even though Thomas’s identification of the kind of
analogy to be used in predicating divine names underwent some development, in
mature works such as On the Power of God (qu. 7, a. 7), SCG I (c.34), and ST I
(qu. 13, a. 5), he identifies this as the analogy of “one to another,” rather
than as the analogy of “many to one.” In none of these works does he propose
using the analogy of “proportionality” that he had previously defended in On
Truth (qu. 2, a. 11). Theological virtues. While Aquinas is convinced that
human reason can arrive at knowledge that God exists and at meaningful
predication of the divine names, he does not think the majority of human beings
will actually succeed in such an effort (SCG I, c. 4; ST II–IIae, qu. 2, a. 4).
Hence he concludes that it was fitting for God to reveal such truths to mankind
along with others that purely philosophical inquiry could never discover even
in principle. Acceptance of the truth of divine revelation presupposes the gift
of the theological virtue of faith in the believer. Faith is an infused virtue
by reason of which we accept on God’s authority what he has revealed to us. To
believe is an act of the intellect that assents to divine truth as a result of
a command on the part of the human will, a will that itself is moved by God
through grace (ST II– IIae, qu. 2, a. 9). For Thomas the theological virtues,
having God (the ultimate end) as their object, are prior to all other virtues
whether natural or infused. Because the ultimate end must be present in the
intellect before it is present to the will, and because the ultimate end is
present in the will by reason of hope and charity (the other two theological
virtues), in this respect faith is prior to hope and charity. Hope is the theological
virtue through which we trust that with divine assistance we will attain the
infinite good – eternal enjoyment of God (ST II–IIae, qu. 17, aa. 1–2). In the
order of generation, hope is prior to charity; but in the order of perfection
charity is prior both to hope and faith. While neither faith nor hope will
remain in those who reach the eternal vision of God in the life to come,
charity will endure in the blessed. It is a virtue or habitual form that is
infused into the soul by God and that inclines us to love him for his own sake.
If charity is more excellent than faith or hope (ST II– IIae, qu. 23, a. 6),
through charity the acts of all other virtues are ordered to God, their
ultimate end (qu. 23, a. 8).
Arabic philosophy, the
philosophy produced in Arabic by philosophers of various ethnic and religious
backgrounds who lived in societies in which Islamic civilization was dominant
and who identified with its cultural values. (The appellation ‘Islamic
philosophy’ is misleading, for it suggests a specific religious content that
was not necessarily there – just as medieval Latin philosophy is not
“Christian” philosophy.) In the historical evolution of Western philosophy it
is the heir to post-Plotinian late Greek philosophy and the immediate precursor
of later medieval philosophy, which it heavily influenced and to which it
exhibits a parallel but independent development after Avicenna well into the
twentieth century. The philosophical curriculum of higher education that had
spread among the Hellenized peoples of Egypt, the Middle East, and Iran in the
sixth century followed the classification of the sciences current in
Alexandria, a classification that had developed from that of Aristotle’s works.
Aristotle’s Organon, including the Rhetoric and Poetics, and prefaced by
Porphyry’s Isagoge, constituted the canonical nine books on logic, the
instrument of philosophy. Philosophy proper was then divided into theoretical
and practical: theoretical philosophy was further subdivided into physics,
mathematics, and metaphysics; and practical into ethics, economics (household
management), and politics. Carriers of this higher education were primarily the
Eastern churches and monastic centers in the Fertile Crescent. With the advent
of Islam in the seventh Arabic philosophy Arabic philosophy 40 4065A- AM 40
century and the eventual spread of Arabic as the language of learning, the
entire curriculum was translated upon demand into Arabic by Syriacspeaking
Christians in the eighth through the tenth centuries. The demand from Arab
intellectuals, who by the time of the translations had developed a significant
scholarly tradition of their own and actively commissioned the translations.
The entire corpus of Aristotle’s writings, together with the complete range of
commentaries from Alexander of Aphrodisias onward, constituted in Arabic the
standard textbooks in logic, physics (including meteorology, the theory of the
soul, and zoology), metaphysics, and ethics. Metaphysics was also studied as a
rule in conjunction with or in the light of the pseudoAristotelian Theologia
Aristotelis (selections from Plotinus’s Enneads, Books 4–6) and the Liber de
causis, along with other selections from Proclus’s Elements of Theology.
Mathematics included geometry (Euclid’s Elements), astronomy (Ptolemy’s
Almagest), arithmetic (Nicomachus’s Introduction), and music (Ptolemy’s
Harmonics). Economics was based almost exclusively on the neo-Pythagorean
Bryson’s Oikonomikos, while politics mainly drew on Plato’s Republic and the
Laws and especially on the pseudepigraphic correspondence between Aristotle and
Alexander (Aristotle’s Politics was known in Arabic in fragmentary form). In
medicine, which was considered an applied science and as such remained outside
this classification, Galen’s entire works were translated. His abridgments of
Plato and his Stoicizing logic formed the basic source of knowledge on these
subjects in Arabic. The early history of Arabic philosophy presents two
independent lines of development. One is associated with the first philosopher
and Arab polymath al-Kindi (d.873) and his followers, notably as-Sarakhsi
(d.889), Abu-Zayd alBalkhi (d.934), and al-‘Amiri (d.992). These philosophers,
who appear to stand closer to the Neoplatonism of Athens than to the
neo-Aristotelianism of Alexandria, sought in their works to present the various
parts of philosophy to an Arab audience, integrate them into Islamic
intellectual life, and solve the philosophical problems that arose in the
process. The famous physician Rhazes (Abu-Bakr ar-Razi, d.925) may be tenuously
related to this line, although he appears to be mostly an autodidact and his
philosophy was decidedly more eclectic, leaving no following. The second is
that of the Aristotelians of Baghdad, founded by the Nestorian scholar and translator
Matta Ibn Yanus (d.940). His Aristotelianism can be traced directly to the
Alexandrian commentators and reaches beyond them to Alexander of Aphrodisias
and Themistius. His students, al-Farabi (d.950) and Yahya Ibn ‘Adi (d.974), and
the wide circle of disciples of the latter, prominent among whom are
Abu-Sulayman as-Sijistani (d.c.985), ‘Isa Ibn-Zur‘a (d.1008), AlHasan Ibn-Suwar
(d.c.1030), and Abu-l-Faraj Ibn at-Tayyib (d.1043), engaged in rigorous textual
analysis and philosophical interpretation of Aristotle’s works and composed
independent monographs on all branches of philosophy. The Aristotelian line of
Baghdad, and especially the work of al-Farabi, was transmitted to Islamic Spain
(al-Andalus) toward the end of the tenth century and formed the basis of the
philosophical tradition there, whose major exponents were Ibn Bajja (Avempace,
d.1139), Ibn Tufayl (d.1186), Averroes (Ibn Rushd, d.1198), and Maimonides (Ibn
Maymun, d.1204). This tradition came to an end with the reconquista of all
Islamic Spain except Granada about two decades after the death of Ibn Tumlas
(d.1223), the last major Andalusian philosopher. These two lines eventually
merge in the work of Avicenna, who set himself the task of synthesizing, in the
light of concerns valid in his time, the divergent tendencies of Aristotelian
philosophy as it had developed throughout the ages. The Alexandrian schema of
the classification of the sciences, which was adopted by Arabic philosophy,
implicitly also presented, by means of the connections it established among the
various subjects, a blueprint of a work that would encompass all philosophy.
Philosophers prior to Avicenna, both the Greeks after Plotinus and the Arabs,
failed to note its potential as an outline for a comprehensive work on all philosophy,
and had worked on different parts of it. Avicenna was the first to perceive
this and to create in his various writings an internally consistent system
having mutually interdependent parts and based on the syllogistic logic of
Aristotle. His philosophical summae thus mark the end of ancient and the
beginning of Scholastic philosophy. In these works Avicenna paid relatively
little attention to certain parts of philosophy, in particular the mathematical
part of theoretical, and virtually the entirety of practical, philosophy. As a
result, Arabic philosophy after him concentrated on three major fields – logic,
physics, and metaphysics – which became the norm. Practical philosophy
developed along different lines, to a large extent divorced from mainstream
philosophy. The highly influential work by Miskawayh (d.1030) on ethics
provided a model that was followed by later treatises, which constituted a
sepArabic philosophy Arabic philosophy 41 4065A- AM 41
arate genre of philosophical writings. As for mathematics, its different parts
were pursued largely independently of the rest of philosophy. After Avicenna,
Arabic philosophy was dominated by his thought and developed along the lines of
the reconstructed Peripateticism he established. In the first place, his
powerful integrative systematization of philosophy elicited a reaction by
certain philosophers toward a more pristine Aristotelianism, notably by
Averroes, ‘Abd-al-Latif al-Baghdadi (d.1231), and the eighteenth-century
Ottoman scholar Yanyali Esat (As‘ad of Yanya, d.1730), who even executed new
Arabic translations from the Greek of some of Aristotle’s physical works.
Secondly, it generated among his followers, notable among whom are Nafir-ad-Din
at-Tusi (d.1274) and Qutb-ad-Din ar-Razi (d.1364), a long series of
philosophically fecund commentaries and supercommentaries. Thirdly, it forced
most theological writing to adopt logic as its method, and philosophical,
rather than theological, analysis as the means of argumentation, a procedure
established by al-Ghazali (d.1111) and consolidated by Fakhr-ad-Din ar-Razi
(d.1209). And fourthly, it formed the basis for the further development of his
metaphysics (in particular the concepts of essence and existence and the schema
of emanation) through the incorporation of the illuminationist philosophy of
Suhrawardi of Aleppo (d.1193) and the mystical theories of Ibn ‘Arabi (d.1240)
in the works of Shiite philosophers active since Safavid times (sixteenth
century). This movement, initiated by Mir Damad (d.1632) and developed by his
pupil Mulla Fadra (d.1640), has continued after the latter’s death among
Iranian philosophers writing partly also in Persian. The colonization of the
Arab world by Western powers since the nineteenth century has resulted in the
spread of modern European, and especially French, philosophy among Arab
intellectuals. Modern Arab philosophical thought is now developing along these
lines while at the same time efforts are being made to relate it to traditional
Arabic philosophy. AL-FARABI, AL-GHAZALi,
AL-KINDI, ARISTOTLE, AVERROES, AVICENNA, ISLAMIC NEOPLATONISM. D.Gu. aradhya,
Sanskrit word meaning ‘object of worship or reverence’. In traditional Indian
society, reverence was almost a way of life. Elders, especially one’s parents
and teachers, were held in godlike esteem. The Indians revered life in any form
as sacred; hence, ahimsa (nonviolence) and vegetarianism were two important
features of the ideal Indian life. In the Hindu polytheistic tradition, which
continues even today, the countless Vedic deities, along with the later gods
and goddesses in the Hindu pantheon, serve as aradhya objects. A popular form
of aradhya in today’s Hindu society is often a chosen deity worshiped in a
household. AHIMSA. D.K.C. Arcesilaus of
Pitane (c.315–242 B.C.), Greek Skeptic philosopher, founder of the Middle
Academy. Influenced by Socratic elenchus, he claimed that, unlike Socrates, he
was not even certain that he was certain of nothing. He shows the influence of
Pyrrho in attacking the Stoic doctrine that the subjective certainty of the
wise is the criterion of truth. At the theoretical level he advocated epoche,
suspension of rational judgment; at the practical, he argued that eulogon,
probability, can justify action – an early version of coherentism. His ethical
views were not extreme; he held, e.g., that one should attend to one’s own life
rather than external objects. Though he wrote nothing except verse, he led the
Academy into two hundred years of Skepticism. R.C. Archelaus of Athens.
Archytas (fl. 400–350 B.C.),
Greek Pythagorean philosopher from Tarentum in southern Italy. He was elected
general seven times and sent a ship to rescue Plato from Dionysius II of
Syracuse in 361. He is famous for solutions to specific mathematical problems,
such as the doubling of the cube, but little is known about his general
philosophical principles. His proof that the numbers in a superparticular ratio
have no mean proportional has relevance to music theory, as does his work with
the arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic means. He gave mathematical accounts of
the diatonic, enharmonic, and chromatic scales and developed a theory of
acoustics. Fragments 1 and 2 and perhaps 3 are authentic, but most material
preserved in his name is spurious.
PYTHAGORAS. C.A.H. Arendt, Hannah (1906–75), German-born American social
and political theorist. She was aradhya Arendt, Hannah 42 4065A- AM 42
educated in her native Germany, studying with Heidegger and Jaspers; fled to
France in 1933; and emigrated in 1941 to the United States, where she taught at
various universities. Her major works are The Origins of Totalitarianism
(1951), The Human Condition (1958), Between Past and Future (1961), On
Revolution (1963), Crises of the Republic (1972), and The Life of the Mind
(1978). In Arendt’s view, for reasons established by Kant and deepened by
Nietzsche, there is a breach between being and thinking, one that cannot be
closed by thought. Understood as philosophizing or contemplation, thinking is a
form of egoism that isolates us from one another and our world. Despite Kant,
modernity remains mired in egoism, a condition compounded by the emergence of a
“mass” that consists of bodies with needs temporarily met by producing and
consuming and which demands governments that minister to these needs. In place
of thinking, laboring, and the administration of things now called democracy,
all of which are instrumental but futile as responses to the “thrown” quality
of our condition, Arendt proposed to those capable of it a mode of being,
political action, that she found in pronounced form in pre-Socratic Greece and
briefly but gloriously at the founding of the Roman and American republics.
Political action is initiation, the making of beginnings that can be explained
neither causally nor teleologically. It is done in the space of appearances
constituted by the presence of other political actors whose re-sponses – the
telling of equally unpredictable stories concerning one another’s actions –
determine what actions are taken and give character to the acting participants.
In addition to the refined discernments already implied, political action
requires the courage to initiate one knows not what. Its outcome is power; not
over other people or things but mutual empowerment to continue acting in
concert and thereby to overcome egoism and achieve (positive) freedom and
humanity.
arete, ancient Greek term
meaning ‘virtue’ or ‘excellence’. In philosophical contexts, the term was used
mainly of virtues of human character; in broader contexts, arete was applicable
to many different sorts of excellence. The cardinal virtues in the classical
period were courage, wisdom, temperance (sophrosune), piety, and justice.
Sophists such as Protagoras claimed to teach such virtues, and Socrates
challenged their credentials for doing so. Several early Platonic dialogues
show Socrates asking after definitions of virtues, and Socrates investigates
arete in other dialogues as well. Conventional views allowed that a person can
have one virtue (such as courage) but lack another (such as wisdom), but
Plato’s Protagoras shows Socrates defending his thesis of the unity of arete,
which implies that a person who has one arete has them all. Platonic accounts
of the cardinal virtues (with the exception of piety) are given in Book IV of
the Republic. Substantial parts of the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle are
given over to discussions of arete, which he divides into virtues of character
and virtues of intellect. This discussion is the ancestor of most modern
theories of virtue ethics. ARISTOTLE, VIRTUE
ETHICS. P.Wo. argument, a sequence of statements such that some of them (the
premises) purport to give reason to accept another of them, the conclusion.
Since we speak of bad arguments and weak arguments, the premises of an argument
need not really support the conclusion, but they must give some appearance of
doing so or the term ‘argument’ is misapplied. Logic is mainly concerned with
the question of validity: whether if the premises are true we would have reason
to accept the conclusion. A valid argument with true premises is called sound.
A valid deductive argument is one such that if we accept the premises we are
logically bound to accept the conclusion and if we reject the conclusion we are
logically bound to reject one or more of the premises. Alternatively, the
premises logically entail the conclusion. A good inductive argument – some
would reserve ‘valid’ for deductive arguments – is one such that if we accept
the premises we are logically bound to regard the conclusion as probable, and,
in addition, as more probable than it would be if the premises should be false.
A few arguments have only one premise and/or more than one conclusion. IMPLICATION, INDUCTION, LOGICAL CONSEQUENCE,
MATHEMATICAL FUNCTION. R.P. argument, a priori.A PRIORI. argument,
practical.PRACTICAL REASONING. argument from analogy.PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION,
PROBLEM OF OTHER MINDS. aretaic argument from analogy 43 4065A- AM 43
argument from authority.INFORMAL FALLACY. argument from design.PHILOSOPHY OF
RELIGION. argument from evil.PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. argument from
hallucination.PERCEPTION. argument from illusion.PERCEPTION. argument (of a
function).MATHEMATICAL FUNCTION. argumentum ad baculum.INFORMAL FALLACY.
argumentum ad hominem.INFORMAL FALLACY. argumentum ad ignorantium.INFORMAL
FALLACY. argumentum ad judicium.INFORMAL FALLACY. argumentum ad
misericordiam.INFORMAL FALLACY. argumentum ad populum.INFORMAL FALLACY.
argumentum ad verecundiam.INFORMAL FALLACY. argumentum consensus.INFORMAL
FALLACY.
Arianism, diverse but
related teachings in early Christianity that subordinated the Son to God the
Father. In reaction the church developed its doctrine of the Trinity, whereby
the Son (and Holy Spirit), though distinct persons (hypostases), share with the
Father, as his ontological equals, the one being or substance (ousia) of God.
Arius (c.250 – c.336) taught in Alexandria, where, on the hierarchical model of
Middle Platonism, he sharply distinguished Scripture’s transcendent God from
the Logos or Son incarnate in Jesus. The latter, subject to suffering and
humanly obedient to God, is inferior to the immutable Creator, the object of
that obedience. God alone is eternal and ungenerated; the Son, divine not by
nature but by God’s choosing, is generated, with a beginning: the unique creature,
through whom all else is made. The Council of Nicea, in 325, condemned Arius
and favored his enemy Athanasius, affirming the Son’s creatorhood and full
deity, having the same being or substance (homoousios) as the Father. Arianism
still flourished, evolving into the extreme view that the Son’s being was
neither the same as the Father’s nor like it (homoiousios), but unlike it
(anomoios). This too was anathematized, by the Council of 381 at
Constantinople, which, ratifying what is commonly called the Nicene Creed,
sealed orthodox Trinitarianism and the equality of the three persons against
Arian subordinationism. HOMOOUSIOS.
A.E.L. Aristippus of Cyrene.CYRENAICS.
Aristotle (384–322 B.C.),
preeminent Greek philosopher born in Stagira, hence sometimes called the
Stagirite. Aristotle came to Athens as a teenager and remained for two decades
in Plato’s Academy. Following Plato’s death in 347, Aristotle traveled to Assos
and to Lesbos, where he associated with Theophrastus and collected a wealth of
biological data, and later to Macedonia, where he tutored Alexander the Great.
In 335 he returned to Athens and founded his own philosophical school in the
Lyceum. The site’s colonnaded walk (peripatos) conferred on Aristotle and his
group the name ‘the Peripatetics’. Alexander’s death in 323 unleashed
antiMacedonian forces in Athens. Charged with impiety, and mindful of the fate
of Socrates, Aristotle withdrew to Chalcis, where he died. Chiefly influenced
by his association with Plato, Aristotle also makes wide use of the
preSocratics. A number of works begin by criticizing and, ultimately, building
on their views. The direction of Plato’s influence is debated. Some scholars
see Aristotle’s career as a measured retreat from his teacher’s doctrines. For
others he began as a confirmed anti-Platonist but returned to the fold as he
matured. More likely, Aristotle early on developed a keenly independent voice
that expressed enduring puzzlement over such Platonic doctrines as the separate
existence of Ideas and the construction of physical reality from
two-dimensional triangles. Such unease was no doubt heightened by Aristotle’s
appreciation for the evidential value of observation as well as by his
conviction that long-received and well-entrenched opinion is likely to contain
at least part of the truth. Aristotle reportedly wrote a few popular works for
publication, some of which are dialogues. Of these we have only fragments and
reports. Notably lost are also his lectures on the good and on the Ideas.
Ancient cataloguers also argument from authority Aristotle 44 4065A- AM 44
list under Aristotle’s name some 158 constitutions of Greek states. Of these,
only the Constitution of Athens has survived, on a papyrus discovered in 1890.
What remains is an enormous body of writing on virtually every topic of
philosophical significance. Much of it consists of detailed lecture notes,
working drafts, and accounts of his lectures written by others. Although
efforts may have been under way in Aristotle’s lifetime, Andronicus of Rhodes,
in the first century B.C., is credited with giving the Aristotelian corpus its
present organization. Virtually no extant manuscripts predate the ninth century
A.D., so the corpus has been transmitted by a complex history of manuscript
transcription. In 1831 the Berlin Academy published the first critical edition
of Aristotle’s work. Scholars still cite Aristotle by , column, and line of
this edition. Logic and language. The writings on logic and language are
concentrated in six early works: Categories, On Interpretation, Prior
Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, and Sophistical Refutations. Known
since late antiquity as the Organon, these works share a concern with what is
now called semantics. The Categories focuses on the relation between uncombined
terms, such as ‘white’ or ‘man’, and the items they signify; On Interpretation
offers an account of how terms combine to yield simple statements; Prior
Analytics provides a systematic account of how three terms must be distributed
in two categorical statements so as to yield logically a third such statement;
Posterior Analytics specifies the conditions that categorical statements must
meet to play a role in scientific explanation. The Topics, sometimes said to
include Sophistical Refutations, is a handbook of “topics” and techniques for
dialectical arguments concerning, principally, the four predicables: accident
(what may or may not belong to a subject, as sitting belongs to Socrates);
definition (what signifies a subject’s essence, as rational animal is the essence
of man); proprium (what is not in the essence of a subject but is unique to or
counterpredicable of it, as all and only persons are risible); and genus (what
is in the essence of subjects differing in species, as animal is in the essence
of both men and oxen). Categories treats the basic kinds of things that exist
and their interrelations. Every uncombined term, says Aristotle, signifies
essentially something in one of ten categories – a substance, a quantity, a
quality, a relative, a place, a time, a position, a having, a doing, or a being
affected. This doctrine underlies Aristotle’s admonition that there are as many
proper or per se senses of ‘being’ as there are categories. In order to isolate
the things that exist primarily, namely, primary substances, from all other
things and to give an account of their nature, two asymmetric relations of
ontological dependence are employed. First, substance (ousia) is distinguished
from the accidental categories by the fact that every accident is present in a
substance and, therefore, cannot exist without a substance in which to inhere.
Second, the category of substance itself is divided into ordinary individuals
or primary substances, such as Socrates, and secondary substances, such as the
species man and the genus animal. Secondary substances are said of primary
substances and indicate what kind of thing the subject is. A mark of this is
that both the name and the definition of the secondary substance can be
predicated of the primary substance, as both man and rational animal can be
predicated of Socrates. Universals in non-substance categories are also said of
subjects, as color is said of white. Therefore, directly or indirectly,
everything else is either present in or said of primary substances and without them
nothing would exist. And because they are neither present in a subject nor said
of a subject, primary substances depend on nothing else for their existence.
So, in the Categories, the ordinary individual is ontologically basic. On
Interpretation offers an account of those meaningful expressions that are true
or false, namely, statements or assertions. Following Plato’s Sophist, a simple
statement is composed of the semantically heterogeneous parts, name (onoma) and
verb (rhema). In ‘Socrates runs’ the name has the strictly referential function
of signifying the subject of attribution. The verb, on the other hand, is
essentially predicative, signifying something holding of the subject. Verbs
also indicate when something is asserted to hold and so make precise the
statement’s truth conditions. Simple statements also include general
categorical statements. Since medieval times it has become customary to refer
to the basic categoricals by letters: (A) Every man is white, (E) No man is
white, (I) Some man is white, and (O) Not every man is white. On Interpretation
outlines their logical relations in what is now called the square of
opposition: A & E are contraries, A & O and E & I are
contradictories, and A & I and E & O are superimplications. That A
implies I reflects the no longer current view that Aristotle Aristotle 45
4065A- AM 45 all affirmative statements carry
existential import. One ambition of On Interpretation is a theory of the truth
conditions for all statements that affirm or deny one thing or another.
However, statements involving future contingencies pose a special problem.
Consider Aristotle’s notorious sea battle. Either it will or it will not happen
tomorrow. If the first, then the statement ‘There will be a sea battle
tomorrow’ is now true. Hence, it is now fixed that the sea battle occur
tomorrow. If the second, then it is now fixed that the sea battle not occur
tomorrow. Either way there can be no future contingencies. Although some hold
that Aristotle would embrace the determinism they find implicit in this
consequence, most argue either that he suspends the law of excluded middle for
future contingencies or that he denies the principle of bivalence for future
contingent statements. On the first option Aristotle gives up the claim that
either the sea battle will happen tomorrow or not. On the second he keeps the
claim but allows that future contingent statements are neither true nor false.
Aristotle’s evident attachment to the law of excluded middle, perhaps, favors
the second option. Prior Analytics marks the invention of logic as a formal
discipline in that the work contains the first virtually complete system of
logical inference, sometimes called syllogistic. The fact that the first
chapter of the Prior Analytics reports that there is a syllogism whenever,
certain things being stated, something else follows of necessity, might suggest
that Aristotle intended to capture a general notion of logical consequence.
However, the syllogisms that constitute the system of the Prior Analytics are
restricted to the basic categorical statements introduced in On Interpretation.
A syllogism consists of three different categorical statements: two premises
and a conclusion. The Prior Analytics tells us which pairs of categoricals
logically yield a third. The fourteen basic valid forms are divided into three
figures and, within each figure, into moods. The system is foundational because
second- and third-figure syllogisms are reducible to first-figure syllogisms,
whose validity is self-evident. Although syllogisms are conveniently written as
conditional sentences, the syllogistic proper is, perhaps, best seen as a
system of valid deductive inferences rather than as a system of valid
conditional sentences or sentence forms. Posterior Analytics extends syllogistic
to science and scientific explanation. A science is a deductively ordered body
of knowledge about a definite genus or domain of nature. Scientific knowledge
(episteme) consists not in knowing that, e.g., there is thunder in the clouds,
but rather in knowing why there is thunder. So the theory of scientific
knowledge is a theory of explanation and the vehicle of explanation is the
first-figure syllogism Barbara: If (1) P belongs to all M and (2) M belongs to
all S, then (3) P belongs to all S. To explain, e.g., why there is thunder,
i.e., why there is noise in the clouds, we say: (3H) Noise (P) belongs to the
clouds (S) because (2H) Quenching of fire (M) belongs to the clouds (S) and
(1H) Noise (P) belongs to quenching of fire (M). Because what is explained in
science is invariant and holds of necessity, the premises of a scientific or
demonstrative syllogism must be necessary. In requiring that the premises be
prior to and more knowable than the conclusion, Aristotle embraces the view
that explanation is asymmetrical: knowledge of the conclusion depends on
knowledge of each premise, but each premise can be known independently of the
conclusion. The premises must also give the causes of the conclusion. To
inquire why P belongs to S is, in effect, to seek the middle term that gives
the cause. Finally, the premises must be immediate and non-demonstrable. A
premise is immediate just in case there is no middle term connecting its
subject and predicate terms. Were P to belong to M because of a new middle, M1,
then there would be a new, more basic premise, that is essential to the full
explanation. Ultimately, explanation of a received fact will consist in a chain
of syllogisms terminating in primary premises that are immediate. These serve
as axioms that define the science in question because they reflect the
essential nature of the fact to be explained – as in (1H) the essence of
thunder lies in the quenching of fire. Because they are immediate, primary
premises are not capable of syllogistic demonstration, yet they must be known
if syllogisms containing them are to constitute knowledge of the conclusion.
Moreover, were it necessary to know the primary premises syllogistically,
demonstration would proceed infinitely or in a circle. The first alternative
defeats the very possibility of explanation and the second undermines its
asymmetric character. Thus, the primary premises must be known by the direct
grasp of the mind (noûs). This just signals the appropriate way for the highest
principles of a science to be known – even demonstrable propositions can be
known directly, but they are explained only when located within the structure
of the relevant science, i.e., only when demonstrated syllogistically. Although
all sciences exhibit the same formal structure and use Aristotle Aristotle 46
4065A- AM 46 certain common principles, different
sciences have different primary premises and, hence, different subject matters.
This “one genus to one science” rule legislates that each science and its
explanations be autonomous. Aristotle recognizes three kinds of intellectual
discipline. Productive disciplines, such as house building, concern the making
of something external to the agent. Practical disciplines, such as ethics,
concern the doing of something not separate from the agent, namely, action and
choice. Theoretical disciplines are concerned with truth for its own sake. As
such, they alone are sciences in the special sense of the Posterior Analytics.
The three main kinds of special science are individuated by their objects – natural
science by objects that are separate but not changeless, mathematics by objects
that are changeless but not separate, and theology by separate and changeless
objects. The mathematician studies the same objects as the natural scientist
but in a quite different way. He takes an actual object, e.g. a chalk figure
used in demonstration, and abstracts from or “thinks away” those of its
properties, such as definiteness of size and imperfection of shape, that are
irrelevant to its standing as a perfect exemplar of the purely mathematical
properties under investigation. Mathematicians simply treat this abstracted
circle, which is not separate from matter, as if it were separate. In this way
the theorems they prove about the object can be taken as universal and
necessary. Physics. As the science of nature (physis), physics studies those
things whose principles and causes of change and rest are internal. Aristotle’s
central treatise on nature, the Physics, analyzes the most general features of
natural phenomena: cause, change, time, place, infinity, and continuity. The
doctrine of the four causes is especially important in Aristotle’s work. A
cause (aitia) is something like an explanatory factor. The material cause of a
house, for instance, is the matter (hyle) from which it is built; the moving or
efficient cause is the builder, more exactly, the form in the builder’s soul;
the formal cause is its plan or form (eidos); and the final cause is its
purpose or end (telos): provision of shelter. The complete explanation of the
coming to be of a house will factor in all of these causes. In natural
phenomena efficient, formal, and final causes often coincide. The form
transmitted by the father is both the efficient cause and the form of the
child, and the latter is glossed in terms of the child’s end or complete
development. This explains why Aristotle often simply contrasts matter and
form. Although its objects are compounds of both, physics gives priority to the
study of natural form. This accords with the Posterior Analytics’ insistence
that explanation proceed through causes that give the essence and reflects
Aristotle’s commitment to teleology. A natural process counts essentially as
the development of, say, an oak or a man because its very identity depends on
the complete form realized at its end. As with all things natural, the end is
an internal governing principle of the process rather than an external goal.
All natural things are subject to change (kinesis). Defined as the
actualization of the potential qua potential, a change is not an ontologically
basic item. There is no category for changes. Rather, they are reductively
explained in terms of more basic things – substances, properties, and
potentialities. A pale man, e.g., has the potentiality to be or become tanned.
If this potentiality is utterly unactualized, no change will ensue; if
completely actualized, the change will have ended. So the potentiality must be
actualized but not, so to speak, exhausted; i.e., it must be actualized qua
potentiality. Designed for the ongoing operations of the natural world, the
Physics’ definition of change does not cover the generation and corruption of
substantial items themselves. This sort of change, which involves matter and
elemental change, receives extensive treatment in On Generation and Corruption.
Aristotle rejects the atomists’ contention that the world consists of an
infinite totality of indivisible atoms in various arrangements. Rather, his
basic stuff is uniform elemental matter, any part of which is divisible into
smaller such parts. Because nothing that is actually infinite can exist, it is
only in principle that matter is always further dividable. So while
countenancing the potential infinite, Aristotle squarely denies the actual
infinite. This holds for the motions of the sublunary elemental bodies (earth,
air, fire, and water) as well as for the circular motions of the heavenly
bodies (composed of a fifth element, aether, whose natural motion is circular).
These are discussed in On the Heavens. The four sublunary elements are further
discussed in Meteorology, the fourth book of which might be described as an
early treatise on chemical combination. Psychology. Because the soul (psyche)
is officially defined as the form of a body with the potentiality for life, psychology
is a subfield of natural science. In effect, Aristotle applies the Aristotle
Aristotle 47 4065A- AM 47 apparatus of form and matter to the
traditional Greek view of the soul as the principle and cause of life. Although
even the nutritive and reproductive powers of plants are effects of the soul,
most of his attention is focused on topics that are psychological in the modern
sense. On the Soul gives a general account of the nature and number of the
soul’s principal cognitive faculties. Subsequent works, chiefly those collected
as the Parva naturalia, apply the general theory to a broad range of
psychological phenomena from memory and recollection to dreaming, sleeping, and
waking. The soul is a complex of faculties. Faculties, at least those distinctive
of persons, are capacities for cognitively grasping objects. Sight grasps
colors, smell odors, hearing sounds, and the mind grasps universals. An
organism’s form is the particular organization of its material parts that
enable it to exercise these characteristic functions. Because an infant, e.g.,
has the capacity to do geometry, Aristotle distinguishes two varieties of
capacity or potentiality (dynamis) and actuality (entelecheia). The infant is a
geometer only in potentiality. This first potentiality comes to him simply by
belonging to the appropriate species, i.e., by coming into the world endowed
with the potential to develop into a competent geometer. By actualizing,
through experience and training, this first potentiality, he acquires a first
actualization. This actualization is also a second potentiality, since it
renders him a competent geometer able to exercise his knowledge at will. The
exercise itself is a second actualization and amounts to active contemplation
of a particular item of knowledge, e.g. the Pythagorean theorem. So the soul is
further defined as the first actualization of a complex natural body.
Faculties, like sciences, are individuated by their objects. Objects of
perception (aisthesis) fall into three general kinds. Special (proper)
sensibles, such as colors and sounds, are directly perceived by one and only
one sense and are immune to error. They demarcate the five special senses:
sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Common sensibles, such as movement and
shape, are directly perceived by more than one special sense. Both special and
common sensibles are proper objects of perception because they have a direct
causal effect on the perceptual system. By contrast, the son of Diares is an
incidental sensible because he is perceived not directly but as a consequence
of directly perceiving something else that happens to be the son of Diares –
e.g., a white thing. Aristotle calls the mind (noûs) the place of forms because
it is able to grasp objects apart from matter. These objects are nothing like
Plato’s separately existing Forms. As Aristotelian universals, their existence
is entailed by and depends on their having instances. Thus, On the Soul’s
remark that universals are “somehow in the soul” only reflects their role in
assuring the autonomy of thought. The mind has no organ because it is not the
form or first actualization of any physical structure. So, unlike perceptual
faculties, it is not strongly dependent on the body. However, the mind thinks
its objects by way of images, which are something like internal
representations, and these are physically based. Insofar as it thus depends on
imagination (phantasia), the mind is weakly dependent on the body. This would
be sufficient to establish the naturalized nature of Aristotle’s mind were it
not for what some consider an incurably dualist intrusion. In distinguishing
something in the mind that makes all things from something that becomes all
things, Aristotle introduces the notorious distinction between the active and
passive intellects and may even suggest that the first is separable from the
body. Opinion on the nature of the active intellect diverges widely, some even
discounting it as an irrelevant insertion. But unlike perception, which depends
on external objects, thinking is up to us. Therefore, it cannot simply be a
matter of the mind’s being affected. So Aristotle needs a mechanism that
enables us to produce thoughts autonomously. In light of this functional role,
the question of active intellect’s ontological status is less pressing.
Biology. Aristotle’s biological writings, which constitute about a quarter of
the corpus, bring biological phenomena under the general framework of natural
science: the four causes, form and matter, actuality and potentiality, and
especially the teleological character of natural processes. If the Physics
proceeds in an a priori style, the History of Animals, Parts of Animals, and
Generation of Animals achieve an extraordinary synthesis of observation,
theory, and general scientific principle. History of Animals is a comparative
study of generic features of animals, including analogous parts, activities,
and dispositions. Although its morphological and physiological descriptions
show surprisingly little interest in teleology, Parts of Animals is squarely
teleological. Animal parts, especially organs, are ultimately differentiated by
function rather than morphology. The composition of, e.g., teeth and flesh is
determined by their role in the overall functioning of the organism and, hence,
requires Aristotle Aristotle 48 4065A-
AM 48 teleology. Generation of
Animals applies the form–matter and actuality–potentiality distinctions to
animal reproduction, inheritance, and the development of accidental
characteristics. The species form governs the development of an organism and
determines what the organism is essentially. Although in the Metaphysics and
elsewhere accidental characteristics, including inherited ones, are excluded
from science, in the biological writings form has an expanded role and explains
the inheritance of non-essential characteristics, such as eye color. The more
fully the father’s form is imposed on the minimally formed matter of the
mother, the more completely the father’s traits are passed on to the offspring.
The extent to which matter resists imposition of form determines the extent to
which traits of the mother emerge, or even those of more distant ancestors.
Aristotle shared the Platonists’ interest in animal classification. Recent
scholarship suggests that this is less an interest in elaborating a
Linnean-style taxonomy of the animal kingdom than an interest in establishing
the complex differentiae and genera central to definitions of living things.
The biological works argue, moreover, that no single differentia could give the
whole essence of a species and that the differentiae that do give the essence
will fall into more than one division. If the second point rejects the method
of dichotomous division favored by Plato and the Academy, the first counters
Aristotle’s own standard view that essence can be reduced to a single final
differentia. The biological sciences are not, then, automatically accommodated
by the Posterior Analytics model of explanation, where the essence or
explanatory middle is conceived as a single causal property. A number of themes
discussed in this section are brought together in a relatively late work,
Motion of Animals. Its psychophysical account of the mechanisms of animal
movement stands at the juncture of physics, psychology, and biology.
Metaphysics. In Andronicus’s edition, the fourteen books now known as the
Metaphysics were placed after the Physics, whence comes the word ‘metaphysics’,
whose literal meaning is ‘what comes after the physics’. Aristotle himself
prefers ‘first philosophy’ or ‘wisdom’ (sophia). The subject is defined as the
theoretical science of the causes and principles of what is most knowable. This
makes metaphysics a limiting case of Aristotle’s broadly used distinction
between what is better known to us and what is better known by nature. The
genus animal, e.g., is better known by nature than the species man because it
is further removed from the senses and because it can be known independently of
the species. The first condition suggests that the most knowable objects would
be the separately existing and thoroughly non-sensible objects of theology and,
hence, that metaphysics is a special science. The second condition suggests
that the most knowable objects are simply the most general notions that apply
to things in general. This favors identifying metaphysics as the general
science of being qua being. Special sciences study restricted modes of being.
Physics, for instance, studies being qua having an internal principle of change
and rest. A general science of being studies the principles and causes of
things that are, simply insofar as they are. A good deal of the Metaphysics
supports this conception of metaphysics. For example, Book IV, on the principle
of non-contradiction, and Book X, on unity, similarity, and difference, treat
notions that apply to anything whatever. So, too, for the discussion of form
and actuality in the central books VII, VIII, and IX. Book XII, on the other
hand, appears to regard metaphysics as the special science of theology.
Aristotle himself attempts to reconcile these two conceptions of metaphysics.
Because it studies immovable substance, theology counts as first philosophy.
However, it is also general precisely because it is first, and so it will
include the study of being qua being. Scholars have found this solution as
perplexing as the problem. Although Book XII proves the causal necessity for
motion of an eternal substance that is an unmoved mover, this establishes no
conceptual connection between the forms of sensible compounds and the pure form
that is the unmoved mover. Yet such a connection is required, if a single
science is to encompass both. Problems of reconciliation aside, Aristotle had
to face a prior difficulty concerning the very possibility of a general science
of being. For the Posterior Analytics requires the existence of a genus for
each science but the Metaphysics twice argues that being is not a genus. The
latter claim, which Aristotle never relinquishes, is implicit in the
Categories, where being falls directly into kinds, namely, the categories.
Because these highest genera do not result from differentiation of a single
genus, no univocal sense of being covers them. Although being is, therefore,
ambiguous in as many ways as there are categories, a thread connects them. The
ontological priority accorded primary substance in the Categories is made part
of the very definition of non-substantial entities Aristotle Aristotle 49
4065A- AM 49 in the Metaphysics: to be an accident is
by definition to be an accident of some substance. Thus, the different senses
of being all refer to the primary kind of being, substance, in the way that
exercise, diet, medicine, and climate are healthy by standing in some relation
to the single thing health. The discovery of focal meaning, as this is
sometimes called, introduces a new way of providing a subject matter with the
internal unity required for science. Accordingly, the Metaphysics modifies the
strict “one genus to one science” rule of the Posterior Analytics. A single
science may also include objects whose definitions are different so long as
these definitions are related focally to one thing. So focal meaning makes
possible the science of being qua being. Focal meaning also makes substance the
central object of investigation. The principles and causes of being in general
can be illuminated by studying the principles and causes of the primary
instance of being. Although the Categories distinguishes primary substances
from other things that are and indicates their salient characteristics (e.g.,
their ability to remain one and the same while taking contrary properties), it
does not explain why it is that primary substances have such characteristics.
The difficult central books of the Metaphysics – VII, VIII, and IX –
investigate precisely this. In effect, they ask what, primarily, about the
Categories’ primary substances explains their nature. Their target, in short,
is the substance of the primary substances of the Categories. As concrete
empirical particulars, the latter are compounds of form and matter (the distinction
is not explicit in the Categories) and so their substance must be sought among
these internal structural features. Thus, Metaphysics VII considers form,
matter, and the compound of form and matter, and quickly turns to form as the
best candidate. In developing a conception of form that can play the required
explanatory role, the notion of essence (to ti en einai) assumes center stage.
The essence of a man, e.g., is the cause of certain matter constituting a man,
namely, the soul. So form in the sense of essence is the primary substance of
the Metaphysics. This is obviously not the primary substance of the Categories
and, although the same word (eidos) is used, neither is this form the species
of the Categories. The latter is treated in the Metaphysics as a kind of
universal compound abstracted from particular compounds and appears to be
denied substantial status. While there is broad, though not universal,
agreement that in the Metaphysics form is primary substance, there is equally
broad disagreement over whether this is particular form, the form belonging to
a single individual, or species form, the form common to all individuals in the
species. There is also lively discussion concerning the relation of the
Metaphysics doctrine of primary substance to the earlier doctrine of the
Categories. Although a few scholars see an outright contradiction here, most
take the divergence as evidence of the development of Aristotle’s views on
substance. Finally, the role of the central books in the Metaphysics as a whole
continues to be debated. Some see them as an entirely selfcontained analysis of
form, others as preparatory to Book XII’s discussion of non-sensible form and
the role of the unmoved mover as the final cause of motion. Practical
philosophy. Two of Aristotle’s most heralded works, the Nicomachean Ethics and
the Politics, are treatises in practical philosophy. Their aim is effective
action in matters of conduct. So they deal with what is up to us and can be
otherwise because in this domain lie choice and action. The practical nature of
ethics lies mainly in the development of a certain kind of agent. The
Nicomachean Ethics was written, Aristotle reminds us, “not in order to know
what virtue is, but in order to become good.” One becomes good by becoming a
good chooser and doer. This is not simply a matter of choosing and doing right
actions but of choosing or doing them in the right way. Aristotle assumes that,
for the most part, agents know what ought to be done (the evil or vicious
person is an exception). The akratic or morally weak agent desires to do other
than what he knows ought to be done and acts on this desire against his better
judgment. The enkratic or morally strong person shares the akratic agent’s
desire but acts in accordance with his better judgment. In neither kind of
choice are desire and judgment in harmony. In the virtuous, on the other hand,
desire and judgment agree. So their choices and actions will be free of the
conflict and pain that inevitably accompany those of the akratic and enkratic
agent. This is because the part of their soul that governs choice and action is
so disposed that desire and right judgment coincide. Acquiring a stable
disposition (hexis) of this sort amounts to acquiring moral virtue (ethike
arete). The disposition is concerned with choices as would be determined by the
person of practical wisdom (phronesis); these will be actions lying between
extreme alternatives. They will lie in a mean – popularly called the “golden
mean” – relative to the talents and stores of the agent. Choosing in this way
is not easily done. It involves, for instance, feeling anger or extending
Aristotle Aristotle 50 4065A- AM 50 generosity at the right time, toward the
right people, in the right way, and for the right reasons. Intellectual
virtues, such as excellence at mathematics, can be acquired by teaching, but
moral virtue cannot. I may know what ought to be done and even perform virtuous
acts without being able to act virtuously. Nonetheless, because moral virtue is
a disposition concerning choice, deliberate performance of virtuous acts can,
ultimately, instill a disposition to choose them in harmony and with pleasure
and, hence, to act virtuously. Aristotle rejected Plato’s transcendental Form
of the Good as irrelevant to the affairs of persons and, in general, had little
sympathy with the notion of an absolute good. The goal of choice and action is
the human good, namely, living well. This, however, is not simply a matter of
possessing the requisite practical disposition. Practical wisdom, which is
necessary for living well, involves skill at calculating the best means to
achieve one’s ends and this is an intellectual virtue. But the ends that are
presupposed by deliberation are established by moral virtue. The end of all
action, the good for man, is happiness (eudaimonia). Most things, such as
wealth, are valued only as a means to a worthy end. Honor, pleasure, reason,
and individual virtues, such as courage and generosity, are deemed worthy in
their own right but they can also be sought for the sake of eudaimonia.
