Lexicon griceianum -- in six volumes, vol. v.

quadrivium Logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science The liberal arts curriculum in the medieval university consisted of seven disciplines, which were divided into a lower division of trivium, including grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and a higher division of quadrivium, including geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. The former is concerned with the art of discussion, and the latter is concerned with the physical world and its principles. The quadrivium was studied after the study of the trivium was completed. Virtually every graduate of a medieval university received training in these seven subjects. “The quadrivium – geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music – constituted a ‘scientific’ syllabus, summarising the principles of order in the physical world.” Haren, Medieval Thought quale, singular of qualia qualia Epistemology, metaphysics [the plural of quale, from Latin qualis, of such a kind or qualities] The immediately experienced contents or objects of sense-awareness, giving what it feels like to have a sensation or to be in a perceptual state. Qualia, which include things such as the smell of coffee or the taste of sugar, are also called phenomenal properties. Qualia are neither intentional nor representational. How to understand the nature of qualia has been a matter of debate. Different accounts have been developed on the basis of different analyses of sensedata. The term was introduced by C. I. Lewis and Goodman for the simplest qualitative elements in the contents of sense-experience. Ayer claims that a quale should be distinguished from a sensory particular that is confined to a momentary episode of awareness. Instead a quale is a sensory universal, intersubjective and repeatable. It can be empirically realized in different minds and at different times. “My qualia, then, are visual or other sensory patterns. I conceive of their range as being very wide. Anything counts as a quale that a person is able to pick out as a recurrent or potentially recurrent feature of his sense-experiences, from a two-dimensional colour expanse to a complex three-dimensional gestalt.” Ayer, The Origins of Pragmatism qualified good Ethics Kant’s distinction between qualified good and unqualified good contrasts with the distinction between instrumental goods and intrinsic goods drawn by utilitarianism. For Kant, many goods are intrinsic, such as pleasure, the absence of pain, and happiness in general, because they are not for further ends. But they are still goods with qualification, rather than goods that are absolute or quantum theory unqualified. Even happiness is good only when it is deserved and is not good if enjoyed by a bad person who does not deserve it. Many other traditional goods, such as moderation or courage, can be put to bad use under some circumstances. Kant held that the only unqualified good that is good whatever the circumstances is a good will, and that other goods always presuppose a good will. “Moderation in emotions and passions, selfcontrol, and calm deliberation are not only good in many respects but even seem to constitute part of the intrinsic worth of a person. But they are far from being rightly called good without qualification . . . For without the principles of a good will, they can become extremely bad.” Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals quality of life Ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of social science The degree of well-being, satisfaction, or happiness in one’s life. A traditional version of utilitarianism claims that the quality of life should be assessed according to an objective measure of utility, such as per capita GNP. But even if we assign a central role to utility, there are problems about its distribution and bearing on people’s lives. Other indicators might be needed to judge quality of life, such as health care, education, social and natural environments, life expectancy, the legal privileges one enjoys, and the freedom one has. Furthermore, some philosophers consider quality of life to be a subjective assessment of how one feels about one’s life, without regard to external conditions. A person could be very happy in situations that others judge to be miserable. We can ask whether there is a unique standard, such that we have a better quality of life the more completely it is satisfied. In discussions of euthanasia and suicide, some philosophers ask whether it is morally permissible to terminate a life that is not worth living judged according to quality of life. “When we inquire about the prosperity of a nation or a region of the world, and about the quality of life of its inhabitants, Sissy Jupe’s problem still arises: how do we determine this? What information do we require? Which criteria are truly relevant to human ‘thriving’?” Nussbaum and Sen (eds.), The Quality of Life quantifier Logic In categorical propositions of standard form, “some” is a quantifier for particular propositions and “all” or “no” are quantifiers for universal propositions. Modern predicate logic calls “some” the existential quantifier and “all” the universal quantifier. The existential quantifier is symbolized as (∃x), which reads “there is at least one x that . . .” or “for some x . . .”. The universal quantifier is symbolized as (x) or (∀x), which reads “for any x . . .” or “for all x . . .”. Quantifiers are employed in sentences with variables (x, y, . . . ), predicates (F, G, . . . ), relations (R, . . . ), the identity sign (=), and the logical constants (and, or, not, if-then . . . ). (∃x)(∃y) (if Fx and Gy, then x = y) reads “For some x and for some y, if x is F and y is G, then x is identical with y.” The individual or multiple use of the universal quantifier “all” and the existential quantifier “there exists” to bind variables in sentences has been seen as the key to the development of a powerful and flexible system of modern predicate logic. Quantifiers can occur more than once in a statement, for example “All human beings have some ancestors.” The application of the quantifier, called quantification, turns an open sentence with unbound variables into a closed sentence in which the variables are bound with quantifiers. There is debate whether quantifiers can bind items other than individual variables, such as predicate, relational, or sentential variables, and a related debate over a referential interpretation of quantification, focusing on the objects in the domain of the quantifier, and the substitutional interpretation of quantification, focusing on the expressions that can be suitably substituted for the quantifier. “Usual notations for these respective purposes are ‘(x)’ and ‘(∃x)’, conveniently read ‘everything x is such that’ and ‘something x is such that’. These prefixes are known, for unobvious but traceable reasons, as quantifiers, universal or existential.” Quine, Word and Object quantum theory Philosophy of science A modern physical theory, developed by Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg, and Schrödinger to deal with the structure and behavior of subatomic particles. According to quantum theory, in the subatomic world the position and velocity of an electron at any moment can be known only with quasi-syntactical sentence mutually related uncertainty. Newton’s theory of causality does not apply in the microworld. For subatomic particles, we can specify neither the energy at a particular time nor the momentum at a particular position with precision. We can, however, calculate the energy over a period of time or the momentum over a range of positions. This lack of certainty at a fundamental physical level establishes a new picture of reality and seriously undermines the classical conceptions of particle and thing. The principle “every event has a cause” is no longer true a priori. If the theory of relativity challenges the traditional concepts of time and space, quantum mechanics challenges the traditional conceptions of physical causality and determinism. Although the theory has had great empirical success, interpreting the theory and explaining why it succeeds have been matters of fierce debate. The Copenhagen interpretation, developed on the basis of the views of Bohr and Heisenberg, offers an anti-realist interpretation, which claims that quantum theory reflects indeterminacy in the world. The rival realist interpretation, developed from Einstein’s criticism of Bohr and defended by Popper and Putnam, argues that a quantum system is really fully determinate like classical systems, even though our knowledge of the system is indeterminate. “Quantum theory gives us a highly workable algorithm for making prediction about the results of measurements, but philosophers and physicists are in total disagreement about what . . . quantum theory tells us about the way the quantum world is.” Gibbins, Particles and Paradoxes quasi-syntactical sentence, see pseudo-object sentence quaterno terminorum, the Latin name for the four-term fallacy quidditas Metaphysics [from Latin quid, what, and quidditas, whatness, quiddity] The essential characteristic or nature of a thing, the nature that makes a thing the kind of thing it is. Quidditas serves as the content of definition and as the object of intellectus. It is a synonym of essentia (essence). To discover quidditas is to answer the question Quad est? (What is it?). Duns Scotus contrasted quidditas to haecceitas, that is, a unique essence or individual essence that determines a thing’s individuality. “The proper object of the intellect is the whatness of things (quidditas).” Aquinas, Summa Theologiae quid facti, see deduction (Kant) quid juris, see deduction (Kant) Quine, Willard Van Orman (1908–2000) American philosopher and logician, born in Akron, Ohio, taught at Harvard. Quine was influenced by Russell, the empiricism of the Vienna Circle, and pragmatism. He made numerous original contributions to logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. He modified Russell and Whitehead’s logicist program of reducing mathematic to logic, rejected the possibility of a formalized intensional logic, and resisted Kripke’s turn to modality. Quine is most famous for seeking to undermine the traditional analytic/synthetic distinction as a dogma of empiricism. The Quine–Duhem thesis argued that empirical tests can be applied only to the whole web or network of hypotheses and not to single theoretical sentences. His theory of radical translation and principle of the indeterminacy of translation attempted to account for language without invoking abstract or mental entities. His claim that “to be is to be the value of a variable” determines our ontological commitments according to our choices about logic and language. His books include From A Logical Point of View (1953), Word and Object (1960), Set Theory and Its Logic (1963), The Ways of Paradox (1966), Ontological Relativity (1969), The Roots of Reference (1974), and Theories and Things (1981). Quine–Duhem thesis, see Duhem–Quine thesis racism Political philosophy The claim that there is a biologically determined hierarchy of capacity or value among different races and that allegedly inferior races should be ruled by allegedly superior races. Racism is generally driven by fear and hatred and has led to major genocidal violence. Modern European racism can be traced to the eighteenth century, along with the emergence of anthropology, a discipline that compares and evaluates racial differences. This development, however, was preceded by similar patterns in the period of discovery and conquest of non-European peoples that began at the end of the fifteenth century. Racism has often been presented as a scientific enterprise, but its notion of race and its empirical claims about different peoples have repeatedly been shown to be unjustified and it is best understood as a pseudo-science. Racism has been particularly identified with the ideology and practice of slavery and other repressive control of African, Asian, and indigenous American and Australian peoples. Historically, racism was employed to justify colonialism and imperialism and to destroy indigenous people and their culture. Racism is related to anti-Semitism and in Germany was the intellectual foundation of Nazism. Theories attending to economic, cultural, historical, social, or universal human factors have sought to explain the conditions under which racism arises and why it provides such deep and powerful motives for destructive action. Colonial studies and postcolonial studies place these questions in historical context. All forms of racism are dangerous in practice, for they tend to create the inequalities between people that they claim to discover. Some philosophers try to determine whether oppression based on class, race, or gender is most fundamental to understanding modern society and culture. “Most definitions of racism tend to be based on the concept of biologically determined superiority of one human population, group or race over another.” Castles, Here for Good radical empiricism Epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science William James’s characterization of his empirical doctrine, which has three basic facets: a postulate that only things definable in terms drawn from experience are debatable; a statement of fact that the relations between things are as much matters of direct particular experience as the things themselves; and a generalized conclusion that the parts of experience hold together from next to next by relations that are themselves parts of experience. Experience is pure and needs no trans-empirical support. The radical nature of this empiricism is in its conclusion, which takes experience to be something neither mental nor physical. Instead, experience becomes the ultimate constituent of the universe out of which material and mental things are constructed. This is a position developed later by Russell in his Analysis of Mind as neutral monism. Radical empiricism is distinguished from traditional empiricism through denying the distinction between our sensations and external objects. James tried to provide a new account of knowledge and a solution to the mind–body problem. He called his position “radical,” not because it was extreme, but because it attempts to remedy the defects he saw in traditional empiricism, namely its failure to include the relations of experience within the basic contents of experience. He also tried to reconcile empiricism and rationalism, using his distinction between tough-minded and tender-minded temperaments. James claimed that his radical empiricism and his pragmatism do not entail one another. However, commentators usually conclude that at least some features of pragmatism lend support to radical empiricism. Feyerabend used the term radical empiricism for the position that science should employ a single set of mutually consistent theories and reject theoretical pluralism. “I am interested in another doctrine in philosophy to which I give the name of radical empiricism, and it seems to me that the establishment of the pragmatist theory of truth is a step of first-rate importance in making radical empiricism prevail.” W. James, The Meaning of Truth radical feminism Political philosophy, philosophy of social science [from Latin radicalis, having a root] The belief that dominant political and social systems are characterized by oppression and that male oppression of women has provided the model for all other forms of oppression, such as racial or class oppression. The material condition of the subjection of women lies in their role in reproduction. Women are always slaves or objects, and men are always masters or subjects. Radical feminists argue that rape, pornography, prostitution, marriage, and heterosexuality are all imposed by male power over women, either directly or through a range of indirect stratagems. They claim that the relationship between male and female must always be conflictual. Radical feminism seeks to analyze the roots of the oppression of women by men and to uncover the various ways in which male power is exercised, with the desire that such understanding will lead to drastic political and social reforms. This position was initiated by de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949), which was influenced by Sartre’s existentialism. Other influential works include Figes’ Patriarchal Attitude (1978), Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex (1971), Greer’s The Female Eunuch (1970), and Millett’s Sexual Politics (1985). “The breadth of subjects treated in The Second Sex prepared the way for radical feminist claims that: Patriarchy is the universal constant in all political and economic systems, that sexism dates from the beginning of history, that society is a repertoire of manoeuvres in which male subjects establish power over female objects.” Nye, Feminist Theory and the Philosophy of Man radical interpretation Philosophy of language A process of interpreting a language unknown to the interpreter without relying upon existing linguistic knowledge. It tries to answer the question how we can understand a particular utterance that is not antecedently given and can not be helped by a translation manual. The theory is developed by Davidson, patterned on Quine’s radical translation. While radical translation intends to establish a linking of synonyms, radical interpretation requires that we establish the truth conditions of the sentences of a foreign language. Quine’s radical translation avoids the use of psychological terms like belief and desire, whereas radical interpretation requires the interpreter to specify the beliefs and desires of the speakers. This interpretation relies heavily on the principle of charity, that is, the assumption that most of the utterances in the language express true beliefs. “The term ‘radical interpretation’ is meant to suggest strong kinship with Quine’s ‘radical translation’. Kinship is not identity, and ‘interpretation’ in place of ‘translation’ marks one of the differences: a greater emphasis on the explicitly semantical in the former.” Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation radical philosophy Political philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of social science, modern European philosophy, feminism A British philosophical movement that arose in the 1970s, with the journal Radical Philosophy (1972– ) as its main forum. Its aim has been to contest the philosophical predominance of analytical philosophy in British universities and intellectual life. In its early phase, it rejected Oxford philosophy, although many members of the radical philosophy group were educated in Oxford. It complained that analytical philosophy was narrow and complacent and that it ignored many crucial issues that require a philosophical response, including specific questions of culture, tradition, history, and politics. It held that the dominant British philosophy was a specialized subject that had little to offer anyone outside a small circle of professional philosophers. Radical philosophy has attempted to change this situation by challenging and subverting linguistic philosophy. The journal did not lay down a philosophical line, although it paid a great deal of attention to traditions ignored by analytical philosophy, especially to European philosophical movements such as phenomenology and existentialism, contemporary Hegelian and Marxist philosophy, structuralism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism. Recently, it has been more associated with feminism and postmodernism. It has been hostile to the constraints of university institutions and has criticized the academic and social environments in which orthodox philosophy is maintained. Radical philosophy should not be confused with philosophical radicals. “What radical philosophy objects to is not the investigation of language and concepts but rather the assumption that for philosophers such study means professional isolation from the world of material reality and acceptance of the ordinary language criterion of meaningfulness.” Edgley and Osborne (eds.), Radical Philosophy Reader radical translation Philosophy of language The translation of an alien language that has no links to familiar ones, where the translator can not appeal to any dictionary, compare other translations, or consult any studies of that language. The only place he can begin is with the sentences that seem to be directed immediately on to stimulus conditions. A rabbit runs by and the speaker says “gavagai.” The translator guesses from observation that this might refer to the rabbit, and then he subjects his guess to tests relating to further cases. He tries to ascertain whether the native speaker assents, dissents, or does neither. What he gets from this process is at best a working hypothesis, and he can never be sure that his translation is the only correct one. Radical translation is a device designed by Quine for his discussion of the indeterminacy of translation and is a model for all attempts to understand the language of another. “What is relevant to our purposes is radical translation, i.e. translation of the language of a hitherto untouched people.” Quine, Word and Object Ramsey, Frank Plumpton (1903–30) English logician and philosopher. In his brief academic career, Ramsey made a number of original contributions, including improvements to the program of Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica, the development of the redundancy theory of truth, the articulation of a subjectivist or personalist theory of probability, and papers on philosophy of science and economics. He held that what came to be called a “Ramsey sentence” could cast a whole scientific theory in the form of one sentence by conjoining all the sentences of the theory and replacing all of its theoretical terms with existentially bound variables. Ramsey is also remembered because his critical philosophical appreciation of the Tractatus and later conversations were important factors in Wittgenstein’s philosophical development. Ramsey’s major philosophical papers were posthumously published in The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays (1931). Ramsey sentence Philosophy of science Also called a Ramsey sentence of a theory. The Cambridge philosopher Frank Ramsey claimed that the whole empirical content of a theory can be cast in the form of one sentence by conjoining sentences expressing the content of the theory and by replacing all theoretical terms in the sentence by existentially bound variables. By replacing theoretical terms with bound variables, theories cease to be committed to specific kinds of entities and are rendered neutral concerning what entities will turn out to satisfy them. This approach to theories can support an instrumentalist view about what a scientific theory should be. It suggests that only observational terms are cognitive, while theoretical terms, as formal and non-descriptive symbols, should be eliminated. This account of theory is close to Craig’s theorem and drew much attention in the 1950s and 1960s, when the distinction between theoretical terms and observation terms and their relationship became a major topic in the philosophy of science. “In general, the Ramsey sentence of a theory is formed as follows: Form the conjunction of a set of statements sufficient to express the content of the theory, and then replace each theoretical term by an existentially quantified variable of appropriate type, making the scope of each quantifier the entire conjunction.” Maxwell, “Structural Realism and the Meaning of Theoretical Terms,” in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. IV range Logic The set of a formula, such that the members of the set are the values of the formula. The range of a quantifier is the collection of things from which values of the quantified variable can be drawn. In this case, range is synonymous with domain. The domain of a relation is a collection of things that stand in the relation to something else. The set of these related things constitutes the range or counterdomain of this relation. The domain and the range together constitute the field of the relation. A range of a function is the set of things that define the function, that is, that serve as possible arguments for this function. A range or universe of discourse is the collection of things talked about during the discourse. “We take the range of the formula Ei to be the class of those value-assignments at which E i comes to be true; the class of all possible valueassignments for E i (i.e. for the value-bearing signs that occurs in E i ) we call the total range of E i; the empty class of such value-assignments we call the null range.” Carnap, Introduction to Symbolic Logic and Its Applications ratio Metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, logic, philosophy of action [Latin, corresponding to the Greek logos, and sharing the complicated and wide usage of the latter] Ratio can be used for the objective meaning of a thing (in a sense close to form), to the power to discern such meanings (in a sense close to mind), to the capacity to draw what is true from the premises when we pursue truth, and to the capacity to determine what to do when we plan action. In English, ratio can be translated by terms such as reason, argument, or description. Generally, ratio is contrasted with emotion and appetite, which it is normally supposed to control in us. In the philosophy of Spinoza, ratio is the second way of knowing, in contrast to imagination (perception) and scientific intuition. Ratio is exemplified in the thinking of scientists, who begin with common and evident truths and proceed to draw general conclusions from them. The model of this type of thinking is Euclidean geometry. “The Ratio expressed in a word is something the intellect [intellectus] conceives from things and expresses in speech.” Aquinas, Summa Theologiae ratio decidendi Philosophy of law [Latin, the reason for deciding, a principle of judicial decision] A ruling on a point of law that a judge provides because he conceives it to be necessary to the justification of his particular decision. Such a ruling is the ratio of the case. It can be the rule of law laid down in a precedent or the rule of law that others regard as having binding authority. It can also be a material evidential fact. In contrast, an obiter dictum is any statement about the law made by the court that was not necessary to the decision. How to identify a ratio decidendi in a case is a fundamental issue. There is much debate about what the ratio is and about how to find it. Different judges in different courts are likely to hold different views so that a ratio decidendi in an original court will be considered as an obiter dictum in an appeal court or vice versa. “The ratio decidendi of a case is any rule of law expressly or implicitly treated by the judge as a necessary step in reaching his conclusion, having regard to the line of reasoning adopted by him, or as a necessary part of his direction to the jury.” Cross, Precedent in English Law rationalism rational cosmology, see cosmology rational egoism, see egoism, ethical rational explanation Philosophy of history, philosophy of action Also called rational reconstruction. Developed by Collingwood and William Dray as an alternative mode of historical explanation to the covering law model. It claims that historical explanation does not consist in bringing an event under a covering general causal law, but rather explains by establishing a relation between an action and the rationality of its agent. We should explain an action by reference to the reasons presented as contained in it. A historian should rethink and reconstruct the rationality of the agent when the agent decided to act. Among others, these factors include the agent’s knowledge of the actual situation, the agent’s purpose, and the agent’s deliberation concerning the means appropriate to his end. If we discover an agent’s reason for performing an action, we achieve an understanding of that action. Certainly, if an agent is rational, the considerations issuing in action must have conformed to some general standards of rationality, but it does not follow that the action is caused or determined by those standards. Some critics argue that irrational and non-rational behavior, in which actors misunderstand their actions, are more important than rational action in understanding history. is any real number that is not rational, such as π or the square root of 2. “The irrational numbers, such as the square root of 2, were supposed to find their place among rational fractions, as being greater than some of them and less than the others, so that rational and irrational numbers could be taken together as one class, called ‘real number’.” Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy rational psychology Metaphysics, philosophy of mind In Christian Wolff ’s division of metaphysics, one branch of special metaphysics (along with cosmology and rational theology). Its subject-matter is the soul or mind, and its major task to prove the immortality of the soul. In contrast to modern empirical psychology, which is based on observation and experiment, rational psychology is purely speculative. Rational theology is also called pneumatology (from Greek pneuma, spirit), a study of the spirit or soul. “The second branch of the metaphysical system was rational psychology or pneumatology. It dealt with the metaphysical nature of the soul – that is, of the Mind regarded as a thing. It expected to find immortality in a sphere dominated by the law of composition, time, qualitative change, and qualitative increase or decrease.” Hegel, Logic “When the historian can see that the agent’s beliefs, purposes, principles, etc., give him a reason for doing what he did, then he can claim to understand the action. The kind of understanding thus achieved, it might be argued, is different in concept from that sought on the scientific model . . . The former – which we might perhaps call ‘rational’ explanation – tries to make clear its point or rationale.” rational reconstruction, another expression for rational explanation William Dray, Philosophy of History rationalism Philosophical method, epistemology, metaphysics In an epistemological sense, rationalism is a philosophical tradition developed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe, represented mainly by Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Epistemological rationalism claimed that knowledge is due to the exercise of the faculty of reason or intellect and that sensory experience cannot establish certainty. The way of reason is the road to true knowledge. Rationalism took mathematics as the rational number Philosophy of mathematics A real number is any number that can be expressed as an infinite decimal. It can be either rational or irrational. A rational number is any number that can be expressed as a ratio x/y, where x is a positive or negative integer or 0 and y is a positive integer, although the same rational number can often be represented by more than one ratio of integers. An irrational number rational self-interest, see self-interest rational theology, another expression for natural theology model of knowledge and admired the axiomatic method. It proposed that the method of philosophy should be the same as the method of mathematics. It held that all knowledge is connected and can be deduced from certain self-evident first principles. It also accepted the existence of a priori knowledge or truths of reason. Rationalism tried to construct a rational science of nature and attempted to solve certain metaphysical problems such as the general structure of the world, the relation of mind to body and immortality. As a tradition, it stood in contrast to the empiricism represented by the British philosophers Francis Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, which claimed that all knowledge is derived ultimately from experience. Kant synthesized the rational and empirical traditions by giving both reason and experience crucial roles in the acquisition and justification of knowledge. Nevertheless, the tension between these two epistemological approaches can still be perceived in the contemporary philosophy of language and other areas. In the post-Kantian period, the continental rationalist tradition, while holding that reason is the supreme cognitive faculty, has held that its exercise should go beyond the scope of natural science. It has extended the exercise of reason to politics, history, art, religion, and in general to the Geisteswissenschaften (human sciences), and has tried to establish universal knowledge in these areas. In its general sense, rationalism refers to all theories and practices that appeal to human rationality and rational principle, and is in contrast to positions that emphasize religious faith, moral sentiment, emotion, and other irrational elements. In this sense, empiricism is a form of rationalism, and rationalism contrasts with irrationalism. “Traditional rationalism, observing that any principles which should serve as ultimate criteria or determine categorical interpretation must be prior to and independent of the experience to which it applies, has supposed that such principles must be innate and so discoverable by some sort of direct inspection.” C. Lewis, Mind and the World-Order rationality Philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, ethics, logic The exercise of human reason, the ability exhibited in deduction, induction, calculation, and other less formal intellectual processes. According to Plato’s tripartite analysis of the human soul, rationality contrasts with emotion (passion) and the appetites. He held that persons must subject their emotions and appetites to the rule of reason in order to find truth and to have a happy and harmonious life. Aristotle put forward a function-based argument, claiming that reason is the peculiar function that distinguishes human beings from other kinds of animals. Human virtue rests in the performance of this function. He even suggested on this basis that pure rational activity, that is, contemplation, is the happiest life. Aristotle made practical reason and moral virtue interdependent, but also acknowledged the possibility of weakness of the will, that is, knowing what is right but doing the contrary. To be rational in this sense is opposed to being emotional or acting according to appetite and intuition, which he described as irrational. Both rationalism and empiricism support the values of rationality, although rationalism emphasizes the role of the faculty of reason, while empiricism places emphasis on observation and experiment. Hume claimed that only deductive and mathematical reasoning is rationally sound and that induction is not rationally justified. This has given rise to the long-standing dispute about the nature of inductive reasoning and the problem of induction. Hume also denied that reason plays a fundamental role in moral life and hence denied the existence of practical reason except as reasoning about means to obtain ends given by the passions. This position is also controversial, and some philosophers consider ends and passions to be within the scope of rationality. In another sense, to call something rational or reasonable means that it conforms to general rules, laws, and acknowledged aims and also adheres to certain qualities of thinking such as consistency, coherence, and completeness. Being rational in this sense means, for example, being appropriate, making sense, or being understandable. This sense is concerned with the correct exercise of human reason, as opposed to its invalid exercise. Creative thought and activity that does not fall within the scope of formal systems can also be assessed for rationality. real definition “Rationality is a matter of seeking to do the very best we can (realistically) manage to do in the circumstances.” Rescher, Rationality rationes seminales Ancient Greek philosophy, philosophy of religion, philosophy of science [Latin, from the Greek logoi spermatikoi, germinal principles or original factors] A notion employed by the Stoics, Neoplatonists, and Augustine. It is usually translated as seminal reason or seminal virtue. By this term Augustine meant the seeds, potential powers, or causes of the subsequent developments in the physical order after God’s creation. Change is simply the realization of what already exists virtually. These seeds were themselves created by God when he created the world. The view was intended to reconcile the tension between the belief that God created all things and the evident fact that new things are constantly developing, for according to this view, the development of every new thing is simply the unfolding of what has been in the world from the beginning. It is a metaphor, derived from the growth of a plant, which is the realization of the seed’s latencies. The concept was possibly influenced by Plato’s theory of recollection, according to which knowledge involves remembering what one already knew. This term was later developed by the Franciscans to oppose Aristotelian naturalism. “Augustine aptly termed rationes seminales all those active and passive powers that are the originative sources of the coming into being of natural things and of their changing.” Aquinas, Summa Theologiae ravens paradox, another expression for Hempel’s paradox Rawls, John (1921–2002) American political philosopher, born in Baltimore, Maryland, educated at Princeton, and taught at Princeton, Cornell, MIT, but mainly Harvard. Rawls is widely considered to be the most important political philosopher of the twentieth century. His book A Theory of Justice (1971) reshaped the field of political philosophy and revived a Kantian version of political liberalism and the social contract tradition. In exploring his central theme of justice as fairness, Rawls developed two principles of justice to govern the basic structure of society. First, “Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others”; second, “social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and attached to positions and offices open to all.” Rawls’s work exerted a profound influence on the understanding of justice in a pluralistic society, and both his methodology and his substantive views have been the object of much subsequent debate. His other books include Political Liberalism (1993), The Law of Peoples (1999), Collected Papers (1999), Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (2000), and Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001). ready-to-hand Modern European philosophy Heidegger’s term for entities within-the-world which we make use of as equipment or as instruments. The Being possessed by this kind of entity is called readinessto-hand, which Heidegger contrasts to presenceat-hand, that is, the Being of the determinate and isolable entities investigated by science. The same entity can be ready-to-hand or present-at-hand, depending upon our attitude or relationship to it. The attitude that determines an entity as ready-at-hand is concern (German Besorgen). Concern leads us to emphasize practical meaning and the use of an entity instead of focusing on the entity itself. Presence-athand is the object of a theoretical attitude, for which an entity is encountered in its own right, independent of its relations with other entities and with their purposes. Taking an entity as ready-to-hand is a pre-theoretical attitude; taking an entity as presentat-hand is a theoretical attitude. In contrast to both, the ontological attitude rejects taking Dasein as another object in the world. “When we make use of the clock-equipment, which is proximally and inconspicuously ready-tohand, the environing Nature is ready-to-hand along with it.” Heidegger, Being and Time real definition Philosophy of language, metaphysics A definition that reveals the meaning of a concept or the essence of the thing being defined, a definition based on the real property of the definiendum. A real definition involves some sort of a discovery. It is contrasted to nominal definition, which determines what a word means on the basis of arbitrary convention and which is popular when a new term or word is introduced. In this context, the word “real” (Latin reale) means “to apply to a thing,” while “nominal” (Latin nominales) means “to apply to a word.” Real definition is also called essentialist definition. All definitions per genus et differentium are real definitions. “All definitions are either nominales or reale definitions. Nominales definitions are ones that contain everything that is equal to the whole concept that we make for ourselves of the thing. Reale definitions, however, are ones that contain everything that belongs to the thing in itself.” Kant, Lectures on Logic real distinction Metaphysics For Descartes, a distinction between two things where each thing can exist without the other and we can conceive of one without being logically compelled to conceive of the other. Descartes claimed that such a distinction occurs between mind and body, for doubt reveals that I have, on the one hand, a clear and distinct idea of myself as a thinking thing that is not extended, and, on the other hand, a clear and distinct idea of my body as a thing that is extended and does not think. Hence my mind is truly distinct for my body, and each can exist without the other. Such a real distinction is, besides the existence of God, the major claim that Meditations purports to prove. Real distinctions contrast with modal distinctions between a substance and its modes, for example between a body and its size. The size can not exist apart from the relevant body. “Two substances are said to be really distinct when each of them can exist apart from the other.” Descartes, The Philosophical Writings real essence Metaphysics Locke distinguished between real essence and nominal essence. The real essence is the real but unknown constitution of each thing, upon which depend all the properties of the particulars that make up the world. The real essence perishes when the object ceases to exist or undergoes radical change. The nominal essence, on the other hand, is the set of qualities that we construct out of observed existing qualities, or collect under one idea or name and is, in effect, a nominal definition provided by a description of the common properties of a thing. Nominal essence depends on real essence. Real essence individuates particulars, while nominal essence groups those particulars into a class for our use. For example, the nominal essence of gold is a complex idea that the word “gold” stands for, including features such as being a body, yellow in color, of a certain weight, and malleable. The real essence is the constitution of the insensible parts of that body upon which those qualities and all other qualities of gold depend. Locke believed that this distinction avoids Aristotle’s mistake of confusing the meaning of an expression with the nature of the object that the expression characterizes. This distinction is influential in modern philosophy, for it leads to phenomenalism, which drops the unknown essence, and also leads to the characteristic emphasis on the study of meaning in contemporary philosophy. “This, though it be all the essence of natural substances that we know, or by which we distinguish them into sorts, yet I call it by a peculiar name, the nominal essence, to distinguish it from that real constitution of substances, upon which depends this nominal essence, and all the properties of that sort; which, therefore, as has been said, may be called the real essence.” Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding real/logical opposition, see logical/real opposition real number, see rational number real variable, another term for free variable realism Metaphysics Realism of various sorts ascribes objective existence to various objects and properties, such as the external world, mathematical objects, universals, theoretical entities, causal relations, moral and aesthetic properties, and other minds. The central idea of realism is that things of a certain problematic sort exist independent of our minds, whether or not we know or believe them to exist. reason and understanding In general terms, realism is opposed by various sorts of anti-realism, which are expressed, for example, as nominalism, subjective idealism, or semantic anti-realism. Hence, in different areas the opposition between realism and anti-realism is presented in different forms. It must be noted that the distinction between realism and anti-realism does not correspond to the distinction between materialism and idealism, for Platonic objective idealism and Hegelian absolute idealism are also forms of realism. One of the most common forms of realism concerns the ontological status of universals and claims that universals have real existence and are objects of knowledge. There are two major versions of this form of realism. First, Platonic realism argues that universals exist in a realm of their own and are more real than sensible objects, which are never fully instantiated in everyday experience. Secondly, Aristotelian realism argues that a universal has no separate existence of its own, but is a structure embedded in things (a universal in re). Realism regarding universals contrasts both with nominalism, which claims that a universal is only a common name, and with conceptualism, which claims that a universal is concept produced by the mind. See entries for different kinds of realism, such as naive realism, direct realism, critical realism, moral realism, legal realism, mathematical realism, and quasi-realism. “Realism is most compelling when we are forced to recognize the existence of something which we cannot describe or know fully, because it lies beyond the reach of language, proof, evidence, or empirical understanding.” T. Nagel, The View from Nowhere. reason: an ability to move from the truth of some beliefs to the truth of others. Some philosophers consider this capacity to be more or less sufficient to determine a single correct and systematic account of reality, while others argue that such an account, if possible at all, must be based primarily upon experience. Kant, following Aristotle, saw reason divided into two parts, theoretical and practical – the latter issuing in actions rather than beliefs – but held that at a deep level the two capacities were the same. Hegel saw reason and much else altering at different stages of historical development. Hume restricted practical reason to finding means to obtain the ends set out by the passions, but others have rejected the means–ends account. Reason enters the account of institutions through models of the interaction of the choices of individuals and through the direct assessment of practices and societies. “Reason is the faculty of the derivation of the particular from the universal or cognition a priori.” Kant, Lectures on Logic. reality: a term that is frequently used, but is ambiguous. Sometimes it means what there is in contrast to appearance. One aspect of the realism and anti-realism debate concerns how much we can count as reality. Reality is a synonym for the world or the sum total of all that there is. In this sense, Wittgenstein’s claim that the world is a world of facts, not of things, concerns the logical structure of reality. Some philosophers distinguish between objective reality, to which our language and perception refer, and formal reality, which is the mode of our language or thought. Sometimes reality is used for objective existence that is independent of our consciousness and will. The question of reality arises also in a wide variety of realist doctrines. “It will be enough, for our purposes, to define ‘reality’ as a quality appertaining to phenomena that we recognise as having a being independent of our own volition (we cannot ‘wish them away’).” Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality reason and understanding, German vernunft, reason; verstand, understanding, associated with to stand] The distinction between reason and understanding was first discussed in Kant’s philosophy. Kant claimed that understanding applies its own categories to experience and generates scientific knowledge, while reason moves from judgment to judgment and seeks to go beyond the limits of experience. Reason tries to apprehend the unconditional, but ends with antinomies, in which reason falls into conflict with itself. Hegel offered a different account of the distinction. He considered understanding to be a fixed or mechanical way of thinking, which produces clear analysis and is in general the first stage of logic and science. But understanding isolates things from one another and is partial, finite, and without fluidity. Reason stands in contrast to the absolute fixation of the understanding. It is associated with inference and argument and tries to discover connections among truths. Reason has two forms. Negative reason uncovers and collapses the contradictions implicit in the abstractions of understanding. Positive reason draws positive conclusions from the work of negative reason. The final purpose of reason is to resolve all conflicts and to grasp totality. For Hegel, reason and understanding are immanent in the absolute idea and govern its processes and hierarchies. Human reason and understanding can be genuine only by conforming to this inherent and objective reason and understanding. “The abstract thinking of understanding is so far from being either ultimate or stable, that it shows a perpetual tendency to work its own dissolution and swing round into its opposite. Reasonableness, on the contrary, just consists in embracing within itself these opposites as unsubstantial elements.” Hegel, Logic reason/cause Philosophy of action When a person performs an act, it is appropriate to seek an explanation or justification for it in terms of some reason. In the philosophy of action, this raises questions of continuing dispute whether a reason is a cause and whether an explanation by reason is a causal explanation. Some philosophers do not believe that a reason is a cause, on the grounds that a reason bears an internal relation to the action it explains, and that the logical relation between reason and action differs from the external contingent relation between events or other items that are causally related. Others, represented by Davidson, reject the argument from internal relation: the descriptions “the cause of x” and “x” are also internally related without destroying the possibility of external contingent relations under different descriptions. Davidson also claims that many reasons are actually dispositional states such as wanting, believing, and intending. Such states are causally connected with the actions they explain. Accordingly, they provide grounds to reject a clear-cut distinction between reasons and causes. “Two ideas are built into the concept of acting on a reason (and hence, the concept of behaviour generally): the idea of cause and the idea of rationality. A reason is a rational cause.” Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events reasoning Logic, philosophy of mind, philosophy of action The cognitive process, close to inferring, of arguing and giving reasons for or against a judgment or an act. It contrasts to a direct appeal to experience or authority. Discursive reasoning proceeds from premises to a conclusion. It is either deductive (reasoning from the universal to the particular) or inductive (reasoning from the particular to the universal). Analogical reasoning argues by comparing similarities and dissimilarities of different things. If the conclusion of a piece of reasoning is about how things are, it is theoretical reasoning. If the conclusion is about what we ought to do, it is practical reasoning. Logic is the study of the rules of reasoning. If a piece of reasoning follows logical rules, it is good. Otherwise, it is bad or invalid in that the conclusion is not supported by the premises. Consistent reasoning is an essential feature of philosophizing. “Reasoning is a process in which the reasoner is conscious that a judgement, the conclusion, is determined by another judgement or judgements, the premises, according to a general habit of thought, which he may not be able precisely to formulate, but which he approaches as conclusive to true knowledge.” Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. 2 recognition statement Philosophy of language Dummett’s term for a statement of the form “this is a,” which identifies some concrete or ostensible object as the bearer of a proper name. Issuing such a statement depends on the recognition of the relevant criterion of identity. “In general, the sense of any proper name ‘a’ of an ostensible object (an object that can be pointed to) will consist in the criterion for the truth of what we may call ‘recognition statements’ of the form “that is a.” Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language recollection Ancient Greek philosophy, epistemology [Greek anamnesis] Plato separated the Forms from the particulars. How can we acquire knowledge of the Forms if they are outside the particulars? The theory of recollection is one of Plato’s answers to this question. The soul is eternal, and has seen the realm of Forms in heaven. But when the soul comes into a body, this knowledge is forgotten and needs to be recollected. Recollection is the process of learning, and because the particulars are imperfect copies of the Forms, they can only act as reminders. Since this doctrine depends on hypotheses about the immortality and transmigration of the soul that can not be proven, Plato adopted it only in a few earlier middle dialogues (Meno, Phaedo, Phaedrus) and later quietly dispensed with it. However, he continued to hold that universal knowledge can not come directly from experience and that there must be some inner functions that make knowledge possible. This belief was inherited and developed by the rationalists such as Descartes and Leibniz, as well as by Kant and Chomsky. “Seeking and learning are in fact nothing but recollection.” Plato, Meno rectificatory justice: Also called corrective justice or remedial justification. A kind of justice that Aristotle contrasted to distributive justice. Injustice can arise in transactions between persons if one party gains at the expense of another. Such transactions include both those that are voluntary, such as buying, selling, or lending, and those that are involuntary, such as stealing, bearing false witness, or assaulting. In rectificatory justice, a judge redresses or rectifies this injustice by awarding compensation to the injured party. The compensation is not a punishment, although in modern times injuries caused by involuntary transactions might be subject to criminal prosecution. According to Aristotle, a judge must establish an arithmetic proportion to achieve justice through rectification. The two parties, A and B, are originally equal. If A unjustly takes a part C from B, they become A+C and B−C respectively. The judge restores the balance by taking C from A and giving it back to B. “Rectificatory justice is what is intermediate between loss and profit.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics recursive definition Logic, philosophy of mathematics [from Latin recurrere, run back] Recursion is a procedure applied to a first instance and then applied to the result of the first application and so on for each successive application. Recursive definition, or definition by induction, defines the result of an operation for 0 and then defines the result of the operation for any number n+1 in terms of the result of the operation for n. For classes, a recursive definition first defines one sub-class of a term and then defines other sub-classes in accordance with their relations to the first sub-class. A typical example defines “Smith’s ancestors” as follows: (1) Smith’s parents are Smith’s ancestors and (2) any parents of Smith’s ancestors are Smith’s ancestors. In a recursive definition, the definiendum appears in a sense in the definiens, but this does not entail circularity. Recursive function theory, also called computability theory, is a branch of mathematical logic that studies functions in terms of recursive procedures. Recursive functions depend on recursive definitions. A recursively enumerable set has a recursive function that enumerates its members. This is equivalent to decidability or completeness. Hence, if a set of theorems, like those of predicate calculus, is not recursively enumerable it is not decidable. “The recursive definition comprises two sentential formulas; the first formula specifies the value at zero of the functor being defined (or the truth-value at zero of the predicate being defined), and the second formula specifies the value at x+1 in terms of the value at x.” Carnap, Introduction to Symbolic Logic and Its Applications red herring fallacy Logic A fallacy in which one ignores the original topic of an argument and subtly changes the subject, but still claims that the conclusion concerning the original subject is reached although the argument actually has little to do to the conclusion. The fallacy gets its name by analogy to the procedure of training hunting dogs to follow a scent. In this procedure a red herring with a particular scent is used to mislead the dog. This fallacy is similar to ignoratio elenchi and occurs when a reasoner is led off the track. “The red herring fallacy is committed when the arguer diverts the attention of the reader or listener by addressing a number of extraneous issues and ends by presuming that some conclusion has been established.” Hurley, Logic reductio ad absurdum Logic [Latin, reduction to absurdity, also called reductio ad impossible, reduction to the impossible] A form of argument which draws out conclusions or entailments from some statement or theory to show that these conclusions are absurd because, for example, they clash with unshakeable beliefs, involve an infinite regress, or are self-contradictory. Since the conclusions are absurd, the premises from which they are derived are to be rejected. According to Ryle, this argument is the paradigm of philosophical analysis, for philosophy does not test a theory or statement by observation or experiment, but by showing whether it creates paradoxes or gives rise to other logically intolerable results. A reductio ad absurdum can reveal that there is a misunderstanding about the logical form of the relevant propositions, and the theory or statement in question must be rejected or revised. Philosophers should work back from these paradoxes to locate their sources, and find the true logical form of the statement or theory underlying the paradox. This argument can also be used to prove that a theory is true by arguing that its denial or negation will involve absurd consequences. “A pattern of argument which is proper and even proprietary to philosophy is the reductio ad absurdum. This argument moves by extracting contradictions or logical paradoxes from its material.” Ryle, Collected Papers reductio ad impossible, see reductio ad absurdum reductionism Philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, metaphysics, philosophy of science Also called reductivism. A position based on the assumption that apparently different kinds of entities or properties are identical and claiming that items of some types can be explained in terms of more fundamental types of entities or properties with which they are identical. Reductionism has different forms in different areas. In the philosophy of mind, behaviorism is reductionist through accounting for all mental phenomena in terms of behavior. The identity theory of mind explains mental phenomena in terms of typetype or token-token identities with states of the central nervous system. Reductionism can have linguistic versions, according to which predicates or sentences of different sorts are shown to be equivalent. In metaphysics, phenomenalism reduces sentences about physical objects to basic sentences about actual or possible immediate experiences. In philosophy of science, the program to establish the unity of science is based on the reductionist premise that the theories of one science can be systematically explained by the theories of another more basic science, or that the laws of complexes can be reduced to the laws of the parts of the complexes. “Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic . . . and truths which are synthetic . . . The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience.” Quine, From a Logical Point of View reductivism, see reductionism redundancy theory of truth Philosophy of language A theory claiming that the predicate “true” is redundant, for to say that it is true that P is equivalent to saying that P. The assertion that a sentence is true is precisely the same as the assertion of that sentence. For instance, “It is true that grass is green” amounts to: “Grass is green.” Hence, “is true” or “is false” are predicates that matter only stylistically and rhetorically, and can be eliminated without semantic loss. The concept of truth is useless in giving a theory of meaning. Truth is essentially a shallow concept. The problem of truth is nothing but a linguistic muddle. This theory was developed by philosophers such as Frege, Ramsey, Wittgenstein, Prior, Ayer, Mackie, and Grover. However, although the truth-predicate is redundant, there are still many philosophical problems about the nature of truth. Asking what makes “It is true that grass is green” true will lead to admitting an extra-linguistic reality. The truth-predicate enables us to move from talk about language to talk about the world. Hence, the redundancy theory does not cover all meanings of truth. Nevertheless, this theory of truth is also a starting-point for Tarski’s semantic theory of truth. “The forms ‘p’ and ‘It is true that p’ yield the same sense no matter what English sentence is substituted for ‘p’. This is appropriately referred to as ‘the redundancy theory of truth’.” Horwich, Truth re-embodiment, see disembodiment reference Philosophy of language, metaphysics The relation between a name or other referring expression and its referent, although sometimes the term is used for the referent itself. Philosophical problems arise over how expressions can point beyond themselves to their referents or be about something. Traditionally, a term is a referring expression if it picks out a particular object and thereby enables the sentence in which it occurs to be true or false. Frege’s distinction between sense and reference initiated the modern examination of reference. According to Frege, two terms having the same reference or extension can differ in sense or intension. Sense and reference are related for Frege because the reference of an expression is determined by its sense. A name picks out a referent that the rest of a sentence describes to provide a claim to knowledge. Russell rejected Frege’s distinction between sense and reference and replaced it by a single notion of “standing for” to explain reference. He distinguished sharply between logically proper names, which pick out objects of immediate experience, and definite descriptions. Definite descriptions are quantified expressions that can be intelligible even if they fail to pick out anything. Strawson argued that Russell’s account of definite descriptions wrongly conflates reference and assertion, leading to the mistaken claim that a sentence like “The present King of France is bald” upon analysis asserts that there is a present King of France and is therefore false. Strawson’s positive account depends on distinguishing sentences or expression, their use and their utterance. Donnellan criticizes both Russell and Strawson for ignoring a crucial distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions. A referential use picks out a particular individual even if the description is mistaken, whilst an attributive use fits whatever satisfies the description. The Fregean tradition regarding names and referents has been challenged by Kripke in Naming and Necessity. Krikpe accounts for names as rigid designators, that is, designators that apply to the same individual in every possible world in which that individual exists. He argues against the use of descriptions as the way to determine a relation between names and their referents. Our current descriptions might be mistaken and other things might satisfy correct descriptions. There are similar problems with natural kind terms, such as water or gold. Kripke ties reference to the essence of individuals or kinds, even if these essences are unknown to us, and to a causal account that fixes reference by providing a chain from an initial use to the present. This is sometimes called the causal theory of reference. “The reference of a proper name is the object itself which we designate by its means . . .” Frege, Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege referent, see reference referential contradiction, see referential tautology referential tautology Philosophy of language David Pears’s term in relation to the problem of whether “exists” is a predicate. If the subject term of a singular existential statement implies existence, then if the verb asserts existence, the resulting statement will be a referential tautology. If the statement denies existence, it is a referential contradiction. For example, in the statement “This room exists,” the subject “this room” implies that there is a room and adding “exists” reasserts the existence of the room. This is a tautology. The statement “This room does not exist” denies the existence of the room that is implied by the subject. This is a referential contradiction. Accordingly, “exists,” although it says something about the subject, is not a genuine predicate, because it adds nothing new, especially nothing that has not been implied by the subject. “So perhaps we could say that the thesis that existence is not a predicate at least means that the verb “to exist” produces referential tautologies and referential contradictions in this way.” Pears, in Strawson (ed.), Philosophical Logic referential theory of meaning Philosophy of language, metaphysics A theory that is based on the assumption that language is used to talk about things outside language and claims that the meaning of a word (except a syncategorematic word) is the object it denotes, and the meaning of a sentence is the proposition it expresses. Every meaningful expression has meaning because there is something that it refers to, designates, signifies, or denotes. It is a symbol that stands for something other than itself. The theory is also called the denotative theory of meaning. A naive version of this theory claims simply that the meaning of an expression is that to which the expression refers. But a sense-reference distinction shows that two expressions can have different meaning but the same referent. A more sophisticated version of this theory, such as that developed by Russell, claims that meaning is a referring or denoting relation between a term and the object it picks out. This theory is the most influential one in the modern discussion of meaning and reference, but it has been challenged because of its metaphysical requirement that there is something or other to which a word refers. Such a metaphysics is controversial, and furthermore not all meaningful expressions refer to something. “The referential theory [of meaning] identifies the meaning of an expression with that to which it refers or with the referential connection.” Alston, Philosophy of Language referentially opaque Philosophy of language, logic Quine’s term, in contrast to referentially transparent. If a context conforms to the principle of intersubstitutivity salva veritate, that is, if two terms that have the same reference, like “Shanghai” and “the largest city of China,” are interchangeable without changing the truth-value of the sentences formed by the terms and their context, then the context is referentially transparent or purely referential. For example, given the context “—is beautiful,” “Shanghai” and “The largest city of China” can be substituted for one another without changing the truth-value of the sentences. Hence “—is beautiful” is a referentially transparent context. However, if substituting co-referential terms for one another within a context can change the truth-value, the context is referentially opaque. Such opacity occurs in the contexts of quotation and propositional attitudes such as belief and modality. For example, “Tony believes that Shanghai is beautiful” need not have the same truth-value as “Tony believes that the largest city of China is beautiful” because Tony might not know that Shanghai is the largest city in China. “What is important is to appreciate that the contexts ‘Necessarily . . .’ and ‘Possibly . . .’ are, like quotation and ‘is unaware that . . .’ and ‘believe that . . .’, referentially opaque.” Quine, From a Logical Point of View referentially transparent, see referentially opaque referring expression, see reference reflection (Hegel) Epistemology, philosophy of mind [German Nachdenken, literally after-think] An important term in Hegel’s philosophy for thinking over what is immediately present to one’s mind and producing thought about it. Hegel’s notion differs from the notion of reflection used by empiricist philosophers such as Locke, for whom reflection is limited to what is present to the mind. For Hegel, reflection starts from the immediately given, such as a perception or feeling, but proceeds to find behind the given what is essential and what is significant. Hence, to reflect involves thinking of the thinking. The main principles by which a mind can reflect what is essential include the principles of identity, difference, non-contradiction, and sufficient reason. However, reflection is partial and provides knowledge of the opposite, but not knowledge of origins. Reflection, for Hegel, is distinguished from speculation, which is holistic and can uncover the underlying unity of opposites. “Those who insist on this separation of religion from thinking usually have before their minds the sort of thought that may be styled after-thought. They mean ‘reflective’ thinking, which has to deal with thoughts as thoughts.” Hegel, Logic reflection (Locke) Epistemology, philosophy of mind For Locke, the source, along with sensation, of material for ideas and knowledge. Analogous to the perception of sensible objects, reflection is the perception of our own mental operations, the operations perceived and reflected on by our selves. Hence, Locke also called reflection inner sense. In today’s terminology, it is introspection. The difference between reflection and sensation arises mainly because reflection is not directly stimulated by objects external to us. Ideas provided by reflection include perceiving, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the various other actions of our own minds. Locke’s account of reflection has been criticized for misunderstanding the structure of mental acts and what it means for them to be available to consciousness. “By ‘reflection’ then, in the following part of this discourse, I would be understood to mean that notice which the mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of them, by reason whereof there come to be IDEAS of these operations in the understanding.” Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding reflective equilibrium Ethics A method of reconciling judgments and principles in moral philosophy through a two-way accommodation between them. There is always the possibility of a discrepancy between general principles and judgments about particular cases. A rational response to these differences requires a process of mutual adjustment of principles and judgments. We revise principles to adjust to judgments or alter judgments to conform to principles until an equilibrium is reached with principles and judgments fitting together or coinciding. The equilibrium is reflective because it yields insight into the relations between our judgments and principles and into their rational grounds. The equilibrium is temporary and can be upset by further reflection or by new cases, but this difficulty also arises, although less transparently, if one tries to determine principles by other procedures. The term gained its currency from Rawls, who traced its origin to Goodman. “This state of affairs I refer to as reflective equilibrium. It is an equilibrium because at last our principles and judgements coincide; and it is reflective since we know to what principles our judgements conform and the premises of their derivation.” Rawls, A Theory of Justice reflective judgment, see Critique of Judgement reflexive Logic A relation is reflexive if and only if for all objects X, X can have the relation to itself (∀x) Rxx. For example, because X must be the same age as himself, “. . . the same age as . . .” is a reflexive relation. A relation is irreflexive if and only if for all objects X, it is not the case that X can have the relation to itself. For example, X can not be a father of himself. Hence “. . . is the father of . . .” is an irreflexive relation. A relation is non-reflexive if it is neither reflexive nor irreflexive. For example, regarding “. . . loves . . .,” we have no idea from the relation whether B loves B. Hence “. . . loves . . .” is a non-reflexive relation. “A relation is said to be reflexive if any individual a has that relation to itself if there is something b such that either Rab or Rba.” Copi, Symbolic Logic reformer’s paradox Ethics A paradox raised by moral conventionalism concerning reform. Imagine that a reformer sees that his fellow citizens are lazy, selfish, and leading meaningless lives. Because he believes that they are this way because of the morality they accept, he advocates the need to reform the existing morality. His motive is to elevate the moral consciousness of his fellow citizens. However, the reformer must begin his reforms in a world that he did not create, but which has shaped him. He is bound by the customs and conventions of the society in which he grew up. According to moral conventionalism, an act is morally right if and only if it conforms to the conventions of the society. Hence, if the reformer wants to change the conventions, he becomes immoral, yet if he keeps the conventions his fellows remain morally inadequate. The same problem applies to the reformer of the system of distribution. “Justice limits utility at exactly the point of the ‘reformer’s paradox’: Given an imperfect existing initial distribution, any redistribution in the interests of arriving, from the standpoint of justice, at a superior distribution runs headlong into the pattern of existing claims that cannot – in the interests of the very justice that provides the rationale for the entire enterprise – be brushed aside as an irrelevant obstacle.” Rescher, Distributive Justice refutation, see conjecture regularity theory of causation Metaphysics, epistemology The causal theory generally held by phenomenalism in order to reject common sense realism about the existence of material things with causal properties. The theory is a sense-data version of Hume’s theory of causation. It claims that when we say “A causes B,” the statement can be analyzed into sequences or correlations of sense-data. Since we observe that whenever A occurs, B occurs, and this succession is regular, we assert that this is a law. Beyond these sequences of sense-data, we have no reason to believe that the causes exert a compelling power or that there is a necessary but unobservable relation between cause and effect. The main difficulty is that it is hard to account for the fact that the causal regularity exists when unobserved by us without relying on a theoretical apparatus involving necessity. In order to account for this, phenomenalists usually appeal to the notion of possible sense-data. “Above all, the suggested analysis of unobserved causes, even granted the Regularity Theory of Causation, makes actual effects depend on cause whose existence is only possible.” Hirst, The Problem of Perception regulative principles, see constitutive principles Reichenbach, Hans (1891–1953) German-American philosopher of science, born in Hamburg, a leading logical positivist, taught at UCLA. Reichenbach developed the relative-frequency interpretation of probability and proposed a probability theory of meaning that holds that a proposition is meaningful if it is possible to determine its degree of probability. In the context of his probabilistic approach, he contributed important views to the justification of inductive inference, the theory of space and time, and the interpretation of quantum theory. Reichenbach’s major books include The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928), Theory of Probability (1935), Experience and Prediction (1938), and The Rise of Scientific Philosophy (1951). Reid, Thomas (1710–96) Scottish philosopher, born in Strachan, Kincardineshire, taught at Aberdeen and Glasgow, a critic of Hume and the leading figure of the Scottish school of common sense. Reid argued that common sense, which prevailed in daily life, should be the first principle of philosophy and the authority in matters of philosophical dispute. His account of perception argued for the role of innate principles in the transformation of sensations into beliefs about external objects. He held that the only things that exist are individuals and that Humean “impressions” and “ideas” are not our primary data. In ethics, he maintained that we can know objective moral truths through moral intuition, and his account of human freedom centered on an analysis of agent causation. In several respects, it is worth comparing Reid’s and Kant’s responses to Hume. Reid’s major books include An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764), Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), and Essays on the Active Power of Man (1788). reification, an alternative term for hypostatization reincarnation Philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind The belief that the soul is immortal and that after the death of one body a person’s life is reborn in another body. Death is thus merely the death of the body, and the soul can take residence in different bodies, either human or animal. In contemporary philosophy, reincarnation is not merely a topic of theology, but also an issue regarding personal identity. The problem concerns the conditions under which the reincarnated self would retain its former identity. If it does retain its identity, then according to what criterion of personal identity does it do so? If it does not, reincarnation does not seem to be a rebirth of the same life. Reincarnation is synonymous with transmigration or metempsychosis (from Greek meta, beyond + en, in + psyche, soul), the term used by Pythagoras. “The affirmation that there is life after death in another world or reincarnation on earth is widespread.” Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism reism Metaphysics A term introduced by the Polish philosopher Tadeusz Kotarbinski in 1929 for the position that only things exist. All statements about abstract objects can be reduced to the statements about things. The term “things” covers both organic and inorganic things. There are no objects other than things. Propositions which appear to imply the existence of abstract entities of one kind or another either can be rephrased without any loss of relevant content or must be rejected as false. Since the term “reism” is easily confused with “realism,” Kotarbinski proposed that it be replaced by “concretism.” Brentano was an earlier reist, for he claimed that only individuals (entia realia) exist and can be thought of, and that non-individuals (entia irrealia) such as possibilities, concepts, and propositions do not exist. Kotarbinski held an even more radical view. He proposed that an entity can be a thing if and only if it is extended in time and space. Accordingly, nothing other than material things exists. This position is in sharp contrast to Platonism, which allows the existence of abstract objects. To distinguish his position from that of Brentano, Kotarbinski calls his own doctrine somatism or pantosomatism (from Greek pantos, all + soma, body). “So much for the reduction of categories of objects to the category of things. The stand taken in favour of such a reduction might be called reism.” Kotarbinski, in McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano relation Metaphysics, logic Although Aristotle classifies relation as one of his ten basic categories of being, it is not until Leibniz that relations become a major focus of metaphysics. Leibniz puzzles over the nature and location of relations, since they can be identified with neither one of the related terms nor with the void between them. In addition, propositions of a relational form can not be reduced to those of single subject-predicate form. He claims that relations, in contrast to one-place properties, are unreal and hence declares that his basic entities, the monads, are windowless, with none of the features of one monad requiring a reference to other monads and their features. His view gives rise to many debates, one of which is whether relations are internal or external. Absolute idealism believes that all relations are internal, that is, part of the essential nature of the related terms. Russell rejects this thesis and claims that all relations are external, that is, accidental to the related terms. Modern formal semantics considers relations to be predicates of n-tuple individuals. A two-place predicate is a relation between two individuals, a three-place predicate is a relation among three individuals, and so on. The main kinds of relation include reflexive, symmetric, transitive, ordering, and equivalent relations. Modern mathematics takes relations as classes of ordered pairs. “Any entity which can occur in a complex, as ‘precedes’ occurs in ‘A precedes B’ will be called a relation.” Russell, Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. VII relation of ideas, see knowledge of relations of ideas relations of production Philosophy of social science, philosophy of history In Marxist philosophy, relations between productive forces and their owners, in which the owner has power to use the productive forces, and between owners and others in the society. The power of the owners implies the exclusion or alienation of others from employing the same productive forces. Hence, relations of production are basically ownership relations. According to Marx, property relations are a legal expression of relations of production. He did not give a formal definition of this term, and there is controversy about how to use his various remarks to formulate a coherent account by which relations of production are explained as a social factor distinct from any item of the superstructure. For Stalin, relations of production defined ownership relations, relations of persons in production, and relations of distribution. In Marxism, relations of production are called the form or base of all historical human society. They involve power rather then rights and hence are more basic than political and legal relations. Relations of production are related to the division of labor and are independent of the will of individuals. The totality of relations of production in a society forms its economic structure, also called its economic base, which is determined by productive forces but in turn determines the superstructure. The essential principle of the economic structure in a class society is the pattern of the ruling class, by which a small ruling class owns most of society’s means of production, while the majority owns few or none of the means of production. According to Marx, relations of production vary from age to age, and their development corresponds to the development of the productive forces from primitive communism to a slave-owning system, feudalism, and capitalism, and will proceed to communism. Communism, it is claimed, will abolish private ownership and eliminate the alienated nature implied in capitalist relations of production. To assess Marx’s concept of the relations of production it is necessary to assess the theoretical structure in which the concept plays a fundamental role. “In the social production of their lives men enter into relations that are specific, necessary and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a specific stage of development of their material productive forces.” Marx, Preface to the Critique of Political Economy relative identity Logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics The sentence “a is identical with b” is traditionally understood as equivalent to “a is the same as b.” Peter Geach calls this notion absolute identity, but claims that it is incomplete. He argues that “a is identical with b” means “a is the same x as b,” with “x” being an unstated kind term that is understood from the context of utterance. He calls this notion relative identity and believes that it fits into our ordinary use of natural language. On his view, all identity is relative to a kind, and two things can not be identical if there is not some kind term under which they both fall. Geach’s position is disputed by others, including David Wiggins, who in Sameness and Substance defends absolute identity based on Leibniz’s law. Some philosophers suggest that relative identity is a qualitative notion, while absolute identity is numerical identity. “Identity statements in natural language come in two syntactic varieties. Some are of the form ‘a is the same as b’ or ‘a is identical with b’. These are absolute identity statements. Others have the form ‘a is the same so-and-so as b’. These are relative identity statements.” N. Griffin, Relative Identity relative product Logic The combination of two relations. Suppose there is a relation R such that xRy, and a relation S such that ySz, then we can combine these two relations R and S (called relative multiplication) and get a relation between x and z. The obtained relation is called the relation product of R and S. Russell symbolizes it as R/S. “By the relative product of the relation R by the Relation S is meant that relation which exists between x and y if and only if there is a u such that x bears the relation R to u and u bears the relation S to y.” Carnap, Introduction to Symbolic Logic and its Applications relativity theory Philosophy of science, metaphysics, epistemology The special theory of relativity is a modern physical theory proposed by Einstein in 1905, according to which neither space nor time has an independent absolute value or existence but is each relative to the other. Thus, the classical view of space and time is replaced by a theory in which the two are aspects of the same underlying reality: space-time. The general theory of relativity extended the special theory from considering frameworks in uniform relative motion to one another to considering frameworks in arbitrary relative motion to one another. The general theory resulted from combining the principle of relativity, that all laws of nature must have the same form in any relatively moving frame of reference, with Mach’s principle, that the fundamental description of any realistic physical system must be closed. It replaced Newton’s theory of universal gravitation and is currently the accepted basis for the theory of gravitation. Relativity theory introduced a revolution in twentieth-century physics and greatly advanced our understanding of the structure of the universe. Its space-time theory gives rise to a variety of important methodological, metaphysical, and epistemological problems. “The theory of relativity takes the view that there are purely objective (non-relative) features of the world that are independent of any individual who might look in.” Sachs, Ideas of the Theory of Relativity relevance logic Logic, philosophy of language A non-classical formal logic that proposes that the premises and conclusion of a valid argument must be relevant to one another. The notion of relevance is defined as the sharing of a variable (that is content) and dependency. This suggests a new conception of entailment or deducibility, according to which q is deducible from p only if p is used in the derivation of q. If q is deducible from p in this sense, p relevantly implies q. This puts a restriction upon classical logic, in which a contradiction entails any statement whatsoever, so that (p ∧ ~p) implies q, no matter whether or not q has anything to do with p. The classical notion of implication leads to the paradoxes of material implication and of strict implication. The avoidance of these paradoxes of implication is one of the most important reasons for the development of relevance logic. Relevance logic was first established by Wilhelm Ackermann in a paper of 1956, and was developed by A. Anderson and N. Belnap. It has not been widely accepted or applied. “Someone who rejects the table as an account of the meaning of ‘if . . . then’ therefore owes us a new account of ‘if . . . then’ introduction, presumably involving a requirement that the antecedent be non-redundantly used in deriving the consequent. There is a branch of logic known as relevance logic which develops this approach.” Forbes, Modern Logic relevant implication, see relevance logic reliabilism Epistemology An externalist approach to epistemic justification with various forms. David Armstrong proposes that the truth of a justified belief is guaranteed by law-like connections in nature. The most influential version of reliabilism is called process reliabilism, claiming that a belief is justified if and only if it is produced by a reliable psychological process. In other words, a justified belief is one produced by an appropriate cognitive process, while an unjustified belief is produced by an inappropriate process. Such things as standard perception and good reasoning are reliable, while wishful thinking, emotional reaction, and guesswork are unreliable. The reliability of a cognitive process is linked to whether what is believed is true in the actual world. Hence knowledge is identified with true belief obtained as a result of law-like connection between us and the world. This form of reliabilism is associated with Alvin Goldman, and it has the advantage of connecting cognitive psychology with epistemology. It is open to counterexamples, for in some cases, such as the brain-in-a-vat case, beliefs thus formed are unjustified, but according to reliabilism they must be justified. “The theory of epistemic justification that has received the most attention recently is reliabilism. Roughly speaking, this is the view that epistemologically justified beliefs are the ones that result from belief-forming processes that reliably lead to true beliefs.” Feldman and Conee, “Evidentialism,” Philosophical Studies 48 religious experience Philosophy of religion The feeling of the power of mystery, awe, wonder, and fascination, generally occurring in a context of religious expectation, which is beyond ordinary rational explanation. Religious experience is claimed to be an inner self-attestation of supernatural reality. Theology claims that this sort of feeling is produced by the agency of God, and it generally describes this sort of experience as a sharing in eternal life or being in touch with the Holy, with a consequent sense of joyfulness. Various kinds of religious experience are recorded in the Bible. Many theologians and metaphysicians try to prove the existence of God by appeal to religious experience, although the changes brought about in us by such experience should perhaps be understood in terms of conversion rather than of rational persuasion. “We may now lay it down as certain that in the distinctively religious sphere of experience, many persons . . . possess the objects of their belief, not in the form of mere conceptions which their intellect accepts as true but rather in the form of quasi-realities directly apprehended.” W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience Religiousness A Philosophy of religion Kierkegaard distinguished three stages of existence: aesthetic, ethical, and religious. He further subdivided the religious stage into Religiousness A and Religiousness B. In Religiousness A, God is thought to be immanent, and the eternal truth to be rationally accessible. The transition from the ethical level to Religiousness A is marked by resignation, suffering, guilt, and humor. In this stage, conventional morality no longer appears as an adequate means of bringing the individual into harmony with the whole of existence. In seeking this harmony, the individual must have recourse to the Deity. Hence, a finite individual retains an essential relationship to the eternal. In Religiousness B, this relationship no longer holds. The individual ceases to believe that by virtue of some specific exercise of thought or action he is capable of realizing some latent kinship with the eternal. The individual tries to relate himself in time to the eternal in time, that is, to become the eternal itself. Religiousness B is Christianity, in which God is incarnated as a human being as an ethical example. This stage is to account for how to become a Christian. According to Kierkegaard, one can progress from overcoming objectivity, to achieving subjectivity (or truth) and on that basis to become a Christian through a leap of faith. “Religiousness A is the dialectic of inward deepening; it is the relation to an eternal happiness that is not conditioned by a something but is the dialectical inward deepening of the relation, consequently conditioned only by the inward deepening, which is dialectical.” Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. Religiousness B, see Religiousness A reluctant desire, see embraced desire Renaissance Philosophical method [from French, rebirth] Historians dispute the distinctive characteristics and limits of the period of the Renaissance. A narrow sense was formulated by the Swiss art historian Jacob Burckhardt, who used the term for the revival or rebirth of learning and arts initiated in Italian culture. In a wider sense, it concerns European history from the early fourteenth to the early seventeenth century, involving a disparagement of the Middle Ages, yet the chronological term is closely related to the development of culture and art. This period is also called the age of adventure, represented by voyages of exploration and the discovery of new lands. It witnessed the religious Reformation, sparked by Martin Luther and John Calvin. This period is admired because of the huge progress of science and technology, represented by the Copernican heliocentric theory. This period was also notable for its achievements in classical learning, the arts, and literature, which were products of its humanism. The humanist movement was stimulated by the discovery of large amounts of previously unknown literature from ancient Greece and Rome. Aristotelianism was still influential, but people read his work in Greek rather than in Latin translation. Platonism underwent a resurgence, especially in the Florentine school directed by Ficino, and Plato’s complete works were translated into Latin for the first time. Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism all exerted great influence. The revival of different schools of ancient philosophy created different schools in the humanist movement and became the major contents of Renaissance philosophy. The philosophy of nature also developed greatly in this period, and indeed philosophy at that time also covered many subjects that now belong to different areas of natural science. The major thinkers include Ficino, Pico, Nicholas of Cusa, Lorenzo Valla, Erasmus, More, Machiavelli, and Giordano Bruno. “By the ‘Renaissance’ I understand that period of Western European History which extends approximately from 1300 to 1600, without any representative theory of mind presupposition as to the characteristics or merits of that period, or of those periods preceding and following it.” Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources. representation Epistemology, philosophy of mind In general, an item in the mind, picture, model, copy, or other thing which stands for something else because of a likeness or on some other grounds. Kant distinguished between representation with consciousness and representation without consciousness. Under the heading of conscious representation, he placed all the elements of experience and knowledge. For Kant, representation is crucially involved in perception, which is divided into subjective perception or sensation and objective perception or cognition. The representations of cognition are further divided into intuitions and concepts, a duality that is fundamental to Kant’s philosophy through his claim that knowledge requires both kinds of representation through the application of concepts to intuitions. With the development of cognitive science, representation has become a prominent term in the philosophy of mind, but many philosophical problems relating to the notion of representation remain. “We have representations in us, and can become conscious of them. But however far this consciousness may extend, and however careful and accurate it may be, they still remain mere representations, that is, inner determinations of our mind in this or that relation of time.