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

sincerity: frankly and plainly presenting oneself to oneself and others, rather than hiding or adding something in order to present oneself as different from what one actually is. Sincere people say and do what they really believe. Insincerity to oneself is a form of self-deception, while insincerity to others is lying or hypocrisy. Sincerity has been regarded as a virtue, but it is controversial whether any form of insincerity counts an evil. Those who modify their views to avoid serious political consequences are only sometimes judged to have acted immorally. The sincerity of skeptics has been a matter of debate because such a person has difficulties in carrying out his belief in his daily life. “Real sincerity implies that all the contradictory facets of the self are given free expression.” Elster, Ulysses and the Sirens sine qua non, conditio sine qua non, a condition without which not, in law a necessary condition] If an event B would not have happened if a prior event A had not happened, then A is a conditio sine qua non of B. This is generally viewed as a factual cause independent of policy or rule. A detailed examination of the relationship between this kind of condition and causally relevant factors in human action can be found in Hart and Honoré, Causation in the Law. “When a negative answer is forthcoming to the question ‘Would Y have occurred if X had not?’ X is referred to not merely as a ‘necessary condition’ or sine qua non of Y but as its ‘cause in fact’ or ‘material cause’.” Hart and Honoré, Causation in the Law Singer, Peter (1946– ) Australian utilitarian moral philosopher, born in Melbourne, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, and Princeton University. Singer has contributed to a reorientation of moral philosophy, from meta-ethics to questions in practical and applied ethics, especially questions of human and animal suffering, life, and death. He proposes utilitarian arguments to reject the species prejudice that gives priority to human over animal well-being and to allow infanticide and euthanasia in cases where there is no prospect of a life worth living. His major works include Animal Liberation (1975) and Practical Ethics (1979). singular term Logic The distinction between singular terms and general terms has been drawn since Mill, and receives much discussion in contemporary analytic philosophy. A singular term is a term that denotes or ostensively refers, under a given circumstance, to an individual object. Terms that belong to the categories of proper names, indexicals, definite descriptions, and so on are all singular terms. A singular term can replace, or be replaced by, an individual variable in an open sentence. It can only be the grammatical subject of a subject-predicate sentence and can never be a predicate. In contrast, a general term introduces a kind or a type of individual thing. While a singular term can only be a subject, a general term can serve either as a subject or as a predicate. The distinction between singular and general terms is widely supported, but it has been criticized by Peter Strawson in Individuals. “Semantically the distinction between singular and general term is vaguely that a single term names or purports to name just one object, though as complex or diffuse an object as you please; while a general term is true of each, severally, of any number of objects.” Quine, Word and Object Sittlichkeit, see ethical life situation ethics Ethics An anti-theoretical position that flourished among Christian religious moralists after the Second World War, influenced by American pragmatism, and operated with the slogan: be loving and do as you please. It claims that ethics is essentially a matter of reacting to the contexts or situations one confronts and that moral choice must be situational, particular, and determined by case-to-case analysis. It proposes that there is only one moral principle, that is, agape or love. Other than this, there should be no packaged moral judgments for Christians. To build an ethical system is meaningless, and the rigid application of the universal moral principles and rules should be rejected. The ethical maxims of the community in which one lives can serve as illuminators, but we should always be prepared to compromise in the situation where love seems better served by doing something else. The systematic exponent of this ethics is Joseph Fletcher, who claims that situation ethics is not relativistic, for it holds that love is the ultimate judge of the norm of action. Hence situation ethics is a middle approach between legalism, which emphasizes systematic rules and regulations, and antinominism, which rejects all principles whatever. This position has similarities with act-utilitarianism and casuistry. “Situation ethics goes part of the way with natural law, by accepting reason as the instrument of moral judgements, while rejecting the notion that the good is ‘given’ in the nature of things, objectively. It goes part of way with Scriptural law by accepting revelation as the source of the norm while rejecting all ‘revealed’ norms or laws but the one command – to love God and thy neighbour.” Fletcher, Situation Ethics situational semantics Philosophy of language Developed in the late 1970s by J. Barwise and J. Parry and intended as an alternative to Tarski’s formal truth-conditional semantics. A situation in this account is the part of reality that agents find themselves in and about which they exchange information. Situational semantics claims that the meaning of a sentence is not given merely through its truth-conditions, but should also be determined by the relations of the sentence to the situation in which it is uttered and information about its speaker. The meaning of an expression can not be described independently of the use of the expression. It involves a relation between the circumstance that the expression describes and the circumstance in which it is uttered, because rational speakers or agents must use information extracted from their situation in order to reason and communicate effectively. “In this book I have been urging the development of a theory of meaning and information content, one rich enough to give a semantics for English that can account for the way language users handle information, and suggesting a shape for this general theory. We call this situation theory, and the applications to natural language situational semantics.” Barwise, The Situation in Logic scepticism, G. skepsis, investigation, enquiry] Also written “scepticism,” a critical philosophical attitude, questioning by systematic arguments the reliability of knowledge claims and our ability to establish objective truth. When ancient Greek philosophers called themselves skeptics, they probably meant that they were undogmatic investigators. The founder of Greek skepticism was Pyrrho of Elis, and skepticism is also called Pyrrhonism. Pyrrhonism claimed to set up many modes of argument to show that the world of appearance is full of contradictions and that there is no guarantee that we apprehend things as they really are. Thus it is better to adopt an attitude of suspension of judgment and to achieve a state of tranquility. Most arguments of Pyrrhonism are recorded in the writings of Sextus Empiricus. Various versions of modern skepticism can be found in figures such as Montaigne, Gassendi, Descartes, Hume, and the logical positivists. While ancient skepticism attacked both knowledge and belief and was a philosophy of life, modern skepticism is a challenge to knowledge only. This is why some philosophers hold that ancient skepticism is more serious. There is also a distinction of subject-matter between ethics and science in modern skepticism, and ethical or moral skepticism, which claims that there are no objective values, has become a separate concern. Skepticism is a negative but dynamic force in the history of philosophy. In attempting to attack and overcome skepticism, philosophers sharpen the formulation of philosophical problems and their attempts to solve them. “Scepticism is an ability which sets up antitheses among appearances and judgements in any way whatever.” Empiricus, Outline of Pyrrhonism Skolem’s theorem paradox, see Skolem–Löwenheim Skolem–Löwenheim theorem Logic Skolem and Löwenheim established that in set theory for any class of formulas of predicate calculus, if there is an interpretation that suits all of them, there is also an interpretation whose domain consists of natural numbers that suits all of them. This Skolem–Löwenheim theorem implies that if first-order set theory is consistent and has a model, it must also have a denumerable infinite model whose continuum is a countable set and is thus apparently non-standard. This result is called Skolem’s paradox because it conflicts with Cantor’s theorem, according to which within set theory we can establish that there is a set of real numbers that is not denumerable. To avoid Skolem’s paradox, we should suppose that the distinction between denumerable and non-denumerable models is relative to an axiom system rather than absolute. Others believe that the paradox indicates that standard first-order predicate calculus is not sufficient to reveal the structure of the continuum. “There is a remarkable theorem in classical logic, the Skolem–Löwenheim theorem, which says that any consistent set of sentences (whether a finite or infinite set of sentences) has a model in the natural numbers.” J. Smart, Our Place in the Universe slave/master, see master/slave slave morality, see master morality slave of the passions Philosophy of action, ethics Hume’s term for the role of reason in action. The traditional ethical belief was that morality is a matter of rationality and that we act according to the dictates of reason. Hume claimed that this is wrong. Reason is useful and can direct our judgment concerning good and evil, but it is impotent with respect to motivating action. Reason is not a causal factor in promoting moral actions. What directly impels us to act is passion or emotion. In contrast to the traditional view that emotion should be subjected to reason, Hume believed that reason is the slave of the passions in the genesis of action. This does not mean that there is a conflict between reason and passion. For Hume, that which is opposed to reason can only be reason itself rather than passion. “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature slippery slope argument Logic, ethics An argument seeking to persuade an audience not to take the first step on the grounds that it will lead to further steps having disastrous consequences. The argument can be formulated in many ways, but its central version is the one that is also called the wedge argument. According to the argument, some actions are like the first step on a slippery slope. Although they can be justified, their performance will inevitably lead to further actions with bad consequences. Hence, it is better not to permit the first action. This argument has a wide application in moral discussions. For example, some argue that if active euthanasia is legalized, terrible consequences will follow. For once societies openly allow deliberate killing under some circumstances (for example, when dying persons are suffering intolerable pain), we will move to allow involuntary euthanasia and even the killing of old people who become a burden to society. Thus, we move from mercy killing to non-merciful killing and from justified killing to unjustified killing. Life, which should be valued, will become cheap. Slippery slope arguments are generally taken to be unconvincing, for there is no rational ground for claiming that we can not firmly draw the line between justified and unjustified acts, although initial steps might alter the context in which subsequent steps are judged. “A slippery slope argument is a kind of argument that warns you if you take the first step you will find yourself involved in a sticky sequence of consequences from which you will be unable to extricate yourself, and eventually you will wind up speeding faster and faster towards some disastrous outcome.” Walton, Slippery Slope Arguments Smart, J(ohn) J(amieson) C(arswell) (1920– ) Australian materialist utilitarian philosopher, born in Cambridge, England, Professor of Philosophy at Australian National University. Smart was an early proponent of a materialist theory of the mind in response to his dissatisfaction with philosophical behaviorism. His materialism is part of his more general integration of the concerns of science and philosophy. In ethics, he has argued for an actutilitarianism. His major works include Philosophy and Scientific Realism (1963), Essays Metaphysical and Moral (1987), and Our Place in the Universe (1989). Smith, Adam (1723–90) Scottish economist and moral philosopher, born in Kirkcaldy, taught at Glasgow. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Smith explained moral goodness in terms of the pleasure taken by an impartial spectator in observing virtue, and this idea was later developed in the “ideal observer theory.” In contrast to Hutcheson’s moral sense theory, he argued that the essence of moral sentiments was sympathy. In An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), Smith established the basis of modern economic thought. His notion of an “invisible hand” that coordinates the workings of a free market has retained its importance in the philosophy of social science and in the theory of rational social action. social action Philosophy of action, philosophy of social science Actions of social groups, such as a rebellion, and actions conducted within a framework of social relations, such as marriage or holding a conversation. Social actions can be ritualized, with fixed sequences of correct behavior, or flexible and diverse, so long as the action of one individual takes account of the behavior of others. For methodological individualists, social action can be reduced to the actions of individuals, but this account is rejected by methodological holists, who claim that social actions have collectively determined meanings and intentions that can not be analyzed in terms of individual action. While all actions are contingent on the external world, social action is also contingent on the interdependence of choices and orientations among rational agents. This double contingency is a characteristic feature of social action. Any social action must follow rules represented, for example, by cultural frameworks, communication systems, or value systems. A main task of sociology is to understand social actions by understanding the social practices and the institutions that embody them. “Action is ‘social’ insofar as its subjective meaning takes account of the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in its course.” Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 1 social choice, another expression for public choice social contract Political philosophy A contract providing the legitimate basis of sovereignty and civil society and of the rights and duties constituting the role of citizen. According to the social contract theory that flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a social contract based on individual consent permits men to enter civil society from the state of nature, whether from the brutal world of Hobbes or the relatively self-sufficient world of Locke. The move to civil society was accomplished by giving up certain natural rights in return for the protection, rights, and advantages offered by the state. For Hobbes, the contract is agreed between people and a proposed sovereign, who received absolute authority. For Locke and Rousseau, the contract is agreed among the people themselves to vest power in a government. For Locke, persons in the state of nature are very much like ourselves, but for Rousseau they become persons by entry into civil society. In Rousseau’s view, the social contract is the condition through which the will of all, the aggregation of individual wills, becomes the general will that wills the common good. It has been a matter of controversy whether classical accounts of the social contract are meant to present an actual or hypothetical contract. Some critics hold that before employing this theory to justify the legitimacy of political authority and the grounds of political obligation, we must provide independent justification for the theory itself. Social contract theory has been employed in the theory of justice of the contemporary political philosopher John Rawls. For Rawls, a contract between rational self-interested actors who are ignorant of their own positions in society determines principles of justice, but this hypothetical contract offers only one aspect of Rawls’s justification of his theory. “What man loses by the social contract . . . is his natural liberty and the absolute right to anything that tempts him and that he can take; what he gains by the social contracts is civil liberty and the legal right of property of what he possesses.” Rousseau, The Social Contract social Darwinism: A theory resulting from the application of Darwinism to human society. By deducing norms of human conduct directly from evolutionary biology, it attempted to deal with ethical, economic, and political problems on the assumption that society is a competitive arena and that the evolution of society fits the Darwinian paradigm in its most individualistic form. According to social Darwinism, the fittest climb to dominant social positions as a consequence of social selection, just as natural selection determines the survival of the fittest. Because on this view human possession of consciousness does not have any moral implications, social Darwinism held that social inequality and the exploitation of lower classes, suppressed races, and conquered nations by the stronger were morally acceptable. It opposed any plan of social reform or welfare system to protect the weak or poor by claiming that such measures disturbed the natural order and hindered the progress of the human species. Altruism was held to be nothing more than hypocrisy. Social Darwinism flourished at the end of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century, with Herbert Spencer’s political theory as its most important theoretical expression. It is now mainly of historic interest, with its science and its ethics both seen to be deeply flawed. “A purely biological perspective will give no grounding to individual rights, and might tend to a sort of social Darwinism, in which individuals would be seen in terms of their contribution to the survival and improvement of the species or society.” O’Hear, Experience, Explanation and Faith social democracy Political philosophy A term originally used for the Marxist approach to socialism, in contrast to revisionist forms of socialism. Since the Russian revolution, Marxist socialism has been called communism. The term social democracy has lost its relationship with Marxist socialism, and has been employed in revisionist and liberal thought. In contrast to classical market liberalism, which emphasizes the primacy of classical civil rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of religious and ideological belief, and freedom to pursue one’s own happiness, social democracy holds that these fundamental rights can be qualified to secure a fair and just distribution of resources and opportunities. Consequently, it allows or requires state agencies to play an active role in many areas of life in order to maintain a just society. “After 1920, and up to the present, the term social democracy has had its strongest links with the related reformist socialism and social liberal tradition.” Vincent, Modern Political Ideologies social fact: a fact about a social institution or group, such as a family, school, class, or community. In contrast, individual facts concern individual agents and their psychological states. A social fact is unobservable, but can be determined through statistical generalizations about certain kinds of social interaction within a given society. Durkheim claimed that the existence of social facts enables the social sciences to conduct studies as objective as those of the natural sciences, which deals with things. For methodological holists, the existence of social facts must be presupposed in interpreting individual behavior, whereas for methodological individualists, social fact can be reduced to individual facts or individual behavior. “A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own rights independent of its individual manifestations.” Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method social philosophy Political philosophy, philosophy of social science The philosophical examination of substantive social issues, such as the relations between society and the state; the relations between society and its members; social equality; morality and law; and issues of health care and child protection. Social philosophy critically assesses political ideologies and societal arrangements and tries to discern clearly what a good society would be like, and how it might be achieved. Plato’s Republic, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Rousseau’s Social Contract can be regarded as classical works in the area of social philosophy. Social philosophy is normative in character and overlaps with political philosophy concerning many issues. It is distinguished from the neutral, methodologically oriented versions of the philosophy of social science, which are mainly concerned with the logic of justification of social scientific theories. It is closer to those versions of philosophy of social science that allow room for value and social criticism within social science. “Social philosophy . . . is concerned with the varying view about the nature of desirable social systems or societies, and sometimes it puts forward its own proposals about what constitutes a good or desirable society.” Rudner, Philosophy of Social Science sociobiology: A study inspired by Darwin’s theory of natural selection and attempting to explain human social behavior by human biological features, particularly genes. Sociobiology focuses on the shared features of genetic design among human beings rather than on cultural and historical dimensions of human life. It claims that genes play a fundamental role in determining human behavior and that, like the social behavior of animals, human social behavior is informed by its evolutionary purposes. The field emerged as a separate discipline with Edward O. Wilson’s Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Many of its claims provoke heated debates. Some critics reject sociobiology as a modernized version of social Darwinism, while others reject its genetic determinism and claim that much human behavior is culturally formed and open to modification. Nevertheless, sociobiology has raised important questions with its emphasis on the evolutionarily determined genes and their role in human consciousness, behavior, and institutions. Sociobiologists believe that humans might recognize that cooperation is a better strategy than purely egoistic pursuits in the search for survival. Accordingly, biological evolution might lead to a type of altruism and form a biological basis for a social contract. Because biological altruism suggests that we will more willingly cooperate with our close kin rather than with strangers, however, even this version of sociobiology denies that our obligations extend to others equally. Sociobiology suggests that biology and morality are closely related, although many of these claims are both speculative and contested. “Sociobiology is the evolutionary theory of the origin and stability of social behaviour. When fully developed, it may account for the evolution of ethics.” von Schilcher and Tennant, Philosophy, Evolution and Human Nature sociology of knowledge Epistemology, philosophy of social science On the assumption