Eudaimonia alone can be sought only for its own sake. Eudaimonia is not a
static state of the soul but a kind of activity (energeia) of the soul –
something like human flourishing. The happy person’s life will be selfsufficient
and complete in the highest measure. The good for man, then, is activity in
accordance with virtue or the highest virtue, should there be one. Here
‘virtue’ means something like excellence and applies to much besides man. The
excellence of an ax lies in its cutting, that of a horse in its equestrian
qualities. In short, a thing’s excellence is a matter of how well it performs
its characteristic functions or, we might say, how well it realizes its nature.
The natural functions of persons reside in the exercise of their natural
cognitive faculties, most importantly, the faculty of reason. So human
happiness consists in activity in accordance with reason. However, persons can
exercise reason in practical or in purely theoretical matters. The first suggests
that happiness consists in the practical life of moral virtue, the second that
it consists in the life of theoretical activity. Most of the Nicomachean Ethics
is devoted to the moral virtues but the final book appears to favor theoretical
activity (theoria) as the highest and most choiceworthy end. It is man’s
closest approach to divine activity. Much recent scholarship is devoted to the
relation between these two conceptions of the good, particularly, to whether
they are of equal value and whether they exclude or include one another. Ethics
and politics are closely connected. Aristotle conceives of the state as a
natural entity arising among persons to serve a natural function. This is not
merely, e.g., provision for the common defense or promotion of trade. Rather,
the state of the Politics also has eudaimonia as its goal, namely, fostering
the complete and selfsufficient lives of its citizens. Aristotle produced a
complex taxonomy of constitutions but reduced them, in effect, to three kinds:
monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Which best serves the natural end of a
state was, to some extent, a relative matter for Aristotle. Although he appears
to have favored democracy, in some circumstances monarchy might be appropriate.
The standard ordering of Aristotle’s works ends with the Rhetoric and the
Poetics. The Rhetoric’s extensive discussion of oratory or the art of
persuasion locates it between politics and literary theory. The relatively
short Poetics is devoted chiefly to the analysis of tragedy. It has had an
enormous historical influence on aesthetic theory in general as well as on the
writing of drama. AQUINAS, ESSENTIALISM,
METAPHYSICS, PLATO, PRACTICAL REASONING, SOCRATES, SYLLOGISM, VIRTUE ETHICS.
M.V.W. Aristotle, commentaries on.COMMENTARIES ON ARISTOTLE. arithmetic
hierarchy.HIERARCHY. arity.DEGREE. Arius.ARIANISM. Arminianism.ARMINIUS.
Arminius, Jacobus (1560–1609), Dutch
theologian who, as a Dutch Reformed pastor and later professor at the
University of Leiden, challenged Calvinist orthodoxy on predestination and free
will. After his death, followers codified Arminius’s views in a document
asserting that God’s grace is necessary for salvation, but not irresistible:
the divine decree depends on human free choice. This became the basis for Arminianism,
which was condemned by the Dutch ReAristotle, commentaries on Arminius, Jacobus
51 4065A- AM 51 formed synod but vigorously debated for
centuries among Protestant theologians of different denominations. The term
‘Arminian’ is still occasionally applied to theologians who defend a free human
response to divine grace against predestinationism. R.H.K. Armstrong, David M.
(b.1926), Australian philosopher of mind and metaphysician, and until his
retirement Challis Professor of Philosophy at Sydney, noted for his allegiance
to a physicalist account of consciousness and to a realist view of properties
conceived as universals. A Materialist Theory of the Mind (1968) develops a
scientifically motivated version of the view that mental states are identical with
physical states of the central nervous system. Universals and Scientific
Realism (1978) and What Is a Law of Nature? (1983) argue that a scientifically
adequate ontology must include universals in order to explain the status of
natural laws. Armstrong contends that laws must be construed as expressing
relations of necessitation between universals rather than mere regularities
among particulars. However, he is only prepared to acknowledge the existence of
such universals as are required for the purposes of scientific explanation.
Moreover, he adopts an “immanent” or “Aristotelian” (as opposed to a
“transcendent” or “Platonic”) realism, refusing to accept the existence of
uninstantiated universals and denying that universals somehow exist “outside”
space and time. More recently, Armstrong has integrated his scientifically
inspired physicalism and property realism within the overall framework of an
ontology of states of affairs, notably in A World of States of Affairs (1997).
Here he advocates the truthmaker principle that every truth must be made true
by some existing state of affairs and contends that states of affairs, rather
than the universals and particulars that he regards as their constituents, are
the basic building blocks of reality. Within this ontology, which in some ways
resembles that of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, necessity and possibility are
accommodated by appeal to combinatorial principles. As Armstrong explains in A
Combinatorial Theory of Possibility (1989), this approach offers an ontologically
economical alternative to the realist conception of possible worlds defended by
David Lewis. LAWLIKE GENERALIZATION,
METAPHYSICAL REALISM, PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, SCIENTIFIC REALISM. E.J.L.
Arnauld, Antoine (1612–94), French theologian and philosopher, perhaps the most
important and best-known intellectual associated with the Jansenist community
at Port-Royal, as well as a staunch and orthodox champion of Cartesian
philosophy. His theological writings defend the Augustinian doctrine of
efficacious grace, according to which salvation is not earned by one’s own
acts, but granted by the irresistible grace of God. He also argues in favor of
a strict contritionism, whereby one’s absolution must be based on a true,
heartfelt repentance, a love of God, rather than a selfish fear of God’s
punishment. These views brought him and Port-Royal to the center of religious
controversy in seventeenth-century France, as Jansenism came to be perceived as
a subversive extension of Protestant reform. Arnauld was also constantly
engaged in philosophical disputation, and was regarded as one of the sharpest
and most philosophically acute thinkers of his time. His influence on several
major philosophers of the period resulted mainly from his penetrating criticism
of their systems. In 1641, Arnauld was asked to comment on Descartes’s
Meditations. The objections he sent – regarding, among other topics, the
representational nature of ideas, the circularity of Descartes’s proofs for the
existence of God, and the apparent irreconcilability of Descartes’s conception
of material substance with the Catholic doctrine of Eucharistic
transubstantiation – were considered by Descartes to be the most intelligent
and serious of all. Arnauld offered his objections in a constructive spirit,
and soon became an enthusiastic defender of Descartes’s philosophy, regarding
it as beneficial both to the advancement of human learning and to Christian
piety. He insists, for example, that the immortality of the soul is well
grounded in Cartesian mind– body dualism. In 1662, Arnauld composed (with
Pierre Nicole) the Port-Royal Logic, an influential treatise on language and
reasoning. After several decades of theological polemic, during which he fled
France to the Netherlands, Arnauld resumed his public philosophical activities
with the publication in 1683 of On True and False Ideas and in 1685 of
Philosophical and Theological Reflections on the New System of Nature and
Grace. These two works, opening salvos in what would become a long debate,
constitute a detailed attack on Malebranche’s theology and its philosophical
foundations. In the first, mainly philosophical treatise, Arnauld insists that
ideas, or the mental representations that mediate human knowledge, are nothing
but acts of the mind that put us in direct cognitive and perceptual contact
with things in the world. (Malebranche, as Arnauld reads him, Armstrong, David
M. Arnauld, Antoine 52 4065A- AM 52 argues that ideas are immaterial but
nonmental objects in God’s understanding that we know and perceive instead of
physical things. Thus, the debate is often characterized as between Arnauld’s
direct realism and Malebranche’s representative theory.) Such mental acts also
have representational content, or what Arnauld (following Descartes) calls
“objective reality.” This content explains the act’s intentionality, or
directedness toward an object. Arnauld would later argue with Pierre Bayle, who
came to Malebranche’s defense, over whether all mental phenomena have
intentionality, as Arnauld believes, or, as Bayle asserts, certain events in
the soul (e.g., pleasures and pains) are non-intentional. This initial critique
of Malebranche’s epistemology and philosophy of mind, however, was intended by
Arnauld only as a prolegomenon to the more important attack on his theology; in
particular, on Malebranche’s claim that God always acts by general volitions
and never by particular volitions. This view, Arnauld argues, undermines the
true Catholic system of divine providence and threatens the efficacy of God’s
will by removing God from direct governance of the world. In 1686, Arnauld also
entered into discussions with Leibniz regarding the latter’s Discourse on
Metaphysics. In the ensuing correspondence, Arnauld focuses his critique on
Leibniz’s concept of substance and on his causal theory, the preestablished
harmony. In this exchange, like the one with Malebranche, Arnauld is concerned
to preserve what he takes to be the proper way to conceive of God’s freedom and
providence; although his remarks on substance (in which he objects to Leibniz’s
reintroduction of “substantial forms”) is also clearly motivated by his
commitment to a strict Cartesian ontology – bodies are nothing more than
extension, devoid of any spiritual element. Most of his philosophical activity
in the latter half of the century, in fact, is a vigorous defense of
Cartesianism, particularly on theological grounds (e.g., demonstrating the
consistency between Cartesian metaphysics and the Catholic dogma of real
presence in the Eucharist), as it became the object of condemnation in both
Catholic and Protestant circles. BAYLE,
DESCARTES, LEIBNIZ, MALEBRANCHE. S.N. Arouet, François-Marie.VOLTAIRE. a
round.Appendix of Special Symbols. arrow paradox.ZENO’S PARADOXES. Arrow’s paradox,
also called Arrow’s (impossibility) theorem, a major result in social choice
theory, named for its discoverer, economist Kenneth Arrow. It is intuitive to
suppose that the preferences of individuals in a society can be expressed
formally, and then aggregated into an expression of social preferences, a
social choice function. Arrow’s paradox is that individual preferences having
certain well-behaved formalizations demonstrably cannot be aggregated into a
similarly well-behaved social choice function satisfying four plausible formal
conditions: (1) collective rationality – any set of individual orderings and
alternatives must yield a social ordering; (2) Pareto optimality – if all
individuals prefer one ordering to another, the social ordering must also
agree; (3) non-dictatorship – the social ordering must not be identical to a
particular individual’s ordering; and (4) independence of irrelevant
alternatives – the social ordering depends on no properties of the individual
orderings other than the orders themselves, and for a given set of alternatives
it depends only on the orderings of those particular alternatives. Most
attempts to resolve the paradox have focused on aspects of (1) and (4). Some
argue that preferences can be rational even if they are intransitive. Others
argue that cardinal orderings, and hence, interpersonal comparisons of
preference intensity, are relevant.
DECISION THEORY, SOCIAL CHOICE THEORY. A.N. Arrow’s theorem.ARROW’s
PARADOX. art, philosophy of.AESTHETICS. art, representational theory
of.MIMESIS. artifactuality.INSTITUTIONAL THEORY OF ART. artificial
intelligence, also called AI, the scientific effort to design and build
intelligent artifacts. Since the effort inevitably presupposes and tests
theories about the nature of intelligence, it has implications for the philosophy
of mind – perhaps even more than does empirical psychology. For one thing,
actual construction amounts to a direct assault on the mind–body problem;
should it succeed, some form of materialism would seem to be vindicated. For
another, a working model, even a limited one, requires a more global conception
of what intelligence is than do experiments to test specific hypotheses. In
fact, psychology’s own overview of its domain Arouet, François-Marie artificial
intelligence 53 4065A- AM 53 has been much influenced by fundamental
concepts drawn from AI. Although the idea of an intelligent artifact is old,
serious scientific research dates only from the 1950s, and is associated with
the development of programmable computers. Intelligence is understood as a
structural property or capacity of an active system; i.e., it does not matter
what the system is made of, as long as its parts and their interactions yield
intelligent behavior overall. For instance, if solving logical problems,
playing chess, or conversing in English manifests intelligence, then it is not
important whether the “implementation” is electronic, biological, or
mechanical, just as long as it solves, plays, or talks. Computers are relevant
mainly because of their flexibility and economy: software systems are unmatched
in achievable active complexity per invested effort. Despite the generality of
programmable structures and the variety of historical approaches to the mind,
the bulk of AI research divides into two broad camps – which we can think of as
language-oriented and pattern-oriented, respectively. Conspicuous by their
absence are significant influences from the conditionedresponse paradigm, the
psychoanalytic tradition, the mental picture idea, empiricist (atomistic)
associationism, and so on. Moreover, both AI camps tend to focus on cognitive
issues, sometimes including perception and motor control. Notably omitted are
such psychologically important topics as affect, personality, aesthetic and
moral judgment, conceptual change, mental illness, etc. Perhaps such matters
are beyond the purview of artificial intelligence; yet it is an unobvious
substantive thesis that intellect can be cordoned off and realized
independently of the rest of human life. The two main AI paradigms emerged
together in the 1950s (along with cybernetic and information-theoretic
approaches, which turned out to be dead ends); and both are vigorous today. But
for most of the sixties and seventies, the language-based orientation dominated
attention and funding, for three signal reasons. First, computer data
structures and processes themselves seemed languagelike: data were
syntactically and semantically articulated, and processing was localized
(serial). Second, twentieth-century linguistics and logic made it intelligible
that and how such systems might work: automatic symbol manipulation made clear,
powerful sense. Finally, the sorts of performance most amenable to the approach
– explicit reasoning and “figuring out” – strike both popular and educated
opinion as particularly “intellectual”; hence, early successes were all the
more impressive, while “trivial” stumbling blocks were easier to ignore. The
basic idea of the linguistic or symbol manipulation camp is that thinking is
like talking – inner discourse – and, hence, that thoughts are like sentences.
The suggestion is venerable; and Hobbes even linked it explicitly to
computation. Yet, it was a major scientific achievement to turn the general
idea into a serious theory. The account does not apply only, or even especially,
to the sort of thinking that is accessible to conscious reflection. Nor is the
“language of thought” supposed to be much like English, predicate logic, LISP,
or any other familiar notation; rather, its detailed character is an empirical
research problem. And, despite fictional stereotypes, the aim is not to build
superlogical or inhumanly rational automata. Our human tendencies to take
things for granted, make intuitive leaps, and resist implausible conclusions
are not weaknesses that AI strives to overcome but abilities integral to real
intelligence that AI aspires to share. In what sense, then, is thought supposed
to be languagelike? Three items are essential. First, thought tokens have a
combinatorial syntactic structure; i.e., they are compounds of welldefined
atomic constituents in well-defined (recursively specifiable) arrangements. So
the constituents are analogous to words, and the arrangements are analogous to
phrases and sentences; but there is no supposition that they should resemble
any known words or grammar. Second, the contents of thought tokens, what they
“mean,” are a systematic function of their composition: the constituents and
forms of combination have determinate significances that together determine the
content of any wellformed compound. So this is like the meaning of a sentence
being determined by its grammar and the meanings of its words. Third, the
intelligent progress or sequence of thought is specifiable by rules expressed
syntactically – they can be carried out by processes sensitive only to
syntactic properties. Here the analogy is to proof theory: the formal validity
of an argument is a matter of its according with rules expressed formally. But
this analogy is particularly treacherous, because it immediately suggests the
rigor of logical inference; but, if intelligence is specifiable by formal
rules, these must be far more permissive, context-sensitive, and so on, than
those of formal logic. Syntax as such is perfectly neutral as to how the
constituents are identified (by sound, by artificial intelligence artificial
intelligence 54 4065A- AM 54 shape, by magnetic profile) and arranged
(in time, in space, via address pointers). It is, in effect, a free parameter:
whatever can serve as a bridge between the semantics and the processing. The
account shares with many others the assumptions that thoughts are contentful
(meaningful) and that the processes in which they occur can somehow be realized
physically. It is distinguished by the two further theses that there must be
some independent way of describing these thoughts that mediates between
(simultaneously determines) their contents and how they are processed, and
that, so described, they are combinatorially structured. Such a description is
syntactical. We can distinguish two principal phases in language-oriented AI,
each lasting about twenty years. Very roughly, the first phase emphasized
processing (search and reasoning), whereas the second has emphasized
representation (knowledge). To see how this went, it is important to appreciate
the intellectual breakthrough required to conceive AI at all. A machine, such
as a computer, is a deterministic system, except for random elements. That is
fine for perfectly constrained domains, like numerical calculation, sorting,
and parsing, or for domains that are constrained except for prescribed
randomness, such as statistical modeling. But, in the general case, intelligent
behavior is neither perfectly constrained nor perfectly constrained with a
little random variation thrown in. Rather, it is generally focused and
sensible, yet also fallible and somewhat variable. Consider, e.g., chess
playing (an early test bed for AI): listing all the legal moves for any given
position is a perfectly constrained problem, and easy to program; but choosing
the best move is not. Yet an intelligent player does not simply determine which
moves would be legal and then choose one randomly; intelligence in chess play
is to choose, if not always the best, at least usually a good move. This is
something between perfect determinacy and randomness, a “between” that is not
simply a mixture of the two. How is it achievable in a machine? The crucial
innovation that first made AI concretely and realistically conceivable is that
of a heuristic procedure. (The term ‘heuristic’ derives from the Greek word for
discovery, as in Archimedes’ exclamation “Eureka!”) The relevant point for AI
is that discovery is a matter neither of following exact directions to a goal
nor of dumb luck, but of looking around sensibly, being guided as much as
possible by what you know in advance and what you find along the way. So a
heuristic procedure is one for sensible discovery, a procedure for sensibly
guided search. In chess, e.g., a player does well to bear in mind a number of
rules of thumb: other things being equal, rooks are more valuable than knights,
it is an asset to control the center of the board, and so on. Such guidelines,
of course, are not valid in every situation; nor will they all be best
satisfied by the same move. But, by following them while searching as far ahead
through various scenarios as possible, a player can make generally sensible
moves – much better than random – within the constraints of the game. This
picture even accords fairly well with the introspective feel of choosing a move,
particularly for less experienced players. The essential insight for AI is that
such roughand-ready (ceteris paribus) rules can be deterministically
programmed. It all depends on how you look at it. One and the same bit of
computer program can be, from one point of view, a deterministic, infallible
procedure for computing how a given move would change the relative balance of
pieces, and from another, a generally sensible but fallible procedure for
estimating how “good” that move would be. The substantive thesis about
intelligence – human and artificial alike – then is that our powerful but
fallible ability to form “intuitive” hunches, educated guesses, etc., is the
result of (largely unconscious) search, guided by such heuristic rules. The
second phase of language-inspired AI, dating roughly from the mid-1970s, builds
on the idea of heuristic procedure, but dramatically changes the emphasis. The
earlier work was framed by a conception of intelligence as finding solutions to
problems (good moves, e.g.). From such a perspective, the specification of the
problem (the rules of the game plus the current position) and the provision of
some heuristic guides (domain-specific rules of thumb) are merely a setting of
the parameters; the real work, the real exercise of intelligence, lies in the
intensive guided search undertaken in the specified terms. The later phase,
impressed not so much by our problem-solving prowess as by how well we get
along with “simple” common sense, has shifted the emphasis from search and reasoning
to knowledge. The motivation for this shift can be seen in the following two
sentences: We gave the monkey the banana because it was ripe. We gave the
monkey the banana because it was hungry. artificial intelligence artificial
intelligence 55 4065A- AM 55 The word ‘it’ is ambiguous, as the
terminal adjectives make clear. Yet listeners effortlessly understand what is
meant, to the point, usually, of not even noticing the ambiguity. The question
is, how? Of course, it is “just common sense” that monkeys don’t get ripe and
bananas don’t get hungry, so . . . But three further observations show that
this is not so much an answer as a restatement of the issue. First, sentences
that rely on common sense to avoid misunderstanding are anything but rare: conversation
is rife with them. Second, just about any odd fact that “everybody knows” can
be the bit of common sense that understanding the next sentence depends on; and
the range of such knowledge is vast. Yet, third, dialogue proceeds in real time
without a hitch, almost always. So the whole range of commonsense knowledge
must be somehow at our mental fingertips all the time. The underlying
difficulty is not with speed or quantity alone, but with relevance. How does a
system, given all that it knows about aardvarks, Alabama, and ax handles, “home
in on” the pertinent fact that bananas don’t get hungry, in the fraction of a
second it can afford to spend on the pronoun ‘it’? The answer proposed is both
simple and powerful: common sense is not just randomly stored information, but
is instead highly organized by topics, with lots of indexes, cross-references,
tables, hierarchies, and so on. The words in the sentence itself trigger the
“articles” on monkeys, bananas, hunger, and so on, and these quickly reveal that
monkeys are mammals, hence animals, that bananas are fruit, hence from plants,
that hunger is what animals feel when they need to eat – and that settles it.
The amount of search and reasoning is minimal; the issue of relevance is solved
instead by the antecedent structure in the stored knowledge itself. While this
requires larger and more elaborate systems, the hope is that it will make them
faster and more flexible. The other main orientation toward artificial
intelligence, the pattern-based approach – often called “connectionism” or
“parallel distributed processing” – reemerged from the shadow of symbol
processing only in the 1980s, and remains in many ways less developed. The
basic inspiration comes not from language or any other psychological phenomenon
(such as imagery or affect), but from the microstructure of the brain. The
components of a connectionist system are relatively simple active nodes – lots
of them – and relatively simple connections between those nodes – again, lots
of them. One important type (and the easiest to visualize) has the nodes
divided into layers, such that each node in layer A is connected to each node
in layer B, each node in layer B is connected to each node in layer C, and so
on. Each node has an activation level, which varies in response to the
activations of other, connected nodes; and each connection has a weight, which
determines how strongly (and in what direction) the activation of one node
affects that of the other. The analogy with neurons and synapses, though imprecise,
is intended. So imagine a layered network with finely tuned connection weights
and random (or zero) activation levels. Now suppose the activations of all the
nodes in layer A are set in some particular way – some pattern is imposed on
the activation state of this layer. These activations will propagate out along
all the connections from layer A to layer B, and activate some pattern there.
The activation of each node in layer B is a function of the activations of all
the nodes in layer A, and of the weights of all the connections to it from
those nodes. But since each node in layer B has its own connections from the
nodes in layer A, it will respond in its own unique way to this pattern of
activations in layer A. Thus, the pattern that results in layer B is a joint
function of the pattern that was imposed on layer A and of the pattern of
connection weights between the two layers. And a similar story can be told
about layer B’s influence on layer C, and so on, until some final pattern is
induced in the last layer. What are these patterns? They might be any number of
things; but two general possibilities can be distinguished. They might be
tantamount to (or substrata beneath) representations of some familiar sort,
such as sentencelike structures or images; or they might be a kind (or kinds)
of representation previously unknown. Now, people certainly do sometimes think
in sentences (and probably images); so, to the extent that networks are taken
as complete brain models, the first alternative must be at least partly right.
But, to that extent, the models are also more physiological than psychological:
it is rather the implemented sentences or images that directly model the mind.
Thus, it is the possibility of a new genus of representation – sometimes called
distributed representation – that is particularly exciting. On this
alternative, the patterns in the mind represent in some way other than by
mimetic imagery or articulate description. How? An important feature of all
network models is that there are two quite different categories of pattern. On
the one hand, there are the relatively ephemeral patterns of activation in
various artificial intelligence artificial intelligence 56 4065A- AM 56
groups of nodes; on the other, there are the relatively stable patterns of
connection strength among the nodes. Since there are in general many more
connections than nodes, the latter patterns are richer; and it is they that
determine the capabilities of the network with regard to the former patterns.
Many of the abilities most easily and “naturally” realized in networks can be
subsumed under the heading pattern completion: the connection weights are
adjusted – perhaps via a training regime – such that the network will complete
any of the activation patterns from a predetermined group. So, suppose some
fraction (say half) of the nodes in the net are clamped to the values they
would have for one of those patterns (say P) while the remainder are given
random (or default) activations. Then the network, when run, will reset the latter
activations to the values belonging to P – thus “completing” it. If the
unclamped activations are regarded as variations or deviations, pattern
completion amounts to normalization, or grouping by similarity. If the initial
or input nodes are always the same (as in layered networks), then we have
pattern association (or transformation) from input to output. If the input
pattern is a memory probe, pattern completion becomes access by content. If the
output pattern is an identifier, then it is pattern recognition. And so on.
Note that, although the operands are activation patterns, the “knowledge” about
them, the ability to complete them, is contained in the connection patterns;
hence, that ability or know-how is what the network represents. There is no obvious
upper bound on the possible refinement or intricacy of these pattern groupings
and associations. If the input patterns are sensory stimuli and the output
patterns are motor control, then we have a potential model of coordinated and
even skillful behavior. In a system also capable of language, a network model
(or component) might account for verbal recognition and content association,
and even such “nonliteral” effects as trope and tone. Yet at least some sort of
“symbol manipulation” seems essential for language use, regardless of how
networklike the implementation is. One current speculation is that it might
suffice to approximate a battery of symbolic processes as a special subsystem
within a cognitive system that fundamentally works on quite different
principles. The attraction of the pattern-based approach is, at this point, not
so much actual achievement as it is promise – on two grounds. In the first
place, the space of possible models, not only network topologies but also ways
of construing the patterns, is vast. Those built and tested so far have been,
for practical reasons, rather small; so it is possible to hope beyond their
present limitations to systems of significantly greater capability. But second,
and perhaps even more attractive, those directions in which patternbased
systems show the most promise – skills, recognition, similarity, and the like –
are among the areas of greatest frustration for languagebased AI. Hence it
remains possible, for a while at least, to overlook the fact that, to date, no
connectionist network can perform long division, let alone play chess or solve
symbolic logic problems. COGNITIVE
SCIENCE, COMPUTER THEORY, CONNECTIONISM, FORMAL LOGIC, GRAMMAR, PHILOSOPHY OF
LANGUAGE, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. J.Hau. artificial language.FORMAL LANGUAGE,
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE.
artificial life, an
interdisciplinary science studying the most general character of the
fundamental processes of life. These processes include self-organization,
self-reproduction, learning, adaptation, and evolution. Artificial life (or
ALife) is to theoretical biology roughly what artificial intelligence (AI) is
to theoretical psychology – computer simulation is the methodology of choice.
In fact, since the mind exhibits many of life’s fundamental properties, AI
could be considered a subfield of ALife. However, whereas most traditional AI
models are serial systems with complicated, centralized controllers making
decisions based on global state information, most natural systems exhibiting
complex autonomous behavior are parallel, distributed networks of simple
entities making decisions based solely on their local state information, so
typical ALife models have a corresponding distributed architecture. A computer
simulation of evolving “bugs” can illustrate what ALife models are like. Moving
around in a two-dimensional world periodically laden with heaps of “food,”
these bugs eat, reproduce, and sometimes perish from starvation. Each bug’s
movement is genetically determined by the quantities of food in its immediate
neighborhood, and random mutations and crossovers modify these genomes during
reproduction. Simulations started with random genes show spontaneous waves of
highly adaptive genetic novelties continuously sweeping through the population
at precisely quantifiable rates.C. Langston et al., eds., Artificial Life II
(1991). artificial language artificial life 57 4065A- AM 57
ALife science raises and promises to inform many philosophical issues, such as:
Is functionalism the right approach toward life? When, if ever, is a simulation
of life really alive? When do systems exhibit the spontaneous emergence of
properties? ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE,
COMPUTER THEORY, CONNECTIONISM, FUNCTIONALISM. M.A.B. ascriptivism, the theory
that to call an action voluntary is not to describe it as caused in a certain
way by the agent who did it, but to express a commitment to hold the agent
responsible for the action. Ascriptivism is thus a kind of noncognitivism as
applied to judgments about the voluntariness of acts. Introduced by Hart in
“Ascription of Rights and Responsibilities,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society (1949), ascriptivism was given its name and attacked in Geach’s
“Ascriptivism,” Philosophical Review (1960). Hart recanted in the Preface to
his Punishment and Responsibility (1968).
DESCRIPTIVISM. B.W.H. a se.ENS A SE. aseity.DIVINE ATTRIBUTES, ENS A SE.
A-series.TIME. Aspasius.COMMENTARIES ON ARISTOTLE. aspectual action
paradox.DEONTIC PARADOXES. assent, notional.NEWMAN. assent, real.NEWMAN.
assertability, warranted.DEWEY. assertability conditions.MEANING.
assertion.PROPOSITION. assertion sign.Appendix of Special Symbols.
assertoric.MODALITY. assisted suicide.BIOETHICS. associationism, the
psychological doctrine that association is the sole or primary basis of
learning as well as of intelligent thought and behavior. Association occurs
when one type of thought, idea, or behavior follows, or is contingent upon,
another thought, idea, or behavior or external event, and the second somehow
bonds with the first. If the idea of eggs is paired with the idea of ham, then
the two ideas may become associated. Associationists argue that complex states
of mind and mental processes can be analyzed into associated elements. The
complex may be novel, but the elements are products of past associations.
Associationism often is combined with hedonism. Hedonism explains why events
associate or bond: bonds are forged by pleasant experiences. If the
pleasantness of eating eggs is combined with the pleasantness of eating ham,
then ideas of ham and eggs associate. Bonding may also be explained by various
non-hedonistic principles of association, as in Hume’s theory of the
association of ideas. One of these principles is contiguity in place or time.
Associationism contributes to the componential analysis of intelligent,
rational activity into non-intelligent, non-rational, mechanical processes.
People believe as they do, not because of rational connections among beliefs,
but because beliefs associatively bond. Thus one may think of London when
thinking of England, not because one possesses an inner logic of geographic
beliefs from which one infers that London is in England. The two thoughts may
co-occur because of contiguity or other principles. Kinds of associationism
occur in behaviorist models of classical and operant conditioning. Certain
associationist ideas, if not associationism itself, appear in connectionist
models of cognition, especially the principle that contiguities breed bonding.
Several philosophers and psychologists, including Hume, Hartley, and J. S. Mill
among philosophers and E. L. Thorndike (1874–1949) and B. F. Skinner (1904–90)
among psychologists, are associationists.
CONNECTIONISM; HARTLEY; HEDONISM; HUME; MILL, J. S. G.A.G. association
of ideas.ASSOCIATIONISM.
Astell, Mary (1666–1731),
an early English feminist and author of A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694
and 1697) and Some Reflections on Marriage (1700). These works argue that
women’s shortcomings are not due to a lack of intellectual ability, since women
have rational souls, and present an educational program to fit them rationally
for their religious duties. Astell entered as well into the philosophical,
theological, and political controversies of her day. Her Letters Concerning the
Love of God (1695) is a correspondence with the ascriptivism Astell, Mary 58
4065A- AM 58 English Malebranchian, John Norris, over
such issues as Norris’s contention that our duty is to God only. Her most
substantial work, The Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the
Church of England (1705), lays out her views on the grounds and implications of
natural and revealed religion. This work includes considerable critical
attention to John Locke’s ideas, and both this and the Letters called forth
refutations from Locke’s friend, Damaris Cudworth. CUDWORTH, DAMARIS; FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY;
MALEBRANCHE. M.At. asymmetrical.RELATION. ataraxia.EPICUREANISM, SEXTUS
EMPIRICUS, SKEPTICS. Athanasius (c.297–373), early Christian father, bishop in
Alexandria (though frequently exiled), and a leading protagonist in the
fourth-century disputes concerning Christ’s relationship to God. Through major
works like On the Incarnation, Against the Arians, and Letters on the Holy
Spirit, Athanasius contributed greatly to the classical doctrines of the
Incarnation and the Trinity. Opposing all forms of Arianism, which denied
Christ’s divinity and reduced him to a creature, Athanasius taught, in the
language of the Nicene Creed, that Christ the Son, and likewise the Holy
Spirit, were of the same being as God the Father (homoousios). Thus with
terminology and concepts drawn from Greek philosophy, he helped to forge the
distinctly Christian and un-Hellenistic doctrine of the eternal triune God, who
became enfleshed in time and matter and restored humanity to immortality,
forfeited through sin, by involvement in its condition of corruption and
decay. ARIANISM. A.E.L. atheism (from
Greek a-, ‘not’, and theos, ‘god’), the view that there are no gods. A widely
used sense denotes merely not believing in God and is consistent with
agnosticism. A stricter sense denotes a belief that there is no God; this use
has become the standard one. In the Apology Socrates is accused of atheism for
not believing in the official Athenian gods. Some distinguish between theoretical
atheism and practical atheism. A theoretical atheist is one who
self-consciously denies the existence of a supreme being, whereas a practical
atheist may believe that a supreme being exists but lives as though there were
no god. L.P.P. Atheismusstreit.FICHTE. Athenian Academy.DAMASCIUS. Athenian
School.MIDDLE PLATONISM. A-theory of time.TIME. Atman, in Hindu thought, the
individual, viewed by Advaita Vedanta as numerically identical to, and by other
varieties of Vedanta as dependent on and capable of worship of, Brahman.
Sometimes in Hinduism conceived as inherently conscious and possessed of
intrinsic mental qualities, and sometimes viewed as having mental qualities
only in the sense that the composite of Atman-embodied-in-a-physical-body has
this feature, Atman beginninglessly transmigrates from life to life (or, for
Advaita, appears to do so). It is embodied in successive bodies, accumulating
karma and possibly achieving enlightenment with its consequent release from
samsara, the transmigratory wheel. K.E.Y. atomism, ancient.ANCIENT ATOMISM.
atomism, logical.RUSSELL. atomism, semantic.SEMANTIC HOLISM.
Atticus.COMMENTARIES ON PLATO, MIDDLE PLATONISM. attitude,
phenomenological.HUSSERL. attitude, practical.PRACTICAL REASONING. attitude,
propositional.PROPOSITION, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. attitude, reactive.STRAWSON.
attribute.PROPERTY. attribution theory, a theory in social psychology concerned
with how and why ordinary people explain events. People explain by attributing
causal powers to certain events rather than others. The theory attempts to
describe and clarify everyday commonsense explanation, to identify criteria of
explanatory success presupposed by common sense, and to compare and contrast
commonsense explanation with scientific explanation. The heart of attribution
theory is the thesis that people tend to attribute causal power to factors
personally important to them, which they believe covary with alleged effects.
For example, a woman may designate sexual discrimination as asymmetrical
attribution theory 59 4065A- AM 59 the cause of her not being promoted in a
corporation. Being female is important to her and she believes that promotion
and failure covary with gender. Males get promoted; females don’t. Causal
attributions tend to preserve self-esteem, reduce cognitive dissonance, and
diminish the attributor’s personal responsibility for misdeeds. When
attributional styles or habits contribute to emotional ill-being, e.g. to
chronic, inappropriate feelings of depression or guilt, attribution theory offers
the following therapeutic recommendation: change attributions so as to reduce
emotional ill-being and increase well-being. Hence if the woman blames herself
for the failure, and if self-blame is part of her depressive attributional
style, she would be encouraged to look outside herself, perhaps to sexual
discrimination, for the explanation. EXPLANATION, MOTIVATIONAL EXPLANATION.
G.A.G. attributive pluralism.PLURALISM. attributive use of descriptions.THEORY
OF DESCRIPTIONS. Augustine, Saint, known as Augustine of Hippo (354–430),
Christian philosopher and church father, one of the chief sources of Christian
thought in the West; his importance for medieval and modern European philosophy
is impossible to describe briefly or ever to circumscribe. Matters are made
more difficult because Augustine wrote voluminously and dialectically as a
Christian theologian, treating philosophical topics for the most part only as
they were helpful to theology – or as corrected by it. Augustine fashioned the
narrative of the Confessions (397–400) out of the events of the first half of
his life. He thus supplied later biographers with both a seductive selection of
biographical detail and a compelling story of his successive conversions from
adolescent sensuality, to the image-laden religion of the Manichaeans, to a
version of Neoplatonism, and then to Christianity. The story is an unexcelled
introduction to Augustine’s views of philosophy. It shows, for instance, that
Augustine received very little formal education in philosophy. He was trained
as a rhetorician, and the only philosophical work that he mentions among his
early reading is Cicero’s (lost) Hortensius, an exercise in persuasion to the
study of philosophy. Again, the narrative makes plain that Augustine finally
rejected Manichaeanism because he came to see it as bad philosophy: a set of
sophistical fantasies without rational coherence or explanatory force. More
importantly, Augustine’s final conversion to Christianity was prepared by his
reading in “certain books of the Platonists” (Confessions 7.9.13). These Latin
translations, which seem to have been anthologies or manuals of philosophic
teaching, taught Augustine a form of Neoplatonism that enabled him to conceive
of a cosmic hierarchy descending from an immaterial, eternal, and intelligible
God. On Augustine’s judgment, philosophy could do no more than that; it could
not give him the power to order his own life so as to live happily and in a
stable relation with the now-discovered God. Yet in his first years as a Christian,
Augustine took time to write a number of works in philosophical genres. Best
known among them are a refutation of Academic Skepticism (Contra academicos,
386), a theodicy (De ordine, 386), and a dialogue on the place of human choice
within the providentially ordered hierarchy created by God (De libero arbitrio,
388/391–95). Within the decade of his conversion, Augustine was drafted into
the priesthood (391) and then consecrated bishop (395). The thirty-five years
of his life after that consecration were consumed by labors on behalf of the
church in northern Africa and through the Latin-speaking portions of the
increasingly fragmented empire. Most of Augustine’s episcopal writing was
polemical both in origin and in form; he composed against authors or movements
he judged heretical, especially the Donatists and Pelagians. But Augustine’s
sense of his authorship also led him to write works of fundamental theology
conceived on a grand scale. The most famous of these works, beyond the
Confessions, are On the Trinity (399–412, 420), On Genesis according to the
Letter (401–15), and On the City of God (413–26). On the Trinity elaborates in
subtle detail the distinguishable “traces” of Father, Son, and Spirit in the
created world and particularly in the human soul’s triad of memory, intellect,
and will. The commentary on Genesis 1–3, which is meant to be much more than a
“literal” commentary in the modern sense, treats many topics in philosophical
psychology and anthropology. It also teaches such cosmological doctrines as the
“seed-reasons” (rationes seminales) by which creatures are given intelligible
form. The City of God begins with a critique of the bankruptcy of pagan civic
religion and its attendant philosophies, but it ends with the depiction of
human history as a combat between forces of self-love, conceived as a diabolic
city of earth, and the graced love of God, which founds that heavenly city
within which alone peace is possible. attributive pluralism Augustine 60 4065A- AM 60
A number of other, discrete doctrines have been attached to Augustine, usually
without the dialectical nuances he would have considered indispensable. One
such doctrine concerns divine “illumination” of the human intellect, i.e., some
active intervention by God in ordinary processes of human understanding.
Another doctrine typically attributed to Augustine is the inability of the
human will to do morally good actions without grace. A more authentically
Augustinian teaching is that introspection or inwardness is the way of discovering
the created hierarchies by which to ascend to God. Another authentic teaching
would be that time, which is a distension of the divine “now,” serves as the
medium or narrative structure for the creation’s return to God. But no list of
doctrines or positions, however authentic or inauthentic, can serve as a
faithful representation of Augustine’s thought, which gives itself only through
the carefully wrought rhetorical forms of his texts. NEOPLATONISM, PATRISTIC AUTHORS, PHILOSOPHY
OF RELIGION. M.D.J. Aurelius, Marcus.MARCUS AURELIUS, STOICISM.
Austin, John (1790–1859),
English legal philosopher known especially for his command theory of law. His
career as a lawyer was unsuccessful but his reputation as a scholar was such
that on the founding of University College, London, he was offered the chair of
jurisprudence. In 1832 he published the first ten of his lectures, compressed
into six as The Province of Jurisprudence Determined. Although he published a
few papers, and his somewhat fragmentary Lectures on Jurisprudence (1863) was
published posthumously, it is on the Province that his reputation rests. He and
Bentham (his friend, London neighbor, and fellow utilitarian) were the foremost
English legal philosophers of their time, and their influence on the course of
legal philosophy endures. Austin held that the first task of legal philosophy,
one to which he bends most of his energy, is to make clear what laws are, and
if possible to explain why they are what they are: their rationale. Until those
matters are clear, legislative proposals and legal arguments can never be
clear, since irrelevant considerations will inevitably creep in. The proper
place for moral or theological considerations is in discussion of what the
positive law ought to be, not of what it is. Theological considerations reduce
to moral ones, since God can be assumed to be a good utilitarian. It is
positive laws, “that is to say the laws which are simply and strictly so
called, . . . which form the appropriate matter of general and particular jurisprudence.”
They must also be distinguished from “laws metaphorical or figurative.” A law
in its most general senseis “a rule laid down for the guidance of an
intelligent being by an intelligent being having power over him.” It is a
command, however phrased. It is the commands of men to men, of political
superiors, that form the body of positive law. General or comparative
jurisprudence, the source of the rationale, if any, of particular laws, is
possible because there are commands nearly universal that may be attributed to
God or Nature, but they become positive law only when laid down by a ruler. The
general model of an Austinian analytic jurisprudence built upon a framework of
definitions has been widely followed, but cogent objections, especially by Hart,
have undermined the command theory of law.
JURISPRUDENCE, PHILOSOPHY OF LAW. E.L.P.
Austin, J(ohn) L(angshaw)
(1911–60), English philosopher, a leading exponent of postwar “linguistic”
philosophy. Educated primarily as a classicist at Shrewsbury and Balliol
College, Oxford, he taught philosophy at Magdalen College. During World War II
he served at a high level in military intelligence, which earned him the
O.B.E., Croix de Guerre, and Legion of Merit. In 1952 he became White’s
Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, and in 1955 and 1958 he held visiting
appointments at Harvard and Berkeley, respectively. In his relatively brief
career, Austin published only a few invited papers; his influence was exerted
mainly through discussion with his colleagues, whom he dominated more by
critical intelligence than by any preconceived view of what philosophy should
be. Unlike some others, Austin did not believe that philosophical problems all
arise out of aberrations from “ordinary language,” nor did he necessarily find
solutions there; he dwelt, rather, on the authority of the vernacular as a
source of nice and pregnant distinctions, and held that it deserves much closer
attention than it commonly receives from philosophers. It is useless, he
thought, to pontificate at large about knowledge, reality, or existence, for
example, without first examining in detail how, and when, the words ‘know’,
‘real’, and ‘exist’ are employed in daily life. In Sense and Sensibilia (1962;
compiled from lecture notes), the sense-datum theory comes under withering fire
for its failings in this respect. Austin also provoked controversy with
Aurelius, Marcus Austin J(ohn) L(angshaw) 61 4065A- AM 61
his well-known distinction between “performative” and “constative” utterances
(‘I promise’ makes a promise, whereas ‘he promised’ merely reports one); he
later recast this as a threefold differentiation of locutionary, illocutionary,
and perlocutionary “forces” in utterance, corresponding (roughly) to the
meaning, intention, and consequences of saying a thing, in one context or
another. Though never very stable or fully worked out, these ideas have since
found a place in the still-evolving study of speech acts.
Australian
materialism.SMART. autarkia, ancient Greek term meaning ‘self-sufficiency’.