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason representational form Logic, philosophy of language [German Form der Darstellung] Wittgenstein’s term, also called form of representation. These forms enable us to describe or represent reality and are a necessary condition for understanding and truth. For Wittgenstein, representational forms are determined by grammar, which lays down rules or norms of description and guides us in making intelligible statements about the world. The necessity involved in using these forms is logically or grammatically based and can not be justified by the reality it represents. “A picture represents its subject from a position outside it. (Its standpoint is its representational form).” Wittgenstein, Tractatus representational theory, another expression for imitation theory representationalism Epistemology Also called the causal theory of perception, the representative theory of perception, or the two-world theory. A major theory of perception that contrasts with direct or naive realism and phenomenalism. While direct realism takes what we immediately perceive to be physical objects, representationalism claims that perception is the result of the operation of nerves and brain and that we are directly aware of subjective private sensations, that is, sense-data or ideas, which can not exist independent of perception. While phenomenalism holds that physical objects are constructions out of sense-data and can not exist independently, representationalism claims that sense-data are representations or symbolizations of the physical objects, which are inferred as the causes of the sense-data. Thus, physical objects exist in their own right, and we may indirectly know them through sense-data. Such a theory is scientifically inspired and is widely held by neurophysiologists. The main difficulty faced by the theory is that if private sensations are the only things to which we can have direct access, it is not clear how we can compare them with the features of the physical world that they are supposed to represent. This problem gives rise to skepticism about the external world and leads to phenomenalism. Nevertheless, the representative theory is perhaps the best available explanation of the uniformity of sequences of sensations. “Representationalism is the view that a percept is veridical only when it is caused by its correspondent object.” Danto, Analytical Philosophy of Action representative theory of mind Philosophy of mind A theory holding that propositional attitudes can be understood in terms of token mental representations. Although there are no general type correlations between propositional attitudes and physical properties, there are token correlations. An organism’s propositional attitude bears a functional relation to a mental representation that is a real and physically realized entity. Mental processes are causal sequences of token mental representations. The properties of a belief are explained in terms of the properties of its associated representations. The only properties of a representation that could influence its causal behavior are its syntactical properties. Hence, a representation’s syntactic properties must mirror its semantic properties in order to preserve the match between the semantic content of a belief and its causal role. For Fodor, the representational theory is the same thing as the language of thought hypothesis, but others argue that one can believe in the representational theory of mind without believing in the language of thought hypothesis. “What I am selling is the representational theory of mind . . . At the heart of the theory is the postulation of a language of thought: an infinite set of ‘mental representations’ which function both as the immediate objects of propositional attitudes and as the domains of mental processes.” Fodor, Psychosemantics representative theory of perception, another term for representationalism repression Philosophy of mind The term Freud used for the force or forces in the mind that are the causal factors of unconscious processes. Repression turns unacceptable or painful parts of reality or impulses away from consciousness and confines them to the unconscious system through a variety of mechanisms. According to Freud, the process of repression does not annihilate these ideas, but prevents them from becoming conscious. Repression is a species of psychic defense, and we can be aware of the repressive forces in the form of resistance, that is, the patient’s rejection of allegedly correct psychoanalytic interpretations. Sometimes “repression” is employed interchangeably with “suppression.” However, repression is claimed to be an instinctual and unconscious denial, rather than a voluntary or conscious restraint upon unwanted desires. Freud claims that repressed instincts can turn to creative forces in sublimation. The basic goal of psychoanalysis is to make those repressed impulses conscious both for therapeutic benefit and for intellectual insight. “The neuroses are the expressions of conflicts between the ego and such of the sexual impulses as seem to the ego incompatible with its integrity or with its ethical standards. Since these impulses are not ego-syntonic, the ego has repressed them: this is to say, it has withdrawn its interests from them and has shut them off from becoming conscious as well as from obtaining satisfaction by motor discharge.” Freud, Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 18 Republic, Gr. politeia, the public and political life of a community, Latin res publica, public business] The English translation of the title of Plato’s most important dialogue. The translation comes from the Latin res publica, which originally had the same meaning as politeia and only later came to be used for a particular form of constitution. For Plato, politeia was simply any constitution of a Greek polis (city-state), and Plato’s book is about the state and society. Politeia might better be translated as political system. In the Republic, Plato set up an ideal state and within that context examined many topics such as the theory of Forms, the role of art, the structure of society, the parts of the soul, the best sort of education, the nature of morality and religion, and the place of women in society. The Republic is one of the great books in human history and has inspired and perplexed generations of its readers. Many Western students began their philosophical education with the Republic. In its modern sense, a republic is a form a society governed by the people, protecting rights and promoting civic virtue. By allowing change of rulers within the constitution, a republic contrasts with both a hereditary monarchy and a dictatorship. “The Republic is the centre around which the other dialogues may be grouped; here philosophy reaches the highest point to which ancient thinkers ever attained.” Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato republicanism Political philosophy [from Latin res publica, public business] The theory of the institutionally organized realm of public affairs in a commonwealth or state in which the people or citizens have a decisive say in its organization and conduct. Republican theory and practice can be traced to the Roman republic and Renaissance Italian city-states. Traditionally, republics have linked citizenship to property, and citizens have tried to arrange government to avoid domination by one individual or group and to provide institutions that would protect liberty. Contemporary republicanism criticizes liberal democratic theory and society on the grounds of their juridical formalism, their emphasis on rights rather than on virtue and civic duty, and their failure to provide the protections that a commonwealth should offer its citizens. As part of its attack on liberal democracy, it controversially reinterpets modern political history as developing initially from republican thought before being subverted by a democratic revolution. “The opposition between liberalism and republicanism, which is a source of inspiration for the recent revival of the latter, is more an invention of this revival than ascertainable historical fact.” Haakonssen, “Republicanism,” in Goodin and Pettit (eds.), A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy res cogitans Metaphysics, philosophy of mind [Latin res, thing + cogitan, to think, thinking thing] Descartes’s term for thinking substance, in contrast to res extensa (Latin, extended thing), Descartes’s term for extended or corporeal substance. According to Descartes, I can doubt anything. But when I doubt, I am thinking, and as long as I am thinking, I exist. Thinking is inseparable from me. Thus I have a clear and distinct idea that I am a mind, or intelligence, and my nature is a thinking thing. On the other hand, I have also a clear idea of body as an extended and non-thinking thing. He concludes that res cogitans and res extensa are two independent entities. This dichotomy is the foundation of Descartes’s dualism. “For all that I am a thing that is real and which truly exists. But what kind of a thing? . . . A thinking thing (res cogitans).” Descartes, The Philosophical Writings res extensa, see res cogitans Rescher, Nicholas (1928– ) American pragmatic idealist epistemologist, logician, and philosopher of science, born in Hagen, Germany, Professor of Philosophy at University of Pittsburgh. Rescher argues for an idealism that is based on a coherence theory of truth and an objective pragmatism that is grounded in considerations of methodology and the long-term survival of theories. He has made strikingly original contributions over a wide range of topics. In some cases, such as the development of logics that tolerate inconsistency, he has opened up important new fields of enquiry. His major works include The Coherence Theory of Truth (1973), A Theory of Probability (1975), Induction (1980), Rationality (1988), and A System of Pragmatic Idealism (1992–3). research program Philosophy of science Lakatos’s term in the philosophy of science for a set of methodological rules for the conduct of research. These can be divided into two kinds: rules that prohibit certain kinds or methods of research, which are called the negative heuristic; and rules that advocate certain kinds of research, which are called the positive heuristic. Each research program has a hard core that is surrounded by a protective belt of auxiliary hypotheses. When the research program encounters problems or needs to be revised, scientists characteristically change some part of the protective belt rather than its core. This explains the continuity in the growth of science. This account of science is related to Popper’s falsificationism. Testing leads to the falsification of hard-core and auxiliary hypotheses, but we alter the auxiliary hypotheses in order to protect the hard core. A research program is the unit by which the nature and direction of scientific growth is analyzed. If a program can continue to anticipate and solve new problems and to determine new facts, it is progressive; and if it ceases to do this, it is degenerating. We can account for scientific progress in terms of the replacement of a degenerating program with a progressive one, although these are relative notions and some degenerating programs can become progressive. Such progress is not linear, but a complex process involving a proliferation of different theories at the same time. According to Lakatos, Newton’s gravitational theory serves as a classic example of a research program. “A research programme is successful if all this leads to a progressive problem shift; unsuccessful it is leads to a degenerating problem shift.” Lakatos, in Lakatos and Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge resemblance, nominalism theory of, see resemblance resemblance nominalism Metaphysics All things that fall under the same predicate resemble one another. Realists claim that they resemble one another because they are all instances of the same universal. According to resemblance nominalism or the theory of resemblance, however, the resemblance, instead of being derived from a universal, is itself ultimate or fundamental. The features by which things resemble one another have different degrees of intensity in different individuals. The common character of things falling under the same predicate can be analyzed simply in virtue of a resemblance among particulars. We might say that A has some property P if and only if A suitably resembles a paradigm case of F. But the paradigm F is another particular, and for F and A both to have P does not require the introduction of a universal. There need not be a universal “redness” for things to be red; all that is needed is a resemblance to, for example, a certain tomato. Resemblance nominalism can be traced back to Hume, and is articulated in detail by H. H. Price, Thinking and Experience and R. Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World. Wittgenstein’s notion of “family resemblance” can be seen as a variant of resemblance nominalism. Resemblance nominalism faces some major difficulties. First, resemblance itself might be a universal. Secondly, two things might need an element in common in order to resemble each other. Both criticisms attempt to introduce items of a sort which resemblance nominalism tried to banish. “Despite the many difficulties which can be raised against Resemblance Nominalism it is by far the most satisfactory version of Nominalism.” Armstrong, Nominalism and Realism. resentment: a frustrated emotion or attitude in which one, for example, feels offended, injured, oppressed, humiliated, or ignored in reaction to others or their actions. It is the emotion of victims toward their offenders. According to Nietzsche, resentment is related to revenge; as a mark of slave morality it is an essential feature of Judaeo-Christian morality. Rawls believes that resentment, in contrast to envy, is based on a sense of inequality and injustice. In “Freedom and Resentment,” Strawson examined situations in which we do or do not feel resentment toward others, to provide a new perspective on freedom and determinism. “Resentment, or what I have called resentment, is a reaction to injury or indifference.” Strawson, Freedom and Resentment resolution, see partition responsibility Ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law [from Latin respondo, I answer] The accountability of persons, primarily for actions and their consequences but sometimes for other items as well. A person who is held responsible or answerable for an action is subject to responses such as blame, praise, punishment, or reward on account of the action. One is legally responsible if one is subject to a legal obligation and is morally responsible if one is subject to a moral obligation. Because of the difference between law and morality, moral responsibility and legal responsibility do not always coincide. Normally, a person is responsible for an action because he does the action or brings it about either directly or indirectly. We are responsible for some, but not all, of the consequences of our actions. Not all responsibilities presuppose a causal link. We are responsible for some of our omissions, and moral luck also plays a role in ascribing responsibility to an agent. With important exceptions, the conditions of responsibility require that persons know what they are doing and that they have at least a certain degree of freedom to control the acts that they perform. Accordingly, freedom and responsibility are closely related, and responsibility is central to the question of freedom and determinism. The discussion of responsibility can be traced to Aristotle’s revenge consideration of voluntary and involuntary actions in the Nicomachean Ethics. It was carried forward through medieval discussions of human evil to investigations of action, deliberation, motivation, choice, intention, weakness of will, and diminished responsibility in contemporary ethics, political philosophy, and legal philosophy. “The central core of the concept of responsibility is that I can be asked the question, ‘why did you do it?’ and be obliged to give an answer.” Lucas, Responsibility retributive justice, see justice retroduction, another name for abduction retrospection Philosophy of mind, epistemology The mental process of looking back or recalling one’s own past items of consciousness or past actions, for example, for the purpose of finding patterns amongst them. Such a process need not be private. It is more or less the same process as discerning such patterns in the behavior of others. Retrospection is thus not as mysterious as introspection. Ryle, when attacking introspection, argues that since the operation of retrospection can provide whatever information we do have about our own mental states, we do not need to posit the existence of mysterious processes such as introspection and self-consciousness. “Part, then, of what people have in mind, when they speak familiarly of introspecting, is this authentic process of retrospection.” Ryle, The Concept of Mind revealed theology Philosophy of religion The positive justification of theistic beliefs from contents of some supernatural revelation accepted by faith. A revelation is mediated through a sacred book, through the words of a prophet, or through the authoritative teachings of a church. Revealed theology is also called supernatural theology. It contrasts with natural theology, which employs the standard norms of reasoning and empirical data in attempting to prove the existence of God. Revealed theology claims that to reason we need to have premises on the ground of which the reasoning proceeds. But the premises of reasoning can not be obtained through reasoning and can only be found through revelation. “In revealed theology . . . reason is confined to systematising and drawing conclusions from premises which natural reason cannot discover . . . They have to be learned through revelation alone and held on faith.” Penelhum, Problems of Religious Knowledge revelation Philosophy of religion In theology, the disclosure through the agency of God of fundamental truths that would be otherwise inaccessible to human beings. God is the agent who reveals, and human beings receive the revelation. While natural theology claims that human reason unaided by revelation can know God’s nature, revealed theology insists that the eternal knowledge about God can only be acquired through revelation. It is through revelation that human beings learn about the existence, attributes, and purposes of God, and about the moral and other directives that humans have to follow. The revelation can be through nature, visions, dreams, in God’s words and activity. Sometimes it needs to be communicated through prophets. It is claimed that in revelation the human being enters into a self-manifesting encounter with God. “We speak of revelation wherever the unconditional import of meaning breaks through the form of meaning. Faith is always based on revelation.” Tillich, What is Religion? revenge Ethics The deliberate infliction of a wrong in return for a wrong suffered by oneself, one’s family, or one’s friends. In ancient Greek, justice and revenge were closely associated, with dikaiosunê ( justice) also meaning a fair deal. The Old Testament suggested that we should exact an eye for an eye. But Socrates argued that returning evil for evil is morally wrong, and the New Testament also advocates forgiveness. Mainstream Western philosophers generally argue that while retribution is rational and justified, revenge should be rejected as an emotional indulgence in which an individual usurps the role of the law. However, it is unclear that we can draw a clear-cut distinction between retribution and revenge. “A man who has been injured by another and then revenges himself upon him is not authorised to act as he does. That is, he is not empowered by generally accepted rules, as a judge is empowered by the law to fix and enforce penalties.” Honderich, Punishment reverse discrimination Political philosophy A proposal or an actual policy in many Western countries that holds that members of oppressed social groups that have suffered from systematic discrimination in the past should receive preferential treatment to correct the consequences of that discrimination. On this view, we should deliberately make policies to grant such groups privileges in areas such as employment, education, health care, and housing. The policy aims to restore a fair balance in society and involves compensatory justice. However, opponents argue that this practice is unjust because reverse discrimination is still discriminatory. It does not conform to the principle of equal competition, but still treats people differently according to certain external features such as race or gender. Further, they reject the claim that injustice regarding an earlier generation justifies preferential treatment of a later generation. “We may begin by defining reverse discrimination as preferential treatment for minority-group members or women in job hiring, school admissions or training-program policies.” Goldman, Justice and Reverse Discrimination revisionary metaphysics, see metaphysics descriptive revisionism, see Marxism rhetoric Ancient Greek philosophy, logic, political philosophy [from Greek rhein, to flow and rhetor, orator] The art of making elegant speeches in order effectively to persuade or influence an audience. In contrast, grammar is the art of using language correctly. Rhetoric was one of the main subjects taught in ancient Athens to the youth who were enthusiastic about politics. Plato attacked rhetoric as an art that is interested in victory in debate by appeal to emotion rather than being interested in truth. Aristotle’s Rhetoric is a systematic examination of the argumentative form of rhetoric. This rendered rhetoric a part of logic in relation to dialectic and a suitable subject of philosophy. Rhetoric was one of the seven liberal arts in medieval universities. In the twentieth century, hermeneutics and postmodernism have led to a revival of interest in rhetoric. “Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.” Aristotle, Rhetoric Ricoeur, Paul (1913– ) French hermeneutic philosopher, born in Valence, Professor of Metaphysics, University of Paris IV and X and Professor, University of Chicago. Ricoeur developed his philosophical hermeneutics, dealing with structures of meaning and interpretation, after early existentialist and phenomenological studies. The displacement of meaning from the acts of Husserl’s Cartesian ego to diverse sources of meaning leads Ricoeur to relinquish the ideal of a single authoritative narrative interpretation or discourse. His major works include History and Truth (1955), The Symbolism of Evil (1960), The Conflict of Interpretations (1969), and Time and Narrative (1983–4). Right, L. rectus, straight, in contrast to Latin tortuos, twisted, wrong] As an adjective, “right,” like “good,” has a wide application. We may say “right road” or “right answer.” When it is applied to moral acts (the moral “right”), different moral theories, according to their understanding of morality, vary in their account of what a right act is. What is morally right is equivalent to what is moral, and a main aim of ethics is to find the right thing to do. The relation between the good and the right is complicated. Utilitarianism defines “good” in terms of utility, and then defines “right” as being that which maximizes the good. Deontology argues that the good consequences of an action do not guarantee that it is the right thing to do and holds that an action is right if one ought to do it or if it is a duty. According to virtue ethics, right action proceeds from the virtue of the agent. Intuitionism holds that the right, like the good, is a primitive unanalyzable concept. “Most of the words in any language have a certain amount of ambiguity; and there is special danger of ambiguity in the case of a word like ‘right’, which does not stand for anything we can point out to one another or apprehend by one of the senses.” Ross, The Right and the Good right (Kant) Ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law For Kant, right concerns the limitation of each person’s action so that it is compatible with the freedom of everyone else. Although he distinguished various kinds of rights, his primary distinction is between innate rights and acquired rights, roughly corresponding to the distinction between natural and statutory rights. Innate rights, also called internal properties, belong to everyone by nature, independent of any juridical acts. Acquired rights, also called external properties, are established by legal acts. The notion of innate right is the ultimate basis of moral rights. Kant held that there is only one innate right, namely the right to lawful freedom, which is based on the harmony of one’s freedom with the freedom of everyone else in accordance with universal law. Accordingly, human freedom is the supreme moral value. An action is right insofar as its freedom can subsist with the freedom of everyone. “Rights, considered as (moral) capacities to bind others, provide the lawful ground for binding others.” Kant, Metaphysics of Morals rights Ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law The idea that a person can have certain natural, inalienable, and indefeasible rights emerged in the seventeenth century and played a crucial role in modern bourgeois revolutions and in the production of such documents as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the American Bill of Rights. Rights are also a central ethical notion in contemporary moral theory. Many major arguments, especially those in applied ethics, are conducted in terms of rights and their violations. The chief characteristic of the rights approach to ethics is that it views questions from the point of view of victims or the oppressed, rather than from the perspective of those with power. The notion of rights has been subjected to much subtle analysis. The most influential framework of analysis is provided by the jurist W. N. Hohfeld, who classifies a fourfold distinction of rights: (1) as claim-rights, which are enforceable claims to someone’s action or inaction. If one has a right to X, then one can demand X as one’s due; (2) as privileges or liberties, which do not involve claims against others, but are simply an absence of an obligation on one’s part; (3) as normative power, that is, as a legal capacity for altering the juridical relations of another person; i.e. the power to make a will; (4) as immunities, which enable a person to be protected from the actions of another. Of these (1) is the dominant sense. This sense of rights pairs with the notion of obligation or of duty. If one has a right to have or to do X, then another person, or group of persons, has a correlative duty or obligation to respect this entitlement. Claim-rights can be sub-classed in many ways. One way is to divide them into personal rights, which one holds against determinate or special persons (for example, the right of the landlord to collect rent from his tenants), and in rem rights, which one holds against people generally (for example, the right not to be killed). Another way is to divide claim-rights into positive rights, which demand other persons’ positive actions, and negative rights, which merely require other persons’ non-action or forbearance. Negative rights can further be divided into active rights to be free from the interference of others and passive rights which are claims not to have certain things done to us. Rights are also categorized into natural rights, legal rights, moral rights, and human rights, all of which have separate entries. “We can locate the place of rights within the ethics of responsiveness to value, by noticing that (generally) a right is something for which one can demand or enforce compliance.” Nozick, Philosophical Explanations rights, absolute Ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law Absolute rights are those rights that are universal and inherent. They can not be overridden under any conceivable circumstances. They are imprescriptible, inalienable, and are not subject to any rational constraint. Persons possessing such a right are justified in demanding and exercising it no matter what kind of situation they are in, while other moral agents must respect it. Human rights are generally regarded as absolute rights. Absolute rights are contrasted to prima facie rights, which a person possesses with respect to a given circumstance. “For an absolute right is a right that human beings have qua human beings and not, as in the case of special rights, rights that they have only if certain conditions, which pertain to their social relations and the transactions in which they engage with one another, are satisfied.” Melden, Rights and Persons rights, animal Ethics A conception appearing in the animal liberation movement, and articulated by Tom Regan in The Case for Animal Rights. Animals are, according to him, subjects-of-a-life that have inherent value independent of their usefulness to others. They therefore have rights related to the protection of this value. These rights are not legal rights, such as the right to vote, but moral rights, to be respected as ends in themselves. However, Regan explains that when the rights to life of humans and animals conflict, human rights have a heavier claim than animal rights, for animals rights are prima facie rather than absolute rights and can be justifiably overridden under certain circumstances. The notion of animal rights is part of an attempt to base animal ethics on an objective ground rather than merely as an expression of human decency. If the extension of rights to animals is justified, hunting, trapping, indifference toward endangered animals, the use of animals in scientific experiments, and other human activities that treat animals merely as means for some human interests are all morally wrong. Yet it is much disputed whether animals have rights in a proper sense. Many philosophers argue that rights involve reciprocal relationships and moral autonomy, and that there is no reason to ascribe rights to animals. But this argument is challenged on the grounds that although infants and some afflicted adults lack these features, we generally accept that they have rights. “[A]nimals have certain basic moral rights including in particular the fundamental right to be treated with the respect that, as possessors of inherent value, they are due as a matter of strict justice.” Regan, The Case for Animal Rights rights, human Ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law A conception of the necessary conditions that constitute the full dignity of a human being and that societies have obligations to accord to persons. People possess these rights simply because they are people, regardless of characteristics such as their race, gender, social position, culture, or customs. All people everywhere have these rights. Hence, human rights are generally regarded as universal. According to Kant, the fundamental right of a human being is to be treated as an end in oneself, not merely as a means. An extensive list of the basic rights that a human being should have is proposed by the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and its core includes the recognized natural rights proposed by the eighteenth-century political philosophers, such as the right to life, to freedom of expression, and to property, and the four freedoms asserted in 1941 by F. D. Roosevelt as the war aims of the Allied nations: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of every person to worship God in his own way, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The conception of human rights presupposes a standard below which human beings lose their dignity, rendering their life intolerable. There are various theoretical debates surrounding this notion. The central point is to justify the universal and absolute existence of rights of this kind. For philosophers who accept the notion of absolute rights, human rights are a conception related to the notion of an inner person independent of social context. But cultural relativists claim that it is improper to apply a fixed set of rights to diverse cultures and traditions. Another issue is whether human rights may ever be violated. While many philosophers insist that these rights are supreme and can not be violated under any circumstances, others propose that they are prima facie rights and that sometimes a basic human right has to be sacrificed in a given context. “They are ‘human rights’ in that they are rights that all humans have as human agents . . . It is these rights that directly enter into the supreme principle of morality.” Gewirth, Reason and Morality rights, inalienable: The natural, innate rights, which can not be relinquished, forfeited, or waived under any circumstances and which can not be handed over or transferred to another person. Fundamental inalienable rights include the right to life and the right to liberty. These rights are essential for a human being as a human being. Inalienable rights in some cases can conflict with freedom and hence render many practical moral problems difficult to solve. For