that knowledge is not merely the result of the meeting of the individual mind with the physical world, but is socially and historically conditioned, sociology of knowledge studies the social facts or elements that shape and condition the acquisition, justification, change and growth of knowledge. This discipline claims to have enriched traditional epistemology by adding a social dimension to it. It claims that in every society there is a fabric of meaning that is conveyed to us in childhood as a set of lores. The social elements considered include such things as the social status and the interests of the subject (either as a group or as an individual), tradition, and convention and the process of socialization. Although sociology of knowledge appeared as a separate discipline only in the twentieth century, through Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia, many of its ideas can be traced to Plato. Max Scheler and Karl Marx also advocated similar positions. In its early stage, sociology of knowledge was confined to investigating the general conditions surrounding the emergence and modification of bodies of institutionalized collective beliefs and the social sources of prejudices and distortions. This program presupposes that knowledge is historically relative and can not be objectively valid, but is, rather, a reflection of the interests of a certain social class. A rival program explores the possibility that social factors can be adequate grounds for objective knowledge. “We have witnessed the rebirth of the notion of the ‘sociology of knowledge’, which suggests that not only our methods but our conclusions and our reasons for believing them, in the entire realm of knowledge, can be shown to be wholly or largely determined by the stage reached in the development of our class or group, or nation or culture, or whatever other unit may be chosen.” Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty Socrates (469–399 bc) Greek philosopher, born in Athens, teacher of Plato. Socrates’ claim that “an unexamined life is not worth living” and his unconditional commitment to philosophy at the expense of his own life, have inspired Western philosophical thought for over two thousand years. Socrates’ philosophical journey began with his attempt to understand the meaning of the Delphic oracle in saying that he was the wisest person. Having examined various people who were thought to have wisdom, Socrates concluded that he was said to be the wisest because he knew that he knew nothing. He continued to examine others in the belief that he served God by revealing the limits of human wisdom. Socrates did not write anything. We know his thought through Aristophanes’ play The Clouds, Xenophon’s writings, Aristotle’s reports and, most importantly, Plato’s dialogues, in which Socrates is always the major speaker. As a result, we have the enduring problem of distinguishing Plato’s Socrates from the historical Socrates. A conventional view holds that the position expressed by the character Socrates in Plato’s early dialogues is close to that of the historical Socrates. These dialogues are characterized by the irony of Socrates’ claim to have no knowledge, by the Socratic method of crossexamining interlocutors to find flaws and inconsistencies in their views, and by the failure to overcome aporia to reach acceptable answers to the questions raised. On this reading, Socrates, despite his disavowal of knowledge, held the following doctrines: happiness is our final end; to be happy a person must look after soul, which is the only thing in us worth saving; to care about soul is to care about virtue; virtue is knowledge; no evil thing can happen to a good man; and because no one does evil willingly, weakness of will is impossible. Socrates was tried and sentenced to death by the Athenians in 399 bc on the charges of impiety and the corruption of youth. A major concern of Plato’s philosophy was to defend Socrates against these charges. Socrates’ question Ancient Greek philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of language A term that is used in two ways. First, it is a question about how one ought to live or about what is a life worth living. Socrates raised this question several times in the Platonic dialogues. Its classical expression is at Gorgias, 500b: “Do not either take what I say as if I were merely playing, for you see the subject of our discussion – and on what subject should even a man of slight intelligence be more serious? – namely, what kind of life one should live.” It is a general question about what to do for one’s whole life, not a question about whether to do this or that action. The question invites one to reflect about one’s own life, and Socrates himself held that an unexamined life is not worth living. It provides an adequate starting-point for moral theories, and any serious moral theory must answer the question in some way. The term is also used for various questions posed by Socrates in the earlier Platonic dialogues in the form: “What is . . . ?,” such as “What is piety?” “What is justice?” “What is courage?” and “What is temperance?” These questions sought to examine general conceptions that determine what is the same in many different particulars. Socrates did not offer conclusive answers to these questions, but they led philosophers to deal with the problem of universals, the relation between the general and the particular, and the nature of predication. The methodology implied by these questions, which was essential for the later development of Western philosophy, led directly to the birth of Plato’s Theory of Forms. “In Socrates’ question the general as such is discovered.” G. Martin, An Introduction to General Metaphysics Socratic elenchus, from Greek elenchein, to refute, to examine, to test] Although Socrates himself did not use this term, it is widely used for his characteristic method of inquiry and his central daily activity. Also called the Socratic method, elenchus involved Socrates in a cross-examination of an interlocutor through a sequence of questions by which Socrates sought to expose conflicts in the views held by the interlocutor. He then tried to reconstruct these beliefs as a result of reflections on the conflicts and on their possible resolution. The earlier Platonic dialogues, in which Socrates showed various elenchi, are called elenctic dialogues. Since this kind of cross-examination always ended without reaching any definite conclusion, these dialogues are also called aporetic dialogues. Socratic elenchus is neither purely negative nor merely for the purpose of exposing confusions in his interlocutors. It was thus distinguished both from Zeno of Elea’s method and from sophistry, although it was similar in form to them. Socrates employed his elenchus in an attempt to get people to see things themselves. The questions by which he conducted his elenchus were not trivial, but rather had to do with the concepts and principles by which the Athenians lived. By this method Socrates questioned the morality of his time. Influenced by Vlastos’s work, scholars have recently examined the logical form of elenchus and its implication for understanding Plato’s earlier dialogues. “Socratic elenchus is a search for moral truth by adversary argument in which a thesis is debated only if asserted as the answerer’s own belief, who is regarded as refuted if and only if the negation of his thesis is deduced from his own beliefs.” Vlastos, “The Socratic Elenchus,” in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 1 Socratic method, another term for Socratic elenchus soft data, see data solipsism Philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology [from Latin solus, alone + ipse, self ] A metaphysical theory which claims that only I and my experience exist. The argument for solipsism asserts that every claim about what exists and what I know is grounded in experience and can not transcend it, but that experience is immediate and private to me; therefore nothing exists beyond myself and my experience. The world is my presentation. Solipsism is closely associated with the claim of traditional British empiricism that immediate perception is the source of all knowledge, and also with Descartes’s cogito ergo sum. Like skepticism, solipsism is criticized as logically incoherent and unintelligible, but a complete refutation is difficult to find. Russell believes that there is something true in it, though he himself chooses not to accept it. Wittgenstein in the Tractatus thinks that since the limits of my language show the limits of my world, there is something correct about solipsism, although it can not be expressed in factual language. He sees the temptation to solipsism as related to the metaphysical subject. “Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.” Wittgenstein, Tractatus somatism, see reism sophia, Greek term for wisdom sophism, see fallacy of ambiguity sophist Ancient Greek philosophy [Greek sophistes, from sophos, wise and sophia, wisdom] Initially, any wise man like a poet, seer, or sage, but in the fifth century bc, a special term for a professional teacher who wandered from city to city to teach many non-traditional courses, including rhetoric and linguistics, which young Greeks needed to pursue political careers. Sophists charged their students for this service. At that time the term did not have a derogatory sense. The sophists did not form a sect or school, and many of them were not philosophers at all. Among the most famous sophists were Protagoras, Gorgias, Thrasymachus, Prodicus, and Hippias. Only in the next generation did “sophist” acquire the unfavorable sense that it still bears today. This change largely resulted from the hostile propaganda of Plato and Aristotle, who accused the sophists of making money for their teaching and of neglecting higher values by teaching techniques aimed merely at winning debates. Many sophists are targets of irony in Plato’s dialogues, where they are distinguished from the practitioners of serious intellectual pursuits. However, from the scant information we possess, it seems that the sophists together formed a loose movement that was skeptical in tradition and having some features of an enlightenment. They made important contributions to the history of thought in fields such as grammar and linguistic theory, moral and political doctrine, and the theory of the nature and origin of man and society. Because no writings survive from any of the sophists, it is difficult to correct the traditional prejudice against them. “A sophistes writes or teaches because he has a special skill or knowledge to impart. His sophia is practical, whether in the fields of conduct and politics or in the technical arts.” Guthrie, The Sophists sorites paradox: from Greek soros, a heap and sorites, a heaper] Also the paradox of the heap, a paradox that concerns how a series of small changes does not affect the possession of a property when taken individually but does affect the possession of the property when the changes are taken together. One grain of sand does not make a heap. Adding a further grain does not make a heap. We can go on adding grains without making a heap, and there is no particular number of grains that will make a heap. Yet many grains of sand certainly do make a heap. If no addition of a single grain can turn a non-heap into a heap, it is difficult to understand how a heap can emerge. The problem can be stated conversely. Removing one grain of sand from a heap does not make the heap disappear. Nor does removing a second grain make the heap disappear, and so on. There seems no point at which the heap disappears, yet it does disappear. A variant of the sorites paradox is the bald man paradox. A man with a full head of hair will not become bald if he loses one hair. Nor will the loss of a second hair make him bald, and so on. There appears to be no point at which the removal of an additional hair will make him bald, but the man does become bald. The problem