Autarkia was widely regarded as a mark of the human good, happiness
(eudaimonia). A life is self-sufficient when it is worthy of choice and lacks
nothing. What makes a life self-sufficient – and thereby happy – was a matter
of controversy. Stoics maintained that the mere possession of virtue would
suffice; Aristotle and the Peripatetics insisted that virtue must be exercised
and even, perhaps, accompanied by material goods. There was also a debate among
later Greek thinkers over whether a self-sufficient life is solitary or whether
only life in a community can be self-sufficient. ARISTOTLE, STOICISM. E.C.H.
authenticity.EXISTENTIALISM, HEIDEGGER. autological.SEMANTIC PARADOXES.
automata theory.COMPUTER THEORY, SELFREPRODUCING AUTOMATON. automatism, conscious.PHILOSOPHY
OF MIND. automaton.COMPUTER THEORY, SELF-REPRODUCING AUTOMATON. automaton,
cellular.SELF-REPRODUCING AUTOMATON. automaton, finite.COMPUTER THEORY, TURING
MACHINE. automaton, self-reproducing.SELF-REPRODUCING AUTOMATON. autonomy.FREE
WILL PROBLEM, KANT, POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE FREEDOM. autonomy of biology.UNITY OF
SCIENCE. autonomy of ethics.ETHICS. autonomy of psychology.PHILOSOPHY OF
PSYCHOLOGY. avatar (from Sanskrit avatara), in Hindu thought, any of the
repeated “descents” of the Supreme Being into the physical world as an animal,
human being, or combination thereof, to destroy evil and restore order.
Predominately identified as the actions of the god Vishnu, these entrances into
the world indicate that Vishnu as lord will adjust the cycle of karma. Its
earliest reference is in the Bhagavad Gita (150 B.C.), where Krishna says that
whenever dharma languishes he incarnates in age after age to destroy evildoers
and promote the good. Later lists of avatars of Vishnu cite ten, twenty, or more,
with Krishna and the Buddha as famous examples. The inclusion of prominent
local deities in the list brought them under the influence of Vishnu devotees,
and today even Jesus and Muhammad may be included. Modern philosophers such as
Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) redefine the concept non-theistically, identifying an
avatar as a human being who has attained enlightenment. R.N.Mi. Avempace.IBN
BAJJA. Avenarius, Richard (1843–96), German philosopher. He was born in Paris
and educated at the University of Leipzig. He became a professor at Leipzig and
succeeded Windelband at the University of Zürich in 1877. For a time he was
editor of the Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie. His earliest work
was Über die beiden ersten Phasen des Spinozischen Pantheismus (1868). His
major work, Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (Critique of Pure Experience, 2 vols.,
1888–90), was followed by his last study, Der menschliche Weltbegriffe (1891).
In his post-Kantian Kritik Avenarius presented a radical positivism that sought
to base philosophy on scientific principles. This “empirio-criticism”
emphasized “pure experience” and descriptive and general definitions of
experience. Metaphysical claims to transcend experience were rejected as mere
creations of the mind. Like Hume, Avenarius denied the ontological validity of
substance and causality. Seeking a scientific empiricism, he endeavored to
delineate a descriptive determination of the form and content of pure
experience. He thought that the subAustralian materialism Avenarius, Richard 62
4065A- AM 62 ject–object dichotomy, the separation of
inner and outer experiences, falsified reality. If we could avoid
“introjecting” feeling, thought, and will into experience (and thereby
splitting it into subject and object), we could attain the original “natural”
view of the world. Although Avenarius, in his Critique of Pure Experience,
thought that changes in brain states parallel states of consciousness, he did
not reduce sensations or states of consciousness to physiological changes in
the brain. Because his theory of pure experience undermined dogmatic
materialism, Lenin attacked his philosophy in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism
(1952). His epistemology influenced Mach and his emphasis upon pure experience
had considerable influence on James.
SUBJECT–OBJECT DICHOTOMY. G.J.S. Averroes, in Arabic, Ibn Rushd
(1126–98), Islamic philosopher, jurist, and physician. Scion of a long line of
qadis (religious judges), he was born at Córdova and educated in Islamic law.
Introduced to the Almohad ruler by Ibn Tufayl, author of the philosophical
allegory Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, he feigned ignorance of philosophy, only to learn
that the leader of the dynasty so feared for its orthodoxy was thoroughly at
home with philosophical issues. He was given a robe of honor and a mount and
later invited to write his famous commentaries on Aristotle and made qadi of
Seville, finally succeeding Ibn Tufayl as royal physician and becoming chief
qadi of Córdova. He was persecuted when the sultan’s successor needed orthodox
support in his war with Christian Spain, but died in the calm of Marrakesh, the
edicts against him rescinded. His works, most often preserved in Hebrew or
Latin translations (‘Averroes’ reflects efforts to Latinize ‘Ibn Rushd’),
include medical and astronomical writings; short, middle, and long commentaries
on Aristotle (“his was the ultimate human mind”); a commentary on Plato’s
Republic; and spirited juridical and conceptual defenses of philosophy: The
Decisive Treatise and Incoherence of the Incoherence. The former argues that
philosophy, although restricted to the adept, is mandated by the Koranic (59:2)
injunction to reflect on God’s design. The latter answers alGhazali’s
Incoherence of the Philosophers, defending naturalism and its presumed
corollary, the world’s eternity, but often cutting adrift the more Platonizing
and original doctrines of Avicenna, al-Ghazali’s chief stalking horse. Thus
Averroes rejects Avicenna’s idea that the world itself is contingent if it is
necessitated by its causes, arguing that removing the necessity that is the
hallmark of God’s wisdom would leave us no way of inferring a wise Author of
nature. Ultimately Averroes rejects emanation and seeks to return natural
theology to the physics of matter and motion, discrediting Avicenna’s
metaphysical approach and locating God’s act in the ordering of eternal matter.
On bodily resurrection, individual providence, and miracles, he takes refuge in
authority, fudge, and bluff; and even his defense of causal necessity smacks of
a dogmatism expressive of the awkwardness of his position and the stiffening of
Peripatetic thought. Yet he retains the idea that the intellect is immortal,
indeed impersonal: since only matter differentiates individuals, all minds are
ultimately one; they reach fulfillment and beatitude by making contact
(ittifal; cf. Plotinus’s aphe) with the Active Intellect. Many Jewish
philosophers like Narboni and Albalag followed Averroes’ arguments explicitly,
reinterpreting Maimonides accordingly. But Averroes’ efforts to accommodate
rhetorical and dialectical along with philosophical discourse led to the
branding of his Christian followers as exponents of a “double truth,” although
no text advances such a doctrine. Siger of Brabant, Boethius of Dacia, and
Bernier of Nivelles were condemned for Averroistic heresies at Paris in the
1270s. But from the thirteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries Latin scholars
regularly read Aristotle with Averroes’ commentaries. His philosophic
respondents include Ibn Taymiyya (d.1327), Gersonides, Albertus Magnus, and
Aquinas. Spinoza’s dogged eternalism links him vividly to Averroes. ARABIC PHILOSOPHY. L.E.G. aversion
therapy.BEHAVIOR THERAPY. Avicebron.IBN GABIROL. Avicenna, in Arabic, Ibn Sina
(980–1037), Islamic philosopher and physician. Born near Bukhara, where his
father served as a provincial governor, Avicenna came to manhood as the Persian
Samanid dynasty was crumbling and spent much of his life fleeing from court to
court to avoid the clutches of the rapacious conqueror Mamhmad of Ghazna. His
autobiography describes him as an intuitive student of philosophy and other
Greek sciences who could not see the point of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, until he
read a tiny essay by al-Farabi(870–950), who showed him what it means to seek
the nature of being as such. Averroes Avicenna 63 4065A- AM 63
It was in metaphysics that Avicenna made his greatest contributions to
philosophy, brilliantly synthesizing the rival approaches of the
Aristotelian-Neoplatonic tradition with the creationist monotheism of Islamic
dialectical theology (kalam). Where Aristotle sought and found being in its
fullest sense in what was changeless in its nature (above all, in the species
of things, the heavenly bodies, the cosmos as a whole), kalam understood being
as the immediately given, allowing no inference beyond a single contingent
datum to any necessary properties, correlatives, continuators, or successors.
The result was a stringent atomist occasionalism resting ultimately on an early
version of logical atomism. Avicenna preserved an Aristotelian naturalism
alongside the Scriptural idea of the contingency of the world by arguing that
any finite being is contingent in itself but necessary in relation to its
causes. He adapted al-Farabi’s Neoplatonic emanationism to this schematization
and naturalized in philosophy his own distinctive version of the kalam argument
from contingency: any being must be either necessary or contingent, but if
contingent, it requires a cause; since no infinite causal regress is possible,
there must be a Necessary Being, which is therefore simple, the ultimate cause
of all other things. Avicenna found refuge at the court of one ‘Ala al-Dawla,
who bravely resisted the military pressures of Mahmud against his lands around
Isfahan and made the philosopher and savant his vizier. Here Avicenna completed
his famous philosophic work the Shifa’ (known in Latin as the Sufficientia) and
his Qanun fi Tibb, the Galenic Canon, which remained in use as a medical
textbook until finally brought down by the weight of criticisms during the
Renaissance. Avicenna’s philosophy was the central target of the polemical
critique of the Muslim theologian al-Ghazali (1058–1111) in his Incoherence of
the Philosophers, mainly on the grounds that the philosopher’s retention of the
Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of the world was inconsistent with his
claim that God was the author of the world. Avicenna’s related affirmations of
the necessity of causation and universality of God’s knowledge, al-Ghazali
argued, made miracles impossible and divine governance too impersonal to
deserve the name. Yet Avicenna’s philosophic works (numbering over a hundred in
their Arabic and sometimes Persian originals) continued to exercise a major
influence on Muslim and Jewish philosophers and (through Latin translations) on
philosophers in the West. ARABIC
PHILOSOPHY. L.E.G. avidya, Sanskrit word meaning ‘ignorance’, ‘lack of wisdom’.
Avidya is a key concept in India’s philosophical systems, which attempted to
explain the reasons for karmic bondage leading to suffering and release from
such bondage through spiritual liberation. The general idea was that karmic
fetters arise because of avidya, which is ignorance of the true nature of
reality. When wisdom dispells avidya, the individual is freed from bondage.
There was intense speculation in Indian philosophy regarding the nature and the
metaphysical status of avidya. If avidya causes bondage that traps the
individual in the transmigratory cycle of life and death (samsara), then where
does avidya reside and how does it come into being? D.K.C. awareness,
consciousness, a central feature of our lives that is notoriously difficult to
characterize. You experience goings-on in the world, and, turning inward
(“introspecting”), you experience your experiencing. Objects of awareness can
be external or internal. Pressing your finger on the edge of a table, you can
be aware of the table’s edge, and aware of the feeling of pressure (though
perhaps not simultaneously). Philosophers from Locke to Nagel have insisted that
our experiences have distinctive qualities: there is “something it is like” to
have them. It would seem important, then, to distinguish qualities of objects
of which you are aware from qualities of your awareness. Suppose you are aware
of a round, red tomato. The tomato, but not your awareness, is round and red.
What then are the qualities of your awareness? Here we encounter a deep puzzle
that divides theorists into intransigent camps. Some materialists, like
Dennett, insist that awareness lacks qualities (or lacks qualities distinct
from its objects: the qualities we attribute to experiences are really those of
experienced objects). This opens the way to a dismissal of “phenomenal”
qualities (qualia), qualities that seem to have no place in the material world.
Others (T. Nagel, Ned Block) regard such qualities as patently genuine,
preferring to dismiss any theory unable to accommodate them. Convinced that the
qualities of awareness are ineliminable and irreducible to respectable material
properties, some philosophers, following Frank Jackson, contend they are
“epiphenomenal”: real but causally inefficacious. Still others, including
Searle, point to what they regard as a fundamental distinction between the
“intrinsically subjecavidya awareness 64 4065A-
AM 64 tive” character of
awareness and the “objective,” “public” character of material objects, but deny
that this yields epiphenomenalism.
PHENOMENOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, QUALIA. J.F.H. axiology.VALUE THEORY.
axiom.AXIOMATIC METHOD. axiomatic method, originally, a method for reorganizing
the accepted propositions and concepts of an existent science in order to
increase certainty in the propositions and clarity in the concepts. Application
of this method was thought to require the identification of (1) the “universe
of discourse” (domain, genus) of entities constituting the primary subject
matter of the science, (2) the “primitive concepts” that can be grasped
immediately without the use of definition, (3) the “primitive propositions” (or
“axioms”), whose truth is knowable immediately, without the use of deduction,
(4) an immediately acceptable “primitive definition” in terms of primitive
concepts for each non-primitive concept, and (5) a deduction (constructed by
chaining immediate, logically cogent inferences ultimately from primitive
propositions and definitions) for each nonprimitive accepted proposition.
Prominent proponents of more or less modernized versions of the axiomatic
method, e.g. Pascal, Nicod (1893–1924), and Tarski, emphasizing the critical and
regulatory function of the axiomatic method, explicitly open the possibility
that axiomatization of an existent, preaxiomatic science may lead to rejection
or modification of propositions, concepts, and argumentations that had
previously been accepted. In many cases attempts to realize the ideal of an
axiomatic science have resulted in discovery of “smuggled premises” and other
previously unnoted presuppositions, leading in turn to recognition of the need
for new axioms. Modern axiomatizations of geometry are much richer in detail
than those produced in ancient Greece. The earliest extant axiomatic text is
based on an axiomatization of geometry due to Euclid (fl. 300 B.C.), which
itself was based on earlier, nolonger-extant texts. Archimedes (287–212 B.C.)
was one of the earliest of a succession of postEuclidean geometers, including
Hilbert, Oswald Veblen (1880–1960), and Tarski, to propose modifications of
axiomatizations of classical geometry. The traditional axiomatic method, often
called the geometric method, made several presuppositions no longer widely
accepted. The advent of non-Euclidean geometry was particularly important in
this connection. For some workers, the goal of reorganizing an existent science
was joined to or replaced by a new goal: characterizing or giving implicit
definition to the structure of the subject matter of the science. Moreover,
subsequent innovations in logic and foundations of mathematics, especially
development of syntactically precise formalized languages and effective systems
of formal deductions, have substantially increased the degree of rigor
attainable. In particular, critical axiomatic exposition of a body of
scientific knowledge is now not thought to be fully adequate, however
successful it may be in realizing the goals of the original axiomatic method,
so long as it does not present the underlying logic (including language,
semantics, and deduction system). For these and other reasons the expression
‘axiomatic method’ has undergone many “redefinitions,” some of which have only
the most tenuous connection with the original meaning. CATEGORICITY, DEDUCTION, FORMALIZATION.
J.Cor.
axiomatic
system.AXIOMATIC METHOD, DEDUCTION. axiom of abstraction.AXIOM OF
COMPREHENSION. axiom of choice.LÖWENHEIM-SKOLEM THEOREM, SET THEORY. axiom of
comprehension, also called axiom of abstraction, the axiom that for every
property, there is a corresponding set of things having that property; i.e.,
(f) (DA) (x) (x 1 A È f x), where f is a property and A is a set. The axiom was
used in Frege’s formulation of set theory and is the axiom that yields
Russell’s paradox, discovered in 1901. If fx is instantiated as x 2 x, then the
result that A 1 A È A 2 A is easily obtained, which yields, in classical logic,
the explicit contradiction A 1 A & A 2 A. The paradox can be avoided by
modifying the comprehension axiom and using instead the separation axiom, (f)
(DA) (x) (x 1 A È(fx & x 1 B)). This yields only the result that A 1 A È(A
2 A & A 1 B), which is not a contradiction. The paradox can also be avoided
by retaining the comprehension axiom but restricting the symbolic language, so
that ‘x 1 x’ is not a meaningful formula. Russell’s type theory, presented in
Principia Mathematica, uses this approach.
FREGE, RUSSELL, SET THEORY, TYPE THEORY. V.K. axiology axiom of
comprehension 65 4065A- AM 65 axiom of consistency, an axiom stating
that a given set of sentences is consistent. Let L be a formal language, D a
deductive system for L, S any set of sentences of L, and C the statement ‘S is
consistent’ (i.e., ‘No contradiction is derivable from S via D’). For certain
sets S (e.g., the theorems of D) it is interesting to ask: Can C be expressed
in L? If so, can C be proved in D? If C can be expressed in L but not proved in
D, can C be added (consistently) to D as a new axiom? Example (from Gödel): Let
L and D be adequate for elementary number theory, and S be the axioms of D;
then C can be expressed in L but not proved in D, but can be added as a new
axiom to form a stronger system D’. Sometimes we can express in L an axiom of
consistency in the semantic sense (i.e., ‘There is a universe in which all the
sentences in S are true’). Trivial example: suppose the only non-logical axiom
in D is ‘For any two sets B and B’, there exists the union of B and B’ ’. Then
C might be ‘There is a set U such that, for any sets B and B’ in U, there
exists in U the union of B and B’ ’.
CONSISTENCY, PROOF THEORY. D.H. axiom of extensionality.SET THEORY.
axiom of infinity.SET THEORY. axiom of reducibility.TYPE THEORY. axiom of
replacement.SET THEORY. axiom of separation.AXIOM OF COMPREHENSION, SET THEORY.
axiom schema.TRANSFORMATION RULE. Ayer, A(lfred) J(ules) (1910–89), British
philosopher, one of the most important of the British logical positivists. He
continued to occupy a dominant place in analytic philosophy as he gradually
modified his adherence to central tenets of the view. He was educated at Eton
and Oxford, and, after a brief period at the University of Vienna, became a
lecturer in philosophy at Christ Church in 1933. After the war he returned to
Oxford as fellow and dean of Wadham College. He was Grote Professor of the
Philosophy of Mind and Logic at the University of London (1946–59), Wykeham
Professor of Logic in the University of Oxford and a fellow of New College
(1959–78), and a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford (1978–83). Ayer was knighted
in 1973 and was a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. His early work clearly and
forcefully developed the implications of the positivists’ doctrines that all
cognitive statements are either analytic and a priori, or synthetic,
contingent, and a posteriori, and that empirically meaningful statements must
be verifiable (must admit of confirmation or disconfirmation). In doing so he
defended reductionist analyses of the self, the external world, and other
minds. Value statements that fail the empiricist’s criterion of meaning but
defy naturalistic analysis were denied truth-value and assigned emotive
meaning. Throughout his writings he maintained a foundationalist perspective in
epistemology in which sense-data (later more neutrally described) occupied not
only a privileged epistemic position but constituted the subject matter of the
most basic statements to be used in reductive analyses. Although in later works
he significantly modified many of his early views and abandoned much of their
strict reductionism, he remained faithful to an empiricist’s version of
foundationalism and the basic idea behind the verifiability criterion of
meaning. His books include Language, Truth and Logic; The Foundations of
Empirical Knowledge; The Problems of Knowledge; Philosophical Essays; The
Concept of a Person; The Origins of Pragmatism; Metaphysics and Common Sense;
Russell and Moore: The Analytical Heritage; The Central Questions of
Philosophy; Probability and Evidence; Philosophy in the Twentieth Century;
Russell; Hume; Freedom and Morality, Ludwig Wittgenstein; and Voltaire.
B
Babbage, Charles
(1792–1871), English applied mathematician, inventor, and expert on machinery
and manufacturing. His chief interest was in developing mechanical “engines” to
compute tables of functions. Until the invention of the electronic computer,
printed tables of functions were important aids to calculation. Babbage
invented the difference engine, a machine that consisted of a series of
accumulators each of which, in turn, transmitted its contents to its successor,
which added to them to its own contents. He built only a model, but George and
Edvard Scheutz built difference engines that were actually used. Though tables of
squares and cubes could be calculated by a difference engine, the more commonly
used tables of logarithms and of trigonometric functions could not. To
calculate these and other useful functions, Babbage conceived of the analytical
engine, a machine for numerical analysis. The analytical engine was to have a
store (memory) and a mill (arithmetic unit). The store was to hold decimal
numbers on toothed wheels, and to transmit them to the mill and back by means
of wheels and toothed bars. The mill was to carry out the arithmetic operations
of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division mechanically, greatly
extending the technology of small calculators. The operations of the mill were
to be governed by pegged drums, derived from the music box. A desired sequence
of operations would be punched on cards, which would be strung together like
the cards of a Jacquard loom and read by the machine. The control mechanisms
could branch and execute a different sequence of cards when a designated
quantity changed sign. Numbers would be entered from punched cards and the
answers punched on cards. The answers might also be imprinted on metal sheets
from which the calculated tables would be printed, thus avoiding the errors of
proofreading. Although Babbage formulated various partial plans for the
analytical engine and built a few pieces of it, the machine was never realized.
Given the limitations of mechanical computing technology, building an
analytical engine would probably not have been an economical way to produce
numerical tables. The modern electronic computer was invented and developed
completely independently of Babbage’s pioneering work. Yet because of it,
Babbage’s work has been publicized and he has become famous. COMPUTER THEORY. A.W.B.
Bachelard, Gaston (1884–1962),
French philosopher of science and literary analyst. His philosophy of science
(developed, e.g., in The New Scientific Spirit, 1934, and Rational Materialism,
1953) began from reflections on the relativistic and quantum revolutions in
twentieth-century physics. Bachelard viewed science as developing through a
series of discontinuous changes (epistemological breaks). Such breaks overcome
epistemological obstacles: methodological and conceptual features of
commonsense or outdated science that block the path of inquiry. Bachelard’s
emphasis on the discontinuity of scientific change strikingly anticipated
Thomas Kuhn’s focus, many years later, on revolutionary paradigm change.
However, unlike Kuhn, Bachelard held to a strong notion of scientific progress
across revolutionary discontinuities. Although each scientific framework
rejects its predecessors as fundamentally erroneous, earlier frameworks may
embody permanent achievements that will be preserved as special cases within
subsequent frameworks. (Newton’s laws of motion, e.g., are special limit-cases
of relativity theory.) Bachelard based his philosophy of science on a
“non-Cartesian epistemology” that rejects Descartes’s claim that knowledge must
be founded on incorrigible intuitions of first truths. All knowledge claims are
subject to revision in the light of further evidence. Similarly, he rejected a
naive realism that defines reality in terms of givens of ordinary sense
experience and ignores the ontological constructions of scientific concepts and
instrumentation. He maintained, however, that denying this sort of realism did
not entail accepting idealism, which makes only the mental ultimately real.
Instead he argued for an “applied rationalism,” which recognizes the active
role of reason in constituting objects of knowledge while admitting that any
constituting act of reason must be directed toward an antecedently given
object. 67 B 4065A- AM 67 Although Bachelard denied the objective
reality of the perceptual and imaginative worlds, he emphasized their
subjective and poetic significance. Complementing his writings on science are a
series of books on imagination and poetic imagery (e.g., The Psychoanalysis of
Fire, 1938; The Poetics of Space, 1957) which subtly unpack the meaning of
archetypal (in Jung’s sense) images. He put forward a “law of the four
elements,” according to which all images can be related to the earth, air,
fire, and water posited by Empedocles as the fundamental forms of matter.
Together with Georges Canguilhem, his successor at the Sorbonne, Bachelard had
an immense impact on several generations of French students of philosophy. He
and Canguilhem offered an important alternative to the more fashionable and
widely known phenomenology and existentialism and were major influences on
(among others) Althusser and Foucault.
ALTHUSSER, FOUCAULT, FRANKFURT SCHOOL. G.G. backward
causation.CAUSATION.
Bacon, Francis
(1561–1626), English philosopher, essayist, and scientific methodologist. In
politics Bacon rose to the position of lord chancellor. In 1621 he retired to
private life after conviction for taking bribes in his official capacity as
judge. Bacon championed the new empiricism resulting from the achievements of
early modern science. He opposed alleged knowledge based on appeals to
authority, and on the barrenness of Scholasticism. He thought that what is
needed is a new attitude and methodology based strictly on scientific
practices. The goal of acquiring knowledge is the good of mankind: knowledge is
power. The social order that should result from applied science is portrayed in
his New Atlantis(1627). The method of induction to be employed is worked out in
detail in his Novum Organum (1620). This new logic is to replace that of
Aristotle’s syllogism, as well as induction by simple enumeration of instances.
Neither of these older logics can produce knowledge of actual natural laws.
Bacon thought that we must intervene in nature, manipulating it by means of
experimental control leading to the invention of new technology. There are well-known
hindrances to acquisition of knowledge of causal laws. Such hindrances (false
opinions, prejudices), which “anticipate” nature rather than explain it, Bacon
calls idols (idola). Idols of the tribe (idola tribus) are natural mental
tendencies, among which are the idle search for purposes in nature, and the
impulse to read our own desires and needs into nature. Idols of the cave (idola
specus) are predispositions of particular individuals. The individual is
inclined to form opinions based on idiosyncrasies of education, social
intercourse, reading, and favored authorities. Idols of the marketplace (idola
fori) Bacon regards as the most potentially dangerous of all dispositions,
because they arise from common uses of language that often result in verbal
disputes. Many words, though thought to be meaningful, stand for nonexistent
things; others, although they name actual things, are poorly defined or used in
confused ways. Idols of the theater (idola theatri) depend upon the influence
of received theories. The only authority possessed by such theories is that
they are ingenious verbal constructions. The aim of acquiring genuine knowledge
does not depend on superior skill in the use of words, but rather on the
discovery of natural laws. Once the idols are eliminated, the mind is free to
seek knowledge of natural laws based on experimentation. Bacon held that
nothing exists in nature except bodies (material objects) acting in conformity
with fixed laws. These laws are “forms.” For example, Bacon thought that the
form or cause of heat is the motion of the tiny particles making up a body.
This form is that on which the existence of heat depends. What induction seeks
to show is that certain laws are perfectly general, universal in application.
In every case of heat, there is a measurable change in the motion of the
particles constituting the moving body. Bacon thought that scientific induction
proceeds as follows. First, we look for those cases where, given certain
changes, certain others invariably follow. In his example, if certain changes
in the form (motion of particles) take place, heat always follows. We seek to
find all of the “positive instances” of the form that give rise to the effect
of that form. Next, we investigate the “negative instances,” cases where in the
absence of the form, the qualitative change does not take place. In the
operation of these methods it is important to try to produce experimentally
“prerogative instances,” particularly striking or typical examples of the
phenomenon under investigation. Finally, in cases where the object under study
is present to some greater or lesser degree, we must be able to take into
account why these changes occur. In the example, quantitative changes in
degrees of heat will be correlated to quantitative changes in the speed of the
motion of the particles. This method implies that backward causation Bacon,
Francis 68 4065A- AM 68 in many cases we can invent instruments to
measure changes in degree. Such inventions are of course the hoped-for outcome
of scientific inquiry, because their possession improves the lot of human
beings. Bacon’s strikingly modern (but not entirely novel) empiricist
methodology influenced nineteenth-century figures (e.g., Sir John Herschel and
J. S. Mill) who generalized his results and used them as the basis for
displaying new insights into scientific methodology. INDUCTION; MILL, J. S.; WHEWELL. R.E.B.
Bacon, Roger
(c.1214–c.1293), English philosopher who earned the honorific title of Doctor
Mirabilis. He was one of the first medievals in the Latin West to lecture and
comment on newly recovered work by Aristotle in natural philosophy, physics,
and metaphysics. Born in Somerset and educated at both Oxford University and
the University of Paris, he became by 1273 a master of arts at Paris, where he
taught for about ten years. In 1247 he resigned his teaching post to devote his
energies to investigating and promoting topics he considered neglected but
important insofar as they would lead to knowledge of God. The English
“experimentalist” Grosseteste, the Frenchman Peter of Maricourt, who did
pioneering work on magnetism, and the author of the pseudo-Aristotelian
Secretum secretorum influenced Roger’s new perspective. By 1257, however,
partly from fatigue, Roger had put this work aside and entered the Franciscan
order in England. To his dismay, he did not receive within the order the
respect and freedom to write and teach he had expected. During the early 1260s
Roger’s views about reforming the university curriculum reached Cardinal Guy le
Gos de Foulques, who, upon becoming Pope Clement IV in 1265, demanded to see
Roger’s writings. In response, Roger produced the Opus maius (1267) – an
encyclopedic work that argues, among other things, that (1) the study of Hebrew
and Greek is indispensable for understanding the Bible, (2) the study of
mathematics (encompassing geometry, astronomy, and astrology) is, with
experimentation, the key to all the sciences and instrumental in theology, and
(3) philosophy can serve theology by helping in the conversion of
non-believers. Roger believed that although the Bible is the basis for human
knowledge, we can use reason in the service of knowledge. It is not that
rational argument can, on his view, provide fullblown proof of anything, but
rather that with the aid of reason one can formulate hypotheses about nature
that can be confirmed by experience. According to Roger, knowledge arrived at
in this way will lead to knowledge of nature’s creator. All philosophical,
scientific, and linguistic endeavors are valuable ultimately for the service
they can render to theology. Roger summarizes and develops his views on these
matters in the Opus minus and the Opus tertium, produced within a year of the
Opus maius. Roger was altogether serious in advocating curricular change. He
took every opportunity to rail against many of his celebrated contemporaries
(e.g., Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Albertus Magnus, and Aquinas) for not
being properly trained in philosophy and for contributing to the demise of
theology by lecturing on Peter Lombard’s Sentences instead of the Bible. He
also wrote both Greek and Hebrew grammars, did important work in optics, and
argued for calendar reform on the basis of his (admittedly derivative)
astronomical research. One should not, however, think that Roger was a good
mathematician or natural scientist. He apparently never produced a single
theorem or proof in mathematics, he was not always a good judge of astronomical
competence (he preferred al-Bitruji to Ptolemy), and he held alchemy in high
regard, believing that base metals could be turned into silver and gold. Some
have gone so far as to claim that Roger’s renown in the history of science is
vastly overrated, based in part on his being confusedly linked with the
fourteenthcentury Oxford Calculators, who do deserve credit for paving the way
for certain developments in seventeenth-century science. Roger’s devotion to
curricular reform eventually led to his imprisonment by Jerome of Ascoli (the
future Pope Nicholas IV), probably between 1277 and 1279. Roger’s teachings
were said to have contained “suspect novelties.” Judging from the date of his
imprisonment, these novelties may have been any number of propositions
condemned by the bishop of Paris, Étienne Tempier, in 1277. But his imprisonment
may also have had something to do with the anger he undoubtedly provoked by
constantly abusing the members of his order regarding their approach to
education, or with his controversial Joachimite views about the apocalypse and
the imminent coming of the Antichrist. Given Roger’s interest in educational
reform and his knack for systematization, it is not unlikely that he was
abreast of and had something to say about most of the central philosophical
issues of the day. If so, his writings could be Bacon, Roger Bacon, Roger 69
4065A- AM 69 an important source of information about
thirteenth-century Scholastic philosophy generally. In this connection, recent
investigations have revealed, e.g., that he may well have played an important
role in the development of logic and philosophy of language during the
thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. In the course of challenging the
views of certain people (some of whom have been tentatively identified as
Richard of Cornwall, Lambert of Auxerre, Siger of Brabant, Henry of Ghent,
Boethius of Dacia, William Sherwood, and the Magister Abstractionum) on the
nature of signs and how words function as signs, Roger develops and defends
views that appear to be original. The pertinent texts include the Sumule
dialectices (c.1250), the De signis (part of Part III of the Opus maius), and
the Compendium studii theologiae (1292). E.g., in connection with the question
whether Jesus could be called a man during the three-day entombment (and, thus,
in connection with the related question whether man can be said to be animal
when no man exists, and with the sophism ‘This is a dead man, therefore this is
a man’), Roger was not content to distinguish words from all other signs as had
been the tradition. He distinguished between signs originating from nature and
from the soul, and between natural signification and conventional (ad placitum)
signification which results expressly or tacitly from the imposition of meaning
by one or more individuals. He maintained that words signify existing and
non-existing entities only equivocally, because words conventionally signify
only presently existing things. On this view, therefore, ‘man’ is not used
univocally when applied to an existing man and to a dead man. ARISTOTLE, GROSSETESTE, PETER LOMBARD. G.S.
Baden School.NEO-KANTIANISM.
bad faith, (1) dishonest
and blameworthy instances of self-deception; (2) inauthentic and self-deceptive
refusal to admit to ourselves and others our full freedom, thereby avoiding
anxiety in making decisions and evading responsibility for actions and
attitudes (Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1943); (3) hypocrisy or dishonesty in
speech and conduct, as in making a promise without intending to keep it. One
self-deceiving strategy identified by Sartre is to embrace other people’s views
in order to avoid having to form one’s own; another is to disregard options so
that one’s life appears predetermined to move in a fixed direction.
Occasionally Sartre used a narrower, fourth sense: self-deceptive beliefs held
on the basis of insincere and unreasonable interpretations of evidence, as
contrasted with the dishonesty of “sincerely” acknowledging one truth (“I am
disposed to be a thief”) in order to deny a deeper truth (“I am free to
change”). FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS, SARTRE,
VITAL LIE. M.W.M.
Bain, Alexander
(1818–1903), British philosopher and reformer, biographer of James Mill (1882)
and J. S. Mill (1882) and founder of the first psychological journal, Mind
(1876). In the development of psychology, Bain represents in England (alongside
Continental thinkers such as Taine and Lotze) the final step toward the
founding of psychology as a science. His significance stems from his wish to
“unite psychology and physiology,” fulfilled in The Senses and the Intellect
(1855) and The Emotions and the Will (1859), abridged in one volume, Mental and
Moral Science (1868). Neither Bain’s psychology nor his physiology were
particularly original. His psychology came from English empiricism and
associationism, his physiology from Johannes Muller’s (1801–58) Elements of
Physiology (1842). Muller was an early advocate of the reflex, or sensorimotor,
conception of the nervous system, holding that neurons conduct sensory
information to the brain or motor commands from the brain, the brain connecting
sensation with appropriate motor response. Like Hartley before him, Bain
grounded the laws of mental association in the laws of neural connection. In
opposition to faculty psychology, Bain rejected the existence of mental powers
located in different parts of the brain (On the Study of Character, 1861). By
combining associationism with modern physiology, he virtually completed the
movement of philosophical psychology toward science. In philosophy, his most
important concept was his analysis of belief as “a preparation to act.” By thus
entwining conception and action, he laid the foundation for pragmatism, and for
the focus on adaptive behavior central to modern psychology. ASSOCIATIONISM. T.H.L.
Bakhtin, Mikhail
Mikhailovich (1895–1975), Russian philosopher and cultural theorist whose
influence is pervasive in a wide range of academic disciplines – from literary
hermeneutics to the epistemology of the human sciences, cultural theory, and
feminism. He may legitimately be called a philosophical anthropologist in the
venerable Continental tradition. Because of his seminal work on Rabelais and
Dostoevsky’s poetics, Baden School Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich 70 4065A- AM 70
his influence has been greatest in literary hermeneutics. Without question
dialogism, or the construal of dialogue, is the hallmark of Bakhtin’s thought.
Dialogue marks the existential condition of humanity in which the self and the
other are asymmetrical but double-binding. In his words, to exist means to
communicate dialogically, and when the dialogue ends, everything else ends.
Unlike Hegelian and Marxian dialectics but like the Chinese correlative logic
of yin and yang, Bakhtin’s dialogism is infinitely polyphonic, open-ended, and
indeterminate, i.e., “unfinalizable” – to use his term. Dialogue means that
there are neither first nor last words. The past and the future are interlocked
and revolve around the axis of the present. Bakhtin’s dialogism is paradigmatic
in a threefold sense. First, dialogue is never abstract but embodied. The lived
body is the material condition of social existence as ongoing dialogue. Not
only does the word become enfleshed, but dialogue is also the incorporation of
the self and the other. Appropriately, therefore, Bakhtin’s body politics may
be called a Slavic version of Tantrism. Second, the Rabelaisian carnivalesque
that Bakhtin’s dialogism incorporates points to the “jesterly” politics of
resistance and protest against the “priestly” establishment of officialdom.
Third, the most distinguishing characteristic of Bakhtin’s dialogism is the
primacy of the other over the self, with a twofold consequence: one concerns
ethics and the other epistemology. In modern philosophy, the discovery of
“Thou” or the primacy of the other over the self in asymmetrical reciprocity is
credited to Feuerbach. It is hailed as the “Copernican revolution” of mind,
ethics, and social thought. Ethically, Bakhtin’s dialogism, based on
heteronomy, signals the birth of a new philosophy of responsibility that
challenges and transgresses the Anglo-American tradition of “rights talk.”
Epistemologically, it lends our welcoming ears to the credence that the other
may be right – the attitude that Gadamer calls the soul of dialogical
hermeneutics. BUBER, FEUERBACH, GADAMER,
HERMENEUTICS, PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY. H.Y.J. Bakunin, Mikhail (1814–76),
Russian revolutionary anarchist. He lived in Western Europe in 1840–49 and
again in 1861–76 after an intervening period in Western and Russian prisons and
Siberian exile. Bakunin is best known for his vigorous if incoherent
anarchist-socialist views. On the one hand, he claimed that the masses’
“instinct for freedom” would spark the social revolution; on the other, he
claimed that the revolution would be the work of a conspiratorial elite of
disciplined professionals. Still, Bakunin made two significant if limited
philosophic contributions. (1) In the early 1840s he spoke of the “incessant
self-immolation of the positive in the pure flame of the negative,” and came to
see that “flame” as a necessary dialectical component of revolutionary action.
His sharpest criticism was directed not at conservative attempts to defend the
existing order but rather at (Hegelian) attempts to reconcile positive and
negative and “liberal” efforts to find a “modest and harmless place” for the
negative within the positive. For Bakunin the negative is absolutely justified
in its “constructive” elimination of the positive. Writing in German (in 1842)
he exploited both senses of the word Lust, namely “joy” and “urge,” declaring
that the Lust to destroy is at the same time a creative Lust. (2) From 1861
until the end of his life Bakunin was committed to scientism, materialism, and
atheism. But in the late 1860s he formulated a forceful critique of the
political and social role of scientific elites and institutions. Individual
life is concrete and particular; science is abstract and general and incapable
of understanding or valuing living individuals. Instead, it tends to ignore or
to exploit them. Bakunin, who had preached an anarchist revolt against church
and state, now preached a “revolt of life against science, or rather against
government by science.” This was related to his anarchist critique of Marx’s
statism and technicism; but it raised the more general question – one of
continuing relevance and urgency – of the role of scientific experts in
decisions about public policy. POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY, RUSSIAN NIHILISM. G.L.K. Balguy, John.HUTCHESON.
Bañez, Domingo
(1528–1604), Spanish Dominican theologian and philosopher. Born in Valladolid,
he studied at Salamanca, where he also taught for many years. As spiritual
director of St. Teresa of Ávila, he exerted considerable influence on her
views. He is known for his disputes with Molina concerning divine grace.
Against Molina he held physical predetermination, the view that God physically
determines the secondary causes of human action. This renders grace
intrinsically efficacious and independent of human will and merits. He is also
known for his Bakunin, Mikhail Bañez, Domingo 71 4065A- AM 71
understanding of the centrality of the act of existence (esse) in Thomistic
metaphysics. Bañez’s most important works are his commentaries on Aquinas’s
Summa theologiae and Aristotle’s On Generation and Corruption. AQUINAS, FREE WILL PROBLEM, METAPHYSICS, MOLINA.
J.J.E.G. Barbara.ARISTOTLE, SYLLOGISM. barber paradox.PARADOX. Barcan
formula.MODAL LOGIC. bare particular.METAPHYSICS. bargaining theory, the branch
of game theory that treats agreements, e.g., wage agreements between labor and
management. In the simplest bargaining problems there are two bargainers. They
can jointly realize various outcomes, including the outcome that occurs if they
fail to reach an agreement. Each bargainer assigns a certain amount of utility
to each outcome. The question is, what outcome will they realize if they are
rational? Methods of solving bargaining problems are controversial. The
best-known proposals are Nash’s and Kalai and Smorodinsky’s. Nash proposes
maximizing the product of utility gains with respect to the disagreement point.
Kalai and Smorodinsky propose maximizing utility gains with respect to the
disagreement point, subject to the constraint that the ratio of utility gains
equals the ratio of greatest possible gains. These methods of selecting an
outcome have been axiomatically characterized. For each method, there are
certain axioms of outcome selection such that that method alone satisfies the
axioms. The axioms incorporate principles of rationality from cooperative game
theory. They focus on features of outcomes rather than bargaining strategies.
For example, one axiom requires that the outcome selected be Pareto-optimal,
i.e., be an outcome such that no alternative is better for one of the
bargainers and not worse for the other. Bargaining problems may become more
complicated in several ways. First, there may be more than two bargainers. If
unanimity is not required for beneficial agreements, splinter groups or
coalitions may form. Second, the protocol for offers, counteroffers, etc., may
be relevant. Then principles of non-cooperative game theory concerning
strategies are needed to justify solutions. Third, the context of a bargaining
problem may be relevant. For instance, opportunities for side payments,
differences in bargaining power, and interpersonal comparisons of utility may
influence the solution. Fourth, simplifying assumptions, such as the assumption
that bargainers have complete information about their bargaining situation, may
be discarded. Bargaining theory is part of the philosophical study of rationality.
It is also important in ethics as a foundation for contractarian theories of
morality and for certain theories of distributive justice. DECISION THEORY, GAME THEORY. P.We. Barthes,
Roland (1915–80), French post-structuralist literary critic and essayist. Born
in Cherbourg, he suffered from numerous ailments as a child and spent much of
his early life as a semiinvalid. After leaving the military, he took up several
positions teaching subjects like classics, grammar, and philology. His interest
in linguistics finally drew him to literature, and by the mid-1960s he had
already published what would become a classic in structural analysis, The
Elements of Semiology. Its principal message is that words are merely one kind
of sign whose meaning lies in relations of difference between them. This
concept was later amended to include the reading subject, and the structuring
effect that the subject has on the literary work – a concept expressed later in
his S/Z and The Pleasure of the Text. Barthes’s most mature contributions to
the post-structuralist movement were brilliant and witty interpretations of
visual, tactile, and aural sign systems, culminating in the publication of
several books and essays on photography, advertising, film, and cuisine. POSTMODERN, SEMIOSIS, STRUCTURALISM. M.Ro.
base, supervenience.SUPERVENIENCE. base clause.MATHEMATICAL INDUCTION. basic
action.ACTION THEORY. basic belief.BERKELEY, FOUNDATIONALISM, LOGICAL
POSITIVISM, PLANTINGA. basic norm, also called Grundnorm, in a legal system, the
norm that determines the legal validity of all other norms. The content of such
an ultimate norm may provide, e.g., that norms created by a legislature or by a
court are legally valid. The validity of such an ultimate norm cannot be
established as a matter of social fact (such as the social fact that the norm
is accepted by some Barbara basic norm 72 4065A- AM 72
group within a society). Rather, the validity of the basic norm for any given
legal system must be presupposed by the validity of the norms that it
legitimates as laws. The idea of a basic norm is associated with the legal
philosopher Hans Kelsen. JURISPRUDENCE,
PHILOSOPHY OF LAW. M.S.M. basic particular.STRAWSON. basic
proposition.EPISTEMOLOGY. basic sentence.FOUNDATIONALISM. basic statement.FOUNDATIONALISM.