instance, if the right to life is inalienable, it must be immoral to permit voluntary euthanasia, although it should be permitted if we have an obligation to respect the will of the patient. “These rights are inalienable because, being necessary to all action, no agent could waive them or be deprived of them and still remain an agent.” Gewirth, Reason and Morality rights, legal: The rights that are ascribed by the laws of a society and that vary from society to society. Within the limit of legal rights, persons are free to do as they please. Correspondingly, the same legal system imposes a legal duty on others to act or to refrain from acting in some way regarding the things about which a person has legal rights. Those violating this duty are legally open to punishment. “To say that I have a legal right to do something is not to say I must do it. I am merely given a liberty to do so, if I wish.” Brandt, Ethical Theory rights, moral Ethics A moral right entitles a person to perform certain actions, especially those that are supported by sound or conclusive moral arguments. Although there can be substantial overlap, legal rights and moral rights are distinct. This difference allows moral rights to be a platform for criticizing the legal system. Generally, but not always, possession of a moral right entails that somebody else has a corresponding moral obligation or duty. Many legal positivists define moral rights as rights conforming to the standard regulations of society that are sanctioned by public opinion rather than by law. But this is problematic, for slavery in Rome was a standard practice, but we can at least argue that slaves have a moral right to freedom. “We can say, roughly, that to have a moral right to something is for someone else to be morally obligated (in the objective sense) to act or to refrain from acting in some way in respect to the thing to which I am said to have the right, if I want him to.” Brandt, Ethical Theory rights, prima facie Ethics A prima facie right is a right that a person has in given circumstances, in contrast to an absolute right, which is universal and inherent and can not be overridden in any situation. If there is no conflicting right, a prima facie right becomes an absolute right. However, it can be overridden in circumstances in which other moral rights have a stronger claim. An absolute right entails a correlative absolute obligation or duty on others to respect it, while a prima facie right entails only a correlative prima facie obligation or duty. Some philosophers argue that all rights are prima facie and that there are no absolute rights. “As in the case of duties one might wish to employ the expression ‘prima facie rights’ in order to speak about the rights a person may be said to have in the case in which it may not be right to exercise them or for others to accord them.” Melden, Rights and Persons rights thesis: A theory about the nature of law developed by Ronald Dworkin. He argues that law is not merely a body of rules laid down by statute, for there are many hard cases that can not be solved by the application of valid rules. In these cases, judges must be guided to their decisions by non-rule standards such as policies and principles. Dworkin distinguishes between an argument of principle, which seeks to solve hard cases by appeal to the rights an individual possesses, and an argument of policy, which seeks to settle hard cases by taking into consideration the good of the community. It is generally believed that arguments of policy dictate the solutions to hard cases, but in his rights thesis Dworkin argues that arguments of principle should govern these judicial decisions. Each person has an equal right to equal concern and respect. These rights originate from the need of members of society to protect certain interests that they collectively regard as valuable. These rights are political trumps that restrict society from interfering with individuals for the purpose of advancing social goods and should have a certain threshold weight against the consideration of the welfare of the community. The specification and guarantee of these rights is a fundamental requirement for justice in society. Dworkin thus rejects the basic assumption of legal positivism that there is a sharp distinction between law and morality. He also claims that judges are not lawmakers, for they need to find deeper moral principles embedded in written laws to solve hard cases. But Dworkin also concedes that the operation of certain rights may be restricted in situations where they conflict with certain major benefits that can be acquired for all the members of the society. It is highly controversial whether judges should ignore completely social or community goods. “The rights thesis . . . provides a more satisfactory explanation of how judges use precedent in hard cases than the explanation provided by any theory that gives a more prominent place to policy.” Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously rigid designator Logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics According to Kripke, proper names are rigid designators because they refer to the same individual in every possible world in which that individual exists. Natural kind terms, like “water” or “gold,” are rigid designators because they designate items with the same essential features across possible worlds. In contrast, accidental or non-rigid designators designate different things according to what satisfies their associated descriptions. A proper name, such as “Socrates,” simply designates a specific individual, and since it does not describe that individual, its designation is not in virtue of the individual satisfying a certain description, but simply because it is that individual. Whether or not the individual satisfies some list of commonly associated descriptions, the proper name will always designate that individual. The conception is devised to challenge the traditional theory of proper names, such as Russell’s view that a name designates a thing by describing properties usually attributed to it. “Let’s call something a rigid designator if in every possible world it designates the same object, a nonrigid or accidental designator if this is not the case.” Kripke, Name and Necessity role Philosophy of social science A basic term in the theory of social behavior and society. As a theatrical term, a role was originally related to persona, mask, and character, and was the prescribed pattern of behavior for an actor in a given part in a play. Later, the notion of a role was extended by analogy to a social position that carries with it a repertoire of expected behavioral regularities. These regularities are normative and reflect the demands of the society, and hence any person occupying a given role is required to conform to them. Sanctions may be used to discipline a person who fails to satisfy the rules or norms constituting or regulating his role. Roles typically belong to patterns of role relations that determine the structure of society or its component groups. Roles govern human interactions in social relations and can be conceived without reference to particular persons. Roles can be described in relation to things such as family, occupation, nationality, class-membership, gender, age, or religion. Since a person may assume a multitude of roles, it is inevitable that sometimes his different roles will conflict with one another. Such conflicts may pose serious moral problems, especially for theories that have no moral standpoint beyond the fulfillment of the duties attached to one’s roles. Roles must be flexible or open-textured to allow a society to cope with unexpected circumstances and to leave room for individuality. For these reasons, some theorists hold that however important roles are for understanding social action, the explanations offered by roles have limits. “Social roles . . . are bundles of expectations directed at the incumbents of positions in a given society.” Dahrendorf, Essays in the Theory of Society role-reversal test Ethics A thought experiment, involving an imaginative or hypothetical identification of oneself rule-following with others in making ethical decisions. It requires that one thinks oneself into someone else’s position and imagine how one would be affected if one were that person. Such a test is the basis for the universalizability of moral judgments, not only in the ethical positions of Kant and Hare, which give special emphasis to moral universality, but also generally. “In doing this, I apply a ‘role-reversal’, and think what I would want or prefer if I were in their positions.” B. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Rorty, Richard (1931– ) American neo-pragmatist philosopher, born in New York, Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University and University of Virginia, Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. Rorty seeks to replace a conception of philosophy that accords a privileged status to mind or language in formulating and solving timeless problems with a conception of philosophy as creative conversation that is nearer to the hermeneutics that emerged from the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida and the pragmatism of James and Dewey. His major works include The Linguistic Turn (1967), Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Consequences of Pragmatism (1982), Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), and Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (1991). Ross, Sir W(illiam) D(avid) (1877–1971) British moral philosopher and Aristotelian scholar, born in Thurso, Scotland, knighted in 1938. As a moral philosopher, Ross published The Right and the Good (1930) and Foundations of Ethics (1939). He developed the influential prima facie duty theory, according to which absolute duty does not exist and all duties are conditional. A prima facie duty becomes an actual duty only if there is not a stronger prima facie duty in the circumstance. Ross distinguished the right from the good by ascribing the right to acts and the good to motives. He claimed that the right and the good are objective qualities that are known intuitively. As an Aristotelian scholar, he was the editor and main translator of the Oxford Translations of Aristotle and contributed highly valuable commentaries to Aristotle’s major works. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–78) French political and social philosopher, born in Geneva. Rousseau used a version of social contract theory to explain the origin and formation of both human society and human individual selfunderstanding within society. He held that the original goodness of human beings in the state of nature has been both elevated and corrupted by society, with the cause of inequality traced to the establishment of private property. Yet humanity requires justice, morality, and reason. He maintained that political obligation is justified solely on the basis of the general will. He also held that the aim of education is to make children grow in accordance with nature by cultivating their heart rather than their reason. Rousseau’s political thought and subtle psychological insights profoundly influenced the French Revolution, and his Social Contract is a major source of both democratic thought and some strands of totalitarian thought. Rousseau’s major works include Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Humans (1755), Émile (1762), The Social Contract (1762), Confessions (1782–9) and the novel Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse. Royce, Josiah (1855–1916) American philosopher, born in Grass Valley, California. Royce’s philosophy, which he called “absolute pragmatism,” was a version of neo-Hegelian absolute idealism. He maintained that we should approach the problem of being by examining the process of knowing. The Absolute as the ultimate reality is an infinite and ordered fullness of experience for which all facts are subject to universal law. Royce also developed a theory of loyalty in ethics, according to which loyalty is the essence of all human virtue. Royce’s numerous works include The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885), The World and the Individual, 2 vols. (1899–1900), and The Philosophy of Loyalty (1908). rule-consequentialism, see act-consequentialism rule-following Philosophy of language An important notion in later Wittgenstein, rule-following is subject to different interpretations. Wittgenstein claims that language comprises language-games governed by sets of rules. Though we do not commonly think of rules when talking and can not usually specify rules governing our usage, rules exist which determine the conditions for the correct application of what we say. Wittgenstein does not offer a linguistic definition of what a rule is, but illustrates rules through many examples. Following a rule is not a matter of interpretation. The ability to understand existing rules rests upon a brute reaction to training, that is, on repetition. By this view, Wittgenstein is suggesting that the meaning of a term is its use. To mean something is to follow a definite rule, otherwise using words to say something would be to string words together aimlessly. On the other hand, rules do not carry their own interpretation, and “going on in the same way” is settled practically by the context in which rules are followed rather than by the rules themselves. Understanding is reacting correctly, on the basis of training, to the rule-following application of words. The notion of rule-following is also a major point in Wittgenstein’s private language argument. Since in a private language there is no way to distinguish between thinking that one is following a rule and actually following it, there is no language at all. “Following a rule is analogous to an order. We are trained to do so.” Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation rule of generalization, see generalization rule of law: a technical term, credited to A. V. Dicey’s An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, for a system in which the powers of government and of state officials are limited by law. The rule of law contrasts with despotic or arbitrary rule. Under the rule of law, political power is generally divided into several branches, such as the legislative, executive, and judicial, and its exercise in each branch is restrained in order to prevent it from being abused. The law lays down general standards of conduct, which are clear and are made known to all those to whom the law applies. The legislators themselves are subject to the law, which is reasonable and relatively stable. Civil liberty is guaranteed, and violations of legal rules are punished. The transference of political power is through fair elections. According to its proponents, the rule of law is a political ideal of liberalism and is an essential aspect of various forms of democracy. “In a purely formal sense, the ideal of the rule of law is none other than what I have just described: the ideal of laws clearly delimiting citizens’ duties and officials’ powers, under which every abusive exercise of public or private power against the legal liberty of any person is suppressed or penalised, and with no one going in peril of coercion for anything other than breach of a pre-announced law.” MacCormick, Legal Right and Social Democracy rule of quality Logic Two rules for categorical syllogisms that determine the valid inference of qualitative connections between premises and conclusion: (1) From two negative premises nothing can be inferred; (2) if one premise is negative, the conclusion must be negative; and to prove a negative conclusion, one of the premises must be negative. The first rule is sound because in the case where there are two negative premises, the middle term does not establish any connection between the major term and the minor term. Violation of this rule will lead to the fallacy of exclusive premises. The second rule is sound because one negative premise determines that the relation between the major term and the minor term must be exclusive. Violation of this rule will lead to the fallacy of drawing an affirmative conclusion from a negative premise. Only from two affirmative premises can one infer an affirmative conclusion. “[They] are called rules of quality because they refer to the ways in which the negative quality of one or both premises restricts the kinds of conclusions that validly may be inferred.” Copi, Introduction to Logic rule of recognition: Hart claimed that a developed legal system is a union of primary rules and secondary rules. Primary rules are rules of obligation which regulate conduct and impose duties, while secondary rules are power-conferring rules to regulate the identification, modification, and adjudication of primary rules. If a law had only primary rules, it would have three major defects: (1) uncertainty, because all rules are merely a set of separate standards with no common identification; (2) inflexibility in rule-changing; (3) inefficiency in the face of the complex social situations. Hence, a set of secondary rules must be introduced to remedy these defects, and this is the step from the pre-legal to the legal world. For improving the defect of uncertainty, we need to introduce a set of rules that stipulate some identifying marks and criteria of the validity of primary rules and that decide their scopes. These are called rules of recognition. For improving the defect of inflexibility, we need to introduce rules of change that allow individuals or groups to introduce new primary rules and to eliminate old ones. Finally, for improving the defect of inefficiency, we need to introduce rules of adjudication that enable individuals to determine when a primary rule has been broken. This conception of law has provoked vigorous discussion in the philosophy of law. In particular, rules of recognition have provided a focus for debate, for they provide a new ground for legal validity in place of Austin’s command of the sovereign. “The simplest form of remedy for the uncertainty of the regime of primary rules is the introduction of what we shall call a ‘rule of recognition’. This will specify some feature or features possession of which by a suggested rule is taken as a conclusive affirmative indication that it is a rule of the group to be supported by the social pressure it exerts.” Hart, The Concept of Law rule-skepticism, another expression for legal realism rule-utilitarianism Ethics, political philosophy In contrast with actutilitarianism, a version of utilitarianism in which general rules rather than acts are assessed for utility, thus shifting concern from individuals to practices and institutions. Acts are endorsed not in their own right, but because they accord with practices or institutions which meet the test of maximizing utility. The rules of rule-utilitarianism can be understood as possible (ideal) rules or actual (existing) rules. The rule-utilitarianism that considers possible rules is a position not far from deontology. According to this version, a moral action should follow a rule which, if generally followed, would have the maximum utility. The rule-utilitarianism that deals with actual and existing rules is developed by Toulmin and many others. According to this version, a moral action should be in accord with the existing moral code. This moral code yields greatest utility if it has general acceptance or universal compliance. The basic difficulty of rule-utilitarianism is that in many cases the rule it prescribes is not the most beneficial to obey on every given individual occasion. Rule-utilitarianism is thus inconsistent with the basic moral motivation of utilitarianism, namely, beneficence. “For rule-utilitarianism rules are morally binding because general adherence to them maximises, or would maximise, welfare, individual acts being right or wrong in virtue of their conformity to such rules.” Sprigge, The Rational Foundations of Ethics. Russell, Bertrand (1872–1970) British logician and philosopher, born in Ravenscroft, England, succeeded to an earldom in 1931, a founder of twentieth-century analytic philosophy. He contributed various significant theories to logic, philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind, although he often changed his views in his long philosophical career. He sought to derive pure mathematics from logical principles and was instrumental in developing symbolic logic. His discovery of “Russell’s paradox” undermined Frege’s logicist program, and his effort to solve this paradox led to the formulation of his theory of types. Russell’s logical atomism aimed to determine an ideal language with which reality would have an isomorphic structure, and claimed that all knowledge could be stated in terms of atomic sentences and their truth-functional compounds. His theory of definite descriptions showed how we could speak meaningfully of non-existent objects without committing ourselves to their existence. He drew the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Politically, Russell was a pacifist, and he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1952. Among Russell’s extensive writings are Principles of Mathematics (1903), Principia Mathematica (with Whitehead) (1910–13), Problems of Philosophy (1912), The Theory of Knowledge (1913), Our Knowledge of the External World (1914), The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918), Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), The Analysis of Mind (1921), The Analysis of Matter (1927), An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940), and Human Knowledge (1948). His intellectual autobiography, My Philosophical Development, was published in 1959. Russell’s paradox Logic A paradox regarding the membership of classes, formulated by Russell in The Principles of Mathematics (1903). Some classes or sets (for example the set of abstract objects) are members of themselves, while others (for example the set of cows) are not. Now consider the set that consists of all sets that are not members of themselves. Is this set a member of itself or not? If it is a member of itself, then it has the property that is shared by its members and is not a member of itself. If it is not a member of itself, then it qualifies for membership in the set and is a member of itself. Either way involves selfcontradiction. This paradox is considered as a prime example of the set-theoretical paradoxes like Cantor’s paradox. Frege took Russell’s paradox as a serious check on the development of any arithmetic system. It undermined many axioms of set theory, especially the axiom of comprehension, that for every property expressible in the notation of set theory, there is a set consisting of all and only those things that possess that property. Russell offered a formal solution for this paradox in his theory of types, and a philosophical solution in his vicious circle principle.“Russell’s paradox about classes, which he discovered in 1901, led to an enormous amount of work in the foundations of mathematics.”Sainsbury, Paradoxes Ryle, Gilbert (1900–76) British philosopher, born in Brighton, a leading figure of Oxford ordinary language philosophy. Ryle’s most influential book was The Concept of Mind (1949), in which he rejected Cartesian dualism as the dogma of “the ghost in the machine.” He argued that mental phenomena could be explained in terms of dispositions to certain characteristic performances. In his view, Cartesian dualism committed a category mistake, by describing the mind as belonging to the category of substance, rather than understanding the mental in terms of dispositions. Ryle also wrote many articles illustrating ways in which philosophical problems arise from conceptual confusions. sacred, see holy St Petersburg paradox Logic A paradox of probability theory. Imagine gambling on the toss of a coin. If heads appears first time, you win $1. If it does not appear until your second toss, you win $2. Your potential winnings double each time tails turns up and you do not win. Your gamble will stop only when heads appears. How much should you expect to win by gambling according to these simple rules and how much should you be willing to pay for a chance to play? The surprising answer, an infinite amount, is derived from the series of (1/2) + (2 × 1/4) + (4 × 1/8) . . . , which has an infinite sum. But this expected return seems unreasonable and has been used to argue against using infinite utilities in decision theory. The paradox is so called because it first appeared in a memoir by Daniel Bernouilli in the Commentarii of the St Petersburg Academy. “The St. Petersburg paradox arises out of a game in which Peter engages to pay Paul one shilling if a head appears at the first toss of a coin, two shillings if it does not appear until the second, and, in general, a r-1 shillings if no head appears until the rth toss.” Keynes, A Treatise of Probability salva veritate Logic [Latin, saving the truth] A term in logic that means “preserving without losing the truth-value,” in relation to the intersubstitutivity of co-referring expressions, that is, expressions having the same reference. For a wide range of contexts, if two expressions A and B have the same reference, then A can be substituted for B in a sentence in which B occurs without changing the truth-value of the sentence. Frege was concerned to develop an extensional logic. Accordingly atomic co-referring sentences can be substituted for one another in molecular sentences truth-functionally compounded out of them without changing the truth-values of the molecular sentences. This feature is related to the principle of substitutivity. However, intersubstitution salva veritate is not possible in other contexts, such as those involving propositional attitudes or modal terms, contexts which Quine calls referentially opaque. “A natural suggestion, deserving close examination, is that the synonymy of two linguistic forms consists simply in their interchangeability in all contexts without change of truth value – interchangeability, in Leibniz’s phrase, salva veritate.” Quine, From a Logical Point of View salvation Philosophy of religion In the New Testament, Jesus is regarded as the lord and savior Jesus Christ, and the purpose of the incarnation is claimed to be for our purpose. It is one of the basic teachings of Christianity that human beings are sinful, and hence something must be done to heal or put right our sinful lives. Jesus was sent by God as the savior of the world, to save people from their sins and to make the soul participate in all the glory of God. Christians believe that salvation can not be won merely by human efforts and requires grace. It is the essential object of hope. “For practical life at any rate, the chance of salvation is enough.” W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience sanctity of human life Ethics A claim originating in the Old Testament, Genesis 1:27: “God created man in his own image,” and claiming that human life is sacred and has a natural, inestimable, and transcendent worth or value. This value is equal for all of us and is independent of any other values that can be ascribed to individual persons in virtue of features such as their efforts, accomplishments or talents. It implies that we have an absolute duty to preserve and protect human life and that it is morally wrong to take human life as having merely instrumental value. The idea of the sanctity of life provides grounds for the right to life and, according to some philosophers and social theorists, renders practices such as capital punishment, euthanasia, and abortion indefensible, although it is debatable whether this principle has paramount validity. We can also ask whether the sanctity of human life implies that human life is superior to the lives of other species. “. . . the view that it is always wrong to take an innocent human life. We may call this the ‘sanctity of life’ view.” P. Singer, Animal Liberation Sandel, Michael (1953– ) American communtarian political philosopher, Professor of Government, Harvard University. Sandel helped to initiate the liberalism–communitarian debate with a rejection of the abstract individualism of liberal theory in favor of a conception of personal identity that is constituted by relations to a community. His work has led to discussion of the role of community in political theory and of the nature of the self in philosophy of mind and ethics. His main work is Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982). Santayana, George Madrid-born philosopher, poet, and novelist, taught at Harvard. Santayana’s first important philosophical writings were The Sense of Beauty (1896) and The Life of Reason, 5 vols. (1905– 6). He viewed aesthetics and philosophy in general as a psychological inquiry, and defined beauty as objectified pleasure. He also sought to trace the role of reason in the progress of human creativity. Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923) and Realms of Being, 4 vols. (1927– 40) mainly focused on ontology. He claimed that we have positive knowledge of essences, but maintained that the existence of objects could not be proved. Thus, he was both a Platonist and a skeptic. He held that through “animal faith” we believe what is necessary for survival. Sapir–Whorf hypothesis: Also called linguistic determinism, a principle of linguistic relativity developed by the linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. It claims that, in addition to being a technique of communication, language is even more significantly a device that gives its speakers habitual modes of analyzing experience into significant categories. Language functions more to define the speaker’s experiences than to report experience. The grammatical structure of the language we speak determines our way of understanding or thinking about the world. Consequently, metaphysics or ontology relies on grammar. Whorf attempted to prove this principle empirically by comparing modern European languages with the native languages of the American Indians. For example, he claimed that Hopi Indians do not have a notion of time, because their language lacks means of marking temporal distinctions. The thesis can be traced to Aristotle’s Categories, Vico’s New Science, and the philosophy of W. V. Humboldt. The thesis is controversial, and there are methodological disputes about what would count as evidence for or against it. “Sapir–Whorf hypothesis . . . claims that the form of our languages in some way determines the fundamental beliefs that we hold.” Bird, Philosophical Tasks Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905– 80) French existentialist philosopher, novelist, playwright, and biographer, born in Paris. Sartre’s primary concern was the existential situation of human individuals in a world of necessity. He maintained that tensions between facticity and freedom and between freedom and responsibility define our humanity. His claim that “existence precedes essence” implies that individual and particular human existence is given, but that human beings are always free to choose and invent their own natures. Consciousness, as what is not or nothing, is the source of activity in choosing and negating. In the end, one is radically responsible for what one chooses, including the background against which one makes one’s choice. If one regards oneself as merely a passive subject of outside influences and as a thing with a fixed nature instead of a being-for-itself, one falls into “bad faith.” Sartre developed a detailed phenomenological psychology and sought to defend Marxism in term of existential anthropology and psychoanalysis. His novels and plays earned him the 1964 Nobel Prize in literature, but he declined to accept it. Sartre’s principal philosophical writings include Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939), The Psychology of Imagination (1940), Being and Nothingness (1943), Existentialism and Humanism (1946), and Critique of Dialectical Reason, 2 vols. (1960, 1985). satisfaction Logic In a technical sense first used by Tarski in defining “truth,” a relation between an open sentence and ordered N-tuples of objects. Open sentences like Fx or Gx are neither true nor false. They are sentential functions rather than sentences because they contain free variables marking gaps into which suitable terms or expressions have to be substituted. If an open sentence is true of the objects that are designated by the expressions that are substituted for its variables, the objects satisfy the open sentence. “X taught Y who taught Z” is satisfied by (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle), for it is true that Socrates is the teacher of Plato, and that Plato is the teacher of Aristotle. An interpretation satisfies a formula if and only if that formula is true under that interpretation. On this basis, Tarski defined a sentence as true just in case it is satisfied by all members in an infinite sequence, and as false just in case it is satisfied by none. For this reason his semantic theory of truth is regarded as being a version of the correspondence theory of truth. “A function satisfies an unstructured n-place predicate with variables in its n places if the predicate is true of the entities (in order) that the function assigns to those variables.” Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation satisficing Philosophy of social science, philosophy of action, ethics A term introduced by the economist Herbert A. Simon for a model of rational choice that seeks to find a satisfactory solution rather than best solution to a problem. The model can also be conceived in terms of seeking a good enough outcome rather than the best outcome. In contrast, the maximizing/optimizing model of rationality seeks to achieve one’s greatest good. The notion has been borrowed by ethics and rational choice theory, especially to formulate versions of consequentialism. Accordingly, one should seek to achieve morally satisficing behavior because under many circumstances an optimal moral choice or action is too difficult to determine or to achieve. The actor is constrained not only by the external environment, but also by a limited access to information and by uncertainty about the value and probability of each of the alternative courses of action. Hence, each human actor is subject to the limits of his cognitive capacities. Positively, a satisficing choice represents a reasonable sense of when one has enough. It corresponds to the idea of moderation in Greek ethics. “Defenders of satisficing claim that it sometimes makes sense not to pursue one’s own greatest good or desire-fulfilment, but I think it can also be shown that it sometimes makes sense deliberately to reject which is better for oneself in favour of what is good and sufficient for one’s purposes.” Slote, Beyond Optimising saturated, see unsaturated Saussure, Ferdinand de (1857–1913) Swiss linguist, born in Geneva, founder of structural linguistics. In his main work, the posthumously published Course in General Linguistics (1916), Saussure distinguished between langue (language) and parole (speech) and claimed that language is a synchronic or static system. He maintained that linguists should saving the phenomena determine the nature of language and analyze the relations between elements that compose the structure of a given language. His work in linguistics exerted great influence upon French structuralist philosophy and modern semiology. saving the phenomena Ancient Greek philosophy, philosophical method, metaphysics A type of empirical methodology initiated by Aristotle. It requires that a scientific discipline should start from phenomena and then develop hypotheses to explain the ground of the phenomena, rather than being satisfied solely with discovering the nature of things. The term “phenomena” should be understood to include both observed facts and common and learned assumptions about a certain subject matter. The methodology may apply to both natural and social sciences. In Greek philosophy, the term also concerns the ground of the world of appearance in discussion developing from Parmenides’ metaphysical claim that only the One is real being and that there is no real motion. “Originally in Aristotle and his immediate successors the task is to give an account of phenomena in terms of basic physics which in turn must be constructed in such a way that the phenomena can be accounted for. Later on basic physics is taken for granted and phenomena must be explained in its terms. This is how the idea of saving the phenomena (rather than giving an account of them) arises.” Feyerabend, Problems of Empiricism saying and showing Philosophy of language, logic, metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of religion Wittgenstein’s distinction, also presented as a contrast between what can be said and what can be shown. Something can be said only if it could be passed on to somebody as a piece of information. To say something without knowing its truth conditions is not really saying in this sense. Anything that can be said at all can be said in a proposition. All factual propositions say something about the world, but all pseudopropositions, including logical, metaphysical, ethical, and religious propositions, attempt to say what can only be shown and are not really saying anything. Instead of specifying the precise meaning of “showing,” Wittgenstein makes a list of what can be shown but not said. The only common point linking them is negative, namely that they are things that can not be expressed in factual language. In his Tractatus Wittgenstein examines them one by one to see why they are excluded from factual language. “What can be shown, cannot be said.” Wittgenstein, Tractatus Scheler, Max (1874–1928) German philosopher, born in Munich, a leading phenomenologist, taught at Jena, Munich, and Cologne. Scheler’s major works include Formalism in Ethics and the Non-Formal Ethics of Value (1913–6) and Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge (1926). Scheler extended the phenomenological method to areas of ethics, axiology, religion, and anthropology. He claimed that values are objective and that the experience of a value is an intentional act. He defined a person as the concrete unity of acts. His works provided extensive analysis of moral feelings, such as sympathy, repentance, resentment, love, and joy. Schelling, Friedrich (1775–1854) German idealist philosopher, born in Leonberg. Schelling was the link between Fichte’s subjective idealism and Hegel’s absolute idealism and was regarded as the leading philosopher of romanticism. Schelling argued that the world of nature existed objectively rather than as a construction of the ego. Nature is an infinite process of unconscious selfdevelopment and is a system of opposed forces. The Absolute is an undifferentiated unity of subject and object. Art is the perfect union of freedom and necessity and of history and nature. Only in art can mind become fully aware of itself. Schelling later called his philosophy the system of identity, which contained his transcendental idealism and philosophy of nature. His major works include Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (1797), The System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), and Philosophical Investigations concerning the Nature of Human Freedom (1809). schema (Kant), see schematism schematism Epistemology, metaphysics An important section of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, dealing with a procedure of judgment that adapts the categories or pure concepts of understanding to experience. Kant held that schematism is necessary because the categories do not have their origin in experience. He argued that an application of the categories in experience is possible because each category has an empirical counterpart or schema. It is not an image, but a rule for production of images. Each schema is a transcendental determination in time. For example, the schema of substance is permanence of the real in time, and the schema of necessity is the existence of an object at all time. In a sense, a schema is just the category itself with the condition of temporality added. As universal and a priori, the schema is homogeneous with the category, but it is also homogeneous with appearance because it involves imagination, time, and the empirical representation of the manifold contained in time. With these characteristics, the schema can mediate between the concept and intuition, which are otherwise heterogeneous, and enable judgments to take place. Without the schema, the concepts are insignificant because only with the aid of schema can they be applied to phenomena. Some critics argue that the schematism restates rather than solves the problem of applying concepts, especially the categories. “This schematism of our understanding, in its application to appearances and their mere form, is an art concealed in the depths of the human soul, whose real modes of activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover, and to have open to our gaze.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. Schiller, F(erdinand) C(anning) S(cott) (1864– 1937) British pragmatist, born in Schleswig-Holstein, taught in Oxford. Schiller opposed the prevailing neo-Hegelian absolute idealism of his day. In virtue of his concern for the intentions, needs, and activities of individual human beings, he called his philosophy “humanism” or “voluntarism.” He was influenced by Protagoras’ maxim that man is the measure of all things, and denied the existence of an independent reality that is irrelevant to human experience and claimed that reality is of our own making. He also denied the existence of absolute truth and claimed that truth is merely the best solution available. Truth is useful, although not everything useful is true. He applied his humanism to logic and sought to replace formal logic with his “logic of application.” Schiller’s principal works are Humanism: Philosophical Essays (1903), Studies in Humanism (1907), and Formal Logic: A Scientific and Social Problem (1912). Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich (1759–1805) German philosopher of aesthetics, poet, and playwright, born in Marbach. Schiller maintained that art or beauty is an intermediary realm between the spheres of nature and freedom. Beauty is characterized as “freedom in appearance.” In human nature, there is an “aesthetic impulse,” which can reconcile and harmonize material and formal impulses. Aesthetic education should acknowledge the interests of the aesthetic impulse in order to achieve harmony and unity in an individual’s life and in society. Schiller’s most important philosophical books were the Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind (1794–5) and On the Sublime (1793–1801). Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1768–1834) German philosopher theologian and Platonic scholar, born in Breslau, founder of modern hermeneutics and modern Protestant theology. He claimed that religion is a feeling of absolute dependence upon the infinite that man experiences as a finite being. He held that Christianity should be understood in historical tradition and that in interpreting a written text, we should seek a psychological understanding of the mind of the author. Schleiermacher’s major works include On Religion (1799), Monologen (1800), Brief Outline of the Study of Religion (1811), and The Christian Faith (1821–2). Schlick, Moritz (1882–1936) German-Austrian physicist and logical positivist philosopher, born in Berlin, taught at University of Vienna, the founder of the Vienna Circle. Schlick’s main concern was to determine the criteria for scientific knowledge. He held that the task of philosophy is to analyze concepts, propositions, and methods of the special sciences and to clarify meanings. Traditional metaphysics is meaningless and must be demarcated from exact scientific knowledge. The propositions of logic and mathematics are analytic instead of synthetic a priori. In ethics Schlick rejected the idea of absolute value. In 1936, he was shot by a deranged student while on the way to a lecture. Schlick’s important works include Space and Time in Contemporary Physics (1917), General Theory of Knowledge (1918), and Problems of Ethics (1930). scholastic philosophy, see scholasticism scholasticism Philosophical method, logic, metaphysics, philosophy of religion Also called scholastic philosophy, the dominant philosophy in the medieval intellectual world. It started in the fifth century with the influential commentary of Aristotle’s logical works by Boethius, and lasted until the middle of the seventeenth century. The heyday of scholasticism was from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, when the universities of Paris and Oxford were founded and the Western philosophical tradition reproduced itself through reading and commenting upon the works of ancient authors, particularly Aristotle, whose works were translated into Latin in this period. The most celebrated exponent of scholastic philosophy, who was also the greatest commentator on Aristotle, was Thomas Aquinas. Other prominent scholastics included Abelard, Buridan, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Suárez. The major characteristic of scholasticism is the attempt to reconcile the conflict between reason and faith by rendering Greek thought, especially Aristotle’s doctrines, consistent with Christian theology, and so to employ philosophy in support of theology. The conjunction of faith and knowledge started with Boethius, and Ockham argued that the prospects of a marriage between them were not hopeful. For this reason, Ockham is said to be the last of the scholastics. Scholasticism was characterized by its disputation of contested points of detail. These formal disputes were conducted according to well-recognized rules derived from Aristotle’s logic. In this way it contributed greatly to logic. Scholasticism is so called because it was philosophy done in the universities (Greek schola, leisure, also the origin of the terms school and scholar), for only when one has leisure time can one learn and contemplate. Scholasticism has had a bad reputation since the Renaissance, and was the major target of attack for early modern philosophers, such as Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke, in their initiation of the modern study of philosophy and science. However, over the last century philosophers have renewed their appreciation of the contributions of scholasticism to logic, linguistics, and metaphysics. “What defined the great age of scholasticism? The fact that its leading minds, Thomas and Bonaventura, say, carried out that co-ordination between believing acceptance of revealed and traditional truth on the one hand and rational argumentation on the other hand with unfailing resoluteness – although they knew just where to draw the line between the claims of reason and the claims of faith.” Pieper, Scholasticism Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860) German philosopher, born in Danzig. Schopenhauer’s masterpiece was The World as Will and Idea (1818). Against Hegelian rationalism, he stressed the importance of unconscious rather than conscious mental processes and took the will to be the central concept of his philosophy. Creative will is the blind and non-rational force in both the world and human nature. Man might separate himself from the dominance of the will only in free aesthetic contemplation. Influenced by Indian Buddhism, Schopenhauer was pessimistic regarding human life. His voluntarism deeply influenced Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Freud. His other books include On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (1813), On the Will of Nature (1836), The Two Basic Problems of Ethics (1841), and Parega and Paralipomena (1851). Schrödinger’s cat Philosophy of science, logic, metaphysics Suppose that a cat is locked in a box with a bottle of poisonous gas that will break if a device connected to it registers that an atom in a radioactive substance in the box decays. The chance of decaying in the next hour is fifty-fifty. If the bottle breaks, the cat will be killed. According to quantum mechanics, the cat, gas, and device form a superposition of states that is indeterminate until a measurement or an observation is made. For this reason, the issue of the cat’s being alive or being dead in the box is indeterminate until we look inside the box. Although it sounds paradoxical, before we look it is not true that the cat is alive and it is not true that the cat is dead. This thought experiment, introduced in 1935 by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, indicates the difficulty in conceiving quantum indeterminacy in terms of daily language. “Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment did not show that quantum mechanics is logically false, but it did show that it is wildly counter-intuitive, perhaps to the point of being absurd.” Brown, The Laboratory of the Mind. “Science is inconceivable without determinism, but the latter is taken in a purely phenomenalist sense: in order to formulate any laws at all, we have to assume that identical conditions produce identical phenomena.” Kolakowski, The Alienation of Reason. Schutz, Alfred (1899–1959) Austrian phenomenological philosopher of social science, born in Vienna, Professor at the New School for Social Research. Schutz provided a phenomenological theoretical basis for his acceptance of Weber’s ideal types in sociological theory, but replaced the mental acts of Husserl’s transcendental subject as a source of meaning with an account involving the transcendental intersubjectivity of Husserl’s later philosophy. His main work is The Phenomenology of the Social World (1932). scientia media, see middle knowledge scientific determinism Philosophy of science The success of Newtonian physics led many scientists and philosophers to believe that there is a natural order governed by the laws of nature. Given the initial state of a system, we can determine any future state by applying the laws of nature and the information about the initial state. Phenomena are necessary outcomes of the operation of laws in the situations that produce them. The future occurrence of an event is predictable. Chance is a name for our ignorance of the laws of nature or of the antecedent conditions of the event. The association of determinism and scientific predictability was established by Laplace. Determinism was widely accepted as a fundamental principle of science and as the very essence of scientific understanding. The truth of science seemed to prove that the whole universe must indeed be a vast and intricate mechanism. In spite of its great prestige, scientific determinism was challenged by the theory of relativity, chaos theory, and quantum mechanics. As a result, the debate between determinism and indeterminism has generated major tensions in the philosophy of science. Traditionally, this debate has occurred mainly in physics, although biological determinists have gained support for the claim that the development of a person is determined by his genetic inheritance. scientific experience, see lived experience scientific image, see manifest image scientific method Philosophy of science A central concern of the philosophy of science. Various positions regarding method may be distinguished in terms of answers to the following questions: (1) How are scientific hypotheses formulated and how is scientific truth discovered? These questions focus on the nature of scientific reasoning, including the method of induction initiated by F. Bacon and elaborated by J. S. Mill. (2) How is knowledge accepted as being scientific? This problem has been the subject of intensive debate, especially since Popper’s criticism of verifiability and his proposal to use falsifiability as the criterion of demarcation between science and non-science. (3) How does science develop? Logical positivists attempted to establish a unified method for all sciences, but their program has not been universally accepted. Traditionally, the method of physics has been accepted as the paradigm of scientific method, although the development of biology has produced a rival paradigm. Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions challenged the picture of science as developing smoothly within the framework of a single methodology in which all theories are commensurable and scientific change is rational. Imre Lakatos understood the progress of science in terms of the relative success of progressive research programs in generating problems and their solutions. Some philosophers see science as a patchwork of different methods in which local successes do not depend on a coherent integrated system. “The practice of scientific method is the persistent critique of arguments, in the light of canons for judging the reliability of the procedures by which evidential data are obtained, and for assessing the probative force of the evidence on which conclusions are based.” E. Nagel, The Structure of Science scientific realism Philosophy of science, epistemology, metaphysics A position claiming that scientific postulates or theoretical entities, such as electrons and quarks, have real existence independent of our minds and that scientific universals are abstractions of the facts. Scientific realism represents the commonsensical view that there is a world that exists independent of our experiences, and holds that any scientific theory has ontological implications. Correct scientific theories describe and explain real features and objective structures of the external world. There is an intrinsic connection between how a theory depicts nature and its other features, including its power to explain. Scientific realism contrasts with many other positions in the philosophy of science, such as operationism or instrumentalism, which commonly claim that theoretical entities are merely fictions. “Scientific realism says that the entities, states and processes described by correct theories really do exist.” Hacking, Representing and Intervening scientism Epistemology The view that science is the only knowledge and that scientific methodology is the only proper method for obtaining knowledge. Everything should be understood and explained by the employment of scientific theories. Other fields of inquiry, including philosophy, art, history, religion, morality, and the social sciences, either are assimilated to science or are excluded as a source of knowledge. Scientism denies that any of these fields has a distinct methodology and in many versions rejects claims that there is aesthetic, moral, or religious knowledge. Philosophers who maintain that there is an autonomous field of humanistic knowledge to which scientific methodology is inapplicable reject scientism and often use the term pejoratively. “Scientism is actually a special form of idealism, for it puts one type of human understanding in charge of the universe and what can be said about it.” T. Nagel, The View from Nowhere scope Logic Scope is attributed to syntactical operators and affects the part of a sentence upon which the operator has immediate effect. An operator is an expression that alters the logical properties of another expression to which it is attached. In the expression “(A ∧ B) ⊃ C,” the scope of ∧ comprises “A” and “B.” In ordinary language, scope is often not clearly demarcated. Hence the same sentence might be interpreted in alternative ways, depending on how one understands the context in which the sentence occurs. This gives rise to structural ambiguities, such as de re/de dicto ambiguities. For example, “I shall go to London and race if the weather is good” means either “I shall go to London anyway, but race only when the weather is good” or “If the weather is not good, I will not go to London and race.” Arguments proceeding on the basis of this sort of ambiguity are said to commit the fallacy of scope. Artificial languages have been invented with the aim of preventing scope ambiguity. The scope of the quantifier is generally the whole formula. An operator attached to a sentence to produce a new sentence is a sentential operator and has the original sentence as its scope. Brackets are conventionally used to indicate the scope of the various operators. Russell’s theory of descriptions explicitly specifies the scope of a definite description. “The sentence to which an operator is attached is called a scope of the operator.” Quine, Word and Object Scotism Metaphysics, philosophy of religion, ethics A form of scholastic philosophy and theology developed by Duns Scotus and his followers, especially among the Franciscans. Scotism was accepted by the Catholic Church as authoritative in 1633, and was taught widely in the universities around the world from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth century. Scotism and Thomism are two main trends in scholasticism. Other famous Scotists include Francis Mayron, John de Bassolis, Peter of Aquila, and Luke Wadding, who in 1639 edited the first edition of the complete works of Scotus. Scotism accepted the Aristotelian view that metaphysics is concerned with being qua being and with various connected transcendental conceptions, rather than with the essence of material things, as Aquinas maintained. The purpose of metaphysics is to demonstrate God as infinite and as the First Being. In demonstrating the existence of God, Duns Scotus developed several arguments of Thomas Aquinas. God created the world ex nihilo, and all created things are finite and contingent. Other than the common nature shared by particular things, there is also an individual form (haecceitas) that is peculiar to each particular. This doctrine differs from the doctrine of Aristotle and Aquinas, who believed that in a composite of matter and form, matter is the principle of individuation and that among distinct entities, which can not be separated from one other, there is a formal distinction. Scotism opposed the Augustinian theory of divine illumination and claimed that being is the primary object of intellect. It also appealed to intellectual intuition in explaining our experience of God. In ethics, Duns Scotus attempted to reconcile the divine will with the rationality of moral law and claimed that human freedom lies in our ability to move from desire to justice. Scotism presented the most sophisticated metaphysics in later medieval philosophy and has been admired by Peirce and Heidegger. “If one looks on Scotism in its position as a stage in the development of medieval thought, it would be idle to deny that de facto it helped to stimulate the critical movement of the fourteenth century.” Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. II Scottish philosophy Epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of social science Education in Scotland has long placed great emphasis on the importance of philosophy. The earliest important Scottish philosophers were Duns Scotus and John Mair. The golden age of Scottish philosophy was the eighteenth century, which contained major figures such as Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson, and Dugald Stewart. These philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment were commonly opposed to the orthodox Calvinism that dominated Scottish church and society at that time. Their work helped to shape the European Enlightenment as a whole. Hutcheson’s account of moral sentiments, Hume’s skepticism, and Reid’s philosophy of common sense have all influenced the later development of philosophy. Smith’s philosophical work is valued as well as his foundation of modern economics in Wealth of Nations. Scottish philosophy has generally been empirical, anti-rationalistic, and closely connected with psychology, as it reflected the fact that in Scottish universities the study of philosophy traditionally included logic (or general philosophy), moral philosophy, psychology, and natural philosophy (or physics). “The philosophy of common sense became ‘the Scottish philosophy’ and schooled several generations of Scotsmen.” Grave, The Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense sea-battle: Aristotle’s example to illustrate the problem of future contingents in De Interpretatione ix. Either there will be or there will not be a sea-battle tomorrow; so the statement “There will be a sea-battle” is either true (and its negation false), or false (and its negation true). However, if the seabattle has not yet happened, how can we claim that a statement about it is true or false? If it is already true or already false, what will happen happens of necessity. Aristotle concluded that statements in the future tense, though potentially either true or false, are actually neither. There has been much discussion about whether Aristotle’s argument is sound and whether he pointed to a need to modify logic. Lukasiewicz developed Aristotle’s thoughts on the sea-battle as the basis for three-valued logic. “For example, it would be necessary that a seabattle should neither take place nor fail to take place tomorrow.” Aristotle, De Interpretatione Searle, J. R. (1932– ) American philosopher of mind and language, born in Denver, Colorado, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley. Searle has developed J. L. Austin’s theory of speech acts to provide an integrated theory of language and mind. His non-reductivist naturalism regarding the mind resists accounting for the mind in computational terms. In his influential Chinese room argument, he distinguishes between the syntactic capacities of computer programs and the syntactic and semantic capacities of human language users. His early discussion of deriving “ought” from “is” remains influential. His major works include Speech Acts (1969), Intentionality (1983), The Rediscovery of the Mind (1992), and The Construction of Social Reality (1995). secession Political philosophy The dismemberment of a state into two or more new sovereign states, typically in response to problems of national, religious, ethnic, or cultural conflict within the state. There are several different reasons for secessionist movements. For example, some attempt to restore a nation that was forcibly and unjustifiably annexed by a larger state, as in the case of some of the republics in the former Soviet Union. Some attempt to escape the consequences of discrimination and genocide, as in the formation of Israel. Although there are significant objections, many commentators argue that secession can be justified in these two cases. There have been attempts to justify other secessionist movements by distinct ethnic groups asserting a right to self-determination to protect their language, traditions, religion, culture, or nationality, or to avoid losing their majority in their own area through imposed population redistribution. It is unclear whether these reasons are morally conclusive in favor of secession. Self-determination is possible without full political independence and can not justify secessionist claims to territory or sovereignty. Secession on this basis would undermine the existence of any state containing groups distinguished in terms of ethnicity, language, religion, culture, or nationality and would lead to political fragmentation. As an alternative to secession, some political philosophers are exploring the possibilities of satisfying the legitimate demands of different groups within an altered conception of a sovereign state. “The problem of secession arises only in cases where an established state houses two or more groups with distinct and irreconcilable national identities.” Miller, On Nationality secondary matter, see primary matter secondary qualities, see primary and secondary qualities secondary rules, see rule of recognition second-level concept, see first-level concept second-level predicate, see first-level concept Secondness, see Firstness second-order logic, see first-order language second-order predicate, see predicate “seeing-in”: a term introduced by the British philosopher Richard Wollheim with regard to the nature of representation in art. There have been various attempts to understand the relation of representation. Different philosophers have claimed respectively that representation is an illusion; that it is the arousal of sensation; that it is a character of a symbol system satisfying certain formal requirements; that it is resemblance; or that it delivers the information found in what is represented. Wollheim finds that none of these accounts is satisfactory and instead argues that pictorial representation, at least, is best understood in terms of seeing in, according to which a representation of x is a configuration in which x could be seen. As one and the same simultaneous perceptual experience, seeing in contains two aspects in virtue of our psychological capacity both to attend to the marks on painted surface present to the eyes and to see in the figurative effects of those marks. “I shall simply offer, in a necessarily crude version, what seems to me the best available theory of representation . . . The theory is stated in terms of ‘seeing-in’. For at least central cases of representation, a necessary condition of R representing x is that R is a configuration in which something or other can be seen and furthermore one in which x can be seen.” Wollheim, The Mind and its Depths self: the subject or bearer of mental attributes such as experience, consciousness, thoughts, beliefs, emotions, intentions, and sensations. The self is the human agent who deliberates and initiates actions, and who bears responsibility for its action. It is the referent of the first-person pronoun. The self is sometimes considered to be the equivalent of the person, although a person is associated with the body and with public or social roles, while the self is more related to the inner part or aspect of a person. Sometimes, the self is identified as the pure I, ego, unity of consciousness, metaphysical subject, soul, or mind. The self is a unity that integrates all experiences, beliefs, and feelings of an individual and enables an individual to have identity as the same person at different times. The self is often taken to be the subject of self-consciousness, which includes itself or its states among the objects. The nature of the self has been a contentious issue in the history of philosophy, starting with the Greek injunction to know oneself. Many philosophers consider the self as an inner entity, but Hume objected to this, claiming that the self is nothing but a bundle of perceptions. Kant agreed that the self is not an object of experience, but offered a complex doctrine, with the self as unity of apperception grounding the possibility of experience and the noumenal self grounding freedom and morality. “It must be some one impression, that gives rise to every real idea. But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are supposed to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, throughout the whole course of our lives; since self is supposed to exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable.” Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature self-alienation, see alienation self-awareness, another expression for selfconsciousness self-consciousness Epistemology, philosophy of mind Also called self-awareness, including the distinctive properties of the self: first, the subject’s awareness of itself as a subject, expressed by the pronoun “I”; secondly, the awareness that one has consciousness, through experiencing the contents of one’s consciousness, such as sensations, thoughts, or feelings; and thirdly, the reflexivity of consciousness, which allows consciousness to be an object of knowledge. Different senses of self-consciousness raise various philosophical problems concerning the certainty and logical structure of our awareness of ourselves as an “I,” introspection, and the nature and character of self-knowledge. “The expression ‘self-consciousness’ can be respectably explained as ‘consciousness that such-and-such holds of oneself ’.” Anscombe, in Guttenplan (ed.), Mind and Language self-contradiction Logic A proposition that has the form P and not P or implies a proposition that form. A proposition is self-contradictory if it contains or implies its own negation and effectively asserts and denies the same thought. Such a proposition can not be true and must be false, because it involves self-refutation. Some self-refutation can be pragmatic, with the use of the proposition conflicting with its semantic content. Descartes claimed that the proposition “I am not a thinking being” is self-contradictory because saying “I am not a thinking being” shows that one is a thinking being. In this case, the content of the utterance does not imply its negation, but asserting the content ensures that the content is false. Selfcontradiction is a crucial objection to any mathematical or logical principle or axiom, and an axiomatic system that lacks self-contradiction meets the test of consistency. Paradoxes arise where apparently legitimate lines of reasoning end in self-contradiction. Philosophers are sometimes puzzled how one and the same proposition can contradict itself. The discussion of self-contradiction is related to the problem of self-deception, in which a person believes what he knows or believes to be false. “The philosophical critic does not always restrict himself to pointing out inconsistencies or to showing that a certain theory leads to contradictions; he frequently alleges that certain propositions – propositions, often enough, which have been put forward by his fellow philosophers – are selfcontradictory in themselves.” Passmore, Philosophical Reasoning self-control, Gr. enkratia, controlling or mastering oneself over irrational desires, as opposed to akrasia, incontinence or weakness of will, the lack of control] An ability enabling oneself to pursue what one believes to be right whilst resisting temptations to do something else. It is strength of will. In Plato’s tripartite division of soul, self-control means the mastery of reason over emotion and appetite. A self-controlled person can pursue greater and longer-term goals without being corrupted by immediate gratification, and can adhere to the principles he endorses in the face of temptation to deviate from them. Such a person, according to Plato, is a free man rather than a slave of his desires. Self-control is the capacity to overcome the influences of desires and differs from temperance, which involves not having excessive desires. “This is so when we describe it as calling for a kind of self-mastery, which consists in reason ruling over desires, a self-control which contrasts to being dominated by one’s appetites and passions.” Taylor, Sources of the Self self-deception: deliberate blindness to what is true or believing what one knows or believes to be false on the basis of a certain motivation. Sartre’s account of self-deception as bad faith (French mauvaise foi) is closely focused on his existentialist claim that we seek to evade our freedom by attempting to take on the character of a thing. He analyzes self-deception in terms of lying to oneself on the model of deceiving others, but this gives rise to the so-called paradox of self-deception. In deceiving another, the deceiver knows the truth and conceals it from the one to be deceived. But how can deception occur if the deceiver and the one to be deceived are the same? A person deceiving himself must already know the truth. Hence a self-deceiver knows that he is deceiving and this seems to rule him out as a victim of his deception. A successful self-deceiver would believe both p and not-p, but this seems to be impossible. Various proposals concerning the structure of the mind, the scope of the will, the nature of knowledge and belief and their logic have been made to avoid the paradox, but each proposed solution is open to dispute. The analysis of self-deception is closely connected with attempts to understand the problem of incontinence (Greek akrasia, lack of self-control) or weakness of will. The incontinent person does what he knows or believes to be wrong or fails to do what he knows or believes to be the best. “The paradox of self-deception was formulated in the following way: ‘how can the self-deceiver believe that something is not so and yet persuade himself that it is so’.” Pears, Motivated Irrationality self-determination Ethics, philosophy of action, political philosophy A moral characteristic by which a moral agent is the source or cause of his own actions. A self-determining agent can exercise rational will without being determined by anything else. Selfdetermination is viewed as synonymous with autonomy and opposed to the fatalism of determinism. In modern ethics, especially in Kant, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Hare, self-determining agency is the principle that is basic to our respect for persons. Self-determination has been viewed as a basic moral right of persons and as the basis for human freedom. In political theory, a right to self-determination allows a people to form and live under autonomous political institutions without undue outside interference. “The balance or see-saw between selfdetermination and external determination is the form in which moral experience presents itself.” Hampshire, Morality and Conflict self-evident Logic, philosophy of mathematics, epistemology That which is intuitively true, generally referring to the principles of logic and axioms of mathematics, whose truth can not be doubted and which do not require a proof. A proposition is self-evident if its truth can be derived from the meaning of the terms it includes, so that anyone who knows the meaning of the words knows that the proposition is true. Such a proposition must be analytic. Being selfevident is generally used as a synonym for a priori But the discovery of logical paradoxes shows that faith in self-evidence of logical and mathematical axioms is not secure. Self-evidence is not the same as being obvious, for a thing might be obvious, but not true. On the other hand, a truth can be self-evident without being immediately obvious. Reasoning might still be required in order to grasp it. “In calling anything self-evident we mean not that it is evident without need for understanding, but that we need consider nothing but the terms of the judgement, to see its necessity.” Joseph, An Introduction to Logic self-fulfillment Ethics Also called self-realization, fulfillment or actualization of one’s best capacities or potentialities. The capacity or potentiality must be defined to be good for a person as a rational being, and the fulfillment concerned must be linked with achievement. Self-fulfillment has been taken by many ethical systems to be the highest good, although these systems might differ over what is the best potentiality to realize. For Aristotle, the potentiality to realize is the human faculty of rationality, and in some texts he saw contemplation of eternal truth as the greatest happiness. Generally, the fulfillment or actualization of one’s best capacity is held to lead to a successful life and the achievement of a true or real self. “The goal of self-management is often called selffulfilment or self-actualisation.” Skinner, About Behaviourism self-identity, see personal identity self-interest Ethics, philosophy of action Interest in one’s own well-being or in the advantages that one can gain for oneself. According to psychological egoism, everyone’s actions are consciously or unconsciously motivated by the pursuit of self-interest. Even seemingly altruistic actions are held to be egoistic at their roots. Ethical egoism allows that actions can be motivated by factors other than self-interest, but advocates the pursuit of self-interest as morally leading to the best outcome. Because morality often seems to require sacrifice of one’s own interests, moralists advocating the pursuit of self-interest try to harmonize moral considerations with selfinterest. According to Adam Smith, the individual pursuit of self-interest promotes the common good through the mechanism of the invisible hand, which balances and reconciles interests in a more effective way than the commands of the state. Although extreme ethical egoism is widely rejected, many moral philosophers propose that we should pursue enlightened or rational self-interest, according to which morality, altruism, and benevolence are compatible with one’s deeper self-interest over a longer term. They claim that people will satisfy their own interests through seeking the best interest of others. “Since the time of Glaucon’s challenge to Socrates, moral philosophers have attempted to show it is in our rational self-interest to act morally.” Nozick, Philosophical Explanations self-intimation Epistemology The truth of a self-intimating statement entails that it is known by someone. If there are any true self-intimating statements, they could exist either without further implications or as the foundation of a more extensive system of knowledge. Some philosophers hold that statements about some of my own mental states, such as my pain, are self-intimating because their truth entails that I know them to be true. Self-intimation is therefore offered as one major ground for our alleged firstperson authority. “Philosophers have not distinguished carefully between incorrigibility and another supposed property of statements of a closely similar and related kind: self-intimation. By this I mean a statement’s truth entailing its being known.” Quinton, The Nature of Things self-love Ethics The desire to maximize one’s own wellbeing. Aristotle distinguished two types of self-love. The noble type seeks to satisfy the rational part of one’s soul by pursuing virtue. The base type seeks to satisfy the appetitive part of one’s soul. The British philosopher Joseph Butler also drew a distinction between two kinds of self-love. Cool self-love, which is long-term, deep-seated, and compatible with benevolent actions is contrasted with self-love as sensual selfishness. Rousseau distinguished between amour de soi and amour-propre, but both can be translated as self-love. Amour de soi is the desire of a person in the state of nature to preserve himself, while amour-propre presupposes a comparison between oneself and others in civil society. It aims to achieve superiority over others and is the source of our desires and motivations. “Conscience and self-love, if we understand our true happiness, always lead us the same way.” Butler, Fifteen Sermons self-ownership Ethics, political philosophy The central libertarian principle that each person is the rightful owner of his own person and powers. Each person is therefore free to use these powers as he wishes, as long as he does not direct them to harm others. Other individuals and groups can not restrict one’s freedom without one’s consent, and one may not use one’s powers to force anyone else to supply products or services. Self-ownership is moral sovereignty, similar to human autonomy. This idea is proposed by Nozick in his influential book, Anarchy, State and Utopia. It prohibits treating a person as a mere means rather than as a being of ultimate value, and also prohibits reducing a person, in any particular circumstance, to the condition of a slave. A consequence of this view is that the action of the state to redistribute wealth in favor of badly off people violates the rights of individuals over themselves and represents a form of partial enslavement. These views are controversial, and other philosophers seek to reject the notion of self-ownership or to show that it is compatible with policies excluded by Nozick’s argument. “The libertarian principle of self-ownership says that each person enjoys, over herself and her powers, full and exclusive rights of control and use, and therefore owes no service or product to anyone else that she has not contracted to supply.” self-realization, another expression for selffulfillment self-reference Logic The character of a sentence that is about itself, in crucial cases leading to paradox. For example, a person says, “I am lying.” If what he says is true, then he is lying and it is false. If what he says is false, then he is not lying and it is true. Russell devised the theory of types in order to rule out this kind of paradox. According to Russell’s theory, we can avoid such paradoxes if we distinguish between first-order sentences that are about objects and second-order sentences that are about first-order sentences. There have been other attempts to deal with this and other paradoxes of self-reference. “It is true that self-reference is a general feature of logically paradoxical utterances and if it is ruled out as senseless they cannot be formulated.” Quinton, The Nature of Things G. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality self-predication, see Third Man argument self-presenting Philosophy of mind A term introduced by Meinong for the capacity of mental states to present themselves directly to thought. Chisholm used this notion as a source of certainty. For him, a selfpresenting state is self-justifying. A proposition is self-presenting if it constitutes its own justification. Belief that one has certain first-person intentional mental states, such as believing, thinking, and feeling, is justified by the fact that to be in these states is to be aware of being in them. Hence these mental states are self-presenting. When a proposition such as “I am thinking” is true for a person S at time t, S is justified in believing it at t. This proposition is self-presenting because it is evident to S even though the only things that make the proposition evident to S are things that entail it. But it is a matter of controversy whether self-presenting or evidence is either necessary or sufficient for justification. “H is self-presenting for S at t = def h is true at t; and necessarily, if h is true at t, then h is evident for S at t.” Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge self-regarding: J. S. Mill drew a distinction between selfregarding actions, which involve only one’s own interests, and other-regarding actions, which affect the interests of other people or of the community. Self-regarding actions are private and should be immune to interference by society. Other-regarding actions, on the other hand, are the stuff of morality and of social regulation. There is also a distinction between self-regarding virtues, such as prudence, fortitude, elegance, and other-regarding virtues, such as generosity and consideration. Contemporary virtue ethics has criticized modern ethical theories for limiting their concern to other-regarding actions or virtues while ignoring self-regarding actions and virtues. The distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding actions or virtues is not always clear-cut, and some actions or virtues can be both self-regarding and other-regarding from different perspectives. “I am the last person to undervalue the selfregarding virtues; they are only second in importance, if even second, to the social.” Mill, On Liberty, in Robson (ed.), Collected Works, vol. XVIII Sellars, Wilfrid (1912–89) American philosopher, born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, taught at Minnesota, Yale, and Pittsburgh. Sellars’s papers, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” (1956) and “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man” (1960), are classics of contemporary philosophy. He rejected the fundamental empiricist claim that there is a sort of knowledge that is directly available to our consciousness as “the myth of the given.” He sought to give due weight philosophically to both the “manifest image” and the “scientific image” of ourselves and the world and brought Kantian, naturalist, and nominalist insights to bear on metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. His books include Science, Perception and Reality (1963), Philosophical Perspectives (1967), Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes (1968), Essays in Philosophy and Its History (1974), and Naturalism and Ontology (1980). His father Roy Wood Sellars (1880–1973) was a leading American realist philosopher. semantic ambiguity: If different senses or references are associated with a single word, it can be unclear in a given context which is meant. If ambiguity of this sort arises from the multiplicity of senses of a word, it is called lexical or semantic ambiguity. For example, the statement “I will wait for you at the bank in an hour,” is ambiguous because the word “bank” can be understood either as a financial institution or as a place at the riverside. “A constituent C is semantically ambiguous just in case the set of readings assigned to C contains two or more members.” Katz, Semantic Theory semantic anti-realism, see anti-realism semantic ascent Philosophy of language A term introduced by Quine for the shift in which the language we use to refer to the world becomes something we talk about in its own right. It is a shift from questions about objects to questions about words. For example, we can move from the proposition “Shanghai is a city” to the proposition “ ‘Shanghai’ is a name ascribed to a city,” or from the proposition “Socrates is wise” to the proposition “ ‘Socrates is wise’ is true.” This is a change from what Carnap called the material mode of speech to the formal mode. The shift is an ascent because at the new level expressions deal with the semantic properties of words or sentences in a language and thus it becomes a higher metalanguage. This strategy tends to reduce questions of philosophy to questions about language. “The strategy of semantic ascent is that it carries the discussion into a domain where both parties are better agreed on the objects (viz. words) and on the main terms concerning them.” Quine, Word and Object semantic holism: also called meaning holism, the view that meaning is holistic rather than atomistic. The unit of meaning is not the word or the sentence, but rather the theory or language of which the word or sentence is a component. The meaning of an expression lies in its relations with other expressions of the language in which it is embedded. It is nonsense to speak of a linguistic component abstracted from the linguistic whole to which it belongs. Semantic holism might be divided into content holism, in which the meaning or content of a sentence is determined by the meanings of all the other sentences in the language, and translation holism, which claims that a translation of a sentence can preserve its meaning only if its associative or inferential relations with other sentences in the home language are preserved in the targeted language. The position is derived from epistemic holism, which claims that whole theories are units of confirmation. The leading advocates of semantic holism include Quine, Davidson, and Putnam. The view is highly controversial, in part because we use sentences not theories to say things. Semantic holism does not say much about the meaning of any particular sentence. “Semantic holism is a doctrine about the metaphysically necessary conditions for something to have meaning or content.” Fodor and Lepore, Holism semantic meaning, another term for descriptive meaning semantic paradox Logic, philosophy of language Semantic paradoxes are represented by the liar paradox, Berry’s paradox, Richard’s paradox, and Grelling’s paradox. These paradoxes can not be explained in logical terms alone. They contain some empirical reference to thought, language, or symbolism and arise as a result of some peculiarity of semantic concepts such as truth, falsity, and definability. Their occurrence shows that there must be flaws in our thought and language. Hence, semantic paradoxes are distinguished from logical paradoxes, which indicate that there must be something wrong with our logic and mathematics. Ramsey introduced the distinction between semantic and logical paradoxes, although he himself calls semantic paradoxes “epistemic paradoxes.” The general approach to avoiding semantic paradoxes requires the distinction between object language and metalanguage rather than appealing to Russell’s ramified theory of types. “It is our choice whether to keep our old familiar semantic concepts, and continue to live with the semantic paradoxes; or whether to search for a brave new world of stability, from which the savagery of contradiction is banished.” Read, Thinking about Logic semantic theory of truth Logic, philosophy of language A theory developed by Tarski and originally intended to solve semantic paradoxes, especially the liar paradox. It suggests that a definition of truth cannot be adequately provided in the object language, that is, in the language that describes the world and does not contain the truth-predicate. It has to be formulated in a metalanguage, that is, the language that talks about the object language. According to this theory, “ ‘P’ is true if and only if P,” where ‘P’ is the name of the sentence and P is the sentence itself. For example, “Snow is white” is true if and only if snow is white. A sentence is true in a given language if its elements are so combined as to state what is the case. The theory has two parts: adequacy conditions on definitions of truth and a definition of truth in terms of satisfaction. Tarski thought that this theory is suitable only for certain artificial and formal languages but not for natural languages. Donald Davidson has developed a truth-conditional approach to meaning on the basis of this theory by relating sentences in a particular language with their truth conditions. This theory has become very influential in contemporary philosophy. “Tarski’s so-called semantical theory of truth is essentially the view that ‘S is true’ assigns a property – truth – to the sentence named by ‘S’.” Danto, Analytical Philosophy of Knowledge semantically closed language: A language containing not only its expected stock of expressions, but also the names of these expressions and semantic terms like “true” that refer to the sentences of the language. According to Tarski, the source of the semantic paradoxes lies in the self-reference of the sentences expressing the paradoxes. He held that the possibility of such self-reference belongs to semantically closed languages. Such a language has a tacit assumption that all sentences that determine the use of “true” can be asserted in the language itself. To avoid this fault, Tarski distinguished between an object language and a metalanguage. “We have implicitly assumed that the language in which antinomy is constructed contains, in addition to its expressions, also the names of these expressions, as well as semantic terms such as the term ‘true’ referring to sentences of this language. A language with these properties will be called ‘semantically closed’.” Tarski, Logic, Semantics, and Metamathematics semantics Philosophy of language [from Greek sema, sign] A term that pertains to the meaning of a sign or set of symbols. Semantics is a discipline dealing with the meaning of linguistics signs or symbols, that is, the words, expressions, and sentences of a language. It belongs to semiotics, the study of signs, and contrasts with the other two branches of semiotics, that is, syntax or syntactics (the study of logical or grammatical form) and pragmatics (the study of the contribution of contextual factors to the meaning of what is said). In semantics, the language whose meaning is discussed is called the object language, while the language that is used to talk about the object language is the metalanguage. For example, in the sentence, “ ‘Snow is white’ is true,” “Snow is white” is in the object language, while the whole sentence is in the metalanguage. Formal semantics discusses the meaning of linguistic signs by appeal to formal and logic method. Its main representative is truth-conditional semantics, developed by Tarski and Davidson on the basis of Frege’s logic, which ascribes semantic values to the basic symbols of the language, takes them as elements of structure, and then derives the semantic values of complex expressions from these elements in accordance with formation rules. In truth-conditional semantics, the meaning of every sentence is determined by the truth-conditions of its component sentences. Semantics is closely related to the philosophy of language, for both employ the same central notions such as reference, predication, meaning, synonymy, and truth. These key notions and their relations form the subject-matter of meta-semantics, which can be treated as a part of the philosophy of language. “Semantics is concerned with linguistic expressions in two respects: reference and meaning.” Quine, From Stimulus to Science seminal reason, English translation of rationes seminales semiology, an alternative name for semiotics semiotics Philosophy of action [from Greek seme, sign] The general study of signs, also called theory of signs or, by the Swiss linguist Saussure, semiology. Charles Morris takes semiotics as a study of linguistic signs, that is, words, expressions, and sentences. In his Foundations of the Theory of Signs, he distinguishes three sub-disciplines: syntax, which deals with relations between linguistic signs or sentential structures; semantics, which deals with relations between linguistic signs and the objects they are talking about; and pragmatics, which deals with relations between linguistic signs and the ways they are used. More broadly, semiology can be viewed as a general inquiry into every sign, both verbal and non-verbal, both human and natural. The extension of “sign” is not confined to linguistic symbols. Peirce defined “sign” as “something that stands for something in some respect or capacity.” This broad sense is preferred by French structuralists. “The entire theory of an object language is called the semiotic of that language; this semiotic is formulated in the mental language.” Carnap, Introduction to Symbolic Logic and Its Applications Sen, Amartya (1933– ) Indian economist and theorist of social choice, Professor at Harvard University and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Sen’s theory of social choice has been influential in economics, ethics, and political philosophy. He rejects an account of welfare in terms of the satisfaction of individual preferences and employs his capability theory of well-being in the theory of economic and social development. His consequentialism in ethics and political philosophy is combined with a conception of rights and an empirically supported account of the good. His theories of poverty and famine have won widespread acclaim. His major works include Choice, Welfare and Measurement (1982). Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (c.2 bc–65 ad) Roman Stoic moral philosopher, orator, and tragic playwright, also called Seneca the Young, born in Cordoba, Spain. Seneca was the tutor and advisor of the Emperor Nero, who forced him to commit suicide. His major philosophical works are Letters to Lucilius and Physical Problems. Because Seneca considered true philosophy to be a means to improve the soul, his main works were focused on conduct and moral exhortation. According to his account of the will, everyone has the power to take the path of virtue if he wills to do so. He also applied Stoic individualism to questions of government. Sensum: sensa Epistemology A term (singular, sensum) introduced by Broad to refer to things that are directly perceived, such as color patches, sounds, shapes, smells, and tactile feelings As objects of perception, they are contrasted to material or physical objects. Sensa are usually taken to be private and known directly with a special certainty. Material objects are public and known indirectly with less certainty. The existence of sensa is mind-dependent. For Broad, they can not exist independent of acts of sensing. They are objective constituents of sensations and are a part of a sensible field. Many names have been given to what Broad calls sensa, the commonest being sensations and sense-data. Others terms include ideas of sense (Locke), sensible qualities (Berkeley), impressions (Hume) and sense-contents (Ayer). “Whenever I truly judge that X appears to me to have the sensible quality Q, what happens is that I am directly aware of a certain object Y, which (a) really does have the quality Q, and stands in some particularly intimate relation, yet to be determined, to X. Such objects as Y I am going to call sensa.” Broad, Scientific Thought sensation Epistemology [From Latin sensatus, gifted with sense] The mental state aroused in a subject in perceiving, a primitive level of mental existence. When we see something, visual sensations are produced in us; when we hear something, auditory sensations are produced. There are also sensations of taste, smell, and touch. Sensations arise not only through senses, but also through the body, such as the bodily sensations of cold, pain, and hunger. Sensations are generally distinguished from experiences and perceptions, but are part of these more complex states, which involve such additional capacities as judgment and inference and are subject to error. Sensations must be owned by some subject. However, it is generally believed that sensations are independent of the conceptual capacities of the subject and hence can also be possessed by animals and young children. A major question is whether sensations are purely private or can be known by others. This is related to the problem of private language and the problem of alleged first-person authority concerning accounts of what we experience. Another major problem concerns the relation between sensations and sense-data. Some philosophers identify them, leading to the question of whether what we perceive directly are sensations or external objects. Others distinguish them by claiming that while sensations are the subjective aspect of perception as the experience itself, sense-data are the objects of experience or perception. “Our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways wherein those objects do affect them; . . . This great source of most of the Ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call sensation.” Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding sensationalism Epistemology, philosophy of mind A view which claims that sensations are the only sources of knowledge; that all ideas can be traced to an origin in sensation; that all statements can be reduced to statements concerning the relations between sensations and that nothing can be said beyond sensations; and that sensations are also the ultimate criteria of verification of all knowledge. In all, sensationalism can be summarized into one sentence: “the world is my sensations.” This view may be traced to the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras, and is classically derived from the British empiricist tradition from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. In the twentieth century, its major representative is Ernst Mach. Sensationalism is opposed to rationalism and the theory of innate ideas. A sensationalist theory of mind claims that all mental events can be analyzed in terms of having of sensations Sensationalism also draws a distinction between perception and sensation, according to which perception, unlike sensation, involves judgment and is open to error. However, its notion of sensation is very ambiguous, including not only sensible qualities, bodily affections, but also desires, emotions, and feelings such as anger and jealousy. There are problems in considering these various items as belonging to the same kind, and it is difficult to see how our full range of empirical knowledge can be derived from the austere basis of sensation. “Sensationalism is the theory that all ideas or concepts are derived from sense-perception.” Pap, Elements of Analytic Philosophy sense and reference Logic, philosophy of language For Frege, every complete sign expresses a sense (German Sinn) and designates something we call its reference (German Bedeutung). Frege introduced this distinction by consideration of the statement “The morning star is identical with the evening star.” While the two phrases “the morning star” and “the evening star” designate the same object, the planet Venus, they have different senses. Hence, the sentence “the morning star is the morning star” provides nothing new, while the sentence “the morning star is the evening star” is informative. This distinction is closely related to the distinction between connotation and denotation and between intension and extension. It shows that the meaning or sense of an expression and its reference do not always vary together, a point having considerably influenced the subsequent development of analytic philosophy. For Frege, a basic sentence consists of a referring expression as subject and a predicate as function or concept. Frege called the sense or meaning of a sentence, which is composed of the senses of the components of the sentence, a thought and said that the reference of a sentence is its truth-value. Russell rejected Frege’s two basic notions of sense and reference and proposed to deal with meaning using a single basic notion of standing for. “A proper name (word, sign, sign combination, expression) expresses its sense, stands for or designates its reference. By means of a sign we express its sense and designate its reference.” Frege, “On Sense and Reference,” Philosophical Writings sense-contents Epistemology Ayer’s term, which he introduces to replace the notion of idea used by Locke and Berkeley. For Locke, ideas are related to a single unobservable underlying substratum, and Berkeley insists that they are necessarily mental. Arguing that both Locke and Berkeley were mistaken, Ayer considers that sense-contents are neutral, that is, neither physical nor mental, and are the sense-data provided by both outer and introspective sensations. According to Ayer’s phenomenalism, material things are constituted out of actual and possible occurrences of sense-contents and can be defined in terms of them. He also suggests that it is misleading to say that sense-contents exist, because this carries the danger of treating them as if they were material things. Instead, we should say that they occur. “We define sense-contents not as the object, but as a part of a sense-experience.” Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic sense-data, another term for sensa sense field, see visual field sense/force Philosophy of language An influential distinction in modern philosophical semantics. Each sentence can be divided into a descriptive content and a forceindicator. The sense or descriptive content is the state of affairs that the sentence describes and its meaning. It is the bearer of a truth-value. The force is the assertive, interrogative, or imperative or other way in which the content is conveyed. Force has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of a sentence. Sentences with the same sense can occur with different forces, and a force can be attached to any given sense. This distinction is generally believed to be based on Frege’s distinction between assertion ( judgment) and thought (content). On this basis, Austin developed his speech act theory, for it is the force that determines what speech act is performed by an utterance of a sentence. It is also the basis for the emotivist distinction between descriptive meaning and evaluative meaning. R. M. Hare’s distinction between phrastics and neustics corresponds to it as well. Dummett makes use of this distinction to criticize Wittgenstein’s claim that philosophy of language is an investigation of how language is used in particular language-games. The same linguistic expression certainly has different forces in different games, but that does not mean that the expression does not have a persistent sense. It is because of that sense that we can learn language. “Adopting Frege’s terminology, we may call this ingredient of meaning the sense of the expression; . . . Force, or, more properly, the indication of force, is the significance possessed by a linguistic element which serves to indicate which type of linguistic act is being performed.” Dummett, The Logical Basis of Metaphysics sense-impression, another term for sense-datum sense qualia Epistemology, metaphysics [from Latin qualia, singular quale, quality, nature, state] Both the qualities of sensations considered in abstraction, such as redness or sweetness, and the qualities sensed in association with specific objects, such as the redness of a red car or the sweetness of a sweet fruit. For many empiricists, the physical object is an idealization of sense qualia, from which the object directly derives its perceptual properties. In this latter sense, the concept of sense qualia is similar to that of sense-data. Attempts to explain relations between qualia and objects quickly become complex. “It is of course possible to designate a sense-quale and ask how it is related to the physical object to which it corresponds.” Ayer, Philosophy in the Twentieth Century senseless Logic, metaphysics, philosophy of language [German sinnlos] Senseless propositions are tautologies and contradictions. A tautology is unconditionally true (true whatever way the world is), and a contradiction is unconditionally false (false whatever way the world is). Senseless propositions should be distinguished from nonsense (German Unsinn). Like nonsensical propositions, senseless propositions say nothing about the world and can be neither confirmed nor rejected by how things are in the world. They do not give pictures of reality. But, unlike nonsensical propositions, they show the logical or structural properties of their components. Since they do not say truly or falsely that the world is such-and-such, as genuine contingent propositions do, they are senseless, but are not nonsense because they show the logical structure of language and the world and do not violate any principles of logical syntax. “Tautologies and contradictions are senseless.” Wittgenstein, Tractatus sensibilia: Russell’s term for entities which are exactly like sense-data, but with which one is not acquainted. Once sensibilia enter into the relation of acquaintance, they become sense-data. Russell uses the notion of sensibilia to replace the notion of matter or physical objects, which he construes as logical constructions out of sensibilia, although the existence of sensibilia themselves is a mere metaphysical hypothesis. “I shall give the name sensibilia to those objects which have the same metaphysical and physical status as sense-data, without necessarily being data to any mind.” Russell, Mysticism and Logic sensibilism, see sensibilia, phenomenalism sensibility Epistemology, philosophy of mind, metaphysics Kant took sensibility and understanding to be two fundamental and related capacities of the human mind. Objects are given to us through sensibility but thought by understanding. Sensibility is the capacity to have representations through being affected by objects, and operates in two ways. As outer sense, sensibility produces sensory states of things outside us; as inner sense, sensibility produces sensory states of our own representations. For Kant, sensibility is receptive but not passive, for there is a formal aspect as well as a material aspect. The forms of sensibility are space and time, which are a priori intuitions, not derived from the independent properties of objects as they are in themselves. Space and time set the order for matter, and hence matter received in sensibility is spatially and temporally organized. Kant intended to reconcile rationalism and empiricism by emphasizing both the rational character and the receptive character of sensibility. Sensibility must be supplemented by understanding if experience is to be possible. Traditional metaphysics is wrong because it used the concepts of understanding without any corresponding evidence of sensibility. “Sensibility is the faculty of intuition: (a) sense, faculty of intuition in the present; imagination, faculty of intuition in the absence of the object.” Kant, Lectures on Logic sensory illusion: the perception of external objects that leads to a false belief about the world. Different persons perceiving the same object will sometimes see it differently. In some cases this will result from different perspectives or conditions of perception but not produce false beliefs. The perceptions are sensory illusions if they produce or tend to produce false beliefs. The existence of sensory illusion is cited as a proof of the existence of sense-data that are different from physical objects. Illusions present a challenge for naive or direct realism, which holds that we perceive nothing but the physical object itself. “To suffer sensory illusion is to acquire a false belief or inclination to a false belief in particular propositions about the physical world by means of our senses.” D. Armstrong, Perception and the Physical World sentence: a grouping of words (symbols, signs) that normally can be used to say something in a natural or artificial language. A sentence must be well-formed grammatically, but not all sentences are meaningful. A sentence may have different meanings, and the same sentence may be used in a variety of ways. Thus, a sentence is distinguished in modern logic from a proposition or statement. A proposition or a statement is what is expressed by a sentence that asserts or denies something, for example, a sentence that states that some predicate holds of some subject or that certain items are related in a certain way. A proposition rather than a sentence is ordinarily recognized as the bearer of truth-value. Logical relations exist among propositions or statements, but not among sentences. “So it will not do to identify the statement either with the sentence or with the meaning of the sentence.” Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory sentence token Philosophy of language We can apply the token/ type distinction to sentences to distinguish between sentence tokens and sentence types. A sentence type is grammatically complete, while a sentence token is a concrete occurrence, that is, an actual inscription or utterance. “I am thirsty” is a sentence type. However, this sentence can be uttered by particular people on particular occasions. These particular utterances of the same sentence type are sentence tokens. This distinction is philosophically useful because it is believed that only sentence tokens can be either true or false. “A sentence token is just the physical sentence resulting from someone’s speaking or writing at a particular time; a sentence type, in contrast, is the abstract class of all such sentence utterances or inscriptions that, roughly speaking, have the same form.” Moser and Nat, Human Knowledge sentence type, see sentence token sentential calculus, another term for propositional logic sentential function Logic An expression containing one or more free variables, such as “X is wise.” This is also called an open sentence. Once the free variable is replaced by a constant, an actual or closed sentence is formed. For instance, if we substitute “Socrates” for X in the above sentential function, we get the closed sentence “Socrates is wise.” Obviously, various sentences of the same type can be formed from such a function. A sentential function can be quantified both existentially (“There is at least one X such that X is wise”) and universally (“For every X, X is wise”). A sentential function is sometimes distinguished from a propositional function, which is what a sentential function denotes, but more often these two expressions are treated as synonymous. “A sentential function, as this technical term is used by logicians, is an expression containing a variable such that a sentence which is either true or false results when a constant is substituted for the variable.” Pap, Elements of Analytic Philosophy Sentience: the capacity to experience pleasure and pain. Since the basic moral principle of utilitarianism is to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, Bentham suggests that the basis for moral consideration should be sentience rather than reason or language. In our moral considerations, we should ask whether a living entity has the ability to suffer. Since not only human beings but also animals are sentient, that is, have the ability to suffer, Peter Singer argues in his animal ethics that we should extend moral consideration to animals. The suffering of animals should be a matter of ethical concern no less than that of our fellow human beings. Pain is an evil. If an animal feels pain, it has its own interests, and its treatment deserves moral consideration. Hence, sentience becomes the passport to the moral community. “The humane moralists, for their part, insist upon sentience as the only relevant capacity a being need possess to enjoy full moral standing.” Callicott, In Defence of the Land Ethic sentiment: The immediate reactive feeling and sense about other people and their actions. According to Hutcheson, Hume, and Adam Smith, human sentiment is the ground of moral attitudes and moral actions. The rules of morality are formed because in a variety of instances one type of conduct constantly pleases in a certain manner, and because in a variety of instances another type of conduct constantly displeases in a certain manner. Sentiment is the basis of moral approval and disapproval. This is the notion that Hutcheson called moral sense, Hume called approbation or sympathy, and Adam Smith called sympathy. In holding this position they opposed the view that morality is a matter of reason or that moral action is determined by rational deliberation. Since their position grounds ethics on sentiment, it is also called sentimentalism. This is a type of non-cognitivism. While for Hutcheson moral sense is a single moral faculty, Smith held that there are a plurality of moral feelings. Accordingly Smith referred to this type of moral theory as the theory of sentiments. “All morality depends upon our sentiments; and when any action, or quality of the mind, pleases us after a certain manner, we say it is virtuous; and when the neglect, or non-performance of it, displeases us after a like manner, we say that we lie under an obligation to perform it.” Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature sentimentalism, see sentiment Separation, Greek chorismos; choristos, separable] For Plato, separation was a mark of division, severance, or disjunction. He held that Ideas or Forms are separated from the individuals participating in them. This separation is a symmetrical relationship: If Ideas are separated from individuals, individuals are separated from Ideas. Aristotle claimed that Socrates sought the definition of the universal but did not separate it from the individuals, while Plato did separate the universal from the individuals and as a consequence committed many errors in his Theory of Ideas, especially relating to the Third Man argument. In Aristotle’s own doctrine of substance in the Metaphysics, separation became a criterion for primary substance. Here, separation means independent existence and is an asymmetrical relationship. Separation applies to the relation between the category of substance and other categories. According to this relation, substance can exist separately from other categories, but other categories can not exist independent of substance. Separation also applies to the relations among form, matter, and the composite of form and matter, in which form satisfies the criterion of separation in the strongest sense and is therefore primary substance. “The separation is the cause of the objections that arise with regard to the ideas.” Aristotle, Metaphysics serial theory of the mind, see bundle theory of mind Set: A collection of distinct entities, classically determined by means of a property or principle that sharply distinguishes members from non-members. For many purposes, sets and classes are the same, but restrictions were introduced on what is allowed to be a class in order to avoid logical paradoxes. Classes with infinite members may not be treated as completed totalities. Not all classes are capable of being members of sets. There are ultimate classes that can not be members of a further class. However, set theory ignores these distinctions and covers all types of classes and sets. A fuzzy set does not have sharp boundaries between members and non-members and can allow different degrees of belonging to the set. There is disagreement between an account of classes and sets as real entities and the view that they are devices that lack ontological implications. “Basically, ‘set’ is simply a synonym of ‘class’ that happens to have more currency than ‘class’ in mathematical contexts.” Quine, Set Theory and its Logic set-theoretical paradox, another term for logical paradox set theory: Classically, a set or class is a collection of things taken as a whole, with a determining property that distinguishes the collection from things in other sets, although this condition is relaxed in the theory of fuzzy sets. A set can be divided into subsets as well as into members. Set theory is the study of relationships within a set and among sets and the nature of sets themselves. Its pioneer is Cantor, and other major contributors include Zermelo, Russell, Fraenkel, Gödel, Skolem, and von Neumann. Set theory is essential for mathematics, and many kinds of pure mathematics can be formulated within set theory. It is crucial for logical deduction. However, naive set theory often leads to paradoxes, such as Burali-Forti’s paradox, Cantor’s paradox and, most famously, Russell’s paradox. Russell sought to avoid these paradoxes by formulating an axiomatic set system in which sets are arranged in a hierarchy of types. Various axiomatic set systems have been proposed, but each has some difficulties. “Set theory is the mathematics of classes. Sets are classes.” Quine, Set Theory and its Logic seven deadly sins, see sin Sextus Empiricus (c.150–c.225) Greek skeptic and physician, active in Alexandria and Rome. Sextus Empiricus’ books, Outlines of Pyrrhonism and Against the Dogmatists, are the principal sources for our knowledge of Greek skepticism and the doctrines of many other Greek philosophical schools. In his own philosophy, he claimed that the only thing that we really aim at in life is the absence of pain and frustration. Since all ethical beliefs are dogmatic and diminish our happiness by disturbing inner tranquility, we should relinquish them. In epistemology, he argued that it is impossible to determine whether perceptual experience is accurate. sex, see gender sexism Ethics, political philosophy The attitude holding that one’s own sex is superior to the other and leading in practice to limited respect for the rights, needs, and values of the other sex. The term is analogical to racism, which regards one’s own race as superior to others. Both sexism and racism are thought to be major social evils. In contemporary environmental ethics, speciesism, the claim that the human species should dominate other species, is controversially held to be a third evil of this sort. Men are more likely than women to be called sexist because historically women have generally been dominated by men. A main aim of feminism is to criticize sexism by revealing its roots, showing the forms it takes in various areas, and suggesting ways of correcting its practices and ideology. Some feminist theorists claim that overcoming sexism will change both women and men and establish social practices that are free from male-dominated gender relations. “The choice can only be whether animals benefit from our practices or are harmed by them. This is why speciesism is falsely modelled on racism and sexism, which really are prejudices. To suppose that there is an ineliminable white or male understanding of the world, and to think that the only choice is whether blacks or women should benefit from ‘our’ (white, male) practices or be harmed by them: this is already to be prejudiced.” B. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Shaftesbury, 3rd Earl of (1671–1713) English moral philosopher, born in London, privately educated and studied with John Locke. Shaftesbury is regarded to be the first to use the term “moral sense” in British moral philosophy. He rejected Hobbes’s view of the selfishness of human nature and maintained that man has a natural affection for virtue and for the good of the species. He also argued that morality is self-determining and can exist independent of religion. Shaftesbury’s numerous essays are collected in Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 3 vols. (1711). shame, see guilt shared name, another expression for sortal Sheffer function Logic Also called a Sheffer stroke or stroke function. There are five primitive logical constants or functions, namely negation (~), conjunction (∧), disjunction (∨), implication (⊃), and equivalence (≡). Logicians showed that they can be reduced to negation and disjunction. In 1913, the American logician H. M. Sheffer proposed obtaining all of them from a single binary truthfunction, which he symbolized by a vertical stroke (|). With this notation, p|q is read as not both p and q. Accordingly, negation (~p) can be defined as p|p; disjunction (p ∨ q) can be defined as (p|p) |(q|q), and so on. The truth-table for the Sheffer stroke function is: p T T F F q T F T F p|q F T T T “A function from which all others may be obtained is called a Sheffer function, after the discoverer of the stroke function.” Goodstein, Development of Mathematical Logic. Sidgwick, Henry (1838–1900) British moral philosopher, born in Skipton, Yorkshire, Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, a main advocate of utilitarianism. In his main work, The Methods of Ethics (1874, with subsequent revised editions), Sidgwick examined three main approaches to ethics: intuitionism, egoism, and utilitarianism. His sophisticated discussion of these methods and their relations led to the conclusion that utilitarianism and intuitionism reinforce each other and should be combined, with utilitarianism based on our moral intuition that we ought to aim at pleasure. Sidgwick’s philosophical rigor has been influential as well as the contents of his views. sign and symbol: Both Peirce and Wittgenstein drew a distinction between sign and symbol. A sign is an expression perceptible by senses, while a symbol is an expression’s meaningful use and the rules for its application. A sign is what can be perceived of a symbol, while a symbol is a mode of signification of a sign. The same sign may be used in different symbols, or, in other words, different symbols may have their sign in common. For example, the sign “bear” in English can be used either as a verb (to carry) or as a noun (a mammal). Wittgenstein makes use of this distinction to criticize Russell’s theory of types. Other than this, the distinction is not always observed. Signs are widely taken to include their symbols. Shoemaker, Sydney (1931– ) American philosopher of metaphysics and mind, born in Boise, Idaho, Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University. Shoemaker has explored arguments for physical and mental criteria of personal identity and self-knowledge without criteria. He introduced a notion of quasi-remembering, which is remembering without the implication that the experience quasi-remembered is that of the person, and discussed thought experiments involving personal fission and fusion. His functionalism in the philosophy of mind differs from standard versions in accepting the existence of qualia. His major works include Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity (1963) and Identity, Cause, and Mind (1984). “In order to recognise a symbol by its sign we must observe how it is used with a sense.” Wittgenstein, Tractatus significant form Aesthetics An elusive and abstract term introduced by the British art critic Clive Bell, referring to the formal structure or unity common and peculiar to all visual works of art. This formal structure is the source that provokes aesthetic emotion. For Bell, the existence of this form and its capacity to arouse aesthetic emotion are the only criteria for being a work of art. The artist sees objects as pure forms, distinct from any associations they may have or ends that they may serve. This form is independent of any everyday human significance of objects in the world and is an end in itself. We can not recognize significant form in cognitive terms, and it is not open to empirical confirmation or falsification. But it can be felt, and it is refined and intensified by artists in their work. In seeing the significant form of things, the artist somehow glimpses “ultimate reality.” The essence of artistic creation is to express the aesthetic emotion that the artist feels before such forms by re-creating them in a work of art. Correspondingly, to appreciate a work of art is to contemplate and feel this form. “Line and colours combined in a particular way, certain forms and relations of form stir our aesthetic emotions. These relations are combinations of line and colours, these aesthetically moving forms, I call ‘significant form’; and ‘significant form’ is the one quality common to all works of visual art.” Bell, Art simple nature Epistemology, metaphysics [Latin naturae simplices] For Francis Bacon, the ultimate qualities, such as red, white, and hard, out of which the whole natural world is constituted. For Descartes, simple natures were the starting-point for the constitution of knowable objects and also for human knowledge of these objects. Simple natures are all self-evident, never contain any falsity, and are grasped by intuition or the natural light. These things are simple because they are known so clearly and distinctly that they can not be divided by the mind into further items that can be known more clearly and distinctly. Descartes distinguished three kinds of simple nature: (1) pure material natures that are recognized to be present only in bodies, such as shape, extension, and movement; (2) pure intellectual natures, such as knowing and doubting, which the intellect recognizes by means of a sort of innate light and which do not involve any corporeal substance; (3) common simple natures, including common concepts that can be ascribed both to the physical and to the mental, such as existence, duration, and the fundamental laws of logic that are called common notions. The first two kinds of simple natures are the building blocks of human knowledge and can be combined again and again into various complex natures. The common simple natures, applicable to both the physical and the mental, are the cement that binds them together. “These simple natures are all self-evident and never contain any falsity.” Descartes, The Philosophical Writings simplicity, principle of Philosophical method, philosophy of science One theory is simpler than another if it postulates fewer entities and explanatory principles. The principle of simplicity generally means the same thing as the principle of parsimony or Ockham’s razor. Simplicity is generally taken as one, although not the only, criterion for determining the acceptability of rival theories. The competing theories might be chosen in terms of consistency, scope, precision, and predictive power. However, everything else being equal, a simpler theory, that is, the theory that makes the fewest assumptions, is more acceptable than its complex rivals. The philosophical problem is whether it is possible to justify this preference for simplicity as something beyond a mere consideration of convenience. The traditional belief is that nature itself is simple. “Nature does nothing in vain.” But the principle of the uniformity of nature itself is a problematic notion. Contemporary philosophy of science takes simplicity as a part of methodology. Quine connects it with high probability. Popper connects it with his criterion of falsifiability by claiming that simple statements are highly desirable because they have richer empirical content and because they are more testable. The dispute about the validity of the principle of simplicity as a sign of truth has yet to be resolved. “The principle of simplicity (also referred to as the principle of parsimony) . . . affirms that other things being equal, the simpler theory should be chosen.” Regan, The Case for Animal Rights simulation theory Philosophy of mind An account of how we know about the propositional attitudes of others. It claims that our knowledge of other people’s beliefs comes not from the application of a theory, but as a result of using our own psychological processes to simulate those of others. It is an extension of our capacity to know our own beliefs. We imagine that we are in someone else’s position and then imagine what we would think or do in that situation. Simulation is used in explaining the meaning of intentional concepts such as belief and desire. The proponents of this theory include Gordon, Goldman, Stich, and Nichols. “Simulation theory suggests an account of the mechanisms underlying our capacity to predict and explain people’s behaviour, and that explanation makes no appeal to an internalised theory or knowledge structure.” Stich, Deconstructing the Mind sin Philosophy of religion, ethics A theological term for the severe wrongdoing or faults of moral character due to disobedience of a divine command or a violation of natural law. A person’s sense of sin is one paradigm of religious experience. According to the New Testament, all men are sinful, because we inherited original sin from Adam, the common father of humankind. Christians believe that the death of Jesus was a sacrifice for human sins. A person after death will be sent to hell if judged by God to be an unrepentant sinner. In a loose sense, sin is synonymous with evil, but strictly speaking, sin is an evil committed toward God, rather than to other persons. Only God may be asked to pardon sins. On some interpretations, sin results from following our sensory nature against our rational nature. It is committed when we do not do the good we know that God requires of us. Persons who believe that they have sinned often feel that they are cut off from God, the vision of God, or God’s grace. The origin of sin is generally ascribed to human free will, but this point is controversial. In medieval philosophy and theology, pride, covetousness, envy, gluttony, anger, sloth, and lust are listed as the seven deadly sins. “By his sin a sinner cannot really injure God, and yet, for his own part, he acts contrary to God in two ways. First, he despises God and his commandments and secondly, he does in fact harm someone, either himself or someone else.” Aquinas, Summa Theologiae