for all versions of the sorites paradox is the same: how can a series of changes, each of which does not make a difference, make a difference eventually when taken together? Attempted solutions deny the claim that if the first change does not make a difference in the possession of the property, then no subsequent change makes a difference; use the notion of degrees of truth regarding the possession of the property; or deal with the property using fuzzy logic, which recognizes degrees of applicability of predicates. “. . . the sorites paradox, the ancient paradox of the heap: If removal of a single grain from a heap always leaves a heap, then, by mathematical induction, removal of all the grains leaves a heap.” Quine, Theories and Things sortal: Although the idea can be traced to Aristotle’s notion of secondary substance, the word “sortal” was introduced by John Locke from sort, on analogy with the derivation of “general” from genus. For Locke, a sortal was a type of abstract idea that denotes the essence of a sort or a kind. Frege introduced sortals into contemporary discussion for a type of predicate by which we know the sort of object to which it applies; sortals delimit that object from other objects. Terms such as “cat” and “person” are sortals. A sortal predicate contains a criterion of identification and distinction. It provides a principle of countability and can be used with a definite or indefinite article. A sortal predicate applies to an object but does not apply to the parts of that object because the object it applies to does not permit arbitrary division. The term “cat” does not apply to a part of a cat, because the part is not itself a cat. On the other hand, a general but non-sortal predicate such as “a red thing” may apply to both the object itself and its parts. For a part of a red thing might itself be red. The use of sortals in considering various topics of contemporary philosophy owes much to Peter Strawson’s discussion in Individuals and to the views that all scientific laws require sortal predicates and that identity claims are sortal-relative. If a particular is an instance of a universal, it is said to be sortally tied to the universal. There are alternative expressions for “sortal.” Strawson used the expression “individuate term” but later reverted to the standard term in his Individuals. Geach used the term “count noun,” and Quine used the expression “divided reference.” Sortals are also called shared names. “A sortal universal supplies a principle for distinguishing and counting individual particulars which it collects.” Strawson, Individuals sortal predicate, see sortal Animatum: Soul, Greek psyche and Latin anima, originally the breath of life] An entity, the presence of which in a body causes the body to possess life and in the absence of which the body is dead. The soul gives the body the faculty of cognition and, in the case of man, thought. The soul gives body the power of self-motion. By analogy, the changing world is sometimes claimed to be a living thing and to have a world soul. Pythagoras introduced the notion that the soul is immortal and transmigrates between many bodies. This idea was reinforced by Plato and led to a perennial topic in philosophy covering identity, survival, resurrection, and disembodiment. Materialists claim that the soul can not exist independently of the body. Aristotle said that the soul is the form or actuality of any organic body and in this sense can not be separate from body, but he also claimed that humans have an imperishable and separate active soul or reason. Plato made a tripartite division of the soul into rational, emotional, and appetitive, and believed that only human beings have the rational part. He believed that these three parts are in a state of constant conflict, and that a just person should make use of his reason to control the appetitive part, with the aid of emotion. This tripartite division has framed much later discussion in the history of Western philosophy. Psychology, which studies the operations and relations of these three parts, is derived from psyche, the Greek term for soul. Descartes preferred to use the term mind (from Latin mens) rather than soul. The mind is the consciousness or the thinking part of the soul, although there are difficulties in giving a conceptually unified account of all that might belong to thinking and the mind. Other philosophers, such as Locke, used mind as a synonym for understanding. Descartes argued that the mind is an independent and incorporeal substance. This thesis gives rise to the mind–body problem, which is the most fundamental problem of the philosophy of mind. Soul is also taken as a synonym of spirit. “It is the soul by or with which primarily we live, perceive and think.” Aristotle, De Anima sovereign Political philosophy, philosophy of law The agent with supreme power who is habitually obeyed in a political society, but who does not habitually obey others. In a monarchy, the sovereign is an individual person; in an aristocracy, the sovereign is a group of people; and in a democracy, the sovereign is the populace or its majority. The sovereign has the power to inflict punishment. For Hobbes, a sovereign should have absolute power and be able to control all areas of life and behavior. Its power is a unity and is irrevocable. John Austin maintained that the sovereign is a pre-legal political fact and must be assumed as a basis for explaining and defining all other legal concepts. In his legal philosophy, the command of the sovereign, like Kelsen’s basic norm or Hart’s rule of recognition, is the ground of legal validity. “If, following Austin, we call such a supreme and independent person or body of persons the sovereign, the laws of any country will be the general orders backed by threats which are issued either by the sovereign or subordinates in obedience to the sovereign.” Hart, The Concept of Law sovereignty Political philosophy, philosophy of law Supreme legal authority. A concept originating in the medieval conflicts between church and state and now a feature of independent states, their people or their rulers. External sovereignty is the supreme authority of the state regarding its relations with other states or international authorities. It is a state’s right to the integrity of its territory and its right to join or withdraw from any international treaty or organization as an independent party. External sovereignty is a major factor in modern international relations and can be limited or augmented by international law. Internal sovereignty concerns the body of laws and rules by which a state conducts its affairs. Within its territory, a sovereign state has final legal authority, with which external forces may not legitimately interfere. Because law and morality differ, there can be tension between internal sovereignty and recognized individual rights. External sovereignty is threatened by foreign invasion and interference, while internal sovereignty is threatened by usurpation and secession. “To say that the State is sovereign is to say that the State has supreme or final authority in a community, that its rules override the rule of any other association.” Raphael, Problems of Political Philosophy spatium: the nature of space, along with the nature of time, is a fundamental question in philosophy. Space is viewed as a continuant that gives form to the possible relations in which things and events stand in the world. It is constituted by all spatially related places. In ancient Greece, the Eleatics denied the possibility of empty space. They also denied that space is material, for otherwise space itself would have to be in another kind of space. Atomists argued that a void exists which separates atoms. Zeno’s paradoxes show the puzzling nature of space and time, especially with regard to the problem of infinity. Kant, echoing Zeno, claimed that antinomies result if we think of space and time as objectively real, and argued that space and time are forms of intuition by which sensibility organizes sensibly given materials into experience. Space is not a concept, because unlike the different instantiations of concepts, all spaces are parts of one space. A major dispute about space concerns whether it is substantial or relational. Plato defined space as a receptacle that does not have any characteristic itself. Aristotle did not distinguish space from place, which he defined as the adjacent boundary of a containing body. Both seem to take space as an objective container. A standard version of the account of space as substantial is offered by Descartes, who claimed that the essence of matter is extension and thus identified space with matter. In his account of absolute space, Newton insisted that space would remain similar and immovable even if it lacked relations to anything else. Radically opposed to Newton’s account is Leibniz’s relational view of space. Leibniz argued that, rather than being a substance, space is a system of relations in which indivisible monads stand next to one another. The power and attraction of the positions in the dispute are captured in the famous Leibniz–Clarke correspondence, in which Samuel Clarke defended Newton. The dispute still goes on today, especially in light of the concept of space-time in general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. “A space, in the literal sense of the term, is that in which material objects are situated, and move or remain still. They change their place by moving through space.” Swinburne, Space and Time space, absolute Metaphysics, philosophy of science Newton maintained that space has its own nature, without dependence on anything else. The three-dimensionality of space is an intrinsic, essential property of space. Mathematicians can describe spaces having other dimensions, but these are not our space. If one part specious present of space is different from another part, this is not because of differences in space itself, but because of the things that occupy space. Absolute space is also separate from time. In contrast to absolute space, relative space depends for its character upon the nature of the things it relates. It would vanish were there no spatially related entities, and in principle it is subject to change. “Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable.” Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy space-time Metaphysics, philosophy of science The theory of relativity uses a unified notion of space-time to replace the separate notion of space and time. Within its framework, space and time can be traded, like mass and energy. As a result, it has become common practice in physics to view the world as a manifold of four dimensions: length, width, height, and interval. Space-time can also be considered a four-dimensional tenseless space, in contrast to our ordinary conception of space as something which endures through time. Many issues, such as infinity, continuity, and their absolute or relational nature, are common to space and time and can be dealt with in a unified theory. On the other hand, it is not clear in what contexts space-time replaces space and time in other aspects of our thought. Some philosophers argue that we could not have spatiotemporal experience of the world in terms of spacetime rather than in terms of space and time. Others reply that our experience is in terms of space-time or of any theory that proves to be true. “We must not forget that space-time is a space in the mathematical sense of the word.” J. Smart (ed.), Problems of Space and Time species, see genus species chauvinism, another term for speciesism speciesism Ethics A term invented by the English writer Richard Ryder in Victims of Science (1975), but popularized by the Australian philosopher, Peter Singer. It refers to the discrimination which human beings exercise over non-human animals. Racism is a prejudice on the basis of race. Sexism is a prejudice on the basis of sex. Speciesism, then, is a prejudice on the basis of species. Human beings have been using animals as means, and exploiting them ruthlessly on the assumption that human beings as rational beings are morally more valuable than animals. However, many members of the human species such as children and mentally retarded persons, although not rational, are still entitled to moral consideration, simply because of their membership of the human species. Singer contends that if racism and sexism are wrong, speciesism must also be wrong. The animal liberation movement that he helped to initiate has as its main goal the removal of speciesism. Speciesism is called by other authors, species chauvinism or human chauvinism. “Speciesism – the word is not an attractive one, but I can think of no better term – is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favour of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species.” P. Singer, Animal Liberation specious present: Our awareness of now or the present as a momentary time interval between past and future. E. R. Clay believed that this experience of a present is not real and is actually a period of time ending at the present. The concrete individual time that we perceive is not strictly instantaneous and is never co-present with our consciousness. It is rather a recent past instead of a real present. Clay called what we perceive the specious present. James borrowed this term and used it extensively to express his view that consciousness of time is indeed a stream or a continuant. Earlier events are temporally extended and are still present in our experience of later events. The specious present includes the recent past and even a bit of future. Past, present, and future are nothing but our conceptual ascription. The term specious present is also employed by Russell and Broad, but is criticized by H. J. Paton. “The time-series, then, of which any part is perceived by me, is a time-series in which the future and the past are separated by a present which is a specious present.” McTaggart, The Nature of Existence. speculatum, f. speculatio, contemplation, in turn derived from specere, to see, to look; equivalent to Greek theoria, contemplation, derived from the verb to see] Etymologically, what is speculative is theoretical, in contrast to the practical and empirical. Kant connected speculative philosophy with metaphysics and believed that it resulted from mistakenly applying concepts to things-in-themselves rather than to empirical objects. For Kant, speculative philosophy has a pejorative sense through being concerned with the transcendent and with reality as a whole, in spite of lacking the proper support of sense-experience. Hegel described speculative philosophy in this sense as dogmatism, but called his own system speculative in another sense because it dealt with conceptual process and not because it dealt with the supersensible. It is a dialectical process in which the opposition between objectivity and subjectivity is sublated, and in which all branches of human knowledge are systematically unified to reveal the true meaning of reality and of humankind. In general, speculative philosophy employs the results of various sciences and religious and ethical experiences to derive general conclusions regarding the nature of the universe and our position in it. Although its holism and sense of system have attractions, most analytic philosophers regard speculative philosophy as purely conjectural and as being close to poetry and mysticism. “Speculative philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted.” Whitehead, Process and Reality speculative philosophy of history, see philosophy of history speech act Philosophy of language A central concept of the use theory of meaning elaborated by Austin in How to Do Things with Words. In an account of the meaning of an expression, one main factor is what the expression is used to do, and this is the speech act aspect of language use. A speech act involves actually saying in contrast to merely thinking, and in this sense to say something is to do something, to perform a linguistic act. A speech act is hence also called a linguistic act. Austin divided speech acts into three kinds. First, a locutionary act is an act of saying something, which is further divided into three kinds: the phonetic act, which is merely the act of uttering certain noises, the phatic act, which makes a grammatical sentence, and the rhetic act, which utters something with a certain sense and with a certain reference. Secondly, an illocutionary act is an act performed in saying something, for example promising, questioning, suggesting, or ordering. Thirdly, a perlocutionary act is an act performed by saying something that will produce certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience. Austin claimed that by clearly distinguishing these acts we are able to get rid of many traditional philosophical problems. Searle has examined and developed this doctrine on the hypothesis that speaking a language is engaging in a rule-governed form of behavior. Most studies of speech acts focus on illocutionary acts. Speech act theory characterizes the nature of communicative intentions. It opposes accounts of meaning based exclusively on semantics and can be seen to be a branch of pragmatics. “The form that this hypothesis will take is that speaking a language is performing speech acts, acts such as making statements, giving commands, asking questions, making promises, and so on.” Searle, Speech Acts speech act fallacy: an analysis that reduces the basic meaning of a statement to what a speaker does in using it. For instance, it uses the speech act of prescribing or commending to explain moral terms, the speech act of re-asserting to explain the meaning of the word “true,” and the speech act of expressing belief or giving guidance or partial assurance to explain the meaning of “probable.” According to John Searle, this is a fallacy because it ignores the locutionary speech act that must precede the illocutionary act. Many words have a literal occurrence in some sentences, and understanding their meaning need not require us to consider the performance of speech acts beyond locutionary acts. This fallacy, which is similar to what Peter Geach calls ascriptivism, is linked by some philosophers to the use theory of meaning. “The general nature of the speech act fallacy can be stated as follows, using ‘good’ as our example. Calling something good is characteristically praising or commending or recommending it, etc. But it is a fallacy to infer from this that the meaning of good is explained by saying it is used to perform the act of commendation.” Searle, Speech Acts Spencer, Herbert (1820–1903) English philosopher, born at Derby, a leading social Darwinist. Spencer created a system of synthetic philosophy by applying the principle of evolution to explain not only organisms, but also every phenomenon and entity, including feeling, society, ethical principle, and education. Influenced by Darwin’s The Origin of Species, he developed a social philosophy based on “the survival of the fittest.” Spencer denied that the process of evolution has a final goal and denied that the principle of evolution can be applied to an unknowable God or to ultimate reality. Spencer’s major works include First Principles (1862), Principles of Sociology, 3 vols. (1876–96), and Principles of Ethics (1879–93). sphere of existence, an alternative expression for stage of existence Spinoza, Benedict (Baruch) (1632–77) Dutch Jewish philosopher, born in Amsterdam. In Ethics (1677), Spinoza used a Euclidean geometric method to present one of the great rationalist metaphysical systems of the seventeenth century. His other major books include Treatise on the Improvement of the Intellect and Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670). He developed a system of substance, attributes, and modes and argued that there could be only one substance: God or Nature (Deus sive Natura). He rejected Descartes’s mind–body dualism and replaced it with a mind–body parallelism grounded in underlying substance. He distinguished three levels in the hierarchy of knowledge (opinion or imagination, adequate ideas, and intuitive knowledge) and held that intuitive knowledge is the highest grade. He believed that the goal of philosophy is to achieve freedom by knowing causes and by controlling the passions. His conceptions of liberty and tolerance were important features of his political philosophy. In 1656, Spinoza was excommunicated by the Jewish Community in Amsterdam for heresy. In order to preserve his intellectual freedom and independence, he supported himself by lens grinding, an occupation that led to consumption and his premature death. spirit, see soul spirit of seriousness Modern European philosophy Sartre’s term for the belief that there is something intrinsically good in itself, which is inherent in the world as absolute value and is discoverable by men. Such a belief leads to bad faith. According to Sartre, people fall into the spirit of seriousness because they forget that values are contingent and are chosen and assigned by our own subjectivity. “The spirit of seriousness has two characteristics: it considers values as transcendent givens independent of human subjectivity, and it transfers the quality of ‘desirable’ from the ontological structure of things to their simple material constitution.” Sartre, Being and Nothingness spiritualism Metaphysics Spiritualism claims that spirit or soul, rather than matter, is the ultimate substance of the world. Body has only a phenomenal existence and, as an expression of the reality of spirit, has spirit or mind as its sole ground. In this sense, spiritualism is a synonym for idealism and is opposed to materialism. Various versions of spiritualism differ regarding how they characterize the fundamental role of spirit in the world. “Spiritualism says that mind not only witnesses and records things, but also runs and operates them.” W. James, Pragmatism and Selections from the Meaning of Truth spontaneity Epistemology, metaphysics In Kant’s philosophy, the theoretical aspect of freedom, corresponding to autonomy, which is the practical aspect of freedom. Spontaneity is reason’s active capacity, in contrast to passive receptivity. It is the absence of external determination and legislates rules for itself to synthesize appearances. Pure forms of intuition and pure concepts of understanding are all produced by the spontaneity of human reason. Kant held that spontaneity and receptivity must be combined for knowledge to be possible. The development of Kant’s idea of spontaneity into a conception of an absolute spontaneous subject by Fichte and Schelling was criticized by Hegel. “Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind; the first is the capacity of receiving representations (receptivity of impressions), the second is the power of knowing an object through these representations (spontaneity (in the production) of concepts).” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason spontaneity/indifference: a Scholastic dichotomy involving two kinds of liberty that was also employed by Locke and Hume in discussing the problem of free will. Liberty of spontaneity is doing what one wants or chooses to do while free from the constraints and violence of others. Liberty of indifference is having the power to do A and the power not to do A, given that the necessary conditions of each are satisfied. It is generally believed that the contradictory of spontaneity is compulsion, while the contradictory of indifference is being determined. Spontaneity is therefore compatible with determinism and, according to some philosophers, is not real freedom. Indifference, on the other hand, can choose between alternative courses of action and is seen by critics of spontaneity as the basis for moral responsibility. Other philosophers, however, reject liberty of indifference and argue for the compatibility of the liberty of spontaneity with freedom and responsibility. “There are traditional names for these two contrasting concepts of freedom: freedom defined in terms of wanting is liberty of spontaneity; liberty defined in terms of power is liberty of indifference.” Kenny, Will, Freedom and Power square of opposition: In traditional logic there are four basic propositions: A (universal affirmative, “All X are Y”), E (universal negative, “All X are not Y”), I (particular affirmative, “Some X are Y”), and O (particular negative, “Some X are not Y”). There are various logical relationships among these propositions. (1) A and E are contraries: they can not both be true, but can both be false. (2) I and O are subcontraries: they can not both be false, but can both be true. (3) A and O are contradictories, and so are E and I: of each pair, if one is true, the other must be false. (4) A implies I: if A is true, I must be true. Also, E implies O. The relationship of implication is also called subalternation. All these logical relationships can be presented in terms of the following diagram which is called the “square of opposition”: 1 A E 3 3 4.4.I 2 O 1. 2. 3. 4.contraries subcontraries contradiction implication. “The formal relations of propositions with identical terms of four forms, A, E, I, O, were represented by traditional logicians by a diagram called the square of opposition.” D. Mitchell, An Introduction to Logic stage of existence Philosophy of religion, ethics, modern European philosophy Also called sphere of existence. A stage is generally a phase of development or a moment in an evolutionary process. But for Kierkegaard, a stage is a view about the possibility of life or of a way of life. He mainly distinguishes three stages: the aesthetic stage, in which one is self-centered and considers life to be a matter of sensuous pleasure; the ethical stage, in which one becomes conscious of being a part of a community; and the religious stage, in which one recognizes that one’s life has a relation to the Absolute. The religious stage is in turn divided into Religiousness A and Religiousness B. Each stage is an enclosed world, an independent sphere of life. An aesthetic individual concentrates on enjoying life. An individual in the ethical stage takes a sense of responsibility and duty as the meaning of life. In Religiousness A, an individual assumes an essential relationship to the eternal, and in Religiousness B, the individual becomes eternal. Kierkegaard believed that in moving from the aesthetic stage to the ethical stage and from the ethical stage to the religious stage, there is an ascent. Each stage in turn aims at something higher in humanity. However, he did not think that one stage will inevitably develop into another stage, although it is possible for one to leap from one to another. The relationship between the aesthetic and ethical stages is discussed in Either/Or, while the relationship between the ethical and religious stages is most clearly explicated in Fear and Trembling. “The different existence-stages rank according to their relation to the cosmic in proportion to their having the cosmic inside or outside themselves, yet not in the sense that the cosmic should be the highest.” Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments Stalnaker, Robert Culp. Princeton, NJ-born philosopher of logic, language, and mind, born in Princeton, New Jersey, Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Stalnaker has used a possibleworld semantics to develop an influential theory of counterfactual conditionals. He has also worked on the semantics and pragmatics of natural languages, the ontology of possible worlds, belief, and mental content. His major works include Inquiry (1984). standing sentence, see occasion sentence state Political philosophy, philosophy of law A set of organized institutions operating in a territory with a substantial population composed of its citizens or subjects. It has a legal system to regulate the activities of society and to reconcile conflicting claims of individuals and groups belonging to it. The legal system is backed by a monopoly of legitimate coercion. In its positive functions, a state promotes welfare and justice for its citizens. In its negative functions, a state defends the integrity of its territory from foreign invasion, keeps order, and maintains the security of its citizens. A state recognizes the equal sovereignty of other states and enters inter-state relations subject to international law. There are various theories about the origin and nature of the state. Anarchism denies the need for the coercive power of the state and argues for the limitation of the state’s functions. Social contract theorists justify the state in terms of the benefits of security and freedom offered by civil society, in contrast to the impotence and misery of an actual or hypothetical state of nature. Communitarians claim that individuals are molded by the state. Individualists and holists disagree whether the existence, nature, and actions of the state can be reduced to those of its individual members. “We should say that a state is a group of persons who have supreme authority within a given territory or over a certain population.” Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism Sachverhalt, state of affairs: Wittgenstein’s term for the combination of objects or things in a determinate way. Its structure is determined by the possible ways in which the objects can be combined. States of affairs are independent of one another, and facts comprise their existence or non-existence. The totality of states of affairs constitutes the world. States of affairs are on the side of the world rather than on the side of language. They are the fundamental picturable items corresponding to elementary propositions in language. “In a state of affairs objects fit into one another like the links of a chain.” Wittgenstein, Tractatus state of nature Political philosophy In social contract theory, the actual or hypothetical natural human condition prior to entry into organized civil society. The concept has been a powerful analytical tool in modern political philosophy in justifying political authority and in explaining human rights. Different philosophers make different use of the state of nature. For Hobbes, it is a brutal state of continual of war of all against all. There is neither peace nor any reasonable way of solving conflicts. To escape, human beings contract with an all-powerful sovereign to give up their natural right to whatever they want in return for stability and protection. For Locke, the state of nature is governed by the law of nature and is more inconvenient than brutal. It lacks established law and has neither impartial judges nor the use of legitimate force in enforcing the law. Our rational desire to seek better protection and impartial enforcement of natural rights leads human beings to form a political or civil society through a unanimous contract and to entrust a government with legislative, executive, and judicial powers. Rousseau claimed that human beings in the state of nature are noble savages, whose nature is perfected, and possibly corrupted, by the formation of civic society. For Hegel, society constitutes the nature of human beings rather than human beings constituting the nature of society. “The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone. And reason, which is the law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or permission.” Locke, Two Treatises on Government statement/proposition Logic, philosophy of language Statements are usually defined as sentences that state (that is, assert or deny) something. “Statement” and “proposition” are widely treated as synonyms, with both distinguished from “sentence.” But logical positivists draw a distinction between statements and propositions. Suppose that a proposition must be both meaningful and the bearer of truth and falsity, and that the verification principle can only used to test propositions (not sentences which are neither true nor false). There would be no point in employing the principle to distinguish meaningful from meaningless propositions because propositions are by definition verifiable and meaningful. To cope with this, logical positivists claim that although all indicative sentences are statements, not all of them propositions. Unlike propositions, indicative sentences might be meaningful or not meaningful. All indicative sentences are statements, but only those that are meaningful according to the verificationist theory of meaning are proposition. Thus, propositions become a sub-class of statements, namely, those statements that are meaningful. The principle of verification is a criterion for determining whether an indicative sentence expresses a propositional or a non-propositional statement. “To say that indicative sentences mean propositions is indeed legitimate, just as it is legitimate to say that they express statements.” Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic Stevenson, C. L. philosopher, taught at Michigan and Bennington College. In Ethics and Language (1944), Stevenson contributed to analytic moral philosophy by presenting a systematic account of ethical emotivism. He distinguished between the descriptive meaning and emotive meaning of expressions and argued that the meaning of ethical terms is primarily emotive. An ethical statement expresses one’s emotion or attitude, and to say that something is good is to express approval of it. He held that ethical argument is often a matter of “persuasive definition” between those who agree on ethical meaning but disagree on descriptive meaning. stimulus meaning Philosophy of language For Quine, the stimulus meaning of a sentence is given when we describe the kind of stimulus that would prompt assent to it. If all speakers assent to a sentence in any circumstance in which it arises, that sentence is stimulus analytic; if two sentences are assented to in just the same circumstances, they are stimulus synonymous. Generally, the stimuli that prompt people’s assent to an occasion sentence are the same, but they vary from person to person in the case of standing sentences. This is one major argument by which Quine claims that the facts about stimulus meaning do not determine a unique correct translation manual, and hence that translation is indeterminate. “The stimulus meaning of a sentence for a subject sums up his disposition to assent to or dissent from the sentence in response to present stimulation.” Quine, Word and Object stipulatum: A definition which gives a particular meaning to a new expression, or a new meaning to an established term. It is provided to indicate how one intends to use the term in order to improve clarity and precision of communication or discussion. It is generally expressed in something like the following form: “By the term X what I mean here is . . .” or “I shall use this word to mean so-and-so.” It does not imply that the word has been used by anyone else to mean this, in contrast to lexical definition, which reports what people in general mean by the word. Sometimes it is necessary for scholars and scientists to characterize the meanings of words to suit to the task at hand. “By ‘stipulative definition’ I mean establishing or announcing or choosing one’s own meaning for a word.” Robinson, Definition Stirner, Max (1806–56) German egoist philosopher. Stirner was a left Hegelian who argued for an extreme individualism. He held that reality is limited to the individual ego and that value depends on serving the interests of the ego. He rejected the authority of institutionally entrenched ideas that could not be controlled by the individual. His main work is The Ego and Its Own (1845). strategic action: For Habermas, a model of action, in contrast to communicative action, in which the participants direct their actions through egocentric calculation of utility. Each agent seeks appropriate means to achieve an end with a favorable outcome for himself. Strategic action is not reciprocal and is