Basilides (A.D. c.120–40), Syrian Christian gnostic teacher in Alexandria who
rivaled Valentinus. He improved on Valentinus’s doctrine of emanations,
positing 365 (the number of days in a year) levels of existence in the Pleroma
(the fullness of the Godhead), all descending from the ineffable Father. He
taught that the rival God was the God of the Jews (the God of the Old
Testament), who created the material world. Redemption consists in the coming
of the first begotten of the Father, Noûs (Mind), in human form in order to
release the spiritual element imprisoned within human bodies. Like other
gnostics he taught that we are saved by knowledge, not faith. He apparently
held to the idea of reincarnation before the restoration of all things to the
Pleroma. GNOSTICISM, VALENTINUS. L.P.P.
basing relation, also called basis relation, the relation between a belief or
item of knowledge and a second belief or item of knowledge when the latter is
the ground (basis) of the first. It is clear that some knowledge is indirect,
i.e., had or gained on the basis of some evidence, as opposed to direct
knowledge, which (assuming there is any) is not so gained, or based. The same
holds for justified belief. In one broad sense of the term, the basing relation
is just the one connecting indirect knowledge or indirectly justified belief to
the evidence: to give an account of either of the latter is to give an account
of the basing relation. There is a narrower view of the basing relation,
perhaps implicit in the first. A person knows some proposition P on the basis
of evidence or reasons only if her belief that P is based on the evidence or
reasons, or perhaps on the possession of the evidence or reasons. The narrow
basing relation is indicated by this question: where a belief that P
constitutes indirect knowledge or justification, what is it for that belief to
be based on the evidence or reasons that support the knowledge or
justification? The most widely favored view is that the relevant belief is
based on evidence or reasons only if the belief is causally related to the
belief or reasons. Proponents of this causal view differ concerning what,
beyond this causal relationship, is needed by an account of the narrow basing
relation. COHERENTISM, FOUNDATIONALISM,
INFERENTIAL KNOWLEDGE. G.S.P. basis clause.MATHEMATICAL INDUCTION. basis
relation.BASING RELATION. Bataille, Georges (1897–1962), French philosopher and
novelist with enormous influence on post-structuralist thought. By locating
value in expenditure as opposed to accumulation, Bataille inaugurates the era
of the death of the subject. He insists that individuals must transgress the
limits imposed by subjectivity to escape isolation and communicate. Bataille’s
prewar philosophical contributions consist mainly of short essays, the most
significant of which have been collected in Visions of Excess. These essays
introduce the central idea that base matter disrupts rational subjectivity by
attesting to the continuity in which individuals lose themselves. Inner
Experience (1943), Bataille’s first lengthy philosophical treatise, was
followed by Guilty (1944) and On Nietzsche (1945). Together, these three works
constitute Bataille’s Summa Atheologica, which explores the play of the
isolation and the dissolution of beings in terms of the experience of excess
(laughter, tears, eroticism, death, sacrifice, poetry). The Accursed Share
(1949), which he considered his most important work, is his most systematic
account of the social and economic implications of expenditure. In Erotism
(1957) and The Tears of Eros (1961), he focuses on the excesses of sex and
death. Throughout his life, Bataille was concerned with the question of value.
He located it in the excess that lacerates individuals and opens channels of
communication. POSTMODERN,
STRUCTURALISM. J.H.L.
Baumgarten, Alexander
Gottlieb (1714–62), German philosopher. Born in Berlin, he was educated in
Halle and taught at Halle (1738–40) and Frankfurt an der Oder (1740–62).
Baumgarten was brought up in the Pietist circle of A. H. Francke but adopted
the anti-Pietist rationalism of Wolff. He wrote textbooks in metabasic
particular Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb 73 4065A- AM 73
physics (Metaphysica, 1739) and ethics (Ethica Philosophica, 1740; Initia
Philosophiae Practicae Prima [“First Elements of Practical Philosophy”], 1760)
on which Kant lectured. For the most part, Baumgarten did not significantly
depart from Wolff, although in metaphysics he was both further and yet closer
to Leibniz than was Wolff: unlike Leibniz, he argued for real physical influx,
but, unlike Wolff, he did not restrict preestablished harmony to the mind–body
relationship alone, but (paradoxically) reextended it to include all relations
of substances. Baumgarten’s claim to fame, however, rests on his introduction
of the discipline of aesthetics into German philosophy, and indeed on his
introduction of the term ‘aesthetics’ as well. Wolff had explained pleasure as
the response to the perception of perfection by means of the senses, in turn
understood as clear but confused perception. Baumgarten subtly but
significantly departed from Wolff by redefining our response to beauty as
pleasure in the perfection of sensory perception, i.e., in the unique potential
of sensory as opposed to merely conceptual representation. This concept was
first introduced in his dissertation Meditationes Philosophicae de Nonnullis ad
Poema Pertinentibus (“Philosophical Meditations on some Matters pertaining to
Poetry,” 1735), which defined a poem as a “perfect sensate discourse,” and then
generalized in his twovolume (but still incomplete) Aesthetica (1750– 58). One
might describe Baumgarten’s aesthetics as cognitivist but no longer
rationalist: while in science or logic we must always prefer discursive
clarity, in art we respond with pleasure to the maximally dense (or “confused”)
intimation of ideas. Baumgarten’s theory had great influence on Lessing and
Mendelssohn, on Kant’s theory of aesthetic ideas, and even on the aesthetics of
Hegel. WOLFF. P.Gu. Bayesian.BAYESIAN
RATIONALITY, CONFIRMATION. Bayesian rationality, minimally, a property a system
of beliefs (or the believer) has in virtue of the system’s “conforming to the
probability calculus.” “Bayesians” differ on what “rationality” requires, but
most agree that (i) beliefs come in degrees (of firmness); (ii) these “degrees
of belief” are (theoretically or ideally) quantifiable; (iii) such
quantification can be understood in terms of person-relative, time-indexed
“credence functions” from appropriate sets of objects of belief (propositions
or sentences) – each set closed under (at least) finite truth-functional
combinations – into the set of real numbers; (iv) at any given time t, a
person’s credence function at t ought to be (usually: “on pain of a Dutch book
argument”) a probability function; that is, a mapping from the given set into
the real numbers in such a way that the “probability” (the value) assigned to
any given object A in the set is greater than or equal to zero, and is equal to
unity (% 1) if A is a necessary truth, and, for any given objects A and B in
the set, if A and B are incompatible (the negation of their conjunction is a
necessary truth) then the probability assigned to their disjunction is equal to
the sum of the probabilities assigned to each; so that the usual propositional
probability axioms impose a sort of logic on degrees of belief. If a credence
function is a probability function, then it (or the believer at the given time)
is “coherent.” On these matters, on conditional degrees of belief, and on the
further constraint on rationality many Bayesians impose (that change of belief
ought to accord with “conditionalization”), the reader should consult John
Earman, Bayes or Bust? A Critical Examination of Bayesian Confirmation Theory
(1992); Colin Howson and Peter Urbach, Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian
Approach (1989); and Richard Jeffrey, The Logic of Decision (1965). BAYES’S THEOREM, DECISION THEORY, DUTCH BOOK
ARGUMENT, PROBABILITY, RATIONALITY. D.A.J. Bayes’s rule.BAYES’s THEOREM.
Bayes’s theorem, any of several relationships between prior and posterior
probabilities or odds, especially (1)–(3) below. All of these depend upon the
basic relationship (0) between contemporaneous conditional and unconditional
probabilities. Non-Bayesians think these useful only in narrow ranges of cases,
generally because of skepticism about accessibility or significance of priors.
According to (1), posterior probability is prior probability times the
“relevance quotient” (Carnap’s term). According to (2), posterior odds are Bayesian
Bayes’s theorem 74 4065A- AM 74 prior odds times the “likelihood ratio”
(R. A. Fisher’s term). Relationship (3) comes from (1) by expanding P (data)
via the law of total probability. Bayes’s rule (4) for updating probabilities
has you set your new unconditional probabilities equal to your old conditional
ones when fresh certainty about data leaves probabilities conditionally upon
the data unchanged. The corresponding rule (5) has you do the same for odds. In
decision theory the term is used differently, for the rule “Choose so as to
maximize expectation of utility.”
DECISION THEORY, PROBABILITY. R.J. Bayle, Pierre (1647–1706), French
philosopher who also pioneered in disinterested, critical history. A Calvinist
forced into exile in 1681, Bayle nevertheless rejected the prevailing use of
history as an instrument of partisan or sectarian interest. He achieved fame
and notoriety with his multivolume Dictionnaire historique et critique (1695).
For each subject covered, Bayle provided a biographical sketch and a
dispassionate examination of the historical record and interpretive
controversies. He also repeatedly probed the troubled and troubling boundary
between reason and faith (philosophy and religion). In the article “David,” the
seemingly illicit conduct of God’s purported agent yielded reflections on the
morals of the elect and the autonomy of ethics. In “Pyrrho,” Bayle argued that
self-evidence, the most plausible candidate for the criterion of truth, is
discredited by Christianity because some self-evident principles contradict
essential Christian truths and are therefore false. Finally, provoking
Leibniz’s Theodicy, Bayle argued, most relentlessly in “Manichaeans” and
“Paulicians,” that there is no defensible rational solution to the problem of
evil. Bayle portrayed himself as a Christian skeptic, but others have seen
instead an ironic critic of religion – a precursor of the French Enlightenment.
Bayle’s purely philosophical reflections support his self-assessment, since he
consistently maintains that philosophy achieves not comprehension and
contentment, but paradox and puzzlement. In making this case he proved to be a
superb critic of philosophical systems. Some examples are “Zeno of Elea” – on
space, time, and motion; “Rorarius” – on mind and body and animal mechanism;
and “Spinoza” – on the perils of monism. Bayle’s skepticism concerning
philosophy significantly influenced Berkeley and Hume. His other important
works include Pensées diverses de la comète de 1683 (1683); Commentaire
philosophique sur ces paroles de Jesus Christ: contrain les d’entrer (1686);
and Réponse aux questions d’un provincial(1704); and an early learned
periodical, the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres (1684– 87). LEIBNIZ. P.D.C. Beattie, James (1735–1803),
Scottish philosopher and poet who, in criticizing Hume, widened the latter’s
audience. A member of the Scottish school of common sense philosophy along with
Oswald and Reid, Beattie’s major work was An Essay on the Nature and
Immutability of Truth (1771), in which he criticizes Hume for fostering
skepticism and infidelity. His positive view was that the mind possesses a
common sense, i.e., a power for perceiving self-evident truths. Common sense is
instinctive, unalterable by education; truth is what common sense determines
the mind to believe. Beattie cited Hume and then claimed that his views led to
moral and religious evils. When Beattie’s Essay was translated into German
(1772), Kant could read Hume’s discussions of personal identity and causation.
Since these topics were not covered in Hume’s Inquiry Concerning Human
Understanding, Beattie provided Kant access to two issues in the Treatises of
Human Nature critical to the development of transcendental idealism. HUME, SCOTTISH COMMON SENSE PHILOSOPHY. P.K.
beauty, an aesthetic property commonly thought of as a species of aesthetic
value. As such, it has been variously thought to be (1) a simple, indefinable
property that cannot be defined in terms of any other properties; (2) a
property or set of properties of an object that makes the object capable of
producing a certain sort of pleasurable experience in any suitable perceiver;
or (3) whatever produces a particular sort of pleasurable experience, even
though what produces the experience may vary from individual to individual. It
is in this last sense that beauty is thought to be “in the eye of the
beholder.” If beauty is a simple, indefinable property, as in (1), then it
cannot be defined conceptually and has to be apprehended by intuition or taste.
Beauty, on this account, would be a particular sort of aesthetic property. If
beauty is an object’s Bayle, Pierre beauty 75 4065A- AM 75
capacity to produce a special sort of pleasurable experience, as in (2), then
it is necessary to say what properties provide it with this capacity. The most
favored candidates for these have been formal or structural properties, such as
order, symmetry, and proportion. In the Philebus Plato argues that the form or
essence of beauty is knowable, exact, rational, and measurable. He also holds
that simple geometrical shapes, simple colors, and musical notes all have
“intrinsic beauty,” which arouses a pure, “unmixed” pleasure in the perceiver
and is unaffected by context. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries many
treatises were written on individual art forms, each allegedly governed by its
own rules. In the eighteenth century, Hutcheson held that ‘beauty’ refers to an
“idea raised in us,” and that any object that excites this idea is beautiful.
He thought that the property of the object that excites this idea is
“uniformity in variety.” Kant explained the nature of beauty by analyzing
judgments that something is beautiful. Such judgments refer to an experience of
the perceiver. But they are not merely expressions of personal experience; we
claim that others should also have the same experience, and that they should
make the same judgment (i.e., judgments that something is beautiful have
“universal validity”). Such judgments are disinterested – determined not by any
needs or wants on the part of the perceiver, but just by contemplating the mere
appearance of the object. These are judgments about an object’s free beauty,
and making them requires using only those mental capacities that all humans
have by virtue of their ability to communicate with one another. Hence the
pleasures experienced in response to such beauty can in principle be shared by
anyone. Some have held, as in (3), that we apply the term ‘beautiful’ to things
because of the pleasure they give us, and not on the basis of any specific
qualities an object has. Archibald Alison held that it is impossible to find
any properties common to all those things we call beautiful. Santayana believed
beauty is “pleasure regarded as a quality of a thing,” and made no pretense
that certain qualities ought to produce that pleasure. The Greek term to kalon,
which is often translated as ‘beauty’, did not refer to a thing’s autonomous
aesthetic value, but rather to its “excellence,” which is connected with its
moral worth and/or usefulness. This concept is closer to Kant’s notion of
dependent beauty, possessed by an object judged as a particular kind of thing
(such as a beautiful cat or a beautiful horse), than it is to free beauty,
possessed by an object judged simply on the basis of its appearance and not in
terms of any concept of use. AESTHETIC
PROPERTY, AESTHETICS. S.L.F. Beauvoir, Simone de.EXISTENTIALISM. Beccaria,
Cesare (1738–94), Italian criminologist and judicial and penal reformer. He
studied in Parma and Pavia and taught political economy in Milan. Here, he met
Pietro and Alessandro Verri and other Milanese intellectuals attempting to
promote political, economical, and judiciary reforms. His major work, Dei
delitti e delle pene (“On Crimes and Punishments,” 1764), denounces the
contemporary methods in the administration of justice and the treatment of
criminals. Beccaria argues that the highest good is the greatest happiness
shared by the greatest number of people; hence, actions against the state are
the most serious crimes. Crimes against individuals and property are less
serious, and crimes endangering public harmony are the least serious. The
purposes of punishment are deterrence and the protection of society. However,
the employment of torture to obtain confessions is unjust and useless: it
results in acquittal of the strong and the ruthless and conviction of the weak
and the innocent. Beccaria also rejects the death penalty as a war of the state
against the individual. He claims that the duration and certainty of the
punishment, not its intensity, most strongly affect criminals. Beccaria was
influenced by Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Condillac. His major work was
translated into many languages and set guidelines for revising the criminal and
judicial systems of several European countries. P.Gar. becoming.TIME. becoming,
temporal.TIME. Bedeutung.FREGE. begging the question.CIRCULAR REASONING.
Begriff.HEGEL. behavioral equivalence.TURING MACHINE.
behavioralism.JURISPRUDENCE. behaviorism, broadly, the view that behavior is
fundamental in understanding mental phenomena. The term applies both to a
scientific research Beauvoir, Simone de behaviorism 76 4065A- AM 76
program in psychology and to a philosophical doctrine. Accordingly, we
distinguish between scientific (psychological, methodological) behaviorism and
philosophical (logical, analytical) behaviorism. Scientific behaviorism. First
propounded by the American psychologist J. B. Watson (who introduced the term
in 1913) and further developed especially by C. L. Hull, E. C. Tolman, and B. F.
Skinner, it departed from the introspectionist tradition by redefining the
proper task of psychology as the explanation and prediction of behavior – where
to explain behavior is to provide a “functional analysis” of it, i.e., to
specify the independent variables (stimuli) of which the behavior (response) is
lawfully a function. It insisted that all variables – including behavior as the
dependent variable – must be specifiable by the experimental procedures of the
natural sciences: merely introspectible, internal states of consciousness are
thus excluded from the proper domain of psychology. Although some behaviorists
were prepared to admit internal neurophysiological conditions among the
variables (“intervening variables”), others of more radical bent (e.g. Skinner)
insisted on environmental variables alone, arguing that any relevant variations
in the hypothetical inner states would themselves in general be a function of
variations in (past and present) environmental conditions (as, e.g., thirst is
a function of water deprivation). Although some basic responses are inherited
reflexes, most are learned and integrated into complex patterns by a process of
conditioning. In classical (respondent) conditioning, a response already under
the control of a given stimulus will be elicited by new stimuli if these are
repeatedly paired with the old stimulus: this is how we learn to respond to new
situations. In operant conditioning, a response that has repeatedly been
followed by a reinforcing stimulus (reward) will occur with greater frequency
and will thus be “selected” over other possible responses: this is how we learn
new responses. Conditioned responses can also be unlearned or “extinguished” by
prolonged dissociation from the old eliciting stimuli or by repeated withholding
of the reinforcing stimuli. To show how all human behavior, including
“cognitive” or intelligent behavior, can be “shaped” by such processes of
selective reinforcement and extinction of responses was the ultimate objective
of scientific behaviorism. Grave difficulties in the way of the realization of
this objective led to increasingly radical liberalization of the distinctive
features of behaviorist methodology and eventually to its displacement by more
cognitively oriented approaches (e.g. those inspired by information theory and
by Chomsky’s work in linguistics). Philosophical behaviorism. A semantic thesis
about the meaning of mentalistic expressions, it received its most sanguine
formulation by the logical positivists (particularly Carnap, Hempel, and Ayer),
who asserted that statements containing mentalistic expressions have the same
meaning as, and are thus translatable into, some set of publicly verifiable
(confirmable, testable) statements describing behavioral and bodily processes
and dispositions (including verbalbehavioral dispositions). Because of the
reductivist concerns expressed by the logical positivist thesis of physicalism
and the unity of science, logical behaviorism (as some positivists preferred to
call it) was a corollary of the thesis that psychology is ultimately (via a
behavioristic analysis) reducible to physics, and that all of its statements,
like those of physics, are expressible in a strictly extensional language.
Another influential formulation of philosophical behaviorism is due to Ryle
(The Concept of Mind, 1949), whose classic critique of Cartesian dualism rests
on the view that mental predicates are often used to ascribe dispositions to
behave in characteristic ways: but such ascriptions, for Ryle, have the form of
conditional, lawlike statements whose function is not to report the occurrence
of inner states, physical or non-physical, of which behavior is the causal
manifestation, but to license inferences about how the agent would behave if
certain conditions obtained. To suppose that all declarative uses of mental
language have a fact-stating or -reporting role at all is, for Ryle, to make a
series of “category mistakes” – of which both Descartes and the logical
positivists were equally guilty. Unlike the behaviorism of the positivists,
Ryle’s behaviorism required no physicalistic reduction of mental language, and
relied instead on ordinary language descriptions of human behavior. A further
version of philosophical behaviorism can be traced to Wittgenstein (Philosophical
Investigations, 1953), who argues that the epistemic criteria for the
applicability of mentalistic terms cannot be private, introspectively
accessible inner states but must instead be intersubjectively observable
behavior. Unlike the previously mentioned versions of philosophical
behaviorism, Wittgenstein’s behaviorism seems to be consistent with
metaphysical mind–body dualism, and is thus also non-reductivist. behaviorism
behaviorism 77 4065A- AM 77 Philosophical behaviorism underwent severe
criticism in the 1950s and 1960s, especially by Chisholm, Charles Taylor,
Putnam, and Fodor. Nonetheless it still lives on in more or less attenuated
forms in the work of such diverse philosophers as Quine, Dennett, Armstrong,
David Lewis, U. T. Place, and Dummett. Though current “functionalism” is often
referred to as the natural heir to behaviorism, functionalism (especially of
the Armstrong-Lewis variety) crucially differs from behaviorism in insisting
that mental predicates, while definable in terms of behavior and behavioral
dispositions, nonetheless designate inner causal states – states that are apt
to cause certain characteristic behaviors.
COGNITIVE SCIENCE, FUNCTIONALISM, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, PHILOSOPHY OF
PSYCHOLOGY, RYLE, VERIFICATIONISM. A.M. behaviorism, supervenient.PHILOSOPHY OF
MIND. behavior therapy, a spectrum of behavior modification techniques applied
as therapy, such as aversion therapy, extinction, modeling, redintegration,
operant conditioning, and desensitization. Unlike psychotherapy, which probes a
client’s recollected history, behavior therapy focuses on immediate behavior,
and aims to eliminate undesired behavior and produce desired behavior through
methods derived from the experimental analysis of behavior and from
reinforcement theory. A chronic problem with psychotherapy is that the client’s
past is filtered through limited and biased recollection. Behavior therapy is
more mechanical, creating systems of reinforcement and conditioning that may
work independently of the client’s long-term memory. Collectively,
behavior-therapeutic techniques compose a motley set. Some behavior therapists
adapt techniques from psychotherapy, as in covert desensitization, where
verbally induced mental images are employed as reinforcers. A persistent
problem with behavior therapy is that it may require repeated application.
Consider aversion therapy. It consists of pairing painful or punishing stimuli
with unwelcome behavior. In the absence, after therapy, of the painful
stimulus, the behavior may recur because association between behavior and
punishment is broken. Critics charge that behavior therapy deals with immediate
disturbances and overt behavior, to the neglect of underlying problems and
irrationalities. COGNITIVE PSYCHOTHERAPY.
G.A.G. being.HEIDEGGER, METAPHYSICS, TRANSCENDENTALS. belief, a dispositional
psychological state in virtue of which a person will assent to a proposition
under certain conditions. Propositional knowledge, traditionally understood,
entails belief. A behavioral view implies that beliefs are just dispositions to
behave in certain ways. Your believing that the stove is hot is just your being
disposed to act in a manner appropriate to its being hot. The problem is that
our beliefs, including their propositional content indicated by a “that”-clause,
typically explain why we do what we do. You avoid touching the stove because
you believe that it’s dangerously hot. Explaining action via beliefs refers
indispensably to propositional content, but the behavioral view does not
accommodate this. A state-object view implies that belief consists of a special
relation between a psychological state and an object of belief, what is
believed. The objects of belief, traditionally understood, are abstract
propositions existing independently of anyone’s thinking of them. The state of
believing is a propositional attitude involving some degree of confidence
toward a propositional object of belief. Such a view allows that two persons,
even separated by a long period of time, can believe the same thing. A state-object
view allows that beliefs be dispositional rather than episodic, since they can
exist while no action is occurring. Such a view grants, however, that one can
have a disposition to act owing to believing something. Regarding mental
action, a belief typically generates a disposition to assent, at least under
appropriate circumstances, to the proposition believed. Given the central role
of propositional content, however, a state-object view denies that beliefs are
just dispositions to act. In addition, such a view should distinguish between
dispositional believing and a mere disposition to believe. One can be merely
disposed to believe many things that one does not actually believe, owing to
one’s lacking the appropriate psychological attitude to relevant propositional
content. Beliefs are either occurrent or non-occurrent. Occurrent belief,
unlike non-occurrent belief, requires current assent to the proposition
believed. If the assent is self-conscious, the belief is an explicit occurrent
belief; if the assent is not self-conscious, the belief is an implicit
occurrent behaviorism, supervenient belief 78 4065A- AM 78
belief. Non-occurrent beliefs permit that we do not cease to believe that 2 ! 2
% 4, for instance, merely because we now happen to be thinking of something
else or nothing at all. ACT-OBJECT
PSYCHOLOGY, BEHAVIORISM, DISPOSITION, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. P.K.M. belief,
basic.BERKELEY, FOUNDATIONALISM, LOGICAL POSITIVISM. belief, degree of.BAYESIAN
RATIONALITY. belief, ethics of.CLIFFORD. belief, partial.PROBABILITY. belief,
properly basic.EVIDENTIALISM, PLANTINGA. belief-desire model.INTENTION. belief
revision, the process by which cognitive states change in light of new
information. This topic looms large in discussions of Bayes’s Theorem and other
approaches in decision theory. The reasons prompting belief revision are
characteristically epistemic; they concern such notions as quality of evidence
and the tendency to yield truths. Many different rules have been proposed for
updating one’s belief set. In general, belief revision typically balances risk
of error against information increase. Belief revision is widely thought to
proceed either by expansion or by conceptual revision. Expansion occurs in
virtue of new observations; a belief is changed, or a new belief established,
when a hypothesis (or provisional belief) is supported by evidence whose
probability is high enough to meet a favored criterion of epistemic warrant.
The hypothesis then becomes part of the existing belief corpus, or is sufficient
to prompt revision. Conceptual revision occurs when appropriate changes are
made in theoretical assumptions – in accordance with such principles as
simplicity and explanatory or predictive power – by which the corpus is
organized. In actual cases, we tend to revise beliefs with an eye toward
advancing the best comprehensive explanation in the relevant cognitive
domain. BAYESIAN RATIONALITY,
COHERENTISM, EPISTEMOLOGY, FOUNDATIONALISM, REFLECTIVE EQUILIBRIUM. J.D.T.
Bell’s theorem.PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, QUANTUM MECHANICS. beneficence.VIRTUE
ETHICS. Beneke, Friedrich Eduard (1798–1854), German philosopher who was
influenced by Herbart and English empiricism and criticized rationalistic
metaphysics. He taught at Berlin and published some eighteen books in philosophy.
His major work was Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissenschaft (1833). He
wrote a critical study of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and another on his
moral theory; other works included Psychologie Skizzen (1825), Metaphysik und
Religionphilosophie (1840), and Die neue Psychologie (1845). The “new
psychology” developed by Beneke held that the hypostatization of “faculties”
led to a mythical psychology. He proposed a method that would yield a natural
science of the soul or, in effect, an associationist psychology. Influenced by
the British empiricists, he conceived the elements of mental life as dynamic,
active processes or impulses (Trieben). These “elementary faculties,”
originally activated by stimuli, generate the substantial unity of the nature
of the psychic by their persistence as traces, as well as by their reciprocal
adjustment in relation to the continuous production of new forces. In what
Beneke called “pragmatic psychology,” the psyche is a bundle of impulses,
forces, and functions. Psychological theory should rest on inductive analyses
of the facts of inner perception. This, in turn, is the foundation of the
philosophical disciplines of logic, ethics, metaphysics, and philosophy of
religion. In this regard, Beneke held a psychologism. He agreed with Herbart
that psychology must be based on inner experience and must eschew metaphysical
speculation, but rejected Hebart’s mathematical reductionism. Beneke sought to
create a “pragmatic philosophy” based on his psychology. In his last years he
contributed to pedagogic theory.
ASSOCIATIONISM. G.J.S. benevolence.VIRTUE ETHICS. Bentham, Jeremy
(1748–1832), British philosopher of ethics and political-legal theory. Born in
London, he entered Queen’s College, Oxford, at age 12, and after graduation
entered Lincoln’s Inn to study law. He was admitted to the bar in 1767 but
never practiced. He spent his life writing, advocating changes along
utilitarian lines (maximal happiness for everyone affected) of the whole legal
system, especially the criminal law. He was a strong influence in changes of
the British law of evidence; in abolition of laws permitting imprisonment for
indebtedness; in the belief, basic Bentham, Jeremy 79 4065A- AM 79
reform of Parliamentary representation; in the formation of a civil service
recruited by examination; and in much else. His major work published during his
lifetime was An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
(1789). He became head of a “radical” group including James Mill and J. S.
Mill, and founded the Westminster Review and University College, London (where
his embalmed body still reposes in a closet). He was a friend of Catherine of
Russia and John Quincy Adams, and was made a citizen of France in 1792.
Pleasure, he said, is the only good, and pain the only evil: “else the words
good and evil have no meaning.” He gives a list of examples of what he means by
‘pleasure’: pleasures of taste, smell, or touch; of acquiring property; of
learning that one has the goodwill of others; of power; of a view of the
pleasures of those one cares about. Bentham was also a psychological hedonist:
pleasures and pains determine what we do. Take pain. Your state of mind may be
painful now (at the time just prior to action) because it includes the
expectation of the pain (say) of being burned; the present pain (or the
expectation of later pain – Bentham is undecided which) motivates action to
prevent being burned. One of a person’s pleasures, however, may be sympathetic
enjoyment of the well-being of another. So it seems one can be motivated by the
prospect of the happiness of another. His psychology here is not incompatible
with altruistic motivation. Bentham’s critical utilitarianism lies in his claim
that any action, or measure of government, ought to be taken if and only if it
tends to augment the happiness of everyone affected – not at all a novel
principle, historically. When “thus interpreted, the words ought, and right and
wrong . . . have a meaning: when otherwise, they have none.” Bentham evidently
did not mean this statement as a purely linguistic point about the actual
meaning of moral terms. Neither can this principle be proved; it is a first
principle from which all proofs proceed. What kind of reason, then, can he
offer in its support? At one point he says that the principle of utility, at
least unconsciously, governs the judgment of “every thinking man . . .
unavoidably.” But his chief answer is his critique of a widely held principle
that a person properly calls an act wrong if (when informed of the facts) he
disapproves of it. (Bentham cites other language as coming to the same thesis:
talk of a “moral sense,” or common sense, or the understanding, or the law of
nature, or right reason, or the “fitness of things.”) He says that this is no
principle at all, since a “principle is something that points out some external
consideration, as a means of warranting and guiding the internal sentiments of
approbation. . . .” The alleged principle also allows for widespread
disagreement about what is moral. So far, Bentham’s proposal has not told us
exactly how to determine whether an action or social measure is right or wrong.
Bentham suggests a hedonic calculus: in comparing two actions under
consideration, we count up the pleasures or pains each will probably produce –
how intense, how long-lasting, whether near or remote, including any derivative
later pleasures or pains that may be caused, and sum them up for all persons
who will be affected. Evidently these directions can provide at best only
approximate results. We are in no position to decide whether one pleasure for
one hour is greater than another pleasure for half an hour, even when they are
both pleasures of one person who can compare them. How much more when the
pleasures are of different persons? Still, we can make judgments important for
the theory of punishment: whether a blow in the face with no lasting damage for
one person is more or less painful than fifty lashes for his assailant! Bentham
has been much criticized because he thought that two pleasures are equal in
value, if they are equally intense, enduring, etc. As he said, “Quantity of
pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry.” It has been thought (e.g.,
by J. S. Mill) that some pleasures, especially intellectual ones, are higher
and deserve to count more. But it may be replied that the so-called higher
pleasures are more enduring, are less likely to be followed by satiety, and
open up new horizons of enjoyment; and when these facts are taken into account,
it is not clear that there is need to accord higher status to intellectual
pleasures as such. A major goal of Bentham’s was to apply to the criminal law
his principle of maximizing the general utility. Bentham thought there should
be no punishment of an offense if it is not injurious to someone. So how much
punishment should there be? The least amount the effect of which will result in
a greater degree of happiness, overall. The benefit of punishment is primarily
deterrence, by attaching to the thought of a given act the thought of the painful
sanction – which will deter both the past and prospective lawbreakers. The
punishment, then, must be severe enough to outweigh the benefit of the offense
to the agent, making allowance, by addition, for the uncertainty that the
punishment will actually occur. There are some harmful acts, however, that it
is Bentham, Jeremy Bentham, Jeremy 80 4065A-
AM 80 not beneficial to punish.
One is an act needful to produce a greater benefit, or avoid a serious evil,
for the agent. Others are those which a penal prohibition could not deter: when
the law is unpublished or the agent is insane or an infant. In some cases
society need feel no alarm about the future actions of the agent. Thus, an act
is criminal only if intentional, and the agent is excused if he acted on the
basis of beliefs such that, were they true, the act would have caused no harm,
unless these beliefs were culpable in the sense that they would not have been
held by a person of ordinary prudence or benevolence. The propriety of
punishing an act also depends somewhat on its motive, although no motive e.g.,
sexual desire, curiosity, wanting money, love of reputation – is bad in itself.
Yet the propriety of punishment is affected by the presence of some motivations
that enhance public security because it is unlikely that they – e.g.,
sympathetic concern or concern for reputation – will lead to bad intentional
acts. When a given motive leads to a bad intention, it is usually because of
the weakness of motives like sympathy, concern for avoiding punishment, or
respect for law. In general, the sanction of moral criticism should take lines
roughly similar to those of the ideal law. But there are some forms of
behavior, e.g., imprudence or fornication, which the law is hardly suited to
punish, that can be sanctioned by morality. The business of the moral
philosopher is censorial: to say what the law, or morality, ought to be. To say
what is the law is a different matter: what it is is the commands of the
sovereign, defined as one whom the public, in general, habitually obeys. As
consisting of commands, it is imperatival. The imperatives may be addressed to
the public, as in “Let no one steal,” or to judges: “Let a judge sentence
anyone who steals to be hanged.” It may be thought that there is a third part,
an explanation, say, of what is a person’s property; but this can be absorbed
in the imperatival part, since the designations of property are just
imperatives about who is to be free to do what. Why should anyone obey the
actual laws? Bentham’s answer is that one should do so if and only if it
promises to maximize the general happiness. He eschews contract theories of
political obligation: individuals now alive never contracted, and so how are
they bound? He also opposes appeal to natural rights. If what are often
mentioned as natural rights were taken seriously, no government could survive:
it could not tax, require military service, etc. Nor does he accept appeal to
“natural law,” as if, once some law is shown to be immoral, it can be said to
be not really law. That would be absurd.
HEDONISM, PHILOSOPHY OF LAW, UTILITARIANISM. R.B.B. Berdyaev, Nicolas
(1874–1948), Russian religious thinker. He began as a “Kantian Marxist” in
epistemology, ethical theory, and philosophy of history, but soon turned away
from Marxism (although he continued to accept Marx’s critique of capitalism)
toward a theistic philosophy of existence stressing the values of creativity
and “meonic” freedom – a freedom allegedly prior to all being, including that
of God. In exile after 1922, Berdyaev appears to have been the first to grasp
clearly (in the early 1920s) that the Marxist view of historical time involves
a morally unacceptable devaluing and instrumentalizing of the historical
present (including living persons) for the sake of the remote future end of a
perfected communist society. Berdyaev rejects the Marxist position on both
Christian and Kantian grounds, as a violation of the intrinsic value of human
persons. He sees the historical order as marked by inescapable tragedy, and
welcomes the “end of history” as an “overcoming” of objective historical time
by subjective “existential” time with its free, unobjectified creativity. For
Berdyaev the “world of objects” – physical things, laws of nature, social
institutions, and human roles and relationships – is a pervasive threat to
“free spiritual creativity.” Yet such creativity appears to be subject to
inevitable frustration, since its outward embodiments are always “partial and
fragmentary” and no “outward action” can escape ultimate “tragic failure.”
Russian Orthodox traditionalists condemned Berdyaev for claiming that all
creation is a “divine-human process” and for denying God’s omnipotence, but
such Western process theologians as Hartshorne find Berdyaev’s position highly
congenial. RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY. G.L.K.
Bergmann, Gustav (1906–87), Austrian philosopher, the youngest member of the
Vienna Circle. Born in Vienna, he received his doctorate in mathematics in 1928
from the University of Vienna. Originally influenced by logical positivism, he
became a phenomenalist who also posited mental acts irreducible to sense-data
(see his The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism, 1954). Although he eventually
rejected phenomenalism, his ontology of material objects remained structurally
phenomenalistic. Bergmann’s world is one of momentary bare (i.e. natureless)
particulars exemplifying (phenomenally) simple Berdyaev, Nicolas Bergmann,
Gustav 81 4065A- AM 81 universals, relational as well as
non-relational. Some of these universals are non-mental, such as color
properties and spatial relations, while others, such as the “intentional
characters” in virtue of which some particulars (mental acts) intend or
represent the facts that are their “objects,” are mental. Bergmann insisted
that the world is independent of both our experience of it and our thought and
discourse about it: he claimed that the connection of exemplification and even
the propositional connectives and quantifiers are mind-independent. (See
Meaning and Existence, 1959; Logic and Reality, 1964; and Realism: A Critique
of Brentano and Meinong, 1967.) Such extreme realism produced many criticisms
of his philosophy that are only finally addressed in Bergmann’s recently, and
posthumously, published book, New Foundations of Ontology (1992), in which he
concedes that his atomistic approach to ontology has inevitable limitations and
proposes a way of squaring this insight with his thoroughgoing realism. METAPHYSICS, VIENNA CIRCLE. W.He. Bergson,
Henri Louis (1859–1941), French philosopher, the most influential of the first
half of the twentieth century. Born in Paris and educated at the prestigious
École Normale Supérieure, he began his teaching career at Clermont-Ferrand in
1884 and was called in 1900 to the Collège de France, where his lectures enjoyed
unparalleled success until his retirement in 1921. Ideally placed in la belle
époque of prewar Paris, his ideas influenced a broad spectrum of artistic,
literary, social, and political movements. In 1918 he received the Légion
d’honneur and was admitted into the French Academy. From 1922 through 1925 he
participated in the League of Nations, presiding over the creation of what was
later to become UNESCO. Forced by crippling arthritis into virtual seclusion
during his later years, Bergson was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in
1928. Initially a disciple of Spencer, Bergson broke with him after a careful
examination of Spencer’s concept of time and mechanistic positivism. Following
a deeply entrenched tradition in Western thought, Spencer treats time (on an
analogy with space) as a series of discrete numerical units: instants, seconds,
minutes. When confronted with experience, however – especially with that of our
own psychological states – such concepts are, Bergson concludes, patently
inadequate. Real duration, unlike clock time, is qualitative, dynamic,
irreversible. It cannot be “spatialized” without being deformed. It gives rise
in us, moreover, to free acts, which, being qualitative and spontaneous, cannot
be predicted. Bergson’s dramatic contrast of real duration and geometrical
space, first developed in Time and Free Will (1890), was followed in 1896 by
the mind –body theory of Matter and Memory. He argues here that the brain is
not a locale for thought but a motor organ that, receiving stimuli from its
environment, may respond with adaptive behavior. To his psychological and
metaphysical distinction between duration and space Bergson adds, in An
Introduction to Metaphysics (1903), an important epistemological distinction
between intuition and analysis. Intuition probes the flow of duration in its
concreteness; analysis breaks up duration into static, fragmentary concepts. In
Creative Evolution (1907), his best-known work, Bergson argues against both
Lamarck and Darwin, urging that biological evolution is impelled by a vital
impetus or élan vital that drives life to overcome the downward entropic drift
of matter. Biological organisms, unlike dice, must compete and survive as they
undergo permutations. Hence the unresolved dilemma of Darwinism. Either
mutations occur one or a few at a time (in which case how can they be “saved
up” to constitute new organs?) or they occur all at once (in which case one has
a “miracle”). Bergson’s vitalism, popular in literary circles, was not accepted
by many scientists or philosophers. His most general contention, however – that
biological evolution is not consistent with or even well served by a
mechanistic philosophy – was broadly appreciated and to many seemed convincing.
This aspect of Bergson’s writings influenced thinkers as diverse as Lloyd
Morgan, Alexis Carrel, Sewall Wright, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and A. N.
Whitehead. The contrasts in terms of which Bergson developed his thought
(duration/space, intuition/ analysis, life/entropy) are replaced in The Two
Sources of Morality and Religion (1932) by a new duality, that of the “open”
and the “closed.” The Judeo-Christian tradition, he contends, if it has
embraced in its history both the open society and the closed society, exhibits
in its great saints and mystics a profound opening out of the human spirit
toward all humanity. Bergson’s distinction between the open and the closed
society was popularized by Karl Popper in his The Open Society and Its Enemies.
While it has attracted serious criticism, Bergson’s philosophy has also
significantly affected subsequent thinkers. Novelists as diverse as Bergson,
Henri Louis Bergson, Henri Louis 82 4065A-
AM 82 Nikos Kazantzakis, Marcel
Proust, and William Faulkner; poets as unlike as Charles Péguy, Robert Frost,
and Antonio Machado; and psychologists as dissimilar as Pierre Janet and Jean
Piaget were to profit significantly from his explorations of duration,
conceptualization, and memory. Both French existentialism and American process
philosophy bear the imprint of his thought.
SPENCER, TIME, WHITEHEAD. P.A.Y.G. Berkeley, George (1685–1753), Irish
philosopher and bishop in the Anglican Church of Ireland, one of the three
great British empiricists along with Locke and Hume. He developed novel and
influential views on the visual perception of distance and size, and an
idealist metaphysical system that he defended partly on the seemingly
paradoxical ground that it was the best defense of common sense and safeguard
against skepticism. Berkeley studied at Trinity College, Dublin, from which he
graduated at nineteen. He was elected to a fellowship at Trinity in 1707, and
did the bulk of his philosophical writing between that year and 1713. He was
made dean of Derry in 1724, following extensive traveling on the Continent; he
spent the years 1728–32 in Rhode Island, waiting in vain for promised Crown
funds to establish a college in Bermuda. He was made bishop of Cloyne, Ireland,
in 1734, and he remained there as a cleric for nearly the remainder of his
life. Berkeley’s first major publication, the Essay Towards a New Theory of
Vision (1709), is principally a work in the psychology of vision, though it has
important philosophical presuppositions and implications. Berkeley’s theory of
vision became something like the received view on the topic for nearly two
hundred years and is a landmark work in the history of psychology. The work is
devoted to three connected matters: how do we see, or visually estimate, the
distances of objects from ourselves, the situation or place at which objects
are located, and the magnitude of such objects? Earlier views, such as those of
Descartes, Malebranche, and Molyneux, are rejected on the ground that their
answers to the above questions allow that a person can see the distance of an
object without having first learned to correlate visual and other cues. This
was supposedly done by a kind of natural geometry, a computation of the
distance by determining the altitude of a triangle formed by light rays from
the object and the line extending from one retina to the other. On the
contrary, Berkeley holds that it is clear that seeing distance is something one
learns to do through trial and error, mainly by correlating cues that suggest
distance: the distinctness or confusion of the visual appearance; the feelings
received when the eyes turn; and the sensations attending the straining of the
eyes. None of these bears any necessary connection to distance. Berkeley infers
from this account that a person born blind and later given sight would not be
able to tell by sight alone the distances objects were from her, nor tell the
difference between a sphere and a cube. He also argues that in visually
estimating distance, one is really estimating which tangible ideas one would
likely experience if one were to take steps to approach the object. Not that
these tangible ideas are themselves necessarily connected to the visual
appearances. Instead, Berkeley holds that tangible and visual ideas are
entirely heterogeneous, i.e., they are numerically and specifically distinct. The
latter is a philosophical consequence of Berkeley’s theory of vision, which is
sharply at odds with a central doctrine of Locke’s Essay, namely, that some
ideas are common to both sight and touch. Locke’s doctrines also receive a
great deal of attention in the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710). Here
Berkeley considers the doctrine of abstract general ideas, which he finds in
Book III of Locke’s Essay. He argues against such ideas partly on the ground
that we cannot engage in the process of abstraction, partly on the ground that
some abstract ideas are impossible objects, and also on the ground that such
ideas are not needed for either language learning or language use. These
arguments are of fundamental importance for Berkeley, since he thinks that the
doctrine of abstract ideas helps to support metaphysical realism, absolute
space, absolute motion, and absolute time (Principles, 5, 100, 110–11), as well
as the view that some ideas are common to sight and touch (New Theory, 123).
All of these doctrines Berkeley holds to be mistaken, and the first is in
direct conflict with his idealism. Hence, it is important for him to undermine
any support these doctrines might receive from the abstract ideas thesis.
Berkeleyan idealism is the view that the only existing entities are finite and
infinite perceivers each of which is a spirit or mental substance, and entities
that are perceived. Such a thesis implies that ordinary physical objects exist
if and only if they are perceived, something Berkeley encapsulates in the esse
est percipi principle: for all senBerkeley, George Berkeley, George 83
4065A- AM 83 sible objects, i.e., objects capable of
being perceived, their being is to be perceived. He gives essentially two
arguments for this thesis. First, he holds that every physical object is just a
collection of sensible qualities, and that every sensible quality is an idea.
So, physical objects are just collections of sensible ideas. No idea can exist
unperceived, something everyone in the period would have granted. Hence, no
physical object can exist unperceived. The second argument is the socalled
master argument of Principles 22–24. There Berkeley argues that one cannot
conceive a sensible object existing unperceived, because if one attempts to do
this one must thereby conceive that very object. He concludes from this that no
such object can exist “without the mind,” that is, wholly unperceived. Many of
Berkeley’s opponents would have held instead that a physical object is best
analyzed as a material substratum, in which some sensible qualities inhere. So
Berkeley spends some effort arguing against material substrata or what he
sometimes calls matter. His principal argument is that a sensible quality
cannot inhere in matter, because a sensible quality is an idea, and surely an
idea cannot exist except in a mind. This argument would be decisive if it were
true that each sensible quality is an idea. Unfortunately, Berkeley gives no
argument whatever for this contention in the Principles, and for that reason
Berkeleyan idealism is not there well founded. Nor does the master argument
fare much better, for there Berkeley seems to require a premise asserting that
if an object is conceived, then that object is perceived. Yet such a premise is
highly dubious. Probably Berkeley realized that his case for idealism had not
been successful, and certainly he was stung by the poor reception of the
Principles. His next book, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (1713),
is aimed at rectifying these matters. There he argues at length for the thesis
that each sensible quality is an idea. The master argument is repeated, but it
is unnecessary if every sensible quality is an idea. In the Dialogues Berkeley
is also much concerned to combat skepticism and defend common sense. He argues
that representative realism as held by Locke leads to skepticism regarding the
external world and this, Berkeley thinks, helps to support atheism and free
thinking in religion. He also argues, more directly, that representative
realism is false. Such a thesis incorporates the claim that somesensible ideas
represent real qualities in objects, the so-called primary qualities. But
Berkeley argues that a sensible idea can be like nothing but another idea, and
so ideas cannot represent qualities in objects. In this way, Berkeley
eliminates one main support of skepticism, and to that extent helps to support
the commonsensical idea that we gain knowledge of the existence and nature of
ordinary physical objects by means of perception. Berkeley’s positive views in epistemology
are usually interpreted as a version of foundationalism. That is, he is
generally thought to have defended the view that beliefs about currently
perceived ideas are basic beliefs, beliefs that are immediately and
non-inferentially justified or that count as pieces of immediate knowledge, and
that all other justified beliefs in contingent propositions are justified by
being somehow based upon the basic beliefs. Indeed, such a foundationalist
doctrine is often taken to help define empiricism, held in common by Locke,
Berkeley, and Hume. But whatever the merits of such a view as an interpretation
of Locke or Hume, it is not Berkeley’s theory. This is because he allows that
perceivers often have immediate and noninferential justified beliefs, and knowledge,
about physical objects. Hence, Berkeley accepts a version of foundationalism
that allows for basic beliefs quite different from just beliefs about one’s
currently perceived ideas. Indeed, he goes so far as to maintain that such
physical object beliefs are often certain, something neither Locke nor Hume
would accept. In arguing against the existence of matter, Berkeley also
maintains that we literally have no coherent concept of such stuff because we
cannot have any sensible idea of it. Parity of reasoning would seem to dictate
that Berkeley should reject mental substance as well, thereby threatening his
idealism from another quarter. Berkeley is sensitive to this line of reasoning,
and replies that while we have no idea of the self, we do have some notion of
the self, that is, some lessthan-complete concept. He argues that a person
gains some immediate knowledge of the existence and nature of herself in a
reflex act; that is, when she is perceiving something she is also conscious
that something is engaging in this perception, and this is sufficient for
knowledge of that perceiving entity. To complement his idealism, Berkeley
worked out a version of scientific instrumentalism, both in the Principles and
in a later Latin work, De Motu (1721), a doctrine that anticipates the views of
Mach. In the Dialogues he tries to show how his idealism is consistent with the
biblical account of the creation, and consistent as well with common sense.
Berkeley, George Berkeley, George 84 4065A-
AM 84 Three later works of
Berkeley’s gained him an enormous amount of attention. Alciphron (1734) was
written while Berkeley was in Rhode Island, and is a philosophical defense of
Christian doctrine. It also contains some additional comments on perception,
supplementing earlier work on that topic. The Analyst (1734) contains trenchant
criticism of the method of fluxions in differential calculus, and it set off a
flurry of pamphlet replies to Berkeley’s criticisms, to which Berkeley
responded in his A Defense of Free Thinking in Mathematics. Siris (1744)
contains a detailed account of the medicinal values of tar-water, water boiled
with the bark of certain trees. This book also contains a defense of a sort of
corpuscularian philosophy that seems to be at odds with the idealism elaborated
in the earlier works for which Berkeley is now famous. In the years 1707–08,
the youthful Berkeley kept a series of notebooks in which he worked out his
ideas in philosophy and mathematics. These books, now known as the
Philosophical Commentaries, provide the student of Berkeley with the rare
opportunity to see a great philosopher’s thought in development. HUME, IDEALISM, LOCKE, PERCEPTION,
PHENOMENALISM. G.S.P. Berlin, Isaiah (1909–97), British philosopher and
historian of ideas. He is widely acclaimed for his doctrine of radical
objective pluralism; his writings on liberty; his modification, refinement, and
defense of traditional liberalism against the totalitarian doctrines of the
twentieth century (not least Marxism-Leninism); and his brilliant and
illuminating studies in the history of ideas from Machiavelli and Vico to Marx
and Sorel. A founding father with Austin, Ayer, and others of Oxford philosophy
in the 1930s, he published several influential papers in its general spirit,
but, without abandoning its empirical approach, he came increasingly to dissent
from what seemed to him its unduly barren, doctrinaire, and truthdenying
tendencies. From the 1950s onward he broke away to devote himself principally
to social and political philosophy and to the study of general ideas. His two
most important contributions in social and political theory, brought together
with two other valuable essays in Four Essays on Liberty (1969), are
“Historical Inevitability” (1954) and his 1958 inaugural lecture as Chichele
Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford, “Two Concepts of Liberty.”
The first is a bold and decisive attack on historical determinism and moral
relativism and subjectivism and a ringing endorsement of the role of free will
and responsibility in human history. The second contains Berlin’s enormously
influential attempt to distinguish clearly between “negative” and “positive”
liberty. Negative liberty, foreshadowed by such thinkers as J. S. Mill,
Constant, and above all Herzen, consists in making minimal assumptions about
the ultimate nature and needs of the subject, in ensuring a minimum of external
interference by authority of any provenance, and in leaving open as large a
field for free individual choice as is consonant with a minimum of social
organization and order. Positive liberty, associated with monist and
voluntarist thinkers of all kinds, not least Hegel, the German Idealists, and
their historical progeny, begins with the notion of self-mastery and proceeds
to make dogmatic and far-reaching metaphysical assumptions about the essence of
the subject. It then deduces from these the proper paths to freedom, and,
finally, seeks to drive flesh-and-blood individuals down these preordained
paths, whether they wish it or not, within the framework of a tight-knit
centralized state under the irrefragable rule of rational experts, thus
perverting what begins as a legitimate human ideal, i.e. positive
self-direction and self-mastery, into a tyranny. “Two Concepts of Liberty” also
sets out to disentangle liberty in either of these senses from other ends, such
as the craving for recognition, the need to belong, or human solidarity,
fraternity, or equality. Berlin’s work in the history of ideas is of a piece
with his other writings. Vico and Herder (1976) presents the emergence of that
historicism and pluralism which shook the two-thousand-yearold monist
rationalist faith in a unified body of truth regarding all questions of fact
and principle in all fields of human knowledge. From this profound intellectual
overturn Berlin traces in subsequent volumes of essays, such as Against the
Current (1979), The Crooked Timber of Humanity (1990), and The Sense of Reality
(1996), the growth of some of the principal intellectual movements that mark
our era, among them nationalism, fascism, relativism, subjectivism, nihilism,
voluntarism, and existentialism. He also presents with persuasiveness and
clarity that peculiar objective pluralism which he identified and made his own.
There is an irreducible plurality of objective human values, many of which are
incompatible with one another; hence the ineluctable need for absolute choices
by individuals and groups, a need that confers supreme value upon, and forms
one of the major justifications of, his conception of negative liberty; Berlin,
Isaiah Berlin, Isaiah 85 4065A- AM 85 hence, too, his insistence that utopia,
namely a world where all valid human ends and objective values are
simultaneously realized in an ultimate synthesis, is a conceptual
impossibility. While not himself founder of any definable school or movement,
Berlin’s influence as a philosopher and as a human being has been immense, not
least on a variety of distinguished thinkers such as Stuart Hampshire, Charles
Taylor, Bernard Williams, Richard Wollheim, Gerry Cohen, Steven Lukes, David
Pears, and many others. His general intellectual and moral impact on the life
of the twentieth century as writer, diplomat, patron of music and the arts,
international academic elder statesman, loved and trusted friend to the great
and the humble, and dazzling lecturer, conversationalist, and animateur des
idées, will furnish inexhaustible material to future historians. FREE WILL PROBLEM, LIBERALISM, POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY, POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE FREEDOM. R.Hau. Bernard of Chartres (fl.
1114–26), French philosopher. He was first a teacher (1114–19) and later
chancellor (1119–26) of the cathedral school at Chartres, which was then an
active center of learning in the liberal arts and philosophy. Bernard himself
was renowned as a grammarian, i.e., as an expositor of difficult texts, and as
a teacher of Plato. None of his works has survived whole, and only three
fragments are preserved in works by others. He is now best known for an image
recorded both by his student, John of Salisbury, and by William of Conches. In
Bernard’s image, he and all his medieval contemporaries were in relation to the
ancient authors like “dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants.” John of
Salisbury takes the image to mean both that the medievals could see more and
further than the ancients, and that they could do so only because they had been
lifted up by such powerful predecessors. M.D.J. Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint
(1090–1153), French Cistercian monk, mystic, and religious leader. He is most
noted for his doctrine of Christian humility and his depiction of the mystical
experience, which exerted considerable influence on later Christian mystics.
Educated in France, he entered the monastery at Cîteaux in 1112, and three
years later founded a daughter monastery at Clairvaux. According to Bernard,
honest self-knowledge should reveal the extent to which we fail to be what we
should be in the eyes of God. That selfknowledge should lead us to curb our
pride and so become more humble. Humility is necessary for spiritual
purification, which in turn is necessary for contemplation of God, the highest
form of which is union with God. Consistent with orthodox Christian doctrine,
Bernard maintains that mystical union does not entail identity. One does not
become God; rather, one’s will and God’s will come into complete
conformity. MYSTICISM. W.E.M.
Bernoulli’s theorem, also called the (weak) law of large numbers, the principle
that if a series of trials is repeated n times where (a) there are two possible
outcomes, 0 and 1, on each trial, (b) the probability p of 0 is the same on
each trial, and (c) this probability is independent of the outcome of other
trials, then, for arbitrary positive e, as the number n of trials is increased,
the probability that the absolute value Kr/n – pK of the difference between the
relative frequency r/n of 0’s in the n trials and p is less than e approaches
1. The first proof of this theorem was given by Jakob Bernoulli in Part IV of
his posthumously published Ars Conjectandi of 1713. Simplifications were later
constructed and his result has been generalized in a series of “weak laws of
large numbers.” Although Bernoulli’s theorem derives a conclusion about the
probability of the relative frequency r/n of 0’s for large n of trials given
the value of p, in Ars Conjectandi and correspondence with Leibniz, Bernoulli
thought it could be used to reason from information about r/n to the value of p
when the latter is unknown. Speculation persists as to whether Bernoulli
anticipated the inverse inference of Bayes, the confidence interval estimation
of Peirce, J. Neyman, and E. S. Pearson, or the fiducial argument of R. A.
Fisher. PROBABILITY. I.L. Berry’s
paradox.SEMANTIC PARADOXES. Bertrand’s box paradox, a puzzle concerning
conditional probability. Imagine three boxes with two drawers apiece. Each
drawer of the first box contains a gold medal. Each drawer of the second
contains a silver medal. One drawer of the third contains a gold medal, and the
other a silver medal. At random, a box is selected and one of its drawers is
opened. If a gold medal appears, what is the probability that the third box was
selected? The probability seems to be ½, because the box is either the first or
the third, and they seem equally probable. But a gold medal is less probable
from the third box than from the first, Bernard of Chartres Bertrand’s box
paradox 86 4065A- AM 86 so the third box is actually less probable
than the first. By Bayes’s theorem its probability is 1 /3. Joseph Bertrand, a
French mathematician, published the paradox in Calcul des probabilités
(Calculus of Probabilities, 1889).
BAYES’s THEOREM,
PROBABILITY. P.We. Bertrand’s paradox, an inconsistency arising from the
classical definition of an event’s probability as the number of favorable cases
divided by the number of possible cases. Given a circle, a chord is selected at
random. What is the probability that the chord is longer than a side of an
equilateral triangle inscribed in the circle? The event has these
characterizations: (1) the apex angle of an isosceles triangle inscribed in the
circle and having the chord as a leg is less than 60°, (2) the chord intersects
the diameter perpendicular to it less than ½ a radius from the circle’s center,
and (3) the chord’s midpoint lies within a circle concentric with the original
and of ¼ its area. The definition thus suggests that the event’s probability is
1 /3, 1 /2, and also ¼. Joseph Bertrand, a French mathematician, published the
paradox in Calcul des probabilités (1889).
PROBABILITY. P.We. Beth’s definability theorem, a theorem for firstorder
logic. A theory defines a term t implicitly if and only if an explicit
definition of the term, on the basis of the other primitive concepts, is
entailed by the theory. A theory defines a term implicitly if any two models of
the theory with the same domain and the same extension for the other primitive
terms are identical, i.e., also have the same extension for the term. An
explicit definition of a term is a sentence that states necessary and
sufficient conditions for the term’s applicability. Beth’s theorem was implicit
in a method to show independence of a term that was first used by the Italian
logician Alessandro Padoa (1868–1937). Padoa suggested, in 1900, that
independence of a primitive algebraic term from the other terms occurring in a
set of axioms can be established by two true interpretations of the axioms that
differ only in the interpretation of the term whose independence has to be
proven. He claimed, without proof, that the existence of two such models is not
only sufficient for, but also implied by, independence. Tarski first gave a
proof of Beth’s theorem in 1926 for the logic of the Principia Mathematica of
Whitehead and Russell, but the result was only obtained for first-order logic
in 1953 by the Dutch logician Evert Beth (1908–64). In modern expositions
Beth’s theorem is a direct implication of Craig’s interpolation theorem. In a
variation on Padoa’s method, Karel de Bouvère described in 1959 a one-model
method to show indefinability: if the set of logical consequences of a theory
formulated in terms of the remaining vocabulary cannot be extended to a model
of the full theory, a term is not explicitly definable in terms of the
remaining vocabulary. In the philosophy of science literature this is called a
failure of Ramsey-eliminability of the term.
MODEL THEORY. Z.G.S.
Bhagavad Gita (from Sanskrit Bhagavadgita, ‘song of the blessed one/exalted
lord’), Hindu devotional poem composed and edited between the fifth century
B.C. and the second century A.D. It contains eighteen chapters and seven
hundred verses, and forms the sixth book (Chapters 23– 40) of the Indian epic
Mahabharata. In its narrative, the warrior Arjuna, reluctantly waiting to wage
war, receives a revelation from the Lord Krishna that emphasizes selfless deeds
and bhakti, or devotion. Strictly classified as smrti or fallible tradition,
the Gita is typically treated as shruti or infallible revelation. Such major
thinkers as Shankara, Ramanuja, and Madhva wrote commentaries on this beloved
book. Shankara reads it as teaching that enlightenment comes through right
(Advaita Vedanta) knowledge alone even without performance of religious duties.
Ramanuja takes it to hold that enlightenment comes through performance of
religious duties, particularly devotion to God for whose sake alone all other duties
must be performed if one’s sins are to be washed away. Such devotion leads to
(or at its zenith includes) self-knowledge and knowledge of personal Brahman.
Madhva sees the Gita as emphasizing divine uniqueness and the necessity of love
and attachment to God and not to oneself or the consequences of one’s deeds.
K.E.Y. bhakti (Sanskrit), in Hindu theistic thought systems, devotion. Bhakti
includes the ideas of faith, surrender, love, affection, and attachment. Its
most common form of expression is worship by means of offerings, puja. Theistic
thinkers such as Ramanuja and Madhva argue that devotion is the key element
that solves the human predicament. As a result the deity responds with grace or
kindness (prasadam) and thereby causes the devotee to prosper or attain moksha.
The Bhakti Sutras (twelfth century A.D.) distinguish “lower bhakti,” i.e.,
devotion with personal goals in mind, from “higher bhakti,” i.e., selfless
devotion practiced only to please the deity. The latter is libBertrand’s
paradox bhakti 87 4065A- AM 87 eration. Modern Hindu philosophers,
following Shankara and the modern Hindu apologist Swami Vivekananda
(1862–1902), often relegate bhakti to a lower path than knowledge (jnana) for
those who are unable to follow philosophy, but in the philosophical systems of
many theists it is defended as the highest path with the main obstacle as
unbelief, not ignorance. HINDUISM.
R.N.Mi. bhavanga, a subliminal mode of consciousness, according to Theravada
Buddhist philosophers, in which no mental activity occurs. The continued
existence of the bhavanga-mind in states where there is no intentional mental
activity (e.g., dreamless sleep) is what guarantees the continuance of a
particular mental continuum in such states. It operates also in ordinary events
of sensation and conceptualization, being connected with such intentional
mental events in complex ways, and is appealed to as an explanatory category in
the accounts of the process leading from death to rebirth. Some Buddhists also
use it as a soteriological category, identifying the bhavanga-mind with mind in
its pure state, mind as luminous and radiant.
ALAYAVIJÑANA,
NIRODHA-SAMAPATTI. P.J.G. biconditional, the logical operator, usually written
with a triple-bar sign (S) or a doubleheaded arrow (Q), used to indicate that
two propositions have the same truth-value: that either both are true or else
both are false. The term also designates a proposition having this sign, or a
natural language expression of it, as its main connective; e.g., P if and only
if Q. The truth table for the biconditional is The biconditional is so called
because its application is logically equivalent to the conjunction
‘(P-conditional-Q)-and-(Q-conditional-P)’.
TRUTH TABLE. R.W.B. biconditional, Tarskian.TARSKI. bilateral reduction
sentence.REDUCTION SENTENCE. binary quantifier.PLURALITIVE LOGIC. bioethics,
the subfield of ethics that concerns the ethical issues arising in medicine and
from advances in biological science. One central area of bioethics is the
ethical issues that arise in relations between health care professionals and
patients. A second area focuses on broader issues of social justice in health
care. A third area concerns the ethical issues raised by new biological
knowledge or technology. In relations between health care professionals and
patients, a fundamental issue is the appropriate role of each in decision
making about patient care. More traditional views assigning principal
decision-making authority to physicians have largely been replaced with ideals of
shared decision making that assign a more active role to patients. Shared
decision making is thought to reflect better the importance of patients’
self-determination in controlling their care. This increased role for patients
is reflected in the ethical and legal doctrine of informed consent, which
requires that health care not be rendered without the informed and voluntary
consent of a competent patient. The requirement that consent be informed places
a positive responsibility on health care professionals to provide their
patients with the information they need to make informed decisions about care.
The requirement that consent be voluntary requires that treatment not be
forced, nor that patients’ decisions be coerced or manipulated. If patients
lack the capacity to make competent health care decisions, e.g. young children
or cognitively impaired adults, a surrogate, typically a parent in the case of
children or a close family member in the case of adults, must decide for them.
Surrogates’ decisions should follow the patient’s advance directive if one
exists, be the decision the patient would have made in the circumstances if
competent, or follow the patient’s best interests if the patient has never been
competent or his or her wishes are not known. A major focus in bioethics
generally, and treatment decision making in particular, is care at or near the
end of life. It is now widely agreed that patients are entitled to decide about
and to refuse, according to their own values, any lifesustaining treatment. They
are also entitled to have desired treatments that may shorten their lives, such
as high doses of pain medications necessary to relieve severe pain from cancer,
although in practice pain treatment remains inadequate for many patients. Much
more controversial is whether more active means to end life such as
physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia are morally permissible in
indibhavanga bioethics 88 4065A- AM 88 vidual cases or justified as public
policy; both remain illegal except in a very few jurisdictions. Several other
moral principles have been central to defining professional–patient
relationships in health care. A principle of truth telling requires that
professionals not lie to patients. Whereas in the past it was common,
especially with patients with terminal cancers, not to inform patients fully
about their diagnosis and prognosis, studies have shown that practice has
changed substantially and that fully informing patients does not have the bad
effects for patients that had been feared in the past. Principles of privacy
and confidentiality require that information gathered in the
professional–patient relationship not be disclosed to third parties without
patients’ consent. Especially with highly personal information in mental health
care, or information that may lead to discrimination, such as a diagnosis of
AIDS, assurance of confidentiality is fundamental to the trust necessary to a
wellfunctioning professional–patient relationship. Nevertheless, exceptions to
confidentiality to prevent imminent and serious harm to others are well
recognized ethically and legally. More recently, work in bioethics has focused
on justice in the allocation of health care. Whereas nearly all developed
countries treat health care as a moral and legal right, and ensure it to all
their citizens through some form of national health care system, in the United
States about 15 percent of the population remains without any form of health
insurance. This has fed debates about whether health care is a right or privilege,
a public or individual responsibility. Most bioethicists have supported a right
to health care because of health care’s fundamental impact on people’s
well-being, opportunity, ability to plan their lives, and even lives
themselves. Even if there is a moral right to health care, however, few defend
an unlimited right to all beneficial health care, no matter how small the
benefit and how high the cost. Consequently, it is necessary to prioritize or
ration health care services to reflect limited budgets for health care, and
both the standards and procedures for doing so are ethically controversial.
Utilitarians and defenders of cost-effectiveness analysis in health policy
support using limited resources to maximize aggregate health benefits for the
population. Their critics argue that this ignores concerns about equity,
concerns about how health care resources and health are distributed. For
example, some have argued that equity requires giving priority to treating the
worst-off or sickest, even at a sacrifice in aggregate health benefits;
moreover, taking account in prioritization of differences in costs of different
treatments can lead to ethically problematic results, such as giving higher
priority to providing very small benefits to many persons than very large but
individually more expensive benefits, including life-saving interventions, to a
few persons, as the state of Oregon found in its initial widely publicized
prioritization program. In the face of controversy over standards for rationing
care, it is natural to rely on fair procedures to make rationing decisions.
Other bioethics issues arise from dramatic advances in biological knowledge and
technology. Perhaps the most prominent example is new knowledge of human
genetics, propelled in substantial part by the worldwide Human Genome Project,
which seeks to map the entire human genome. This project and related research
will enable the prevention of genetically transmitted diseases, but already
raises questions about which conditions to prevent in offspring and which
should be accepted and lived with, particularly when the means of preventing
the condition is by abortion of the fetus with the condition. Looking further
into the future, new genetic knowledge and technology will likely enable us to
enhance normal capacities, not just prevent or cure disease, and to manipulate
the genes of future children, raising profoundly difficult questions about what
kinds of persons to create and the degree to which deliberate human design
should replace “nature” in the creation of our offspring. A dramatic example of
new abilities to create offspring, though now limited to the animal realm, was
the cloning in Scotland in 1997 of a sheep from a single cell of an adult
sheep; this event raised the very controversial future prospect of cloning
human beings. Finally, new reproductive technologies, such as oocyte (egg)
donation, and practices such as surrogate motherhood, raise deep issues about
the meaning and nature of parenthood and families.
DIGNITY, ETHICS,
EUTHANASIA, INFORMED CONSENT. D.W.B. biological naturalism.SEARLE. biology,
autonomy of.UNITY OF SCIENCE. biology, philosophy of.PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY.
biology, social.SOCIAL BIOLOGY. Birkhoff–von Neumann logic.QUANTUM LOGIC.
biological naturalism Birkhoff–von Neumann logic 89 4065A- AM 89
bit (from binary digit), a unit or measure of information. Suggested by John W.
Tukey, a bit is both an amount of information (a reduction of eight equally
likely possibilities to one generates three bits [% log2 8] of information) and
a system of representing that quantity. The binary system uses 1’s and
0’s. INFORMATION THEORY. F.A. bivalence,
principle of.PRINCIPLE OF BIVALENCE. black box, a hypothetical unit specified
only by functional role, in order to explain some effect or behavior. The term
may refer to a single entity with an unknown structure, or unknown internal
organization, which realizes some known function, or to any one of a system of
such entities, whose organization and functions are inferred from the behavior
of an organism or entity of which they are constituents. Within behaviorism and
classical learning theory, the basic functions were taken to be generalized
mechanisms governing the relationship of stimulus to response, including
reinforcement, inhibition, extinction, and arousal. The organism was treated as
a black box realizing these functions. Within cybernetics, though there are no
simple input–output rules describing the organism, there is an emphasis on
functional organization and feedback in controlling behavior. The components
within a cybernetic system are treated as black boxes. In both cases, the
details of underlying structure, mechanism, and dynamics are either unknown or
regarded as unimportant. BEHAVIORISM,
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, THEORETICAL TERM. R.C.R. bleen.GRUE PARADOX. blindsight, a
residual visual capacity resulting from lesions in certain areas of the brain
(the striate cortex, area 17). Under routine clinical testing, persons
suffering such lesions appear to be densely blind in particular regions of the
visual field. Researchers have long recognized that, in primates, comparable
lesions do not result in similar deficits. It has seemed unlikely that this
disparity could be due to differences in brain function, however. And, indeed,
when human subjects are tested in the way non-human subjects are tested, the
disparity vanishes. Although subjects report that they can detect nothing in
the blind field, when required to “guess” at properties of items situated
there, they perform remarkably well. They seem to “know” the contents of the
blind field while remaining unaware that they know, often expressing
astonishment on being told the results of testing in the blind field. PERCEPTION. J.F.H. Bloch, Ernst (1885–1977),
German philosopher. Influenced by Marxism, his views went beyond Marxism as he
matured. He fled Germany in the 1930s, but returned after World War II to a
professorship in East Germany, where his increasingly unorthodox ideas were
eventually censured by the Communist authorities, forcing a move to West
Germany in the 1960s. His major work, The Principle of Hope (1954–59), is
influenced by German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Neoplatonism, utopianism, and
numerous other sources besides Marxism. Humans are essentially unfinished,
moved by a cosmic impulse, “hope,” a tendency in them to strive for the
as-yet-unrealized, which manifests itself as utopia, or vision of future
possibilities. Despite his atheism, Bloch wished to retrieve the sense of
self-transcending that he saw in the religious and mythical traditions of
humankind. His ideas have consequently influenced theology as well as
philosophy, e.g. the “theology of hope” of Jurgen Moltmann. R.H.K. Blondel,
Maurice (1861–1949), French Christian philosopher who discovered the deist
background of human action. In his main work, Action (1893, 2d rev. ed. 1950),
Blondel held that action is part of the very nature of human beings and as such
becomes an object of philosophy; through philosophy, action should find its
meaning, i.e. realize itself rationally. An appropriate phenomenology of action
through phenomenological description uncovers the phenomenal level of action
but points beyond it. Such a supraphenomenal sense of action provides it a
metaphysical status. This phenomenology of action rests on an immanent
dialectics of action: a gap between the aim of the action and its realization.
This gap, while dissatisfying to the actor, also drives him toward new
activities. The only immanent solution of this dialectics and its consequences
is a transcendent one. We have to realize that we, like other humans, cannot
grasp our own activities and must accept our limitations and our finitude as
well as the insufficiency of our philosophy, which is now understood as a
philosophy of insufficiency and points toward the existence of the supernatural
element in every human act, namely God. Human activity is the outcome of divine
grace. Through action bit Blondel, Maurice 90 4065A- AM 90
one touches the existence of God, something not possible by logical argumentation.
In the later phase of his development Blondel deserted his early
“anti-intellectualism” and stressed the close relation between thought and
action, now understood as inseparable and mutually interrelated. He came to see
philosophy as a rational instrument of understanding one’s actions as well as
one’s insufficiency. G.Fl. bodily continuity.PERSONAL IDENTITY. Bodin, Jean
(c.1529–96), French political philosopher whose philosophy centers on the
concept of sovereignty. His Six livres de la république (1577) defines a state
as constituted by common public interests, families, and the sovereign. The
sovereign is the lawgiver, who stands beyond the absolute rights he possesses;
he must, however, follow the law of God, natural law, and the constitution. The
ideal state was for Bodin a monarchy that uses aristocratic and democratic
structures of government for the sake of the common good. In order to achieve a
broader empirical picture of politics Bodin used historical comparisons. This
is methodologically reflected in his Methodus ad facilem historiarum
cognitionem (1566). Bodin was clearly a theorist of absolutism. As a member of
the Politique group he played a practical role in emancipating the state from
the church. His thinking was influenced by his experience of civil war. In his
Heptaplomeres (posthumous) he pleaded for tolerance with respect to all
religions, including Islam and Judaism. As a public prosecutor, however, he
wrote a manual for judges in witchcraft trials (De la démonomanie des sorciers,
1580). By stressing the peacemaking role of a strong state Bodin was a
forerunner of Hobbes.
HOBBES, POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY. H.P. body, objective.EMBODIMENT. body, phenomenal.EMBODIMENT.
Boehme, Jakob (1575–1624), German Protestant speculative mystic. Influenced
especially by Paracelsus, Boehme received little formal education, but was
successful enough as a shoemaker to devote himself to his writing, explicating
his religious experiences. He published little in his lifetime, though enough
to attract charges of heresy from local clergy. He did gather followers, and
his works were published after his death. His writings are elaborately symbolic
rather than argumentative, but respond deeply to fundamental problems in the
Christian worldview. He holds that the Godhead, omnipotent will, is as nothing
to us, since we can in no way grasp it. The Mysterium Magnum, the ideal world,
is conceived in God’s mind through an impulse to selfrevelation. The actual
world, separate from God, is created through His will, and seeks to return to
the peace of the Godhead. The world is good, as God is, but its goodness falls
away, and is restored at the end of history, though not entirely, for some
souls are damned eternally. Human beings enjoy free will, and create themselves
through rebirth in faith. The Fall is necessary for the selfknowledge gained in
recovery from it. Recognition of one’s hidden, free self is a recognition of
God manifested in the world, so that human salvation completes God’s act of
self-revelation. It is also a recognition of evil rooted in the blind will
underlying all individual existence, without which there would be nothing
except the Godhead. Boehme’s works influenced Hegel and the later
Schelling.
MYSTICISM, PARACELSUS.
J.Lo. Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus (c.480– 525), Roman philosopher and
Aristotelian translator and commentator. He was born into a wealthy patrician
family in Rome and had a distinguished political career under the Ostrogothic
king Theodoric before being arrested and executed on charges of treason. His
logic and philosophical theology contain important contributions to the
philosophy of the late classical and early medieval periods, and his
translations of and commentaries on Aristotle profoundly influenced the history
of philosophy, particularly in the medieval Latin West. His most famous work,
The Consolation of Philosophy, composed during his imprisonment, is a moving
reflection on the nature of human happiness and the problem of evil and
contains classic discussions of providence, fate, chance, and the apparent
incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human free choice. He was known
during his own lifetime, however, as a brilliant scholar whose knowledge of the
Greek language and ancient Greek philosophy set him apart from his Latin
contemporaries. He conceived his scholarly career as devoted to preserving and
making accessible to the Latin West the great philosophical achievement of
ancient Greece. To this end he announced an ambitious plan to translate into
Latin and write commenbodily continuity Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus 91
4065A- AM 91 taries on all of Plato and Aristotle, but
it seems that he achieved this goal only for Aristotle’s Organon. His extant
translations include Porphyry’s Isagoge (an introduction to Aristotle’s
Categories) and Aristotle’s Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics,
Topics, and Sophistical Refutations. He wrote two commentaries on the Isagoge
and On Interpretation and one on the Categories, and we have what appear to be
his notes for a commentary on the Prior Analytics. His translation of the
Posterior Analytics and his commentary on the Topics are lost. He also
commented on Cicero’s Topica and wrote his own treatises on logic, including De
syllogismis hypotheticis, De syllogismis categoricis, Introductio in
categoricos syllogismos, De divisione, and De topicis differentiis, in which he
elaborates and supplements Aristotelian logic. Boethius shared the common
Neoplatonist view that the Platonist and Aristotelian systems could be harmonized
by following Aristotle in logic and natural philosophy and Plato in metaphysics
and theology. This plan for harmonization rests on a distinction between two
kinds of forms: (1) forms that are conjoined with matter to constitute bodies –
these, which he calls “images” (imagines), correspond to the forms in
Aristotle’s hylomorphic account of corporeal substances; and (2) forms that are
pure and entirely separate from matter, corresponding to Plato’s ontologically
separate Forms. He calls these “true forms” and “the forms themselves.” He
holds that the former, “enmattered” forms depend for their being on the latter,
pure forms. Boethius takes these three sorts of entities – bodies, enmattered
forms, and separate forms – to be the respective objects of three different
cognitive activities, which constitute the three branches of speculative
philosophy. Natural philosophy is concerned with enmattered forms as
enmattered, mathematics with enmattered forms considered apart from their
matter (though they cannot be separated from matter in actuality), and theology
with the pure and separate forms. He thinks that the mental abstraction
characteristic of mathematics is important for understanding the Peripatetic
account of universals: the enmattered, particular forms found in sensible
things can be considered as universal when they are considered apart from the
matter in which they inhere (though they cannot actually exist apart from
matter). But he stops short of endorsing this moderately realist Aristotelian
account of universals. His commitment to an ontology that includes not just
Aristotelian natural forms but also Platonist Forms existing apart from matter
implies a strong realist view of universals. With the exception of De fide
catholica, which is a straightforward credal statement, Boethius’s theological
treatises (De Trinitate, Utrum Pater et Filius, Quomodo substantiae, and Contra
Euthychen et Nestorium) show his commitment to using logic and metaphysics,
particularly the Aristotelian doctrines of the categories and predicables, to
clarify and resolve issues in Christian theology. De Trinitate, e.g., includes
a historically influential discussion of the Aristotelian categories and the
applicability of various kinds of predicates to God. Running through these treatises
is his view that predicates in the category of relation are unique by virtue of
not always requiring for their applicability an ontological ground in the
subjects to which they apply, a doctrine that gave rise to the common medieval
distinction between so-called real and non-real relations. Regardless of the
intrinsic significance of Boethius’s philosophical ideas, he stands as a
monumental figure in the history of medieval philosophy rivaled in importance
only by Aristotle and Augustine. Until the recovery of the works of Aristotle
in the mid-twelfth century, medieval philosophers depended almost entirely on
Boethius’s translations and commentaries for their knowledge of pagan ancient
philosophy, and his treatises on logic continued to be influential throughout
the Middle Ages. The preoccupation of early medieval philosophers with logic
and with the problem of universals in particular is due largely to their having
been tutored by Boethius and Boethius’s Aristotle. The theological treatises
also received wide attention in the Middle Ages, giving rise to a commentary
tradition extending from the ninth century through the Renaissance and shaping
discussion of central theological doctrines such as the Trinity and
Incarnation. ARISTOTLE, COMMENTARIES ON
ARISTOTLE, FUTURE CONTINGENTS, PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, PLATO. S.Ma. Boltzmann,
Ludwig (1844–1906), Austrian physicist who was a spirited advocate of the
atomic theory and a pioneer in developing the kinetic theory of gases and
statistical mechanics. Boltzmann’s most famous achievements were the transport
equation, the H-theorem, and the probabilistic interpretation of entropy. This
work is summarized in his Vorlesungen über Gastheorie (“Lectures on the Theory
of Gases,” 1896–98). He held chairs in physics at the universities of Graz,
Vienna, Munich, and Leipzig before returning to Vienna as professor of
theoretical physics in 1902. In 1903 he succeeded Mach at Boltzmann, Ludwig
Boltzmann, Ludwig 92 4065A- AM 92 Vienna and lectured on the philosophy of
science. In the 1890s the atomic-kinetic theory was attacked by Mach and by the
energeticists led by Wilhelm Ostwald. Boltzmann’s counterattack can be found in
his Populäre Schriften (“Popular Writings,” 1905). Boltzmann agreed with his
critics that many of his mechanical models of gas molecules could not be true
but, like Maxwell, defended models as invaluable heuristic tools. Boltzmann
also insisted that it was futile to try to eliminate all metaphysical pictures
from theories in favor of bare equations. For Boltzmann, the goal of physics is
not merely the discovery of equations but the construction of a coherent
picture of reality. Boltzmann defended his H-theorem against the reversibility
objection of Loschmidt and the recurrence objection of Zermelo by conceding
that a spontaneous decrease in entropy was possible but extremely unlikely.
Boltzmann’s views that irreversibility depends on the probability of initial
conditions and that entropy increase determines the direction of time are
defended by Reichenbach in The Direction of Time (1956). ENTROPY, MACH, MAXWELL, PHILOSOPHY OF
SCIENCE, REICHENBACH. M.C. Bolzano, Bernard (1781–1848), Austrian philosopher.
He studied philosophy, mathematics, physics, and theology in Prague; received
the Ph.D.; was ordained a priest (1805); was appointed to a chair in religion
at Charles University in 1806; and, owing to his criticism of the Austrian
constitution, was dismissed in 1819. He composed his two main works from 1823
through 1841: the Wissenschaftslehre (4 vols., 1837) and the posthumous
Grössenlehre. His ontology and logical semantics influenced Husserl and,
indirectly, Lukasiewicz, Tarski, and others of the Warsaw School. His
conception of ethics and social philosophy affected both the cultural life of
Bohemia and the Austrian system of education. Bolzano recognized a profound
distinction between the actual thoughts and judgments (Urteile) of human
beings, their linguistic expressions, and the abstract propositions (Sätze an
sich) and their parts which exist independently of those thoughts, judgments,
and expressions. A proposition in Bolzano’s sense is a preexistent sequence of
ideas-as-such (Vorstellungen an sich). Only propositions containing finite
ideas-as-such are accessible to the mind. Real things existing concretely in
space and time have subsistence (Dasein) whereas abstract objects such as
propositions have only logical existence. Adherences, i.e., forces, applied to
certain concrete substances give rise to subjective ideas, thoughts, or
judgments. A subjective idea is a part of a judgment that is not itself a
judgment. The set of judgments is ordered by a causal relation. Bolzano’s
abstract world is constituted of sets, ideas-as-such, certain properties
(Beschaffenheiten), and objects constructed from these. Thus, sentence shapes
are a kind of ideas-as-such, and certain complexes of ideas-as-such constitute
propositions. Ideas-as-such can be generated from expressions of a language by
postulates for the relation of being an object of something. Analogously, properties
can be generated by postulates for the relation of something being applied to
an object. Bolzano’s notion of religion is based on his distinction between
propositions and judgments. His Lehrbuch der Religionswissenschaft (4 vols.,
1834) distinguishes between religion in the objective and subjective senses.
The former is a set of religious propositions, whereas the latter is the set of
religious views of a single person. Hence, a subjective religion can contain an
objective one. By defining a religious proposition as being moral and
imperatives the rules of utilitarianism, Bolzano integrated his notion of
religion within his ontology. In the Grössenlehre Bolzano intended to give a
detailed, well-founded exposition of contemporary mathematics and also to
inaugurate new domains of research. Natural numbers are defined, half a century
before Frege, as properties of “bijective” sets (the members of which can be
put in one-to-one correspondence), and real numbers are conceived as properties
of sets of certain infinite sequences of rational numbers. The analysis of
infinite sets brought him to reject the Euclidean doctrine that the whole is
always greater than any of its parts and, hence, to the insight that a set is
infinite if and only if it is bijective to a proper subset of itself. This
anticipates Peirce and Dedekind. Bolzano’s extension of the linear continuum of
finite numbers by infinitesimals implies a relatively constructive approach to
nonstandard analysis. In the development of standard analysis the most
remarkable result of the Grössenlehre is the anticipation of Weirstrass’s
discovery that there exist nowhere differentiable continuous functions. The
Wissenschaftslehre was intended to lay the logical and epistemological
foundations of Bolzano’s mathematics. A theory of science in Bolzano’s sense is
a collection of rules for delimiting the set of scientific textbooks. Whether a
Bolzano, Bernard Bolzano, Bernard 93 4065A-
AM 93 class of true propositions
is a worthwhile object of representation in a scientific textbook is an ethical
question decidable on utilitarian principles. Bolzano proceeded from an
expanded and standardized ordinary language through which he could describe
propositions and their parts. He defined the semantic notion of truth and
introduced the function corresponding to a “replacement” operation on
propositions. One of his major achievements was his definition of logical
derivability (logische Ableitbarkeit) between sets of propositions: B is
logically derivable from A if and only if all elements of the sum of A and B
are simultaneously true for some replacement of their non-logical ideas-as-such
and if all elements of B are true for any such replacement that makes all
elements of A true. In addition to this notion, which is similar to Tarski’s
concept of consequence of 1936, Bolzano introduced a notion corresponding to
Gentzen’s concept of consequence. A proposition is universally valid
(allgemeingültig) if it is derivable from the null class. In his proof theory
Bolzano formulated counterparts to Gentzen’s cut rule. Bolzano introduced a
notion of inductive probability as a generalization of derivability in a
limited domain. This notion has the formal properties of conditional
probability. These features and Bolzano’s characterization of probability
density by the technique of variation are reminiscent of Wittgenstein’s
inductive logic and Carnap’s theory of regular confirmation functions. The
replacement of conceptual complexes in propositions would, if applied to a
formalized language, correspond closely to a substitutionsemantic conception of
quantification. His own philosophical language was based on a kind of free
logic. In essence, Bolzano characterized a substitution-semantic notion of
consequence with a finite number of antecedents. His quantification over
individual and general concepts amounts to the introduction of a non-elementary
logic of lowest order containing a quantification theory of predicate variables
but no set-theoretical principles such as choice axioms. His conception of
universal validity and of the semantic superstructure of logic leads to a
semantically adequate extension of the predicate-logical version of Lewis’s
system S5 of modal logic without paradoxes. It is also possible to simulate
Bolzano’s theory of probability in a substitution-semantically constructed
theory of probability functions. Hence, by means of an ontologically
parsimonious superstructure without possible-worlds metaphysics, Bolzano was
able to delimit essentially the realms of classical logical truth and additive
probability spaces. In geometry Bolzano created a new foundation from a
topological point of view. He defin
ed the notion of an
isolated point of a set in a way reminiscent of the notion of a point at which
a set is well-dimensional in the sense of Urysohn and Menger. On this basis he
introduced his topological notion of a continuum and formulated a recursive
definition of the dimensionality of non-empty subsets of the Euclidean 3-space,
which is closely related to the inductive dimension concept of Urysohn and
Menger. In a remarkable paragraph of an unfinished late manuscript on geometry
he stated the celebrated curve theorem of Jordan. FREE LOGIC, MODAL LOGIC, PHILOSOPHY OF
MATHEMATICS, PROBABILITY, SET THEORY, TARSKI. J.Be. Bonaventure, Saint
(c.1221–74), Italian theologian. Born John of Fidanza in Bagnorea, Tuscany, he
was educated at Paris, earning a master’s degree in arts and a doctorate in
theology. He joined the Franciscans about 1243, while still a student, and was
elected minister general of the order in 1257. Made cardinal bishop of Albano
by Pope Gregory X in 1274, Bonaventure helped organize the Second Ecumenical
Council of Lyons, during the course of which he died, in July 1274. He was
canonized in 1482 and named a doctor of the church in 1587. Bonaventure wrote
and preached extensively on the relation between philosophy and theology, the
role of reason in spiritual and religious life, and the extent to which
knowledge in God is obtainable by the “wayfarer.” His basic position is nicely
expressed in De reductione artium ad theologiam (“On the Reduction of the Arts
to Theology”): “the manifold wisdom of God, which is clearly revealed in sacred
scripture, lies hidden in all knowledge and in all nature.” He adds, “all divisions
of knowledge are handmaids of theology.” But he is critical of those
theologians who wish to sever the connection between faith and reason. As he
argues in another famous work, Itinerarium mentis ad deum (“The Mind’s Journey
unto God,” 1259), “since, relative to our life on earth, the world is itself a
ladder for ascending to God, we find here certain traces, certain images” of
the divine hand, in which God himself is mirrored. Although Bonaventure’s own
philosophical outlook is Augustinian, he was also influenced by Aristotle,
whose newly available works he both read and appreciated. Thus, while
upholdBonaventure, Saint Bonaventure, Saint 94 4065A- AM 94
ing the Aristotelian ideas that knowledge of the external world is based on the
senses and that the mind comes into existence as a tabula rasa, he also
contends that divine illumination is necessary to explain both the acquisition
of universal concepts from sense images, and the certainty of intellectual
judgment. His own illuminationist epistemology seeks a middle ground between,
on the one hand, those who maintain that the eternal light is the sole reason
for human knowing, providing the human intellect with its archetypal and
intelligible objects, and, on the other, those holding that the eternal light
merely influences human knowing, helping guide it toward truth. He holds that
our intellect has certain knowledge when stable; eternal archetypes are
“contuited by us [a nobis contuita],” together with intelligible species
produced by its own fallible powers. In metaphysics, Bonaventure defends
exemplarism, the doctrine that all creation is patterned after exemplar causes
or ideas in the mind of God. Like Aquinas, but unlike Duns Scotus, he argues
that it is through such ideas that God knows all creatures. He also adopts the
emanationist principle that creation proceeds from God’s goodness, which is
self-diffusive, but differs from other emanationists, such as al-Farabi,
Avicenna, and Averroes, in arguing that divine emanation is neither necessary
nor indirect (i.e., accomplished by secondary agents or intelligences). Indeed,
he sees the views of these Islamic philosophers as typical of the errors bound
to follow once Aristotelian rationalism is taken to its extreme. He is also
well known for his anti-Aristotelian argument that the eternity of the world –
something even Aquinas (following Maimonides) concedes as a theoretical
possibility – is demonstrably false. Bonaventure also subscribes to several
other doctrines characteristic of medieval Augustinianism: universal
hylomorphism, the thesis, defended by Ibn Gabirol and Avicenna (among others),
that everything other than God is composed of matter and form; the plurality of
forms, the view that subjects and predicates in the category of substance are
ordered in terms of their metaphysical priority; and the ontological view of
truth, according to which truth is a kind of rightness perceived by the mind.