not performed on the basis of mutual understanding. In communicative action, participants harmonize their respective plans on the basis of having a common understanding of the situation, and make claims that all concerned can accept as valid. The distinction between strategic action and communicative action provides the framework by reference to which Habermas seeks to explain a wide range of social phenomena. “Strategic action is distinguished from communicative actions under common conditions by the characteristic that deciding between possible alternative choices can in principle be made monologically – that means, ad hoc without reaching agreement, and indeed must be made so, because the rules of preference and the maxims binding on each individual partner have been brought into prior harmony.” Habermas, Theory and Practice Strauss, Leo (1899–1973) American political philosopher, born in Germany, Professor at the University of Chicago. Strauss argued for the importance of normative political theory not in general terms, but in order to overcome the mediocrity of democratic mass culture and to restore anti-egalitarian moral concerns to politics. As an intellectual historian, he has reinterpreted important works by looking for textual clues to doctrines that had to be hidden by their authors because of censorship and other forms of persecution. His main works include Natural Right and History (1953) and Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952). straw man fallacy Logic An argument against a position that substitutes another view for the opponent’s actual stance and gives the impression that the actual position has been refuted. The position that is misleadingly ascribed generally sounds more unlikely than the actual position and is hence more easily exposed to criticism. Because the alleged position is not what the opponent holds and is weaker than the actual position, it is like a straw man that can be far more easily overcome than a real man. “The best and purest cases of the straw man fallacy . . . go like this. I argue for a certain position, . . . you then try to refute me, not by arguing against my conclusion, but against an exaggeration.” T. Richards, The Language of Reasons Strawson, P. F. London-born philosopher of logic, language, and metaphysics, Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy, University of Oxford. Strawson has made major contributions to philosophical logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and the history of philosophy. His early work on truth and on Russell’s theory of descriptions preceded a general account of the relations between formal logic and ordinary language. He is best known for introducing descriptive metaphysics into analytic philosophy, arguing that material objects are basic particulars, for the priority of persons as entities to which we can ascribe both conscious states and physical properties and for the importance of relating the subject-predicate distinction in logic to the particular-universal distinction in metaphysics. His work on Kant and its exposition of Kant’s transcendental arguments led to the revival of Kantian projects in contemporary British and American philosophy, and his work on skepticism and naturalism has contributed to renewed interest in non-reductionist naturalism. His major works include Introduction to Logical Theory (1952), Individuals (1959), The Bounds of Sense (1966), Logico-Linguistic Papers (1971), Freedom and Resentment (1974), Subject and Predicate in Logic and Grammar (1974), Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties (1985), and Analysis and Metaphysics (1992). stream of consciousness Philosophy of mind A metaphor introduced by William James to describe the character of consciousness. Consciousness is not made out of units, but is a stream-like process. Past, present, and future are our conceptual ascription. Because any awareness of “present” is seen as an awareness of a recent past, the stream of consciousness is associated with the notion of a specious present. “Consciousness . . . does not appear to itself chopped up in bits . . . a ‘river’ or ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described.” W. James, Principles of Psychology strict conditional, v. strict implication strict identity: Butler initiated a distinction between two meanings of identity, that is, identity in the strict sense, and identity in a loose and popular sense. That A is strictly identical with B means that whatever can be said of one can be said of the other. That is, A and B are identical in all possible worlds. Identity or sameness in our daily conversation only requires that two things are identical in certain parts or aspects. A man yesterday is identical with this man today. But this is not a strict identity, for the man today has some characteristics that were not possessed by the same person yesterday. For instance, yesterday the person was sick, while today he is well; yesterday he was single, but today he is married. “Strict identity is governed by a principle that is called the Indiscernibility of Identicals. This says that if a is strictly identical with b, then a and b have exactly the same properties.” D. Armstrong, Universals strict implication: In order to avoid the paradoxes of material implication, C. I. Lewis introduced the notion of strict implication. One proposition implies another (If P then Q) in the strict sense of the word if and only if it is impossible that P should be true and Q false, that is, if the statement “P is true and Q is false” is inconsistent. Lewis claimed that strict implication was the relation that justified inference from the premises to a conclusion in a deductive argument. Hence it can avoid the paradoxes of material implication and does justice to our ordinary notion of implication. He therefore developed a propositional calculus on the basis of strict implication in order to replace Russell’s propositional calculus, which was established on the basis of material implication. However, his definition of strict implication also implies a paradox: an impossible proposition implies every proposition; and a necessary proposition is implied by every proposition. Hence, just as the term material conditional was proposed to replace the term material implication, it has been suggested that strict conditional should replace strict implication. “If p implies q, then it is not the case that p is true and q false . . . this is the main distinction between strict implication and material implication.” Lewis and Langford, Symbolic Logic neikos kai philia -- strife and love, Greek neikos, strife; philia, love or friendship, Two principles of movement in the cosmology of the Greek philosopher Empedocles. By analogy with human emotions, Strife is the power to dissolve or separate the four basic elements: fire, air, water, and earth, and Love is the power to form and maintain their union. Both principles are eternal. They have no perceptible qualities of their own, but are detectable by their effects. They alternately dominate the cosmos as a whole, making the cosmic system a never-ending cycle. When Love is in control, all elements are fused uniformly, but when Strife rules, the elements are at war with each other. These two principles were meant not only to account for process and change in the natural world, but also to work in social relationships. “These things never cease from continual shifting, at one time all coming together, through Love, at another each borne apart from the others through Strife.” Simplicius, Physics structural ambiguity: Also called syntactical ambiguity. The ambiguity arises from the grammatical structure of a language, that is, from the different ways in which words in a sentence of that language can be related meaningfully to each other. This sort of ambiguity is ascribed to a sentence or statement, and is in contrast to semantic or lexical ambiguity, which is ascribed to a word and arises from the multiplicity of senses associated with a single word. The grammatical relations that most often produce structural or syntactical ambiguity include misplaced modifiers, loosely applied adverbs, elliptical constructions, and omitted punctuation. For instance, the statement that “The fat businessman’s son is nice” is structurally ambiguous, for the adjective “fat” can be taken either to modify “businessman” or “the businessman’s son.” “A denoting expression is called structurally ambiguous if there is a model with respect to which it is ambiguous.” Montague, Formal Philosophy structural linguistics Philosophy of language, philosophy of social science The school of modern linguistics which holds that language is a system or structure of elements that happen to occur in a single speech community at a particular time. Each language is a unique system without any presumption about other languages. The job of linguists is to describe the structure of a given language, namely, to analyze the relations between elements that compose the structure, such as phonemes, morphemes, and phrases. The founder of structural linguistics was Ferdinard de Saussure, who had great influence through his posthumously published Cours de Linguistique Generale, although he used the word “system” rather than “structure.” In criticizing the diachronic perspective of nineteenth-century comparative grammar, Saussure claimed that language has a systematic aspect. It embodies laws of equilibrium that operate on its elements and yield a synchronic system. Structural linguistics separates linguistics from other disciplines and renders it a special science. Other major expositors of structural linguistics include Bloomfield (Language, 1931) and Zellig Harris (Methods in Structural Linguistics, 1952). Through criticism of structural linguistics, Chomsky developed his transformational-generative linguistics. Chomsky believes that the wholeness of linguistic structures is based on the laws of transformation. Hence, linguistics should study the creative aspect of language, together with its synchronic aspect. “It is extremely interesting that, despite the very strong arguments for keeping linguistic structuralism within synchronic confines, present-day linguistic structuralism, as represented by the work of Zellig S. Harris, and above all, his pupil Noam Chomsky, has, as regards syntax, a clearly ‘generative’ orientation.” Piaget, Structuralism structural property Metaphysics A property of a thing that results from the structure of the thing or a system. If a relation R is symmetric, then every relation having the same structure as R will also be symmetric. This property of being symmetric is a structural property because it relies only on the structure of the relation and is not affected by a change in the items within the structure. The structure itself is a structural property. “In general we say a property of n-place relation is a (n-place) structural property provided it depends simply on the structure, i.e. provided it is preserved under isomorphism.” Carnap, Introduction to Symbolic Logic and Its Applications structural violence: A term for social and institutional injustice, such as apartheid, rather than conflict and injury caused by force. Structural violence is exemplified by unfair laws or entrenched customs that deny certain groups in the community fair access to the available social, economic, political, or cultural opportunities. Structural violence does not necessarily involve physical force. It is called violence, which ordinarily means the use of physical force, to justify rebellion against unjust institutions by appeal to the right to self-defense. Structural violence and institutional violence are sometimes used interchangeably, but the latter is more properly restricted to legally sanctioned violence. Institutional violence has often been used to maintain structural violence. “Structural violence is a name for what would more correctly be called social injustice.” Teichman, Pacifism and the Just