In a similar vein, Bonaventure argues that knowledge ultimately consists in
perceiving truth directly, without argument or demonstration. Bonaventure also
wrote several classic works in the tradition of mystical theology. His
bestknown and most popular mystical work is the aforementioned Itinerarium,
written in 1259 on a pilgrimage to La Verna, during which he beheld the
six-winged seraph that had also appeared to Francis of Assisi when Francis
received the stigmata. Bonaventure outlines a seven-stage spiritual journey, in
which our mind moves from first considering God’s traces in the perfections of
irrational creatures, to a final state of peaceful repose, in which our
affections are “transferred and transformed into God.” Central to his writings
on spiritual life is the theme of the “three ways”: the purgative way, inspired
by conscience, which expels sin; the illuminative way, inspired by the
intellect, which imitates Christ; and the unitive way, inspired by wisdom,
which unites us to God through love. Bonaventure’s writings most immediately
influenced the work of other medieval Augustinians, such as Matthew of
Aquasparta and John Peckham, and later, followers of Duns Scotus. But his
modern reputation rests on his profound contributions to philosophical
theology, Franciscan spirituality, and mystical thought, in all three of which
he remains an authoritative source.
ARISTOTLE, AUGUSTINE. J.A.Z. boo-hurrah theory.EMOTIVISM. Book of
Changes.I-CHING. book of life, expression found in Hebrew and Christian
scriptures signifying a record kept by the Lord of those destined for eternal
happiness (Exodus 32:32; Psalms 68; Malachi 3:16; Daniel 12:1; Philippians 4:3;
Revelation 3:5, 17:8, 20:12, 21:27). Medieval philosophers often referred to
the book of life when discussing issues of predestination, divine omniscience,
foreknowledge, and free will. Figures like Augustine and Aquinas asked whether
it represented God’s unerring foreknowledge or predestination, or whether some
names could be added or deleted from it. The term is used by some contemporary
philosophers to mean a record of all the events in a person’s life.
FREE WILL PROBLEM. R.H.K.
Boole, George.BOOLEAN ALGEBRA, LOGICAL FORM. Boolean algebra, (1) an ordered
triple (B,†,3), where B is a set containing at least two elements and † and 3
are unary and binary operations in B such that (i) a 3 b % b 3 a, (ii) a 3 (b 3
c) % (a 3 b) 3 c, (iii) a 3 † a % b 3 † b, and (iv) a 3 b = a if and only if a
3 † b % a 3 † a; (2) the theboo-hurrah theory Boolean algebra 95 4065A- AM 95
ory of such algebras. Such structures are modern descendants of algebras
published by the mathematician G. Boole in 1847 and representing the first
successful algebraic treatment of logic. (Interpreting † and 3 as negation and
conjunction, respectively, makes Boolean algebra a calculus of propositions.
Likewise, if B % {T,F} and † and 3 are the truth-functions for negation and
conjunction, then (B,†,3) – the truth table for those two connectives – forms a
two-element Boolean algebra.) Picturing a Boolean algebra is simple. (B,†,3) is
a full subset algebra if B is the set of all subsets of a given set and † and 3
are set complementation and intersection, respectively. Then every finite
Boolean algebra is isomorphic to a full subset algebra, while every infinite
Boolean algebra is isomorphic to a subalgebra of such an algebra. It is for
this reason that Boolean algebra is often characterized as the calculus of
classes. SET THEORY, TRUTH TABLE. G.F.S.
borderline case, in the logical sense, a case that falls within the “gray area”
or “twilight zone” associated with a vague concept; in the pragmatic sense, a
doubtful, disputed, or arguable case. These two senses are not mutually
exclusive, of course. A moment of time near sunrise or sunset may be a
borderline case of daytime or nighttime in the logical sense, but not in the
pragmatic sense. A sufficiently freshly fertilized ovum may be a borderline
case of a person in both senses. Fermat’s hypothesis, or any of a large number
of other disputed mathematical propositions, may be a borderline case in the
pragmatic sense but not in the logical sense. A borderline case per se in
either sense need not be a limiting case or a degenerate case.
DEGENERATE CASE, LIMITING CASE, VAGUENESS.
J.Cor. Born interpretation.QUANTUM MECHANICS. Bosanquet, Bernard (1848–1923),
British philosopher, the most systematic British absolute idealist and, with F.
H. Bradley, the leading British defender of absolute idealism. Although he
derived his name from Huguenot ancestors, Bosanquet was thoroughly English.
Born at Altwick and educated at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford, he was for
eleven years a fellow of University College, Oxford. The death of his father in
1880 and the resulting inheritance enabled Bosanquet to leave Oxford for London
and a career as a writer and social activist. While writing, he taught courses
for the London Ethical Society’s Center for University Extension and donated
time to the Charity Organization Society. In 1895 he married his coworker in
the Charity Organization Society, Helen Dendy, who was also the translator of
Christoph Sigwart’s Logic. Bosanquet was professor of moral philosophy at St.
Andrews from 1903 to 1908. He gave the Gifford Lectures in 1911 and 1912.
Otherwise he lived in London until his death. Bosanquet’s most comprehensive
work, his two-volume Gifford Lectures, The Principle of Individuality and Value
and The Value and Destiny of the Individual, covers most aspects of his
philosophy. In The Principle of Individuality and Value he argues that the
search for truth proceeds by eliminating contradictions in experience. (For
Bosanquet a contradiction arises when there are incompatible interpretations of
the same fact.) This involves making distinctions that harmonize the
incompatible interpretations in a larger body of knowledge. Bosanquet thought
there was no way to arrest this process short of recognizing that all human
experience forms a comprehensive whole which is reality. Bosanquet called this
totality “the Absolute.” Just as conflicting interpretations of the same fact
find harmonious places in the Absolute, so conflicting desires are also
included. The Absolute thus satisfies all desires and provides Bosanquet’s
standard for evaluating other objects. This is because in his view the value of
an object is determined by its ability to satisfy desires. From this Bosanquet
concluded that human beings, as fragments of the Absolute, acquire greater
value as they realize themselves by partaking more fully in the Absolute. In
The Value and Destiny of the Individual Bosanquet explained how human beings
could do this. As finite, human beings face obstacles they cannot overcome; yet
they desire the good (i.e., the Absolute) which for Bosanquet overcomes all
obstacles and satisfies all desires. Humans can best realize a desire for the
good, Bosanquet thinks, by surrendering their private desires for the sake of
the good. This attitude of surrender, which Bosanquet calls the religious
consciousness, relates human beings to what is permanently valuable in reality
and increases their own value and satisfaction accordingly. Bosanquet’s defense
of this metaphysical vision rests heavily on his first major work, Logic or the
Morphology of Knowledge (1888; 2d ed., 1911). As the subtitle indicates,
Bosanquet took the subject matter of Logic to be the structure of knowledge.
Like Hegel, who was in many ways his inspiration, Bosanquet thought that the
nature of knowledge was defined by structures repeated in different parts of
knowledge. He borderline case Bosanquet, Bernard 96 4065A- AM 96
called these structures forms of judgment and tried to show that simple judgments
are dependent on increasingly complex ones and finally on an all-inclusive
judgment that defines reality. For example, the simplest element of knowledge
is a demonstrative judgment like “This is hot.” But making such a judgment
presupposes understanding the contrast between ‘this’ and ‘that’. Demonstrative
judgments thus depend on comparative judgments like “This is hotter than that.”
Since these judgments are less dependent on other judgments, they more fully
embody human knowledge. Bosanquet claimed that the series of increasingly
complex judgments are not arranged in a simple linear order but develop along
different branches finally uniting in disjunctive judgments that attribute to
reality an exhaustive set of mutually exclusive alternatives which are
themselves judgments. When one contained judgment is asserted on the basis of
another, a judgment containing both is an inference. For Bosanquet inferences
are mediated judgments that assert their conclusions based on grounds. When
these grounds are made fully explicit in a judgment containing them, that
judgment embodies the nature of inference: that one must accept the conclusion
or reject the whole of knowledge. Since for Bosanquet the difference between
any judgment and the reality it represents is that a judgment is composed of
ideas that abstract from reality, a fully comprehensive judgment includes all
aspects of reality. It is thus identical to reality. By locating all judgments
within this one, Bosanquet claimed to have described the morphology of
knowledge as well as to have shown that thought is identical to reality.
Bosanquet removed an objection to this identification in History of Aesthetics
(1892), where he traces the development of the philosophy of the beautiful from
its inception through absolute idealism. According to Plato and Aristotle
beauty is found in imitations of reality, while in objective idealism it is
reality in sensuous form. Drawing heavily on Kant, Bosanquet saw this process
as an overcoming of the opposition between sense and reason by showing how a
pleasurable feeling can partake of reason. He thought that absolute idealism
explained this by showing that we experience objects as beautiful because their
sensible qualities exhibit the unifying activity of reason. Bosanquet treated
the political implications of absolute idealism in his Philosophical Theory of
the State (1898; 3d ed., 1920), where he argues that humans achieve their ends
only in communities. According to Bosanquet, all humans rationally will their
own ends. Because their ends differ from moment to moment, the ends they
rationally will are those that harmonize their desires at particular moments.
Similarly, because the ends of different individuals overlap and conflict, what
they rationally will are ends that harmonize their desires, which are the ends
of humans in communities. They are willed by the general will, the realization
of which is self-rule or liberty. This provides the rational ground of
political obligation, since the most comprehensive system of modern life is the
state, the end of which is the realization of the best life for its
citizens.
HEGEL, IDEALISM. J.W.A.
Boscovich, Roger Joseph, or Rudjer Josip Bos v kovic’ (1711–87), Croatian
physicist and philosopher. Born of Serbian and Italian parents, he was a Jesuit
and polymath best known for his A Theory of Natural Philosophy Reduced to a
Single Law of the Actions Existing in Nature. This work attempts to explain all
physical phenomena in terms of the attractions and repulsions of point
particles (puncta) that are indistinguishable in their intrinsic qualitative
properties. According to Boscovich’s single law, puncta at a certain distance
attract, until upon approaching one another they reach a point at which they
repel, and eventually reach equilibrium. Thus, Boscovich defends a form of
dynamism, or the theory that nature is to be understood in terms of force and
not mass (where forces are functions of time and distance). By dispensing with
extended substance, Boscovich avoided epistemological difficulties facing
Locke’s natural philosophy and anticipated developments in modern physics.
Among those influenced by Boscovich were Kant (who defended a version of
dynamism), Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Lord Kelvin. Boscovich’s theory
has proved to be empirically inadequate to account for phenomena such as light.
A philosophical difficulty for Boscovich’s puncta, which are physical
substances, arises out of their zero-dimensionality. It is plausible that any
power must have a basis in an object’s intrinsic properties, and puncta appear
to lack such support for their powers. However, it is extensional properties
that puncta lack, and Boscovich could argue that the categorial property of
being an unextended spatial substance provides the needed basis. J.Ho. &
G.Ro. bottom-up.COGNITIVE SCIENCE. bound variable.
ONTOLOGICAL COMMITMENT,
VARIABLE. Boscovich, Roger Joseph bound variable 97 4065A- AM 97
Bouwsma, O(ets) K(olk) (1898–1978), American philosopher, a practitioner of
ordinary language philosophy and celebrated teacher. Through work on Moore and
contact with students such as Norman Malcolm and Morris Lazerowitz, whom he
sent from Nebraska to work with Moore, Bouwsma discovered Wittgenstein. He
became known for conveying an understanding of Wittgenstein’s techniques of
philosophical analysis through his own often humorous grasp of sense and
nonsense. Focusing on a particular pivotal sentence in an argument, he provided
imaginative surroundings for it, showing how, in the philosopher’s mouth, the
sentence lacked sense. He sometimes described this as “the method of failure.”
In connection with Descartes’s evil genius, e.g., Bouwsma invents an elaborate
story in which the evil genius tries but fails to permanently deceive by means
of a totally paper world. Our inability to imagine such a deception undermines
the sense of the evil genius argument. His writings are replete with similar
stories, analogies, and teases of sense and nonsense for such philosophical
standards as Berkeley’s idealism, Moore’s theory of sensedata, and Anselm’s
ontological argument. Bouwsma did not advocate theories nor put forward
refutations of other philosophers’ views. His talent lay rather in exposing
some central sentence in an argument as disguised nonsense. In this, he went
beyond Wittgenstein, working out the details of the latter’s insights into
language. In addition to this appropriation of Wittgenstein, Bouwsma also
appropriated Kierkegaard, understanding him too as one who dispelled
philosophical illusions – those aris
ing from the attempt to
understand Christianity. The ordinary language of religious philosophy was that
of scriptures. He drew upon this language in his many essays on religious
themes. His religious dimension made whole this person who gave no quarter to
traditional metaphysics. His papers are published under the titles
Philosophical Essays, Toward a New Sensibility, Without Proof or Evidence, and
Wittgenstein Conversations 1949–51. His philosophical notebooks are housed at
the Humanities Research Center in Austin, Texas. ORDINARY LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY, WITTGENSTEIN.
R.E.H. Boyle, Robert (1627–91), British chemist and physicist who was a major
figure in seventeenthcentury natural philosophy. To his contemporaries he was
“the restorer” in England of the mechanical philosophy. His program was to
replace the vacuous explanations characteristic of Peripateticism (the “quality
of whiteness” in snow explains why it dazzles the eyes) by explanations
employing the “two grand and most catholic principles of bodies, matter and
motion,” matter being composed of corpuscles, with motion “the grand agent of
all that happens in nature.” Boyle wrote influentially on scientific
methodology, emphasizing experimentation (a Baconian influence), experimental
precision, and the importance of devising “good and excellent” hypotheses. The
dispute with Spinoza on the validation of explanatory hypotheses contrasted
Boyle’s experimental way with Spinoza’s way of rational analysis. The 1670s
dispute with Henry More on the ontological grounds of corporeal activity
confronted More’s “Spirit of Nature” with the “essential modifications” (motion
and the “seminal principle” of activity) with which Boyle claimed God had
directly endowed matter. As a champion of the corpuscularian philosophy, Boyle
was an important link in the development before Locke of the distinction
between primary and secondary qualities. A leading advocate of natural
theology, he provided in his will for the establishment of the Boyle Lectures
to defend Protestant Christianity against atheism and materialism.
MECHANISTIC EXPLANATION,
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, SPINOZA. A.G. bracketing.HUSSERL, PHENOMENOLOGY.
Bradley, F(rancis) H(erbert) (1846–1924), the most original and influential
nineteenth-century British idealist. Born at Clapham, he was the fourth son of
an evangelical minister. His younger brother A. C. Bradley was a well-known
Shakespearean critic. From 1870 until his death Bradley was a fellow of Merton
College, Oxford. A kidney ailment, which first occurred in 1871, compelled him
to lead a retiring life. This, combined with his forceful literary style, his
love of irony, the dedication of three of his books to an unknown woman, and
acclaim as the greatest British idealist since Berkeley, has lent an aura of
mystery to his personal life. The aim of Bradley’s first important work,
Ethical Studies (1876), is not to offer guidance for dealing with practical
moral problems (Bradley condemned this as casuistry), but rather to explain
what makes morality as embodied in the consciousness of individuals and in
social institutions possible. Bradley thought it was the fact that moral agents
take morality as an end in itself which involves identifying their wills with
an ideal (provided in part by their stations in sociBouwsma, O(ets) K(olk)
Bradley, F(rancis) H(erbert) 98 4065A-
AM 98 ety) and then transferring
that ideal to reality through action. Bradley called this process
“selfrealization.” He thought that moral agents could realize their good selves
only by suppressing their bad selves, from which he concluded that morality
could never be completely realized, since realizing a good self requires having
a bad one. For this reason Bradley believed that the moral consciousness would
develop into religious consciousness which, in his secularized version of
Christianity, required dying to one’s natural self through faith in the actual
existence of the moral ideal. In Ethical Studies Bradley admitted that a full
defense of his ethics would require a metaphysical system, something he did not
then have. Much of Bradley’s remaining work was an attempt to provide the
outline of such a system by solving what he called “the great problem of the
relation between thought and reality.” He first confronted this problem in The
Principles of Logic(1883), which is his description of thought. He took thought
to be embodied in judgments, which are distinguished from other mental
activities by being true or false. This is made possible by the fact that their
contents, which Bradley called ideas, represent reality. A problem arises
because ideas are universals and so represent kinds of things, while the things
themselves are all individuals. Bradley solves this problem by distinguishing
between the logical and grammatical forms of a judgment and arguing that all
judgments have the logical form of conditionals. They assert that universal
connections between qualities obtain in reality. The qualities are universals,
the connections between them are conditional, while reality is one individual
whole that we have contact with in immediate experience. All judgments, in his
view, are abstractions from a diverse but non-relational immediate experience.
Since judgments are inescapably relational, they fail to represent accurately
non-relational reality and so fail to reach truth, which is the goal of
thought. From this Bradley concluded that, contrary to what some of his more
Hegelian contemporaries were saying, thought is not identical to reality and is
never more than partially true. Appearance and Reality (1893) is Bradley’s
description of reality: it is experience, all of it, all at once, blended in a
harmonious way. Bradley defended this view by means of his criterion for
reality. Reality, he proclaimed, does not contradict itself; anything that does
is merely appearance. In Part I of Appearance and Reality Bradley relied on an
infinite regress argument, now called Bradley’s regress, to contend that
relations and all relational phenomena, including thought, are contradictory.
They are appearance, not reality. In Part II he claimed that appearances are
contradictory because they are abstracted by thought from the immediate
experience of which they are a part. Appearances constitute the content of this
whole, which in Bradley’s view is experience. In other words, reality is
experience in its totality. Bradley called this unified, consistent
all-inclusive reality “the Absolute.” Today Bradley is mainly remembered for
his argument against the reality of relations, and as the philosopher who
provoked Russell’s and Moore’s revolution in philosophy. He would be better
remembered as a founder of twentiethcentury philosophy who based metaphysical
conclusions on his account of the logical forms of judgments. BOSANQUET, IDEALISM. J.W.A. Bradwardine,
Thomas.OXFORD CALCULATORS. Brahma.BRAHMAN. Brahman, in Hinduism, the ultimate
reality, possessed of being, consciousness, and bliss, dependent on nothing
else for existence. Brahman is conceived as a personal deity (Brahma) in
Vis’istadvaita and Dvaita Vedanta and as apersonal and qualityless in Advaita
Vedanta, in which “being, consciousness, and bliss” are interpreted negatively.
While Brahman is conceived as saguna or “with qualities” in Vis’istadvaita and
Dvaita, for Advaita Brahman is nirguna or qualityless. For Vis’istadvaita, ‘Brahman’
secondarily refers to the world dependent on Brahman strictly so called, namely
all minds and material things that constitute Brahman’s body. For Advaita, each
apparently individual mind (or other thing) is identical to Brahman; Dvaita
does not construe the world, or anything else, as Brahman’s body.
Enlightenment, or moksha, with its consequent escape from the cycle of
rebirths, for Advaita involves recognizing one’s identity with nirguna Brahman,
and for Dvaita and Vis’istadvaita involves repenting and forsaking one’s sins
and trusting a gracious Brahman for salvation.
Brandt, Richard B.
(1910–97), American moral philosopher, most closely associated with rule
utilitarianism (which term he coined). Brandt Bradwardine, Thomas Brandt,
Richard B. 99 4065A- AM 99 earned degrees from Denison College and
Cambridge University, and obtained a Ph.D. from Yale in 1936. He taught at
Swarthmore College from 1937 to 1964 and at the University of Michigan from
1964 to 1981. His six books and nearly one hundred articles included work on
philosophy of religion, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of action,
political philosophy, and philosophy of law. His greatest contributions were in
moral philosophy. He first defended rule utilitarianism in his textbook Ethical
Theory (1959), but greatly refined his view in the 1960s in a series of
articles, which were widely discussed and reprinted and eventually collected
together in Morality, Utilitarianism, and Rights (1992). Further refinements
appear in his A Theory of the Good and the Right (1979) and Facts, Values, and
Morality (1996). Brandt famously argued for a “reforming definition” of
‘rational person’. He proposed that we use it to designate someone whose
desires would survive exposure to all relevant empirical facts and to correct
logical reasoning. He also proposed a “reforming definition” of ‘morally right’
that assigns it the descriptive meaning ‘would be permitted by any moral code
that all (or nearly all) rational people would publicly favor for the agent’s
society if they expected to spend a lifetime in that society’. In his view,
rational choice between moral codes is determined not by prior moral
commitments but by expected consequences. Brandt admitted that different
rational people may favor different codes, since different rational people may
have different levels of natural benevolence. But he also contended that most
rational people would favor a rule-utilitarian code. COGNITIVE PSYCHOTHERAPY, ETHICS, UTILITARIANISM.
B.W.H. Brentano, Franz (1838–1917), German philosopher, one of the most
intellectually influential and personally charismatic of his time. He is known
especially for his distinction between psychological and physical phenomena on
the basis of intentionality or internal object-directedness of thought, his
revival of Aristotelianism and empirical methods in philosophy and psychology,
and his value theory and ethics supported by the concept of correct pro- and
anti-emotions or love and hate attitudes. Brentano made noted contributions to the
theory of metaphysical categories, phenomenology, epistemology, syllogistic
logic, and philosophy of religion. His teaching made a profound impact on his
students in Würzburg and Vienna, many of whom became internationally respected
thinkers in their fields, including Meinong, Husserl, Twardowski, Christian von
Ehrenfels, Anton Marty, and Freud. Brentano began his study of philosophy at
the Aschaffenburg Royal Bavarian Gymnasium; in 1856–58 he attended the
universities of Munich and Würzburg, and then enrolled at the University of
Berlin, where he undertook his first investigations of Aristotle’s metaphysics
under the supervision of F. A. Trendelenburg. In 1859– 60, he attended the
Academy in Münster, reading intensively in the medieval Aristotelians; in 1862
he received the doctorate in philosophy in absentia from the University of
Tübingen. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1864, and was later involved in
a controversy over the doctrine of papal infallibility, eventually leaving the
church in 1873. He taught first as Privatdozent in the Philosophical Faculty of
the University of Würzburg (1866–74), and then accepted a professorship at the
University of Vienna. In 1880 he decided to marry, temporarily resigning his
position to acquire Saxon citizenship, in order to avoid legal difficulties in
Austria, where marriages of former priests were not officially recognized.
Brentano was promised restoration of his position after his circumvention of
these restrictions, but although he was later reinstated as lecturer, his
appeals for reappointment as professor were answered only with delay and
equivocation. He left Vienna in 1895, retiring to Italy, his family’s country
of origin. At last he moved to Zürich, Switzerland, shortly before Italy
entered World War I. Here he remained active both in philosophy and psychology,
despite his ensuing blindness, writing and revising numerous books and
articles, frequently meeting with former students and colleagues, and
maintaining an extensive philosophical-literary correspondence, until his
death. In Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (“Psychology from an Empirical
Standpoint,” 1874), Brentano argued that intentionality is the mark of the
mental, that every psychological experience contains an intended object – also
called an intentional object – which the thought is about or toward which the
thought is directed. Thus, in desire, something is desired. According to the
immanent intentionality thesis, this means that the desired object is literally
contained within the psychological experience of desire. Brentano claims that
this is uniquely true of mental as opposed to physical or non-psychological
phenomena, so that the intentionality of the psychological distinguishes mental
from physical states. The immanent intentionality thesis proBrentano, Franz
Brentano, Franz 100 4065A- AM 100 vides a framework in which Brentano
identifies three categories of psychological phenomena: thoughts (Vorstellungen),
judgments, and emotive phenomena. He further maintains that every thought is
also self-consciously reflected back onto itself as a secondary intended object
in what he called the eigentümliche Verfleckung. From 1905 through 1911, with
the publication in that year of Von der Klassifikation der psychischen
Phänomene, Brentano gradually abandoned the immanent intentionality thesis in
favor of his later philosophy of reism, according to which only individuals
exist, excluding putative nonexistent irrealia, such as lacks, absences, and
mere possibilities. In the meantime, his students Twardowski, Meinong, and
Husserl, reacting negatively to the idealism, psychologism, and related
philosophical problems apparent in the early immanent intentionality thesis,
developed alternative non-immanence approaches to intentionality, leading, in the
case of Twardowski and Meinong and his students in the Graz school of
phenomenological psychology, to the construction of Gegenstandstheorie, the
theory of (transcendent existent and nonexistent intended) objects, and to
Husserl’s later transcendental phenomenology. The intentionality of the mental
in Brentano’s revival of the medieval Aristotelian doctrine is one of his most
important contributions to contemporary non-mechanistic theories of mind,
meaning, and expression. Brentano’s immanent intentionality thesis was,
however, rejected by philosophers who otherwise agreed with his underlying
claim that thought is essentially object-directed. Brentano’s value theory
(Werttheorie) offers a pluralistic account of value, permitting many different
kinds of things to be valuable – although, in keeping with his later reism, he
denies the existence of an abstract realm of values. Intrinsic value is
objective rather than subjective, in the sense that he believes the pro- and
anti-emotions we may have toward an act or situation are objectively correct if
they present themselves to emotional preference with the same apodicity or
unquestionable sense of rightness as other selfevident matters of non-ethical
judgment. Among the controversial consequences of Brentano’s value theory is
the conclusion that there can be no such thing as absolute evil. The
implication follows from Brentano’s observation, first, that evil requires evil
consciousness, and that consciousness of any kind, even the worst imaginable
malice or malevolent ill will, is (considered merely as consciousness)
intrinsically good. This means that necessarily there is always a mixture of
intrinsic good even in the most malicious possible states of mind, by virtue
alone of being consciously experienced, so that pure evil never obtains.
Brentano’s value theory admits of no defense against those who happen not to
share the same “correct” emotional attitudes toward the situations he
describes. If it is objected that to another person’s emotional preferences
only good consciousness is intrinsically good, while infinitely bad
consciousness despite being a state of consciousness appears instead to contain
no intrinsic good and is absolutely evil, there is no recourse within
Brentano’s ethics except to acknowledge that this contrary emotive attitude
toward infinitely bad consciousness may also be correct, even though it
contradicts his evaluations. Brentano’s empirical psychology and articulation
of the intentionality thesis, his moral philosophy and value theory, his investigations
of Aristotle’s metaphysics at a time when Aristotelian realism was little
appreciated in the prevailing climate of post-Kantian idealism, his epistemic
theory of evident judgment, his suggestions for the reform of syllogistic
logic, his treatment of the principle of sufficient reason and existence of
God, his interpretation of a fourstage cycle of successive trends in the
history of philosophy, together with his teaching and personal moral example,
continue to inspire a variety of divergent philosophical traditions. ARISTOTLE, HUSSERL, INTENTIONALITY, MEINONG,
PHENOMENOLOGY, VALUE. D.J. Brentano’s thesis.INTENTIONALITY. bridge
law.REDUCTION. British empiricists.RATIONALISM. Broad, C(harlie) D(unbar) (1887–1971),
English epistemologist, metaphysician, moral philosopher, and philosopher of
science. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, taught at several
universities in Scotland, and then returned to Trinity, first as lecturer in
moral science and eventually as Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy. His
philosophical views are in the broadly realist tradition of Moore and Russell,
though with substantial influence also from his teachers at Cambridge,
McTaggart and W. E. Johnson. Broad wrote voluminously and incisively on an
extremely wide range of philosophical topics, including most prominently the
nature of perception, a priori knowledge and concepts, the problem of
induction, the mind– Brentano’s thesis Broad, C(harlie) D(unbar) 101
4065A- AM 101 body problem, the free will problem,
various topics in moral philosophy, the nature and philosophical significance
of psychical research, the nature of philosophy itself, and various historical
figures such as Leibniz, Kant, and McTaggart. Broad’s work in the philosophy of
perception centers on the nature of sense-data (or sensa, as he calls them) and
their relation to physical objects. He defends a rather cautious, tentative
version of the causal theory of perception. With regard to a priori knowledge,
Broad rejects the empiricist view that all such knowledge is of analytic
propositions, claiming instead that reason can intuit necessary and universal
connections between properties or characteristics; his view of concept
acquisition is that while most concepts are abstracted from experience, some
are a priori, though not necessarily innate. Broad holds that the rationality
of inductive inference depends on a further general premise about the world, a
more complicated version of the thesis that nature is uniform, which is
difficult to state precisely and even more difficult to justify. Broad’s view
of the mind–body problem is a version of dualism, though one that places
primary emphasis on individual mental events, is much more uncertain about the
existence and nature of the mind as a substance, and is quite sympathetic to
epiphenomenalism. His main contribution to the free will problem consists in an
elaborate analysis of the libertarian conception of freedom, which he holds to
be both impossible to realize and at the same time quite possibly an essential
precondition of the ordinary conception of obligation. Broad’s work in ethics
is diverse and difficult to summarize, but much of it centers on the issue of
whether ethical judgments are genuinely cognitive in character. Broad was one
of the few philosophers to take psychical research seriously. He served as
president of the Society for Psychical Research and was an occasional observer
of experiments in this area. His philosophical writings on this subject, while
not uncritical, are in the main sympathetic and are largely concerned to defend
concepts like precognition against charges of incoherence and also to draw out
their implications for more familiar philosophical issues. As regards the
nature of philosophy, Broad distinguishes between “critical” and “speculative”
philosophy. Critical philosophy is analysis of the basic concepts of ordinary
life and of science, roughly in the tradition of Moore and Russell. A very high
proportion of Broad’s own work consists of such analyses, often amazingly detailed
and meticulous in character. But he is also sympathetic to the speculative
attempt to arrive at an overall conception of the nature of the universe and
the position of human beings therein, while at the same time expressing doubts
that anything even remotely approaching demonstration is possible in such
endeavors. The foregoing catalog of views reveals something of the range of
Broad’s philosophical thought, but it fails to bring out what is most
strikingly valuable about it. Broad’s positions on various issues do not form
anything like a system (he himself is reported to have said that there is
nothing that answers to the description “Broad’s philosophy”). While his views
are invariably subtle, thoughtful, and critically penetrating, they rarely have
the sort of one-sided novelty that has come to be so highly valued in
philosophy. What they do have is exceptional clarity, dialectical insight, and
even-handedness. Broad’s skill at uncovering and displaying the precise shape
of a philosophical issue, clarifying the relevant arguments and objections, and
cataloging in detail the merits and demerits of the opposing positions has
rarely been equaled. One who seeks a clear-cut resolution of an issue is likely
to be impatient and disappointed with Broad’s careful, measured discussions, in
which unusual effort is made to accord all positions and arguments their due.
But one who seeks a comprehensive and balanced understanding of the issue in
question is unlikely to find a more trustworthy guide.
Brouwer, Luitzgen
Egbertus Jan (1881–1966), Dutch mathematician and philosopher and founder of
the intuitionist school in the philosophy of mathematics. Educated at the
Municipal University of Amsterdam, where he received his doctorate in 1907, he
remained there for his entire professional career, as Privaat-Docent (1909–12)
and then professor (1912–55). He was among the preeminent topologists of his
time, proving several important results. Philosophically, he was also unique in
his strongly held conviction that philosophical ideas and arguments concerning
the nature of mathematics ought to affect and be reflected in its practice. His
general orientation in the philosophy of mathematics was Kantian. This was
manifested in his radical critique of the role accorded to logical reasoning by
classical mathematics; a role that Brouwer, following Kant, believed to be
incompatible with the role that intuition must properly play in mathematical
reasoning. The bestknown, if not the most fundamental, part of his Brouwer,
Luitzgen Egbertus Jan Brouwer, Luitzgen Egbertus Jan 102 4065A- AM 102
critique of the role accorded to logic by classical mathematics was his attack
on the principle of the excluded middle and related principles of classical
logic. He challenged their reliability, arguing that their unrestricted use
leads to results that, intuitionistically speaking, are not true. However, in
its fundaments, Brouwer’s critique was not so much an attack on particular
principles of classical logic as a criticism of the general role that classical
mathematics grants to logical reasoning. He believed that logical structure
(and hence logical inference) is a product of the linguistic representation of
mathematical thought and not a feature of that thought itself. He stated this
view in the so-called First Act of Intuitionism, which contains not only the
chief critical idea of Brouwer’s position, but also its core positive element.
This positive element says, with Kant, that mathematics is an essentially
languageless activity of the mind. (Brouwer went on to say something with which
Kant would only have partially agreed: that this activity has its origin in the
perception of a move of time.) The critical element complements this by saying
that mathematics is thus to be kept wholly distinct from mathematical language
and the phenomena of language described by logic. The so-called Second Act of
Intuitionism then extends the positive part of the First Act by stating that
the “self-unfolding” of the primordial intuition of a move of time is the basis
not only of the construction of the natural numbers but also of the
(intuitionistic) continuum. Together, these two ideas form the basis of
Brouwer’s philosophy of mathematics – a philosophy that is radically at odds
with most of twentieth-century philosophy of mathematics. PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS. M.D. Bruno,
Giordano (1548–1600), Italian speculative philosopher. He was born in Naples,
where he entered the Dominican order in 1565. In 1576 he was suspected of
heresy and abandoned his order. He studied and taught in Geneva, but left
because of difficulties with the Calvinists. Thereafter he studied and taught
in Toulouse, Paris, England, various German universities, and Prague. In 1591
he rashly returned to Venice, and was arrested by the Venetian Inquisition in
1592. In 1593 he was handed over to the Roman Inquisition, which burned him to
death as a heretic. Because of his unhappy end, his support for the Copernican
heliocentric hypothesis, and his pronounced anti-Aristotelianism, Bruno has
been mistakenly seen as the proponent of a scientific worldview against
medieval obscurantism. In fact, he should be interpreted in the context of
Renaissance hermetism. Indeed, Bruno was so impressed by the hermetic corpus, a
body of writings attributed to the mythical Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus,
that he called for a return to the magical religion of the Egyptians. He was
also strongly influenced by Lull, Nicholas of Cusa, Ficino, and Agrippa von
Nettesheim, an early sixteenth-century author of an influential treatise on
magic. Several of Bruno’s works were devoted to magic, and it plays an
important role in his books on the art of memory. Techniques for improving the
memory had long been a subject of discussion, but he linked them with the
notion that one could so imprint images of the universe on the mind as to
achieve special knowledge of divine realities and the magic powers associated
with such knowledge. He emphasized the importance of the imagination as a
cognitive power, since it brings us into contact with the divine. Nonetheless,
he also held that human ideas are mere shadows of divine ideas, and that God is
transcendent and hence incomprehensible. Bruno’s best-known works are the
Italian dialogues he wrote while in England, including the following, all
published in 1584: The Ash Wednesday Supper; On Cause, Principle and Unity; The
Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast; and On the Infinite Universe and Worlds. He
presents a vision of the universe as a living and infinitely extended unity
containing innumerable worlds, each of which is like a great animal with a life
of its own. He maintained the unity of matter with universal form or the
World-Soul, thus suggesting a kind of pantheism attractive to later German
idealists, such as Schelling. However, he never identified the World-Soul with
God, who remained separate from matter and form. He combined his speculative
philosophy of nature with the recommendation of a new naturalistic ethics.
Bruno’s support of Copernicus in The Ash Wednesday Supper was related to his
belief that a living earth must move, and he specifically rejected any appeal
to mere mathematics to prove cosmological hypotheses. In later work he
described the monad as a living version of the Democritean atom. Despite some
obvious parallels with both Spinoza and Leibniz, he seems not to have had much
direct influence on seventeenth-century thinkers. E.J.A. Brunschvicg, Léon
(1869–1944), French philosopher, an influential professor at the Sorbonne and
the École Normale Supérieure of Paris, and a founder of the Revue de
Métaphysique et de Morale (1893) and the Société Française de Bruno, Giordano
Brunschvicg, Léon 103 4065A- AM 103 Philosophie (1901). In 1940 he was forced
by the Nazis to leave Paris and sought refuge in the nonoccupied zone, where he
died. A monistic idealist, Brunschvicg unfolded a philosophy of mind
(Introduction to the Life of the Mind, 1900). His epistemology highlights
judgment. Thinking is judging and judging is acting. He defined philosophy as
“the mind’s methodical self-reflection.” Philosophy investigates man’s growing
self-understanding. The mind’s recesses, or metaphysical truth, are accessible
through analysis of the mind’s timely manifestations. His major works therefore
describe the progress of science as progress of consciousness: The Stages of
Mathematical Philosophy (1912), Human Experience and Physical Causality (1922),
The Progress of Conscience in Western Philosophy (1927), and Ages of
Intelligence (1934). An heir of Renouvier, Cournot, and Revaisson, Brunschvicg
advocated a moral and spiritual conception of science and attempted to
reconcile idealism and positivism. J.-L.S. B-series.TIME. B-theory of
time.TIME. Buber, Martin (1878–1965), German Jewish philosopher, theologian,
and political leader. Buber’s early influences include Hasidism and
neo-Kantianism. Eventually he broke with the latter and became known as a
leading religious existentialist. His chief philosophic works include his most
famous book, Ich und du (“I and Thou,” 1923); Moses (1946); Between Man and Man
(1947); and Eclipse of God (1952). The crux of Buber’s thought is his
conception of two primary relationships: I-Thou and I-It. IThou is
characterized by openness, reciprocity, and a deep sense of personal
involvement. The I confronts its Thou not as something to be studied, measured,
or manipulated, but as a unique presence that responds to the I in its
individuality. I-It is characterized by the tendency to treat something as an
impersonal object governed by causal, social, or economic forces. Buber rejects
the idea that people are isolated, autonomous agents operating according to
abstract rules. Instead, reality arises between agents as they encounter and
transform each other. In a word, reality is dialogical. Buber describes God as
the ultimate Thou, the Thou who can never become an It. Thus God is reached not
by inference but by a willingness to respond to the concrete reality of the
divine presence. EXISTENTIALISM, JEWISH
PHILOSOPHY. K.See. Buchmanism, also called the Moral Rearmament Movement, a
non-creedal international movement that sought to bring about universal
brotherhood through a commitment to an objectivist moral system derived largely
from the Gospels. It was founded by Frank Buchman (1878–1961), an American
Lutheran minister who resigned from his church in 1908 in order to expand his
ministry. To promote the movement, Buchman founded the Oxford Group at Oxford
University in 1921. L.P.P. Buddha (from Sanskrit, ‘the enlightened one’), a
title (but not a name) of Siddharta Gotama (c.563–c.483 B.C.), the historical
founder of Buddhism, and of any of his later representations. ‘Buddha’ can also
mean anyone who has attained the state of enlightenment (Buddhahood) sought in
Buddhism. The Pali Canon mentions twenty-four Buddhas. Siddharta Gotama was the
son of the ruler of a small state in what is now Nepal. Tradition says that he
left home at the age of twenty-nine to seek enlightenment, achieved it at the
age of thirty-five, and was a wandering teacher until his death at eighty. He
found ready-made in Indian culture the ideas of karma (‘fruits of action’) and
samsara (‘wheel of rebirth’) as well as the view that escape from the wheel is
the highest good, and offered his own Buddhist way of escape.
BUDDHISM. K.E.Y.
Buddhagosa (fourth–fifth century A.D.), Theraveda Buddhist philosopher whose
major work was the Visuddhimagga (“Path of Purification”). He accepted the
typical Buddhist doctrine that everything that exists (Nirvana aside) is
impermanent and momentary. A mind at a moment is only a momentary collection of
momentary states; over time it is a series of such collections; similarly for a
physical object. He held that, through sensory perception, physical objects are
known to exist mind-independently. To the objection that perception of an
object cannot occur in a moment since perception requires memory, attention,
recognition, examination, and the like, he theorized that there is physical
time and there is mental time; a single physical moment passes while distinct
mental moments mount to sixteen in number. Hence a complex perceptual process
can occur within a series of mental moments while a single material moment
passes. Critics (e.g., Buddhist Yogacara philosophers) saw in this a denial of
impermanence. BUDDHISM. K.E.Y. B-series
Buddhagosa 104 4065A- AM 104 Buddhism, a religion of eastern and
central Asia founded by Siddharta Gotama Buddha. The Buddha found ready-made in
Indian culture the ideas of karma (‘fruits of action’) and samsara (‘wheel of
rebirth’), as well as the view that escape from the wheel is the highest good.
Buddhist doctrine, like that of other Indian religions, offers its distinctive
way to achieve that end. It teaches that at the core of the problem is desire
or craving – for wealth, pleasure, power, continued existence – which fuels the
flame of continued life. It adds that the solution is the snuffing out of
craving by following the Eightfold Path (right speech, action, livelihood,
effort, mindfulness, concentration, views, and intentions). The idea is that
intuitive wisdom follows upon moral conduct and mental discipline in accord
with Buddhist precepts. This involves accepting these claims: all existence is
unsatisfactory (dukkha); all existence is impermanent (anicca); and there is no
permanent self (anatta). Along with these claims go the doctrines of
momentariness (everything that exists is transitory, lasting only a moment) and
codependent origination (everything that exists does so dependently on other
things). Since God is typically conceived in monotheistic religions as existing
independently and as either eternal or everlasting, there is no room within a
Buddhist perspective for monotheism. Save for a heretical school, Buddhist
traditions also reject all belief in substances. A substance, in this sense, is
something that has properties, is not itself a property or a collection of
properties, and endures through time. The obvious contrast to the Buddhist
perspective is the notion of a self in Hinduism and Jainism, which is
beginningless and endless, an indestructible entity sometimes conceived as
inherently self-conscious and sometimes viewed as conscious only when embodied.
But even the notion of a substance that endured but had a beginning or end or
both, or a substance that existed dependently and endured so long as its
sustaining conditions obtained, would run deep against the grain of typical
Buddhist teaching. The Buddha is said to have offered no opinion, and to have
found no profit in speculation, on certain questions: whether the world is or
is not eternal, whether the world is or is not infinite, and whether the soul
is different from or identical to the body. The religious reason given for this
indifference is that reflection on such matters does not lead to enlightenment.
A philosophical reason sometimes given is that if, as Buddhism claims, there is
no world of substances, whether minds or bodies, then these questions have no
straightforward answer. They are like the question, What does the horn of the
hare weigh? Hares have no horns to be heavy or light. Seen in the context of
the assumptions common in the culture in which they were asked, the questions
would suggest that there are substantival minds and bodies and a world made up
of them, and to answer these questions, even negatively, would have involved at
least implicitly sanctioning that suggestion. Broadly, Indian Buddhism divides
into Theravada (“Doctrine of the Elders,” namely those who heard and followed
the Buddha; this school is also called Hinayana, or “Lesser Vehicle”) and
Mahayana (“Greater Vehicle”). The Sautrantika and Vaibhasika schools belong to
Theravada and the Madhyamika and Yogacara schools are Mahayana. The Theravada
schools. The Sautrantika school holds that while sensory experience justifies
belief in the existence of mind-independent objects, the justification it
provides requires us to infer from our sensory experience physical objects that
we do not directly experience; it embraces representative realism. Thus, while
our seeming to experience mind-independent objects is no illusion, our
knowledge that it is not illusory rests as much on inference as on perception.
The explanation of the fact that we cannot perceive as we wish – that we see
and taste but rice and water though we would prefer meat and wine – is that
what we see depends on what there is to be represented and what the conditions
are under which we do our perceiving. The Vaibhasika (followers of the
Vaibhasha commentary) school defends direct realism, contending that if sensory
perception does not justify us in claiming actually to sense objects there is
no way in which we can infer their existence. If what we directly experience
are alleged representations or copies of objects we never see, from which we
must then infer the objects copied, we have no reason to think that the copies
are copies of anything. We do not determine the content of our perception
because it typically is determined for us by the objects that we see. The very
distinctions between dreams and waking perceptions, or veridical perceptions
and illusions, to which idealists appeal, depend for their appropriateness to
the idealist’s purpose on our being able to tell that some perceptual
experiences are reliable and some are not; but then the idealist cannot
successfully use them. For both Theravada schools, there is no need to correct
our belief in physical Buddhism Buddhism 105 4065A- AM 105
objects, or in minds, beyond our viewing both minds and objects as collections
of (different sorts of) momentary states. The Mahayana schools. The Madhyamika
school holds out for a more radical revision. Our experience of physical
objects is reliable only if the beliefs that we properly base on it are true –
only if things are as they sensorily seem. These beliefs are true only if we
can sensorily distinguish between individual objects. But everything exists
dependently, and nothing that exists dependently is an individual. So there are
no individuals and we cannot distinguish between individual objects. So our
sensory experience is not reliable, but rather is systematically illusory.
Madhyamika then adds the doctrine of an ineffable ultimate reality hidden
behind our ordinary experience and descriptions, which is accessible only in
esoteric enlightenment experience. In this respect it is like Advaita Vedanta,
which it probably influenced. One result of the overall Madhyamika teaching
described here is that Nirvana and samsara,the goal and ordinary life, are
identified; roughly samsara is how Nirvana seems to the unenlightened (as
roughly, for Advaita, the world of dependent things is how qualityless Brahman
appears to the unenlightened). The Yogacara (perhaps “Yoga” because it used
meditation to remove belief in mind-independent physical objects) school of
Mahayana Buddhism contends for a more ambitious revision of our beliefs about
objects than does Sautrantika or Vaibhasika, but a less radical one than the
Madhyamika. Against the latter, it contends that if mind itself is empty of
essence and if all there is is an ineffable reality, then there is no one to
see the truth and no reliable way to discover it. Against the direct
physical-object realism of the Vaibhasika and the representational realism of
the Sautrantika, the Yogacara philosophers argue that dream experience seems to
be of objects that exist mind-independently and in a public space, and yet
there are no such objects and there is no such space. What we have experiential
evidence for is the existence of (non-substantival) minds and the experiences
that those minds have. There are no substances at all and no physical states;
there are only mental states that compose minds. Yogacara philosophers too had
to explain why our perceptual content is not something we can decide by whim,
and its explanation came in terms of the theory that each collection of
momentary states, and hence each series or stream of such collections, contains
impressions that represent past experiences. These impressions become potent
under certain circumstances and determine the content of one’s explicit or
conscious perception. The stream, or substream, of representative impressions
is a storehouse of memories and plays a role in Yogacara theory analogous to
that of the Atman or Jiva in some of the schools of Hinduism. Critics suspected
it of being a thin surrogate for a substantival self. AsaNga, Dignaga, and
especially Vasubandhu were leading Yogacara philosophers. Further, critics of
the Yogacara idealism argued that while the view contends that there are minds
other than one’s own, it provided no way in which that belief could be justified.
Our discussion has dealt with Indian Buddhism. Buddhism largely died out in
India around the thirteenth century. It thrived in other places, especially
China, Tibet, and Japan. Japanese Pure Land Buddhism resembles monotheism more
than do any of the traditions that we have discussed. Zen is a form of Mahayana
that developed in China in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. and spread to
Japan. It involves esoteric teachings outside the sacred writings, following
which is believed to lead to realization of Buddhahood. The metaphysical and
epistemological issues briefly discussed here demonstrate that the Buddhist
tradition found it natural to trace the consequences of views about the nature
of objects and persons, and about what experience teaches, beyond the scope of
what Buddhism as a religion might strictly require. There are direct realists,
representational realists, and idealists, and the question arises as to whether
idealism slides into solipsism. There is no way of telling what a particular
religious doctrine may or may not be related to. Arguably, certain Buddhist
doctrines are incompatible with certain views in contemporary physics (and
Buddhist apologists have claimed that contemporary physics provides some sort
of confirmation of basic Buddhist categories). There is no a priori way to
limit the relationships that may come to light between apparently very diverse,
and quite unrelated, issues and doctrines.
CHINESE PHILOSOPHY, JAPANESE PHILOSOPHY, KOREAN PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS,
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. K.E.Y. Buddhism, Hinayana.BUDDHISM. Buddhism,
Kyo-hak.KOREAN PHILOSOPHY. Buddhism, Mahayana.BUDDHISM. Buddhism, Son.KOREAN
PHILOSOPHY. Buddhism, Hinayana Buddhism, Son 106 4065A- AM 106
Buddhism, Theravada.BUDDHISM. Buddhism, Zen.BUDDHISM. bundle theory, a view
that accepts the idea that concrete objects consist of properties but denies
the need for introducing substrata to account for their diversity. By contrast,
one traditional view of concrete particular objects is that they are complexes
consisting of two more fundamental kinds of entities: properties that can be
exemplified by many different objects and a substratum that exemplifies those
properties belonging to a particular object. Properties account for the
qualitative identity of such objects while substrata account for their
numerical diversity. The bundle theory is usually glossed as the view that a
concrete object is nothing but a bundle of properties. This gloss, however, is
inadequate. For if a “bundle” of properties is, e.g., a set of properties, then
bundles of properties differ in significant ways from concrete objects. For
sets of properties are necessary and eternal while concrete objects are
contingent and perishing. A more adequate statement of the theory holds that a
concrete object is a complex of properties which all stand in a fundamental
contingent relation, call it co-instantiation, to one another. On this account,
complexes of properties are neither necessary nor eternal. Critics of the
theory, however, maintain that such complexes have all their properties
essentially and cannot change properties, whereas concrete objects have some of
their properties accidentally and undergo change. This objection fails to
recognize that there are two distinct problems addressed by the bundle theory:
(a) individuation and (b) identity through time. The first problem arises for
all objects, both momentary and enduring. The second, however, arises only for
enduring objects. The bundle theory typically offers two different solutions to
these problems. An enduring concrete object is analyzed as a series of
momentary objects which stand in some contingent relation R. Different versions
of the theory offer differing accounts of the relation. For example, Hume holds
that the self is a series of co-instantiated impressions and ideas, whose
members are related to one another by causation and resemblance (this is his
bundle theory of the self). A momentary object, however, is analyzed as a
complex of properties all of which stand in the relation of co-instantiation to
one another. Consequently, even if one grants that a momentary complex of
properties has all of its members essentially, it does not follow that an
enduring object, which contains the complex as a temporal part, has those
properties essentially unless one endorses the controversial thesis that an
enduring object has its temporal parts essentially. Similarly, even if one
grants that a momentary complex of properties cannot change in its properties,
it does not follow that an enduring object, which consists of such complexes,
cannot change its properties. Critics of the bundle theory argue that its
analysis of momentary objects is also problematic. For it appears possible that
two different momentary objects have all properties in common, yet there cannot
be two different complexes with all properties in common. There are two
responses available to a proponent of the theory. The first is to distinguish
between a strong and a weak version of the theory. On the strong version, the
thesis that a momentary object is a complex of co-instantiated properties is a
necessary truth, while on the weak version it is a contingent truth. The
possibility of two momentary objects with all properties in common impugns only
the strong version of the theory. The second is to challenge the basis of the
claim that it is possible for two momentary objects to have all their
properties in common. Although critics allege that such a state of affairs is
conceivable, proponents argue that investigation into the nature of conceivability
does not underwrite this claim.
ESSENTIALISM, IDENTITY OF INDISCERNIBLES, METAPHYSICS, PHENOMENALISM,
SUBSTANCE, TIME SLICE. A.C. bundle theory of the self.BUNDLE THEORY.
Burali-Forte paradox.
SET-THEORETIC PARADOXES,
SET THEORY. Buridan, Jean (c.1300–after 1358), French philosopher. He was born
in Béthune and educated at the University of Paris. Unlike most philosophers of
his time, Buridan spent his academic career as a master in the faculty of arts,
without seeking an advanced degree in theology. He was also unusual in being a
secular cleric rather than a member of a religious order. Buridan wrote
extensively on logic and natural philosophy, although only a few of his works
have appeared in modern editions. The most important on logic are the Summulae
de dialectica (“Sum of Dialectic”), an introduction to logic conceived as a
revision of, and extended commentary on, the Summulae logicales of Peter of
Spain, a widely used logic textbook of the period; and the Tractatus de
consequentiis, a treatise on modes of inference. Most of Buridan’s other
Buddhism, Theravada Buridan, Jean 107 4065A-
AM 107 writings are short literal
commentaries (expositiones) and longer critical studies (quaestiones) of
Aristotle’s works. Like most medieval nominalists, Buridan argued that
universals have no real existence, except as concepts by which the mind
“conceives of many things indifferently.” Likewise, he included only particular
substances and qualities in his basic ontology. But his nominalist program is
distinctive in its implementation. He differs, e.g., from Ockham in his
accounts of motion, time, and quantity (appealing, in the latter case, to
quantitative forms to explain the impenetrability of bodies). In natural
philosophy, Buridan is best known for introducing to the West the
non-Aristotelian concept of impetus, or impressed force, to explain projectile
motion. Although asses appear often in his examples, the particular example
that has come (via Spinoza and others) to be known as “Buridan’s ass,” an ass starving
to death between two equidistant and equally tempting piles of hay, is unknown
in Buridan’s writings. It may, however, have originated as a caricature of
Buridan’s theory of action, which attempts to find a middle ground between
Aristotelian intellectualism and Franciscan voluntarism by arguing that the
will’s freedom to act consists primarily in its ability to defer choice in the
absence of a compelling reason to act one way or the other. Buridan’s
intellectual legacy was considerable. His works continued to be read and
discussed in universities for centuries after his death. Three of his students
and disciples, Albert of Saxony, Marsilius of Inghen, and Nicole Oresme, went
on to become distinguished philosophers in their own right. METAPHYSICS, OCKHAM. J.A.Z. Buridan’s
ass.BURIDAN. Burke, Edmund (1729–97), British statesman and one of the
eighteenth century’s greatest political writers. Born in Dublin, he moved to
London to study law, then undertook a literary and political career. He sat in
the House of Commons from 1765 to 1794. In speeches and pamphlets during these
years he offered an ideological perspective on politics that endures to this
day as the fountain of conservative wisdom. The philosophical stance that
pervades Burke’s parliamentary career and writings is skepticism, a profound
distrust of political rationalism, i.e., the achievement in the political realm
of abstract and rational structures, ideals, and objectives. Burkean skeptics
are profoundly anti-ideological, detesting what they consider the complex,
mysterious, and existential givens of political life distorted, criticized, or
planned from a perspective of abstract, generalized, and rational categories.
The seminal expression of Burke’s skeptical conservatism is found in the Reflections
on the Revolution in France (1790). The conservatism of the Reflections was
earlier displayed, however, in Burke’s response to radical demands in England
for democratic reform of Parliament in the early 1780s. The English radicals
assumed that legislators could remake governments, when all wise men knew that
“a prescriptive government never was made upon any foregone theory.” How
ridiculous, then, to put governments on Procrustean beds and make them fit “the
theories which learned and speculative men have made.” Such prideful
presumption required much more rational capacity than could be found among
ordinary mortals. One victim of Burke’s skepticism is the vaunted liberal idea
of the social contract. Commonwealths were neither constructed nor ought they
to be renovated according to a priori principles. The concept of an original
act of contract is just such a principle. The only contract in politics is the
agreement that binds generations past, present, and future, one that “is but a
clause in the great primeval contract of an eternal society.” Burke rejects the
voluntaristic quality of rationalist liberal contractualism. Individuals are
not free to create their own political institutions. Political society and law
are not “subject to the will of those who, by an obligation above them, and
infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law.” Men and
groups “are not morally at liberty, at their pleasure, and on their
speculations of a contingent improvement” to rip apart their communities and dissolve
them into an “unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos.” Burke saw our stock of
reason as small; despite this people still fled their basic limitations in
flights of ideological fancy. They recognized no barrier to their powers and
sought in politics to make reality match their speculative visions. Burke
devoutly wished that people would appreciate their weakness, their “subordinate
rank in the creation.” God has “subjected us to act the part which belongs to
the place assigned us.” And that place is to know the limits of one’s rational
and speculative faculties. Instead of relying on their own meager supply of
reason, politicians should avail themselves “of the general bank and capital of
nations and of ages.” Because people forget this they weave rational schemes of
reform far beyond their power to implement. Buridan’s ass Burke, Edmund 108
4065A- AM 108 Burke stands as the champion of political
skepticism in revolt against Enlightenment rationalism and its “smugness of
adulterated metaphysics,” which produced the “revolution of doctrine and
theoretic dogma.” The sins of the French were produced by the “clumsy subtlety
of their political metaphysics.” The “faith in the dogmatism of philosophers”
led them to rely on reason and abstract ideas, on speculation and a priori
principles of natural right, freedom, and equality as the basis for reforming
governments. Englishmen, like Burke, had no such illusions; they understood the
complexity and fragility of human nature and human institutions, they were not “the
converts of Rousseau . . . the disciples of Voltaire; Helvetius [had] made no
progress amongst [them].” POLITICAL
PHILOSOPHY. I.K. Burley, Walter (c.1275–c.1344), English philosopher who taught
philosophy at Oxford and theology at Paris. An orthodox Aristotelian and a
realist, he attacked Ockham’s logic and his interpretation of the Aristotelian
categories. Burley commented on almost of all of Aristotle’s works in logic,
natural philosophy, and moral philosophy. An early Oxford Calculator, Burley began
his work as a fellow of Merton College in 1301. By 1310, he was at Paris. A
student of Thomas Wilton, he probably incepted before 1322; by 1324 he was a
fellow of the Sorbonne. His commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences has been
lost. After leaving Paris, Burley was associated with the household of Richard
of Bury and the court of Edward III, who sent him as an envoy to the papal
curia in 1327. De vita et moribus philosophorum (“On the Life and Manners of
Philosophers”), an influential, popular account of the lives of the
philosophers, has often been attributed to Burley, but modern scholarship
suggests that the attribution is incorrect. Many of Burley’s independent works
dealt with problems in natural philosophy, notably De intensione et remissione
formarum (“On the Intension and Remission of Forms”), De potentiis animae (“On
the Faculties of the Soul”), and De substantia orbis. De primo et ultimo
instanti (“On First and Last Instants”) discusses which temporal processes have
intrinsic, which extrinsic limits. In his Tractatus de formis Burley attacks
Ockham’s theory of quantity. Similarly, Burley’s theory of motion opposed
Ockham’s views. Ockham restricts the account of motion to the thing moving, and
the quality, quantity, and place acquired by motion. By contrast, Burley
emphasizes the process of motion and the quantitative measurement of that
process. Burley attacks the view that the forms successively acquired in motion
are included in the form finally acquired. He ridicules the view that contrary
qualities (hot and cold) could simultaneously inhere in the same subject
producing intermediate qualities (warmth). Burley emphasized the formal
character of logic in his De puritate artis logicae (“On the Purity of the Art
of Logic”), one of the great medieval treatises on logic. Ockham attacked a
preliminary version of De puritate in his Summa logicae; Burley called Ockham a
beginner in logic. In De puritate artis logicae, Burley makes syllogistics a
subdivision of consequences. His treatment of negation is particularly
interesting for his views on double negation and the restrictions on the rule
that notnot-p implies p. Burley distinguished between analogous words and
analogous concepts and natures. His theory of analogy deserves detailed
discussion. These views, like the views expressed in most of Burley’s works,
have seldom been carefully studied by modern philosophers. OCKHAM, PETER LOMBARD. R.W. business
ethics.ETHICS. Butler, Joseph (1692–1752), English theologian and Anglican
bishop who made important contributions to moral philosophy, to the
understanding of moral agency, and to the development of deontological ethics.
Better known in his own time for The Analogy of Religion (1736), a defense,
along broadly empiricist lines, of orthodox, “revealed” Christian doctrine
against deist criticism, Butler’s main philosophical legacy was a series of
highly influential arguments and theses contained in a collection of Sermons
(1725) and in two “Dissertations” appended to The Analogy – one on virtue and
the other on personal identity. The analytical method of these essays
(“everything is what it is and not another thing”) provided a model for much of
English-speaking moral philosophy to follow. For example, Butler is often
credited with refuting psychological hedonism, the view that all motives can be
reduced to the desire for pleasure or happiness. The sources of human
motivation are complex and structurally various, he argued. Appetites and
passions seek their own peculiar objects, and pleasure must itself be understood
as involving an intrinsic positive regard for a particular object. Other
philosophers had maintained, like Butler, that we can desire, e.g., the
happiness of others intrinsically, and not just as a means to our own Burley,
Walter Butler, Joseph 109 4065A- AM 109 happiness. And others had argued that the
person who aims singlemindedly at his own happiness is unlikely to attain it.
Butler’s distinctive contribution was to demonstrate that happiness and
pleasure themselves require completion by specific objects for which we have an
intrinsic positive regard. Self-love, the desire for our own happiness, is a
reflective desire for, roughly, the satisfaction of our other desires. But
self-love is not our only reflective desire; we also have “a settled reasonable
principle of benevolence.” We can consider the goods of others and come on
reflection to desire their welfare more or less independently of particular
emotional involvement such as compassion. In morals, Butler equally opposed
attempts to reduce virtue to benevolence, even of the most universal and
impartial sort. Benevolence seeks the good or happiness of others, whereas the
regulative principle of virtue is conscience, the faculty of moral approval or
disapproval of conduct and character. Moral agency requires, he argued, the
capacities to reflect disinterestedly on action, motive, and character, to
judge these in distinctively moral terms (and not just in terms of their
relation to the non-moral good of happiness), and to guide conduct by such judgments.
Butler’s views about the centrality of conscience in the moral life were
important in the development of deontological ethics as well as in the working
out of an associated account of moral agency. Along the first lines, he argued
in the “Dissertation” that what it is right for a person to do depends, not
just on the (non-morally) good or bad consequences of an action, but on such
other morally relevant features as the relationships the agent bears to
affected others (e.g., friend or beneficiary), or whether fraud, injustice,
treachery, or violence is involved. Butler thus distinguished analytically
between distinctively moral evaluation of action and assessing an act’s
relation to such non-moral values as happiness. And he provided succeeding deontological
theorists with a litany of examples where the right thing to do is apparently
not what would have the best consequences. Butler believed God instills a
“principle of reflection” or conscience in us through which we intrinsically
disapprove of such actions as fraud and injustice. But he also believed that
God, being omniscient and benevolent, fitted us with these moral attitudes
because “He foresaw this constitution of our nature would produce more
happiness, than forming us with a temper of mere general benevolence.” This
points, however, toward a kind of anti-deontological or consequentialist view,
sometimes called indirect consequentialism, which readily acknowledges that
what it is right to do does not depend on which act will have the best consequences.
It is entirely appropriate, according to indirect consequentialism, that
conscience approve or disapprove of acts on grounds other than a calculation of
consequences precisely because its doing so has the best consequences. Here we
have a version of the sort of view later to be found, for example, in Mill’s
defense of utilitarianism against the objection that it conflicts with justice
and rights. Morality is a system of social control that demands allegiance to
considerations other than utility, e.g., justice and honesty. But it is
justifiable only to the extent that the system itself has utility. This sets up
something of a tension. From the conscientious perspective an agent must
distinguish between the question of which action would have the best consequences
and the question of what he should do. And from that perspective, Butler
thinks, one will necessarily regard one’s answer to the second question as
authoritative for conduct. Conscience necessarily implicitly asserts its own
authority, Butler famously claimed. Thus, insofar as agents come to regard
their conscience as simply a method of social control with good consequences,
they will come to be alienated from the inherent authority their conscience
implicitly claims. A similar issue arises concerning the relation between
conscience and self-love. Butler says that both self-love and conscience are
“superior principles in the nature of man” in that an action will be unsuitable
to a person’s nature if it is contrary to either. This makes conscience’s
authority conditional on its not conflicting with self-love (and vice versa).
Some scholars, moreover, read other passages as implying that no agent could
reasonably follow conscience unless doing so was in the agent’s interest. But
again, it would seem that an agent who internalized such a view would be
alienated from the authority that, if Butler is right, conscience implicitly
claims. For Butler, conscience or the principle of reflection is uniquely the
faculty of practical judgment. Unlike either self-love or benevolence, even
when these are added to the powers of inference and empirical cognition, only
conscience makes moral agency possible. Only a creature with conscience can
accord with or violate his own judgment of what he ought to do, and thereby be
a “law to himself.” This suggests a view that, like Kant’s, seeks to link
deontology to a conception of autonomous moral agency.
EGOISM, ETHICS, HEDONISM, UTILITARIANISM.
S.L.D. Butler, Joseph Butler, Joseph 110 4065A-
AM 110 cabala (from Hebrew qabbala,
‘tradition’), a system of Jewish mysticism and theosophy practiced from the
thirteenth to the eighteenth century; loosely, all forms of Jewish mysticism.
Believed by its adherents to be a tradition communicated to Moses at Sinai, the
main body of cabalistic writing, the Zohar, is thought to be the work primarily
of Moses de León of Guadalajara, in the thirteenth century, though he
attributed it to the second-century rabbi Simon bar Yohai. The Zohar builds on
earlier Jewish mysticism, and is replete with gnostic and Neoplatonic themes.
It offers the initiated access to the mysteries of God’s being, human destiny,
and the meaning of the commandments. The transcendent and strictly unitary God
of rabbinic Judaism here encounters ten apparently real divine powers, called
sefirot, which together represent God’s being and appearance in the cosmos and
include male and female principles. Evil in the world is seen as a reflection
of a cosmic rupture in this system, and redemption on earth entails restoration
of the divine order. Mankind can assist in this task through knowledge, piety,
and observance of the law. Isaac Luria in the sixteenth century developed these
themes with graphic descriptions of the dramas of creation, cosmic rupture, and
restoration, the latter process requiring human assistance more than ever.
A.L.I. Caird, Edward (1835–1908), Scottish philosopher, a leading absolute
idealist. Influential as both a writer and a teacher, Caird was professor of
moral philosophy at Glasgow and master of Balliol College, Oxford. His aim in
philosophy was to overcome intellectual oppositions. In his main work, The
Critical Philosophy of Kant (1889), he argued that Kant had done this by using
reason to synthesize rationalism and empiricism while reconciling science and
religion. In Caird’s view, Kant unfortunately treated reason as subjective,
thereby retaining an opposition between self and world. Loosely following
Hegel, Caird claimed that objective reason, or the Absolute, was a larger whole
in which both self and world were fragments. In his Evolution of Religion
(1893) Caird argued that religion progressively understands God as the Absolute
and hence as what reconciles self and world. This allowed him to defend
Christianity as the highest evolutionary stage of religion without defending
the literal truth of Scripture.
IDEALISM, PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. J.W.A. Cajetan, original name, Tommaso
de Vio (c.1469– 1534), Italian prelate and theologian. Born in Gaeta (from
which he took his name), he entered the Dominican order in 1484 and studied
philosophy and theology at Naples, Bologna, and Padua. He became a cardinal in
1517; during the following two years he traveled to Germany, where he engaged
in a theological controversy with Luther. His major work is a Commentary on St.
Thomas’ Summa of Theology (1508), which promoted a renewal of interest in
Scholastic and Thomistic philosophy during the sixteenth century. In agreement
with Aquinas, Cajetan places the origin of human knowledge in sense perception.
In contrast with Aquinas, he denies that the immortality of the soul and the
existence of God as our creator can be proved. Cajetan’s work in logic was
based on traditional Aristotelian syllogistic logic but is original in its
discussion of the notion of analogy. Cajetan distinguishes three types: analogy
of inequality, analogy of attribution, and analogy of proportion. Whereas he
rejected the first two types as improper, he regarded the last as the basic
type of analogy and appealed to it in explaining how humans come to know God
and how analogical reasoning applied to God and God’s creatures avoids being
equivocal. THOMISM. P.Gar. calculi of
relations.RELATIONAL LOGIC. calculus, a central branch of mathematics,
originally conceived in connection with the determination of the tangent (or
normal) to a curve and of the area between it and some fixed axis; but it also
embraced the calculation of volumes and of areas of curved surfaces, the
lengths of curved lines, and so on. Mathematical analysis is a still broader
branch that subsumed the calculus under its rubric (see below), together with
the theories of functions and of infinite series. Still more general and/or
abstract versions of analysis have been developed during the twentieth 111 C
4065A- AM 111 century, with applications to other
branches of mathematics, such as probability theory. The origins of the
calculus go back to Greek mathematics, usually in problems of determining the
slope of a tangent to a curve and the area enclosed underneath it by some fixed
axes or by a closed curve; sometimes related questions such as the length of an
arc of a curve, or the area of a curved surface, were considered. The subject
flourished in the seventeenth century when the analytical geometry of Descartes
gave algebraic means to extend the procedures. It developed further when the
problems of slope and area were seen to require the finding of new functions,
and that the pertaining processes were seen to be inverse. Newton and Leibniz
had these insights in the late seventeenth century, independently and in
different forms. In the Leibnizian differential calculus the differential dx
was proposed as an infinitesimal increment on x, and of the same dimension as
x; the slope of the tangent to a curve with y as a function of x was the ratio
dy/dx. The integral, ex, was infinitely large and of the dimension of x; thus
for linear variables x and y the area ey dx was the sum of the areas of
rectangles y high and dx wide. All these quantities were variable, and so could
admit higher-order differentials and integrals (ddx, eex, and so on). This
theory was extended during the eighteenth century, especially by Euler, to
functions of several independent variables, and with the creation of the
calculus of variations. The chief motivation was to solve differential
equations: they were motivated largely by problems in mechanics, which was then
the single largest branch of mathematics. Newton’s less successful fluxional
calculus used limits in its basic definitions, thereby changing dimensions for
the defined terms. The fluxion was the rate of change of a variable quantity
relative to “time”; conversely, that variable was the “fluent” of its fluxion.
These quantities were also variable; fluxions and fluents of higher orders
could be defined from them. A third tradition was developed during the late
eighteenth century by J. L. Lagrange. For him the “derived functions” of a
function f(x) were definable by purely algebraic means from its Taylorian
power-series expansion about any value of x. By these means it was hoped to
avoid the use of both infinitesimals and limits, which exhibited conceptual
difficulties, the former due to their unclear ontology as values greater than
zero but smaller than any orthodox quantity, the latter because of the naive
theories of their deployment. In the early nineteenth century the Newtonian
tradition died away, and Lagrange’s did not gain general conviction; however,
the LeibnizEuler line kept some of its health, for its utility in physical
applications. But all these theories gradually became eclipsed by the
mathematical analysis of A. L. Cauchy. As with Newton’s calculus, the theory of
limits was central, but they were handled in a much more sophisticated way. He
replaced the usual practice of defining the integral as (more or less)
automatically the inverse of the differential (or fluxion or whatever) by
giving independent definitions of the derivative and the integral; thus for the
first time the fundamental “theorem” of the calculus, stating their inverse
relationship, became a genuine theorem, requiring sufficient conditions upon
the function to ensure its truth. Indeed, Cauchy pioneered the routine
specification of necessary and/or sufficient conditions for truth of theorems
in analysis. His discipline also incorporated the theory of (dis)continuous
functions and the convergence or divergence of infinite series. Again, general
definitions were proffered and conditions sought for properties to hold.
Cauchy’s discipline was refined and extended in the second half of the nineteenth
century by K. Weierstrass and his followers at Berlin. The study of existence
theorems (as for irrational numbers), and also technical questions largely
concerned with trigonometric series, led to the emergence of set topology. In
addition, special attention was given to processes involving several variables
changing in value together, and as a result the importance of quantifiers was
recognized – for example, reversing their order from ‘there is a y such that
for all x . . .’ to ‘for all x, there is a y . . .’. This developed later into
general set theory, and then to mathematical logic: Cantor was the major figure
in the first aspect, while G. Peano pioneered much for the second. Under this
regime of “rigor,” infinitesimals such as dx became unacceptable as
mathematical objects. However, they always kept an unofficial place because of
their utility when applying the calculus, and since World War II theories have
been put forward in which the established level of rigor and generality are
preserved (and even improved) but in which infinitesimals are reinstated. The
best-known of these theories, the non-standard analysis of A. Robinson, makes
use of model theory by defining infinitesimals as arithmetical inverses of the
transfinite integers generated by a “non-standard model” of Peano’s postulates
for the natural numbers. calculus calculus 112 4065A- AM
112 MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS,
PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS, SET THEORY. I.G.-G. calculus, fluxional.CALCULUS.
calculus, lambda-.
Calvin, John (1509–64),
French theologian and church reformer, a major figure in the Protestant
Reformation. He was especially important for the so-called Reformed churches in
France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Scotland, and England. Calvin
was a theologian in the humanist tradition rather than a philosopher. He valued
philosophy as “a noble gift of God” and cited philosophers (especially Plato)
when it suited his purposes; but he rejected philosophical speculation about
“higher things” and despised – though sometimes exploiting its resources – the
dominant (Scholastic) philosophy of his time, to which he had been introduced
at the University of Paris. His eclectic culture also included a variety of
philosophical ideas, of whose source he was often unaware, that inevitably helped
to shape his thought. His Christianae religionis institutio (first ed. 1536 but
repeatedly enlarged; in English generally cited as Institutes), his theological
treatises, his massive biblical commentaries, and his letters, all of which
were translated into most European languages, thus helped to transmit various
philosophical motifs and attitudes in an unsystematic form both to
contemporaries and to posterity. He passed on to his followers impulses derived
from both the antiqui and the moderni. From the former he inherited an
intellectualist anthropology that conceived of the personality as a hierarchy
of faculties properly subordinated to reason, which was at odds with his
evangelical theology; and, though he professed to scorn Stoicism, a moralism often
more Stoic than evangelical. He also relied occasionally on the Scholastic
quaestio, and regularly treated substantives, like the antiqui, as real
entities. These elements in his thought also found expression in tendencies to
a natural theology based on an innate and universal religious instinct that can
discern evidences of the existence and attributes of God everywhere in nature,
and a conception of the Diety as immutable and intelligible. This side of
Calvinism eventually found expression in Unitarianism and universalism. It was,
however, in uneasy tension with other tendencies in his thought that reflect
both his biblicism and a nominalist and Scotist sense of the extreme
transcendence of God. Like other humanists, therefore, he was also profoundly skeptical
about the capacity of the human mind to grasp ultimate truth, an attitude that
rested, for him, on both the consequences of original sin and the merely
conventional origins of language. Corollaries of this were his sense of the
contingency of all human intellectual constructions and a tendency to emphasize
the utility rather than the truth even of such major elements in his theology
as the doctrine of predestination. It may well be no accident, therefore, that
later skepticism and pragmatism have been conspicuous in thinkers nurtured by
later Calvinism, such as Bayle, Hume, and James. HUMANISM, PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION,
TRANSCENDENCE. W.J.B. Cambridge change, a non-genuine change. If I turn pale, I
am changing, whereas your turning pale is only a Cambridge change in me. When I
acquire the property of being such that you are pale, I do not change. In
general, an object’s acquiring a new property is not a sufficient condition for
that object to change (although some other object may genuinely change). Thus
also, my being such that you are pale counts only as a Cambridge property of
me, a property such that my gaining or losing it is only a Cambridge change.
Cambridge properties are a proper subclass of extrinsic properties: being south
of Chicago is considered an extrinsic property of me, but since my moving to
Canada would be a genuine change, being south of Chicago cannot, for me, be a
Cambridge property. The concept of a Cambridge change reflects a way of
thinking entrenched in common sense, but it is difficult to clarify, and its
philosophical value is controversial. Neither science nor formal semantics,
e.g., supports this viewpoint. Perhaps calculus, fluxional Cambridge change 113
4065A- AM 113 Cambridge changes and properties are, for
better or worse, inseparable from a vague, intuitive metaphysics.
PROPERTY, TIME. S.J.W.
Cambridge Platonists, a group of seventeenthcentury philosopher-theologians at
the University of Cambridge, principally including Benjamin Whichcote
(1609–83), often designated the father of the Cambridge Platonists; Henry More;
Ralph Cudworth (1617–88); and John Smith (1616–52). Whichcote, Cudworth, and
Smith received their university education in or were at some time fellows of
Emmanuel College, a stronghold of the Calvinism in which they were nurtured and
against which they rebelled under mainly Erasmian, Arminian, and Neoplatonic
influences. Other Cambridge men who shared their ideas and attitudes to varying
degrees were Nathanael Culverwel (1618?–51), Peter Sterry (1613–72), George
Rust (d.1670), John Worthington (1618–71), and Simon Patrick (1625– 1707). As a
generic label, ‘Cambridge Platonists’ is a handy umbrella term rather than a
dependable signal of doctrinal unity or affiliation. The Cambridge Platonists
were not a self-constituted group articled to an explicit manifesto; no two of
them shared quite the same set of doctrines or values. Their Platonism was not
exclusively the pristine teaching of Plato, but was formed rather from Platonic
ideas supposedly prefigured in Hermes Trismegistus, in the Chaldean Oracles,
and in Pythagoras, and which they found in Origen and other church fathers, in
the Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Proclus, and in the Florentine Neoplatonism of
Ficino. They took contrasting and changing positions on the important belief
(originating in Florence with Giovanni Pico della Mirandola) that Pythagoras
and Plato derived their wisdom ultimately from Moses and the cabala. They were
not equally committed to philosophical pursuits, nor were they equally versed
in the new philosophies and scientific advances of the time. The Cambridge
Platonists’ concerns were ultimately religious and theological rather than
primarily philosophical. They philosophized as theologians, making eclectic use
of philosophical doctrines (whether Platonic or not) for apologetic purposes.
They wanted to defend “true religion,” namely, their latitudinarian vision of
Anglican Christianity, against a variety of enemies: the Calvinist doctrine of
predestination; sectarianism; religious enthusiasm; fanaticism; the
“hide-bound, strait-laced spirit” of Interregnum Puritanism; the “narrow,
persecuting spirit” that followed the Restoration; atheism; and the impieties
incipient in certain trends in contemporary science and philosophy. Notable among
the latter were the doctrines of the mechanical philosophers, especially the
materialism and mechanical determinism of Hobbes and the mechanistic
pretensions of the Cartesians. The existence of God, the existence,
immortality, and dignity of the human soul, the existence of spirit activating
the natural world, human free will, and the primacy of reason are among the
principal teachings of the Cambridge Platonists. They emphasized the positive
role of reason in all aspects of philosophy, religion, and ethics, insisting in
particular that it is irrationality that endangers the Christian life. Human
reason and understanding was “the Candle of the Lord” (Whichcote’s phrase),
perhaps their most cherished image. In Whichcote’s words, “To go against
Reason, is to go against God . . . Reason is the Divine Governor of Man’s Life;
it is the very Voice of God.” Accordingly, “there is no real clashing at all
betwixt any genuine point of Christianity and what true Philosophy and right
Reason does determine or allow” (More). Reason directs us to the self-evidence
of first principles, which “must be seen in their own light, and are perceived
by an inward power of nature.” Yet in keeping with the Plotinian mystical tenor
of their thought, they found within the human soul the “Divine Sagacity”
(More’s term), which is the prime cause of human reason and therefore superior
to it. Denying the Calvinist doctrine that revelation is the only source of
spiritual light, they taught that the “natural light” enables us to know God and
interpret the Scriptures. Cambridge Platonism was uncompromisingly innatist.
Human reason has inherited immutable intellectual, moral, and religious
notions, “anticipations of the soul,” which negate the claims of empiricism.
The Cambridge Platonists were skeptical with regard to certain kinds of
knowledge, and recognized the role of skepticism as a critical instrument in
epistemology. But they were dismissive of the idea that Pyrrhonism be taken
seriously in the practical affairs of the philosopher at work, and especially
of the Christian soul in its quest for divine knowledge and understanding.
Truth is not compromised by our inability to devise apodictic demonstrations.
Indeed Whichcote passed a moral censure on those who pretend “the doubtfulness
and uncertainty of reason.” Innatism and the natural light of reason shaped the
Cambridge Platonists’ moral philosoCambridge Platonists Cambridge Platonists
114 4065A- AM 114 phy. The unchangeable and eternal ideas
of good and evil in the divine mind are the exemplars of ethical axioms or
noemata that enable the human mind to make moral judgments. More argued for a
“boniform faculty,” a faculty higher than reason by which the soul rejoices in
reason’s judgment of the good. The most philosophically committed and systematic
of the group were More, Cudworth, and Culverwel. Smith, perhaps the most
intellectually gifted and certainly the most promising (note his dates),
defended Whichcote’s Christian teaching, insisting that theology is more “a
Divine Life than a Divine Science.” More exclusively theological in their
leanings were Whichcote, who wrote little of solid philosophical interest,
Rust, who followed Cudworth’s moral philosophy, and Sterry. Only Patrick, More,
and Cudworth (all fellows of the Royal Society) were sufficiently attracted to
the new science (especially the work of Descartes) to discuss it in any detail
or to turn it to philosophical and theological advantage. Though often
described as a Platonist, Culverwel was really a neo-Aristotelian with Platonic
embellishments and, like Sterry, a Calvinist. He denied innate ideas and
supported the tabula rasa doctrine, commending “the Platonists . . . that they
lookt upon the spirit of a man as the Candle of the Lord, though they were
deceived in the time when ‘twas lighted.” The Cambridge Platonists were
influential as latitudinarians, as advocates of rational theology, as severe
critics of unbridled mechanism and materialism, and as the initiators, in
England, of the intuitionist ethical tradition. In the England of Locke they
are a striking counterinstance of innatism and non-empirical philosophy. MORE, HENRY; NEOPLATONISM; PHILOSOPHY OF
RELIGION; PLATO. A.G. Cambridge property.CAMBRIDGE CHANGE. camera obscura, a
darkened enclosure that focuses light from an external object by a pinpoint
hole instead of a lens, creating an inverted, reversed image on the opposite
wall. The adoption of the camera obscura as a model for the eye revolutionized
the study of visual perception by rendering obsolete previous speculative
philosophical theories, in particular the emanation theory, which explained
perception as due to emanated copy-images of objects entering the eye, and
theories that located the image of perception in the lens rather than the
retina. By shifting the location of sensation to a projection on the retina,
the camera obscura doctrine helped support the distinction of primary and
secondary sense qualities, undermining the medieval realist view of perception
and moving toward the idea that consciousness is radically split off from the
world. PERCEPTION. T.H.L. Campanella,
Tommaso (1568–1639), Italian theologian, philosopher, and poet. He joined the
Dominican order in 1582. Most of the years between 1592 and 1634 he spent in
prison for heresy and for conspiring to replace Spanish rule in southern Italy
with a utopian republic. He fled to France in 1634 and spent his last years in
freedom. Some of his best poetry was written while he was chained in a dungeon;
and during less rigorous confinement he managed to write over a hundred books,
not all of which survive. His best-known work, The City of the Sun (1602;
published 1623), describes a community governed in accordance with astrological
principles, with a priest as head of state. In later political writings, Campanella
attacked Machiavelli and called for either a universal Spanish monarchy with
the pope as spiritual head or a universal theocracy with the pope as both
spiritual and temporal leader. His first publication was Philosophy
Demonstrated by the Senses (1591), which supported the theories of Telesio and
initiated his lifelong attack on Aristotelianism. He hoped to found a new
Christian philosophy based on the two books of nature and Scripture, both of
which are manifestations of God. While he appealed to sense experience, he was
not a straightforward empiricist, for he saw the natural world as alive and
sentient, and he thought of magic as a tool for utilizing natural processes. In
this he was strongly influenced by Ficino. Despite his own difficulties with Rome,
he wrote in support of Galileo. FICINO,
TELESIO. E.J.A. Campbell, Norman Robert (1880–1949), British physicist and
philosopher of science. A successful experimental physicist, Campbell (with A.
Wood) discovered the radioactivity of potassium. His analysis of science
depended on a sharp distinction between experimental laws and theories.
Experimental laws are generalizations established by observations. A theory has
the following structure. First, it requires a (largely arbitrary) hypothesis,
which in itself is untestable. To render it testable, the theory requires a
“dictionary” of propositions linking the hypothesis to scientific laws, which
can be established experimentally. But theories are not merely logical
relations between hypotheses and experimental Cambridge property Campbell,
Norman Robert 115 4065A- AM 115 laws; they also require concrete
analogies or models. Indeed, the models suggest the nature of the propositions
in the dictionary. The analogies are essential components of the theory, and,
for Campbell, are nearly always mechanical. His theory of science greatly
influenced Nagel’s The Structure of Science (1961). PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, THEORETICAL TERM.
R.E.B. Camus, Albert (1913–60), French philosophical novelist and essayist who
was also a prose poet and the conscience of his times. He was born and raised
in Algeria, and his experiences as a fatherless, tubercular youth, as a young
playwright and journalist in Algiers, and later in the anti-German resistance
in Paris during World War II informed everything he wrote. His best-known
writings are not overtly political; his most famous works, the novel The
Stranger (written in 1940, published in 1942) and his book-length essay The
Myth of Sisyphus (written in 1941, published in 1943) explore the notion of
“the absurd,” which Camus alternatively describes as the human condition and as
“a widespread sensitivity of our times.” The absurd, briefly defined, is the
confrontation between ourselves – with our demands for rationality and justice
– and an “indifferent universe.” Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods to the
endless, futile task of rolling a rock up a mountain (whence it would roll back
down of its own weight), thus becomes an exemplar of the human condition,
struggling hopelessly and pointlessly to achieve something. The odd antihero of
The Stranger, on the other hand, unconsciously accepts the absurdity of life.
He makes no judgments, accepts the most repulsive characters as his friends and
neighbors, and remains unmoved by the death of his mother and his own killing
of a man. Facing execution for his crime, he “opens his heart to the benign
indifference of the universe.” But such stoic acceptance is not the message of
Camus’s philosophy. Sisyphus thrives (he is even “happy”) by virtue of his
scorn and defiance of the gods, and by virtue of a “rebellion” that refuses to
give in to despair. This same theme motivates Camus’s later novel, The
Plague(1947), and his long essay The Rebel (1951). In his last work, however, a
novel called The Fall published in 1956, the year before he won the Nobel prize
for literature, Camus presents an unforgettably perverse character named
Jean-Baptiste Clamence, who exemplifies all the bitterness and despair rejected
by his previous characters and in his earlier essays. Clamence, like the
character in The Stranger, refuses to judge people, but whereas Meursault (the
“stranger”) is incapable of judgment, Clamence (who was once a lawyer) makes it
a matter of philosophical principle, “for who among us is innocent?” It is
unclear where Camus’s thinking was heading when he was killed in an automobile
accident (with his publisher, Gallimard, who survived). EXISTENTIALISM, SARTRE. R.C.SO. Canguilhem,
Georges (1904–96), French historian and philosopher of science. Canguilhem
succeeded Gaston Bachelard as director of the Institut d’Histoire des Sciences
et des Techniques at the University of Paris. He developed and sometimes
revised Bachelard’s view of science, extending it to issues in the biological
and medical sciences, where he focused particularly on the concepts of the
normal and the pathological (The Normal and the Pathological, 1966). On his
account norms are not objective in the sense of being derived from
value-neutral scientific inquiry, but are rooted in the biological reality of
the organisms that they regulate. Canguilhem also introduced an important
methodological distinction between concepts and theories. Rejecting the common
view that scientific concepts are simply functions of the theories in which they
are embedded, he argued that the use of concepts to interpret data is quite
distinct from the use of theories to explain the data. Consequently, the same
concepts may occur in very different theoretical contexts. Canguilhem made
particularly effective use of this distinction in tracing the origin of the
concept of reflex action. BACHELARD,
PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, PSYCHOPATHOLOGY. G.G. Cantor, Georg
(1845–1918), German mathematician, one of a number of late nineteenthcentury
mathematicians and philosophers (including Frege, Dedekind, Peano, Russell, and
Hilbert) who transformed both mathematics and the study of its philosophical
foundations. The philosophical import of Cantor’s work is threefold. First, it
was primarily Cantor who turned arbitrary collections into objects of
mathematical study, sets. Second, he created a coherent mathematical theory of
the infinite, in particular a theory of transfinite numbers. Third, linking
these, he was the first to indicate that it might be possible to present
mathematics as nothing but the theory of sets, thus making set theory
foundational for mathematics. This contributed to the Camus, Albert Cantor,
Georg 116 4065A- AM 116 view that the foundations of mathematics
should itself become an object of mathematical study. Cantor also held to a
form of principle of plenitude, the belief that all the infinities given in his
theory of transfinite numbers are represented not just in mathematical (or
“immanent” reality), but also in the “transient” reality of God’s created
world. Cantor’s main, direct achievement is his theory of transfinite numbers
and infinity. He characterized (as did Frege) sameness of size in terms of
one-to-one correspondence, thus accepting the paradoxical results known to
Galileo and others, e.g., that the collection of all natural numbers has the
same cardinality or size as that of all even numbers. He added to these
surprising results by showing (1874) that there is the same number of algebraic
(and thus rational) numbers as there are natural numbers, but that there are
more points on a continuous line than there are natural (or rational or
algebraic) numbers, thus revealing that there are at least two different kinds
of infinity present in ordinary mathematics, and consequently demonstrating the
need for a mathematical treatment of these infinities. This latter result is
often expressed by saying that the continuum is uncountable. Cantor’s theorem
of 1892 is a generalization of part of this, for it says that the set of all
subsets (the power-set) of a given set must be cardinally greater than that
set, thus giving rise to the possibility of indefinitely many different
infinities. (The collection of all real numbers has the same size as the
power-set of natural numbers.) Cantor’s theory of transfinite numbers (1880–
97) was his developed mathematical theory of infinity, with the infinite
cardinal numbers (the F-, or aleph-, numbers) based on the infinite ordinal
numbers that he introduced in 1880 and 1883. The F-numbers are in effect the
cardinalities of infinite well-ordered sets. The theory thus generates two
famous questions, whether all sets (in particular the continuum) can be well
ordered, and if so which of the F-numbers represents the cardinality of the
continuum. The former question was answered positively by Zermelo in 1904,
though at the expense of postulating one of the most controversial principles
in the history of mathematics, the axiom of choice. The latter question is the
celebrated continuum problem. Cantor’s famous continuum hypothesis (CH) is his
conjecture that the cardinality of the continuum is represented by F1, the
second aleph. CH was shown to be independent of the usual assumptions of set
theory by Gödel (1938) and Cohen (1963). Extensions of Cohen’s methods show
that it is consistent to assume that the cardinality of the continuum is given
by almost any of the vast array of F-numbers. The continuum problem is now
widely considered insoluble. Cantor’s conception of set is often taken to admit
the whole universe of sets as a set, thus engendering contradiction, in
particular in the form of Cantor’s paradox. For Cantor’s theorem would say that
the power-set of the universe must be bigger than it, while, since this
powerset is a set of sets, it must be contained in the universal set, and thus
can be no bigger. However, it follows from Cantor’s early (1883) considerations
of what he called the “absolute infinite” that none of the collections
discovered later to be at the base of the paradoxes can be proper sets.
Moreover, correspondence with Hilbert in 1897 and Dedekind in 1899 (see Cantor,
Gesammelte Abhandlungen mathematischen und philosophischen Inhalts, 1932) shows
clearly that Cantor was well aware that contradictions will arise if such
collections are treated as ordinary sets.
CONTINUUM PROBLEM, SETTHEORETIC PARADOXES, SET THEORY. M.H. Cantor’s
paradox.SET-THEORETIC PARADOXES. Cantor’s theorem.
cardinal virtues,
prudence (practical wisdom), courage, temperance, and justice. Medievals deemed
them cardinal (from Latin cardo, ‘hinge’) because of their important or pivotal
role in human flourishing. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates explains them through
a doctrine of the three parts of the soul, suggesting that a person is prudent
when knowledge of how to live (wisdom) informs her reason, courageous when
informed reason governs her capacity for wrath, temperate when it also governs
her appetites, and just when each part performs its proper task with informed
reason in control. Development of thought on the cardinal virtues was closely
tied to the doctrine of the unity of the virtues, i.e., that a person
possessing one virtue will have them all.
Carlyle, Thomas
(1795–1881), Scottish-born essayist, historian, and social critic, one of the
most popular writers and lecturers in nineteenth-century Britain. His works
include literary criticism, history, and cultural criticism. With respect to
philosophy, his views on the theory of history are his most significant
contributions. According to Carlyle, great personages are the most important causal
factor in history. On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (1841)
asserts, “Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this
world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They
were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a
wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or
to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are
properly the outer material result, the practical realisation and embodiment,
of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the
whole world’s history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these.”
Carlyle’s doctrine has been challenged from many different directions. Hegelian
and Marxist philosophers maintain that the so-called great men of history are
not really the engine of history, but merely reflections of deeper forces, such
as economic ones, while contemporary historians emphasize the priority of
“history from below” – the social history of everyday people – as far more
representative of the historical process.
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. N.C. Carnap, Rudolf (1891–1970), German-born
American philosopher, one of the leaders of the Vienna Circle, a movement
loosely called logical positivism or logical empiricism. He made fundamental
contributions to semantics and the philosophy of science, as well as to the
foundations of probability and inductive logic. He was a staunch advocate of,
and active in, the unity of science movement. Carnap received his Ph.D. in
philosophy from the University of Jena in 1921. His first major work was Die
Logische Aufbau der Welt (1928), in which he sought to apply the new logic
recently developed by Frege and by Russell and Whitehead to problems in the
philosophy of science. Although influential, it was not translated until 1967,
when it appeared as The Logical Structure of the World. It was important as one
of the first clear and unambiguous statements that the important work of
philosophy concerned logical structure: that language and its logic were to be
the focus of attention. In 1935 Carnap left his native Germany for the United
States, where he taught at the University of Chicago and then at UCLA. Die
Logiche Syntax der Sprach (1934) was rapidly translated into English, appearing
as The Logical Syntax of Language (1937). This was followed in 1941 by
Introduction to Semantics, and in 1942 by The Formalization of Logic. In 1947
Meaning and Necessity appeared; it provided the groundwork for a modal logic
that would mirror the meticulous semantic development of first-order logic in
the first two volumes. One of the most important concepts introduced in these
volumes was that of a state description. A state description is the linguistic
counterpart of a possible world: in a given language, the most complete
description of the world that can be given. Carnap then turned to one of the
most pervasive and important problems to arise in both the philosophy of
science and the theory of meaning. To say that the meaning of a sentence is
given by the conditions under which it would be verified (as the early
positivists did) or that a scientific theory is verified by predictions that
turn out to be true, is clearly to speak loosely. Absolute verification does
not occur. To carry out the program of scientific philosophy in a realistic
way, we must be able to speak of the support given by inconclusive evidence,
either in providing epistemological justification for scientific knowledge, or
in characterizing the meanings of many of the terms of our scientific language.
This calls for an understanding of probability, or as Carnap preferred to call
it, degree of confirmation. We must distinguish between two senses of
probability: what he called probability1, corresponding to credibility, and
probability2, corresponding to the frequency or empirical conception of
probability defended by Reichenbach and von Mises. ‘Degree of confirmation’ was
to be the formal concept corresponding to credibility. The first book on this
subject, written from the same point of view as the works on semantics, was The
Logical Foundations of Probability (1950). The goal was a logical definition of
‘c(h,e)’: the degree of confirmation of a hypothesis h, relative to a body of
evidence e, or the degree of rational belief that one whose total evidence was
e should commit to h. Of course we must first settle on a formal language in
which to express the hypothesis and the evidence; for this Carnap chooses a
first-order language based on a finite number of one-place predicates, and a
countable number of individual constants. Against this background, we perform
the following reductions: ‘c(h,e)’ represents a conditional probability; thus
it can be represented as the ratio of the absolute probabilCarlyle, Thomas
Carnap, Rudolf 118 4065A- AM 118 ity of h & e to the absolute
probability of e. Absolute probabilities are represented by the value of a
measure function m, defined for sentences of the language. The problem is to
define m. But every sentence in Carnap’s languages is equivalent to a
disjunction of state descriptions; the measure to be assigned to it must,
according to the probability calculus, be the sum of the measures assigned to
its constituent state descriptions. Now the problem is to define m for state
descriptions. (Recall that state descriptions were part of the machinery Carnap
developed earlier.) The function c† is a confirmation function based on the
assignment of equal measures to each state description. It is inadequate,
because if h is not entailed by e, c†(h,e) % m†(h), the a priori measure
assigned to h. We cannot “learn from experience.” A measure that does not have
that drawback is m*, which is based on the assignment of equal measures to each
structure description. A structure description is a set of state descriptions;
two state descriptions belong to the same structure description just in case
one can be obtained from the other by a permutation of individual constants.
Within the structure description, equal values are assigned to each state
description. In the next book, The Continuum of Inductive Methods, Carnap takes
the rate at which we learn from experience to be a fundamental parameter of his
assignments of probability. Like measures on state descriptions, the values of
the probability of the singular predictive inference determine all other
probabilities. The “singular predictive inference” is the inference from the
observation that individual 1 has one set of properties, individual 2 has
another set of properties, etc., to the conclusion: individual j will have
property k. Finally, in the last works (Studies in Inductive Logic and
Probability, vols. I [1971] and II [1980], edited with Richard Jeffrey) Carnap
offered two long articles constituting his Basic System of Inductive Logic.
This system is built around a language having families of attributes (e.g.,
color or sound) that can be captured by predicates. The basic structure is
still monadic, and the logic still lacks identity, but there are more
parameters. There is a parameter l that reflects the “rate of learning from
experience”; a parameter h that reflects an inductive relation between values
of attributes belonging to families. With the introduction of arbitrary
parameters, Carnap was edging toward a subjective or personalistic view of
probability. How far he was willing to go down the subjectivist garden path is
open to question; that he discovered more to be relevant to inductive logic
than the “language” of science seems clear. Carnap’s work on probability measures
on formal languages is destined to live for a long time. So too is his work on
formal semantics. He was a staunch advocate of the fruitfulness of formal
studies in philosophy, of being clear and explicit, and of offering concrete
examples. Beyond the particular philosophical doctrines he advocated, these
commitments characterize his contribution to philosophy. CONFIRMATION, PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE,
PROBABILITY, VIENNA CIRCLE. H.E.K. Carneades.ACADEMY. Carroll, Lewis, pen name
of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–98), English writer and mathematician. The
eldest son of a large clerical family, he was educated at Rugby and Christ
Church, Oxford, where he remained for the rest of his uneventful life, as
mathematical lecturer (until 1881) and curator of the senior commonroom. His
mathematical writings (under his own name) are more numerous than important. He
was, however, the only Oxonian of his day to contribute to symbolic logic, and
is remembered for his syllogistic diagrams, for his methods for constructing
and solving elaborate sorites problems, for his early interest in logical
paradoxes, and for the many amusing examples that continue to reappear in
modern textbooks. Fame descended upon him almost by accident, as the author of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Through the Looking Glass (1872), The
Hunting of the Snark (1876), and Sylvie and Bruno (1889– 93); saving the last,
the only children’s books to bring no blush of embarrassment to an adult
reader’s cheek. Dodgson took deacon’s orders in 1861, and though pastorally
inactive, was in many ways an archetype of the prim Victorian clergyman. His
religious opinions were carefully thought out, but not of great philosophic
interest. The Oxford movement passed him by; he worried about sin (though rejecting
the doctrine of eternal punishment), abhorred profanity, and fussed over Sunday
observance, but was oddly tolerant of theatergoing, a lifelong habit of his
own. Apart from the sentimental messages later inserted in them, the Alice
books and Snark are blessedly devoid of religious or moral concern. Full of
rudeness, aggression, and quarrelsome, if fallacious, argument, they have, on
the other hand, a natural attraction for philosophers, who pillage Carneades
Carroll, Lewis 119 4065A- AM 119 them freely for illustrations.
Humpty-Dumpty, the various Kings and Queens, the Mad Hatter, the Caterpillar,
the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Unicorn, the Tweedle brothers, the
Bellman, the Baker, and the Snark make fleeting appearances in the s of
Russell, Moore, Broad, Quine, Nagel, Austin, Ayer, Ryle, Blanshard, and even
Wittgenstein (an unlikely admirer of the Mock Turtle). The first such allusion
(to the March Hare) is in Venn’s Symbolic Logic (1881). The usual reasons for
quotation are to make some point about meaning, stipulative definition, the
logic of negation, time reversal, dream consciousness, the reification of
fictions and nonentities, or the absurdities that arise from taking “ordinary
language” too literally. (For exponents of word processing, the effect of
running Jabberwocky through a spell-checker is to extinguish all hope for the
future of Artificial Intelligence.) Though himself no philosopher, Carroll’s
unique sense of philosophic humor keeps him (and his illustrator, Sir John
Tenniel) effortlessly alive in the modern age. Alice has been translated into
seventy-five languages; new editions and critical studies appear every year;
imitations, parodies, cartoons, quotations, and ephemera proliferate beyond
number; and Carroll societies flourish in several countries, notably Britain
and the United States. P.He. Cartesian circle.DESCARTES. Cartesian
demon.DESCARTES. Cartesian dualism.DUALISM, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. Cartesian
interactionism.PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. Cartesianism.DESCARTES. Cartesian product.SET
THEORY. Carvaka, Indian materialism. Its varieties share the view that the mind
is simply the body and its capacities, but differ as to whether every mental
property is simply a physical property under some psychological description
(reductive materialism) or there are emergent irreducibly mental properties
that are caused by physical properties and themselves have no causal impact
(epiphenomenalism). Some Carvaka epistemologists, at least according to their
critics, accept only perception as a reliable source of knowledge, but in its
most sophisticated form Carvaka, not unlike logical positivism, allows
inference at least to conclusions that concern perceptually accessible states
of affairs.
HINDUISM. K.E.Y.
Cassirer, Ernst (1874–1945), German philosopher and intellectual historian. He
was born in the German city of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) and educated at
various German universities. He completed his studies in 1899 at Marburg under
Hermann Cohen, founder of the Marburg School of neo-Kantianism. Cassirer
lectured at the University of Berlin from 1906 to 1919, then accepted a
professorship at the newly founded University of Hamburg. With the rise of
Nazism he left Germany in 1933, going first to a visiting appointment at All
Souls College, Oxford (1933– 35) and then to a professorship at the University
of Göteborg, Sweden (1935–41). In 1941 he went to the United States; he taught
first at Yale (1941–44) and then at Columbia (1944–45). Cassirer’s works may be
divided into those in the history of philosophy and culture and those that
present his own systematic thought. The former include major editions of
Leibniz and Kant; his four-volume study The Problem of Knowledge (vols. 1–3,
1906–20; vol. 4, 1950), which traces the subject from Nicholas of Cusa to the
twentieth century; and individual works on Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Rousseau,
Goethe, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and English Platonism. The latter
include his multivolume The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–29), which
presents a philosophy of human culture based on types of symbolism found in
myth, language, and mathematical science; and individual works concerned with
problems in such fields as logic, psychology, aesthetics, linguistics, and
concept formation in the humanities. Two of his best-known works are An Essay
on Man (1944) and The Myth of the State (1946). Cassirer did not consider his
systematic philosophy and his historical studies as separate endeavors; each
grounded the other. Because of his involvement with the Marburg School, his
philosophical position is frequently but mistakenly typed as neo-Kantian. Kant
is an important influence on him, but so are Hegel, Herder, Wilhelm von
Humboldt, Goethe, Leibniz, and Vico. Cassirer derives his principal
philosophical concept, symbolic form, most directly from Heinrich Hertz’s
conception of notation in mechanics and the conception of the symbol in art of
the Hegelian aesthetician, Friedrich Theodor Vischer. In a wider sense his
conception of symbolic form is a transformation of “idea” and “form” within the
whole tradition of philoCartesian circle Cassirer, Ernst 120 4065A- AM 120
sophical idealism. Cassirer’s conception of symbolic form is not based on a distinction
between the symbolic and the literal. In his view all human knowledge depends
on the power to form experience through some type of symbolism. The forms of
human knowledge are coextensive with forms of human culture. Those he most
often analyzes are myth and religion, art, language, history, and science.
These forms of symbolism constitute a total system of human knowledge and
culture that is the subject matter of philosophy. Cassirer’s influence is most
evident in the aesthetics of Susanne Langer (1895–1985), but his conception of
the symbol has entered into theoretical anthropology, psychology, structural
linguistics, literary criticism, myth theory, aesthetics, and phenomenology.
His studies of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment still stand as
groundbreaking works in intellectual history.
HEGEL, LEIBNIZ, NEO-KANTIANISM, VICO. D.P.V. Castañeda, Hector-Neri
(1924–91), American analytical philosopher. Heavily influenced by his own
critical reaction to Quine, Chisholm, and his teacher Wilfrid Sellars,
Castañeda published four books and more than 175 essays. His work combines
originality, rigor, and penetration, together with an unusual comprehensiveness
– his network of theory and criticism reaches into nearly every area of
philosophy, including action theory; deontic logic and practical reason;
ethics; history of philosophy; metaphysics and ontology; philosophical
methodology; philosophy of language, mind, and perception; and the theory of
knowledge. His principal contributions are to metaphysics and ontology,
indexical reference, and deontic logic and practical reasoning. In metaphysics
and ontology, Castañeda’s chief work is guise theory, first articulated in a
1974 essay, a complex and global account of language, mind, ontology, and
predication. By holding that ordinary concrete individuals, properties, and
propositions all break down or separate into their various aspects or guises,
he theorizes that thinking and reference are directed toward the latter. Each
guise is a genuine item in the ontological inventory, having properties
internally and externally. In addition, guises are related by standing in
various sameness relations, only one of which is the familiar relation of
strict identity. Since every guise enjoys bona fide ontological standing,
whereas only some of these actually exist, Castañeda’s ontology and semantics
are Meinongian. With its intricate account of predication, guise theory affords
a unified treatment of a wide range of philosophical problems concerning
reference to nonexistents, negative existentials, intentional identity,
referential opacity, and other matters. Castañeda also played a pivotal role in
emphasizing the significance of indexical reference. If, e.g., Paul assertively
utters ‘I prefer Chardonnay’, it would obviously be incorrect for Bob to report
‘Paul says that I prefer Chardonnay’, since the last statement expresses
(Bob’s) speaker’s reference, not Paul’s. At the same time, Castañeda contends,
it is likewise incorrect for Bob to report Paul’s saying as either ‘Paul says
that Paul prefers Chardonnay’ or ‘Paul says that Al’s luncheon guest prefers
Chardonnay’ (when Paul is Al’s only luncheon guest), since each of these fail
to represent the essentially indexical element of Paul’s assertion. Instead,
Bob may correctly report ‘Paul says that he himself prefers Chardonnay’, where
‘he himself’ is a quasi-indicator, serving to depict Paul’s reference to
himself qua self. For Castañeda (and others), quasi-indicators are a person’s
irreducible, essential means for describing the thoughts and experiences of
others. A complete account of his view of indexicals, together with a full
articulation of guise theory and his unorthodox theories of definite
descriptions and proper names, is contained in Thinking, Language, and
Experience (1989). Castañeda’s main views on practical reason and deontic logic
turn on his fundamental practition–proposition distinction. A number of
valuable essays on these views, together with his important replies, are
collected in James E. Tomberlin, ed., Agent, Language, and the Structure of the
World (1983), and Tomberlin, ed., Hector-Neri Castañeda (1986). The latter also
includes Castañeda’s revealing intellectual autobiography. DEONTIC LOGIC, GUISE THEORY, MEINONG,
PRACTICAL REASONING, PRACTITION, QUASI-INDICATOR. J.E.T. casuistry, the case-analysis
approach to the interpretation of general moral rules. Casuistry starts with
paradigm cases of how and when a given general moral rule should be applied,
and then reasons by analogy to cases in which the proper application of the
rule is less obvious – e.g., a case in which lying is the only way for a priest
not to betray a secret revealed in confession. The point of considering the
series of cases is to ascertain the morally relevant similarities and
differences between cases. Casuistry’s heyday was the first half of the
seventeenth century. Reacting against Castañeda, Hector-Neri casuistry 121
4065A- AM 121 casuistry’s popularity with the Jesuits
and against its tendency to qualify general moral rules, Pascal penned a
polemic against casuistry from which the term never recovered (see his
Provincial Letters, 1656). But the kind of reasoning to which the term refers
is flourishing in contemporary practical ethics. B.W.H.
categorematic.SYNCATEGOREMATA. categorematica.SYNCATEGOREMATA. categorical
grammar.GRAMMAR. categorical imperative.KANT. categorical-in-power.CATEGORICAL
THEORY. categorical proposition.SYLLOGISM. categorical theory, a theory all of
whose models are isomorphic. Because of its weak expressive power, in
first-order logic with identity only theories with a finite model can be
categorical; without identity no theories are categorical. A more interesting
property, therefore, is being categorical in power: a theory is categorical in
power a when the theory has, up to isomorphism, only one model with a domain of
cardinality a. Categoricity in power shows the capacity to characterize a
structure completely, only limited by cardinality. For example, the first-order
theory of dense order without endpoints is categorical in power w the
cardinality of the natural numbers. The first-order theory of simple discrete
orderings with initial element, the ordering of the natural numbers, is not
categorical in power w. There are countable discrete orders, not isomorphic to
the natural numbers, that are elementary equivalent to it, i.e., have the same
elementary, first-order theory. In first-order logic categorical theories are
complete. This is not necessarily true for extensions of first-order logic for
which no completeness theorem holds. In such a logic a set of axioms may be
categorical without providing an informative characterization of the theory of
its unique model. The term ‘elementary equivalence’ was introduced around 1936
by Tarski for the property of being indistinguishable by elementary means.
According to Oswald Veblen, who first used the term ‘categorical’ in 1904, in a
discussion of the foundations of geometry, that term was suggested to him by
the American pragmatist John Dewey.
COMPLETENESS, MODEL THEORY. Z.G.S. categoricity, the semantic property
belonging to a set of sentences, a “postulate set,” that implicitly defines
(completely describes, or characterizes up to isomorphism) the structure of its
intended interpretation or standard model. The best-known categorical set of
sentences is the postulate set for number theory attributed to Peano, which
completely characterizes the structure of an arithmetic progression. This
structure is exemplified by the system of natural numbers with zero as
distinguished element and successor (addition of one) as distinguished
function. Other exemplifications of this structure are obtained by taking as
distinguished element an arbitrary integer, taking as distinguished function
the process of adding an arbitrary positive or negative integer and taking as
universe of discourse (or domain) the result of repeated application of the
distinguished function to the distinguished element. (See, e.g., Russell’s
Introduction to the Mathematical Philosophy, 1918.) More precisely, a postulate
set is defined to be categorical if every two of its models (satisfying
interpretations or realizations) are isomorphic (to each other), where, of
course, two interpretations are isomorphic if between their respective
universes of discourse there exists a one-to-one correspondence by which the
distinguished elements, functions, relations, etc., of the one are mapped
exactly onto those of the other. The importance of the analytic geometry of
Descartes involves the fact that the system of points of a geometrical line
with the “left-of relation” distinguished is isomorphic to the system of real
numbers with the “less-than” relation distinguished. Categoricity, the ideal
limit of success for the axiomatic method considered as a method for
characterizing subject matter rather than for reorganizing a science, is known
to be impossible with respect to certain subject matters using certain formal
languages. The concept of categoricity can be traced back at least as far as
Dedekind; the word is due to Dewey.
AXIOMATIC METHOD,
LÖWENHEIMSKOLEM THEOREM, MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS, MODEL THEORY. J.COR.
categories, table of.KANT. categories of the understanding.KANT. category, an
ultimate class. Categories are the highest genera of entities in the world.
They may contain species but are not themselves species of any higher genera.
Aristotle, the first philosopher categorematic category 122 4065A- AM 122
to discuss categories systematically, listed ten, including substance, quality,
quantity, relation, place, and time. If a set of categories is complete, then
each entity in the world will belong to a category and no entity will belong to
more than one category. A prominent example of a set of categories is
Descartes’s dualistic classification of mind and matter. This example brings
out clearly another feature of categories: an attribute that can belong to
entities in one category cannot be an attribute of entities in any other
category. Thus, entities in the category of matter have extension and color
while no entity in the category of mind can have extension or color. ARISTOTLE, GENUS GENERALISSIMUM, RYLE. J.W.M.
category mistake, the placing of an entity in the wrong category. In one of
Ryle’s examples, to place the activity of exhibiting team spirit in the same
class with the activities of pitching, batting, and catching is to make a category
mistake; exhibiting team spirit is not a special function like pitching or
batting but instead a way those special functions are performed. A second use
of ‘category mistake’ is to refer to the attribution to an entity of a property
which that entity cannot have (not merely does not happen to have), as in ‘This
memory is violet’ or, to use an example from Carnap, ‘Caesar is a prime
number’. These two kinds of category mistake may seem different, but both
involve misunderstandings of the natures of the things being talked about. It
is thought that they go beyond simple error or ordinary mistakes, as when one
attributes a property to a thing which that thing could have but does not have,
since category mistakes involve attributions of properties (e.g., being a
special function) to things (e.g., team spirit) that those things cannot have.
According to Ryle, the test for category differences depends on whether
replacement of one expression for another in the same sentence results in a
type of unintelligibility that he calls “absurdity.” RYLE. J.W.M. category-preserving.LOGICAL
FORM. category theory, a mathematical theory that studies the universal
properties of structures via their relationships with one another. A category C
consists of two collections Obc and Morc , the objects and the morphisms of C,
satisfying the following conditions: (i) for each pair (a, b) of objects there
is associated a collection Morc (a, b) of morphisms such that each member of
Morc belongs to one of these collections; (ii) for each object a of Obc , there
is a morphism ida , called the identity on a; (iii) a composition law
associating with each morphism f: a P b and each morphism g: b P c a morphism
gf:a P c, called the composite of f and g; (iv) for morphisms f: a P b, g: b P
c, and h: c P d, the equation h(gf) % (hg)f holds; (v) for any morphism f: a P
b, we have idbf % f and fida % f. Sets with specific structures together with a
collection of mappings preserving these structures are categories. Examples:
(1) sets with functions between them; (2) groups with group homomorphisms; (3)
topological spaces with continuous functions; (4) sets with surjections instead
of arbitrary maps constitute a different category. But a category need not be
composed of sets and set-theoretical maps. Examples: (5) a collection of
propositions linked by the relation of logical entailment is a category and so
is any preordered set; (6) a monoid taken as the unique object and its elements
as the morphisms is a category. The properties of an object of a category are
determined by the morphisms that are coming out of and going in this object.
Objects with a universal property occupy a key position. Thus, a terminal
object a is characterized by the following universal property: for any object b
there is a unique morphism from b to a. A singleton set is a terminal object in
the category of sets. The Cartesian product of sets, the product of groups, and
the conjunction of propositions are all terminal objects in appropriate
categories. Thus category theory unifies concepts and sheds a new light on the
notion of universality. PHILOSOPHY OF
MATHEMATICS. J.-P.M. causal chain.CAUSATION. causal closure.DAVIDSON. causal
decision theory.DECISION THEORY. causal dependence.DEPENDENCE. causal
determinism.DETERMINISM. causal-historical theory of reference.PHILOSOPHY OF
LANGUAGE. causal immediacy.IMMEDIACY. causal law, a statement describing a
regular and invariant connection between types of events or states, where the
connections involved are causal in some sense. When one speaks of causal laws
as distinguished from laws that are not 123 category mistake causal law
4065A- AM 123 causal, the intended distinction may
vary. Sometimes, a law is said to be causal if it relates events or states
occurring at successive times, also called a law of succession: e.g.,
‘Ingestion of strychnine leads to death.’ A causal law in this sense contrasts
with a law of coexistence, which connects events or states occurring at the
same time (e.g., the Wiedemann-Franz law relating thermal and electric
conductivity in metals). One important kind of causal law is the deterministic
law. Causal laws of this kind state exceptionless connections between events,
while probabilistic or statistical laws specify probability relationships
between events. For any system governed by a set of deterministic laws, given
the state of a system at a time, as characterized by a set of state variables,
these laws will yield a unique state of the system for any later time (or,
perhaps, at any time, earlier or later). Probabilistic laws will yield, for a
given antecedent state of a system, only a probability value for the occurrence
of a certain state at a later time. The laws of classical mechanics are often
thought to be paradigmatic examples of causal laws in this sense, whereas the
laws of quantum mechanics are claimed to be essentially probabilistic. Causal
laws are sometimes taken to be laws that explicitly specify certain events as
causes of certain other events. Simple laws of this kind will have the form
‘Events of kind F cause events of kind G’; e.g., ‘Heating causes metals to
expand’. A weaker related concept is this: a causal law is one that states a
regularity between events which in fact are related as cause to effect,
although the statement of the law itself does not say so (laws of motion
expressed by differential equations are perhaps causal laws in this sense).
These senses of ‘causal law’ presuppose a prior concept of causation. Finally,
causal laws may be contrasted with teleological laws, laws that supposedly
describe how certain systems, in particular biological organisms, behave so as
to achieve certain “goals” or “end states.” Such laws are sometimes claimed to
embody the idea that a future state that does not as yet exist can exert an
influence on the present behavior of a system. Just what form such laws take
and exactly how they differ from ordinary laws have not been made wholly clear,
however. CAUSATION, DETERMINISM, LAWLIKE
GENERALIZATION. J.K. causal overdetermination.CAUSATION. causal relation,
singular.PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. causal responsibility.RESPONSIBILITY. causal
statement, singular.CAUSATION. causal theory of knowledge.EPISTEMOLOGY,
NATURALISTIC EPISTEMOLOGY. causal theory of mental content.SKEPTICISM. causal
theory of mind.FUNCTIONALISM. causal theory of perception.PERCEPTION. causal
theory of proper names, the view that proper names designate what they name by
virtue of a kind of causal connection to it. This view is a special case, and
in some instances an unwarranted interpretation, of a direct reference view of
names. On this approach, proper names, e.g., ‘Machiavelli’, are, as J. S. Mill
wrote, “purely denotative. . . . they denote the individuals who are called by
them; but they do not indicate or imply any attributes as belonging to those
individuals” (A System of Logic, 1879). Proper names may suggest certain
properties to many competent speakers, but any such associated information is
no part of the definition of the name. Names, on this view, have no
definitions. What connects a name to what it names is not the latter’s
satisfying some condition specified in the name’s definition. Names, instead,
are simply attached to things, applied as labels, as it were. A proper name,
once attached, becomes a socially available device for making the relevant name
bearer a subject of discourse. On the other leading view, the descriptivist
view, a proper name is associated with something like a definition.
‘Aristotle’, on this view, applies by definition to whoever satisfies the
relevant properties – e.g., is ‘the teacher of Alexander the Great, who wrote
the Nicomachean Ethics’. Russell, e.g., maintained that ordinary proper names
(which he contrasted with logically proper or genuine names) have definitions,
that they are abbreviated definite descriptions. Frege held that names have
sense, a view whose proper interpretation remains in dispute, but is often
supposed to be closely related to Russell’s approach. Others, most notably
Searle, have defended descendants of the descriptivist view. An important
variant, sometimes attributed to Frege, denies that names have articulable
definitions, but nevertheless associates them with senses. And the bearer will
still be, by definition (as it were), the unique thing to satisfy the relevant
mode of presentation. causal overdetermination causal theory of proper names
124 4065A- AM 124 The direct reference approach is
sometimes misleadingly called the causal theory of names. But the key idea need
have nothing to do with causation: a proper name functions as a tag or label
for its bearer, not as a surrogate for a descriptive expression. Whence the
(allegedly) misleading term ‘causal theory of names’? Contemporary defenders of
Mill’s conception like Keith Donnellan and Kripke felt the need to expand upon
Mill’s brief remarks. What connects a present use of a name with a referent?
Here Donnellan and Kripke introduce the notion of a “historical chains of
communication.” As Kripke tells the story, a baby is baptized with a proper
name. The name is used, first by those present at the baptism, subsequently by
those who pick up the name in conversation, reading, and so on. The name is
thus propagated, spread by usage “from link to link as if by a chain” (Naming
and Necessity, 1980). There emerges a historical chain of uses of the name
that, according to Donnellan and Kripke, bridges the gap between a present use
of the name and the individual so named. This “historical chain of
communication” is occasionally referred to as a “casual chain of
communication.” The idea is that one’s use of the name can be thought of as a
causal factor in one’s listener’s ability to use the name to refer to the same
individual. However, although Kripke in Naming and Necessity does occasionally
refer to the chain of communication as causal, he more often simply speaks of
the chain of communication, or of the fact that the name has been passed “by
tradition from link to link” (p. 106). The causal aspect is not one that Kripke
underscores. In more recent writings on the topic, as well as in lectures,
Kripke never mentions causation in this connection, and Donnellan questions
whether the chain of communication should be thought of as a causal chain. This
is not to suggest that there is no view properly called a “causal theory of
names.” There is such a view, but it is not the view of Kripke and Donnellan.
The causal theory of names is a view propounded by physicalistically minded
philosophers who desire to “reduce” the notion of “reference” to something more
physicalistically acceptable, such as the notion of a causal chain running from
“baptism” to later use. This is a view whose motivation is explicitly rejected
by Kripke, and should be sharply distinguished from the more popular
anti-Fregean approach sketched above.
MEANING, THEORY OF DESCRIPTIONS. H.W. causal theory of
reference.PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE. causation, the relation between cause and
effect, or the act of bringing about an effect, which may be an event, a state,
or an object (say, a statue). The concept of causation has long been recognized
as one of fundamental philosophical importance. Hume called it “the cement of
the universe”: causation is the relation that connects events and objects of
this world in significant relationships. The concept of causation seems
pervasively present in human discourse. It is expressed by not only ‘cause’ and
its cognates but by many other terms, such as ‘produce’, ‘bring about’,
‘issue’, ‘generate’, ‘result’, ‘effect’, ‘determine’, and countless others.
Moreover, many common transitive verbs (“causatives”), such as ‘kill’, ‘break’,
and ‘move’, tacitly contain causal relations (e.g., killing involves causing to
die). The concept of action, or doing, involves the idea that the agent
(intentionally) causes a change in some object or other; similarly, the concept
of perception involves the idea that the object perceived causes in the
perceiver an appropriate perceptual experience. The physical concept of force,
too, appears to involve causation as an essential ingredient: force is the
causal agent of changes in motion. Further, causation is intimately related to
explanation: to ask for an explanation of an event is, often, to ask for its
cause. It is sometimes thought that our ability to make predictions, and
inductive inference in general, depends on our knowledge of causal connections
(or the assumption that such connections are present): the knowledge that water
quenches thirst warrants the predictive inference from ‘X is swallowing water’
to ‘X’s thirst will be quenched’. More generally, the identification and
systematic description of causal relations that hold in the natural world have
been claimed to be the preeminent aim of science. Finally, causal concepts play
a crucial role in moral and legal reasoning, e.g., in the assessment of
responsibilities and liabilities. Event causation is the causation of one event
by another. A sequence of causally connected events is called a causal chain.
Agent causation refers to the act of an agent (person, object) in bringing
about a change; thus, my opening the window (i.e., my causing the window to
open) is an instance of agent causation. There is a controversy as to whether
agent causation is reducible to event causation. My opening the window seems
reducible to event causation since in reality a certain motion of my arms, an
event, causal theory of reference causation 125 4065A- AM 125
causes the window to open. Some philosophers, however, have claimed that not
all cases of agent causation are so reducible. Substantival causation is the
creation of a genuinely new substance, or object, rather than causing changes
in preexisting substances, or merely rearranging them. The possibility of
substantival causation, at least in the natural world, has been disputed by
some philosophers. Event causation, however, has been the primary focus of
philosophical discussion in the modern and contemporary period. The analysis of
event causation has been controversial. The following four approaches have been
prominent: the regularity analysis, the counterfactual analysis, the manipulation
analysis, and the probabilistic analysis. The heart of the regularity (or
nomological) analysis, associated with Hume and J. S. Mill, is the idea that
causally connected events must instantiate a general regularity between like
kinds of events. More precisely: if c is a cause of e, there must be types or
kinds of events, F and G, such that c is of kind F, e is of kind G, and events
of kind F are regularly followed by events of kind G. Some take the regularity
involved to be merely de facto “constant conjunction” of the two event types
involved; a more popular view is that the regularity must hold as a matter of
“nomological necessity” – i.e., it must be a “law.” An even stronger view is
that the regularity must represent a causal law. A law that does this job of
subsuming causally connected events is called a “covering” or “subsumptive”
law, and versions of the regularity analysis that call for such laws are often
referred to as the “covering-law” or “nomic-subsumptive” model of causality.
The regularity analysis appears to give a satisfactory account of some aspects
of our causal concepts: for example, causal claims are often tested by
re-creating the event or situation claimed to be a cause and then observing
whether a similar effect occurs. In other respects, however, the regularity
account does not seem to fare so well: e.g., it has difficulty explaining the
apparent fact that we can have knowledge of causal relations without knowledge
of general laws. It seems possible to know, for instance, that someone’s
contraction of the flu was caused by her exposure to a patient with the
disease, although we know of no regularity between such exposures and
contraction of the disease (it may well be that only a very small fraction of
persons who have been exposed to flu patients contract the disease). Do I need
to know general regularities about itchings and scratchings to know that the
itchy sensation on my left elbow caused me to scratch it? Further, not all
regularities seem to represent causal connections (e.g., Reid’s example of the
succession of day and night; two successive symptoms of a disease).
Distinguishing causal from non-causal regularities is one of the main problems
confronting the regularity theorist. According to the counterfactual analysis,
what makes an event a cause of another is the fact that if the cause event had
not occurred the effect event would not have. This accords with the idea that
cause is a condition that is sine qua non for the occurrence of the effect. The
view that a cause is a necessary condition for the effect is based on a similar
idea. The precise form of the counterfactual account depends on how
counterfactuals are understood (e.g., if counterfactuals are explained in terms
of laws, the counterfactual analysis may turn into a form of the regularity
analysis). The counterfactual approach, too, seems to encounter various
difficulties. It is true that on the basis of the fact that if Larry had
watered my plants, as he had promised, my plants would not have died, I could
claim that Larry’s not watering my plants caused them to die. But it is also
true that if George Bush had watered my plants, they would not have died; but
does that license the claim that Bush’s not watering my plants caused them to
die? Also, there appear to be many cases of dependencies expressed by
counterfactuals that, however, are not cases of causal dependence: e.g., if
Socrates had not died, Xanthippe would not have become a widow; if I had not
raised my hand, I would not have signaled. The question, then, is whether these
non-causal counterfactuals can be distinguished from causal counterfactuals
without the use of causal concepts. There are also questions about how we could
verify counterfactuals – in particular, whether our knowledge of causal
counterfactuals is ultimately dependent on knowledge of causal laws and
regularities. Some have attempted to explain causation in terms of action, and
this is the manipulation analysis: the cause is an event or state that we can
produce at will, or otherwise manipulate, to produce a certain other event as
an effect. Thus, an event is a cause of another provided that by bringing about
the first event we can bring about the second. This account exploits the close
connection noted earlier between the concepts of action and cause, and
highlights the important role that knowledge of causal connections plays in our
control of natural events. However, as an analysis of the concept of cause, it
may well have things backward: the concept of action seems to causation
causation 126 4065A- AM 126 be a richer and more complex concept that
presupposes the concept of cause, and an analysis of cause in terms of action
could be accused of circularity. The reason we think that someone’s exposure to
a flu patient was the cause of her catching the disease, notwithstanding the
absence of an appropriate regularity (even one of high probability), may be
this: exposure to flu patients increases the probability of contracting the
disease. Thus, an event, X, may be said to be a probabilistic cause of an
event, Y, provided that the probability of the occurrence of Y, given that X
has occurred, is greater than the antecedent probability of Y. To meet certain
obvious difficulties, this rough definition must be further elaborated (e.g.,
to eliminate the possibility that X and Y are collateral effects of a common
cause). There is also the question whether probabilistic causation is to be
taken as an analysis of the general concept of causation, or as a special kind
of causal relation, or perhaps only as evidence indicating the presence of a
causal relationship. Probabilistic causation has of late been receiving
increasing attention from philosophers. When an effect is brought about by two
independent causes either of which alone would have sufficed, one speaks of
causal overdetermination. Thus, a house fire might have been caused by both a
short circuit and a simultaneous lightning strike; either event alone would
have caused the fire, and the fire, therefore, was causally overdetermined.
Whether there are actual instances of overdetermination has been questioned;
one could argue that the fire that would have been caused by the short circuit
alone would not have been the same fire, and similarly for the fire that would
have been caused by the lightning alone. The steady buildup of pressure in a
boiler would have caused it to explode but for the fact that a bomb was
detonated seconds before, leading to a similar effect. In such a case, one
speaks of preemptive, or superseding, cause. We are apt to speak of causes in
regard to changes; however, “unchanges,” e.g., this table’s standing here
through some period of time, can also have causes: the table continues to stand
here because it is supported by a rigid floor. The presence of the floor,
therefore, can be called a sustaining cause of the table’s continuing to stand.
A cause is usually thought to precede its effect in time; however, some have
argued that we must allow for the possibility of a cause that is temporally
posterior to its effect – backward causation (sometimes called retrocausation).
And there is no universal agreement as to whether a cause can be simultaneous
with its effect – concurrent causation. Nor is there a general agreement as to
whether cause and effect must, as a matter of conceptual necessity, be
“contiguous” in time and space, either directly or through a causal chain of
contiguous events – contiguous causation. The attempt to “analyze” causation
seems to have reached an impasse; the proposals on hand seem so widely
divergent that one wonders whether they are all analyses of one and the same
concept. But each of them seems to address some important aspect of the
variegated notion that we express by the term ‘cause’, and it may be doubted
whether there is a unitary concept of causation that can be captured in an
enlightening philosophical analysis. On the other hand, the centrality of the
concept, both to ordinary practical discourse and to the scientific description
of the world, is difficult to deny. This has encouraged some philosophers to view
causation as a primitive, one that cannot be further analyzed. There are others
who advocate the extreme view (causal nihilism) that causal concepts play no
role whatever in the advanced sciences, such as fundamental physical theories
of space-time and matter, and that the very notion of cause is an
anthropocentric projection deriving from our confused ideas of action and
power. AGENT CAUSATION, EXPLANATION,
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. J.K. causation, backward.CAUSATION. causation,
counterfactual analysis of.CAUSATION. causation, immanent.AGENT CAUSATION.
causation, manipulation analysis of.CAUSATION. causation,
probabilistic.CAUSATION. causation, regularity theory of.CAUSATION. causation,
substance.AGENT CAUSATION. causation, transeunt.AGENT CAUSATION. causative
verb.ACTION VERB. cause, efficient.ARISTOTLE. cause, final.ARISTOTLE.
causation, backward cause, final 127 4065A-
AM 127 cause, formal.ARISTOTLE.
cause, material.ARISTOTLE. cause, preemptive.CAUSATION. cause,
superseding.CAUSATION. cause, sustaining.CAUSATION. causes, the four.ARISTOTLE.
causa sui (Latin, ‘cause of itself’), an expression applied to God to mean in
part that God owes his existence to nothing other than himself. It does not
mean that God somehow brought himself into existence. The idea is that the very
nature of God logically requires that he exists. What accounts for the
existence of a being that is causa sui is its own nature.
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