War. structuralism Philosophy of social science, modern European philosophy The basic claim of structuralism is that all social phenomena, no matter how diverse their superficial appearance, are internally connected and organized according to some unconscious patterns. These internal relations and patterns constitute structures, and uncovering these structures is the object of human studies. Generally, a structure is characteristically whole, transformational, and self-regulatory. Structuralism is a methodology that emphasizes structure rather than substance and relations rather than things. It holds that things exist only as elements of a signifying system. Structural methodology originated in Saussure’s structural linguistics, which describes language as a rule-governed social system of signs. In the 1960s, the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss extended this methodology not only to anthropology (anthropological structuralism) but, indeed, to all signifying systems. Lévi-Strauss is generally regarded to be the founder of modern structuralism. Through his work, structuralism became a major intellectual trend in Western Europe, especially France, and greatly influenced the study of the human sciences. Foucault was influenced by this methodology in his radical reconstruction of intellectual history. Lacan relied on both Saussure and Freud in his development of psychoanalysis (psycho-structuralism). Althusser applied the methodology to the analysis of Marxism (structural Marxism). The structuralist method is also applied to mathematics. In contrast to the compartmentalization characteristic of other approaches to mathematics, structuralism claims to recover unity through isomorphisms in different branches of mathematics. Structuralism became a major methodological movement, although its doctrines and interpretations of its crucial term “structure” varied in different fields. In many areas, structuralism has been superseded by post-structuralism. “Structuralism is essentially a method, with all this term implies – it is technical, involves certain intellectual obligations of honesty, views progress in terms of gradual approximation.” Piaget. structured violence: B. A. O. Williams drew a distinction between structured violence and unstructured violence among official violent acts in “Politics and Moral Character.” Only the state can be justified in performing acts of structured violence, such as judicial execution, regular military operations, and the application of legal force by the police. No private citizen is lawfully allowed to do them, and it would not even make sense to say that a private person performed some of them. Acts of unstructured violence may be performed by a political leader, but in accordance with law and for the sake of defending the national interest. Acts of this sort especially appear in international relations, which generally are less structured than relationships within a society. Unstructured violence is the topic of public morality. “It may be said that structured violence constitutes acts which none but the state could even logically perform.” Williams, in Hampshire (ed.), Public and Private Morality. style: the manner in which a thing is made or done. Style is generally ascribed only to artifacts rather than to nature. The style of a work of art is a complex consisting of ways of creating, modifying, selecting, and interpreting the material. Style manifests the peculiarity and personality of an artist, and directs the audience to the salient features of the work they are appreciating. The same content can be presented with different styles, and different artists are identified by their different styles. Styles can characterize works of a period, tradition, or school as well as those of an individual artist. Some philosophers are puzzled why in some cases critics can articulate the complex character of a style only in retrospect. “A style is a way of doing things; but what we have in nature is just the way things happen. The arts are means of expression, and style in art plays the part in expression that is played in communication by language.” Sparshott, The Structure of Aesthetics Suarez, Francisco (1548–1617) Spanish scholastic philosopher and theologian, born in Granada. In Disputationes Metaphysicae (1597), Suárez provided a comprehensive and systematic discussion of all the major metaphysical problems of late scholasticism. The work greatly influenced modern metaphysics. In De Legibus ac Deo Legislatore (1612), he characterized law as an act of will and divided law into eternal law, divine law, natural law, and human law. This work influenced Grotius. subaltern Logic In traditional logic, a universal proposition implies a particular proposition of the same quality. Hence A (All S are P) implies I (Some S are P), and E (All S are not P) implies O (Some S are not P). Logicians call I the subaltern of A, and O the subaltern of E. Correspondingly, A is called the superaltern of I, and E the superaltern of O. The whole relationship between a universal proposition and its corresponding particular proposition (which has the same subject and predicate terms and the same quality as the universal) is subalternation and is represented in the square of opposition. A subaltern is also termed a subimplicit, while a superaltern is also termed a superimplicit. If the universal proposition is true, so is its corresponding particular proposition, but not vice versa. “Subaltern . . . is a particular proposition which follows by an immediate inference from its corresponding universal to which it is said to be subaltern.” Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. II subcontraries: if two propositions can not both be false but may both be true, they are subcontraries. Hence we may infer from the falsity of one that the other is true, but can not infer the truth-value of the other from the truth of one of them. In traditional logic, this logical relationship occurs between the particular affirmative proposition I (Some S are P) and the particular negative proposition O (Some S are not P). “Two propositions are said to be subcontraries if they cannot both be false, although they might both be true.” Copi, Introduction to Logic subjective knowledge, see objective knowledge subjective-objective distinction Epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics The subject contributes what is subjective to such things as perceptual, moral, and aesthetic judgment and experience; the objects of such judgments and experience contribute what is objective. The subjective seems prone to variation among subjects, while the objective appears to provide a basis for universal agreement. There is disagreement over the contribution of the subject and the object to such judgments. The subjective view is also called the internal view, and is that in which the situation of the agent itself is involved. The objective view is also called the external view, and is that in which agent-related factors are abstracted or surpassed. The subjective is not always private, and the objective is not identical with what can be touched or sensed. Different notions of objectivity might be suitable in different domains. Historical judgments, for example, might be objective if the historian making them is unbiased and has not come to his conclusions as a result of having a favored relation to the relevant objects. “The distinction between subjective and objective is relative. A general human point of view is more objective than the view from what you happen to be, but less objective than the view point of physical science.” T. Nagel, Mortal Questions subjectivism, see objectivism. Subjectivity: a term correlated with objectivity. Ontologically, subjectivity is a mode of existence, in which a thing exists in virtue of being sensed or experienced by a subject. Epistemologically, a knowledge claim is subjective if determining its truth-value requires offering priority to someone having a first-person standpoint regarding the claim. Such priority, however, is unjustifiably claimed on behalf of personal opinions, biases, and arbitrary preferences that are not related to objective facts. If a theory or a judgment is subjective in this sense, it obstructs the achievement of truth and validity and should be rejected along with other forms of partiality, arbitrariness, and bias. On the other hand, the priority of the subjective need not be restricted to individual experience, and perhaps can be justified by the perspectives carried by a person as an historical and cultural being or as a result of special education and training, but it is difficult to determine how to treat the subjectivity of personal and social cultural horizons, social presuppositions, and moral, religious, and aesthetic attitudes. Too great an emphasis on these factors will lead to relativism or extreme subjectivism, but eliminating them is impossible, for they are basic conditions for inquiry. Admitting a place for subjectivity allows that there are alternative and reasonable views, perhaps by using subjective claims as a starting-point that can then be incorporated into a structure of objective knowledge. Executing such a plan has been a central concern for many philosophers. “We often speak of judgements as being ‘subjective’ when we mean that their truth or falsity cannot be settled ‘objectively’, because the truth or falsity is not a simple matter of fact but depends on certain attitudes, feelings, and points of views of the makers and the hearers of the judgements.” Searle, The Construction of Social Reality subject-of-a-life Ethics A term introduced by Tom Regan for individuals who are more than merely alive and conscious. Subjects-of-a-life are characterized by a set of features including having beliefs, desires, memory, feelings, self-consciousness, an emotional life, a sense of their own future, an ability to initiate action to pursue their goals, and an existence that is logically independent of being useful to anyone else’s interests. Such an individual has inherent value independent of its utility for others. Because of this inherent value, a subject-of-a-life has rights to protect this value and not to be harmed. Other subjects have a duty to respect these rights. Regan then argues that all mature normal mammals fit the conditions for a subject-of-a-life; so they have inherent value and have rights. We have natural duties toward these animals, and should treat them equally and not interfere with their normal life course. Being a subject-of-a-life is his criterion for inclusion of an individual in the moral community. “Those who satisfy the subject-of-a-life criterion themselves have a distinctive kind of value – inherent value – and are not to be viewed or treated as mere receptacles.” Regan, The Case for Animal Rights sublation, L. sublatus, past participle of tollere, (1) to raise, to lift up or (2) to remove, to destroy. German aufheben has an additional meaning: (3) to keep, to preserve] In Hegel’s philosophy, the three senses of sublation are used together, rather than as three separate meanings. Sublation is the negation of the negation, a negation that has a positive consequence. What is sublated is not reduced to nothing, but has a result that originated in what has been negated. For Hegel, a thing is negated by its opposite, and both are removed from their immediacy but also preserved as items by a higher whole. This higher whole is an improvement over the original thing and its negation, and is an elevation of them, although the higher whole is itself open to further sublation. For Hegel both concepts and things can be sublated. The term is also translated as supersede, supersession, and sublimation. “To sublate has a twofold meaning in the language: on the one hand it means to preserve, to maintain, and equally it also means to cause to cease, to put an end to . . . Thus, what is sublated is at the same time preserved; it has only lost its immediacy but is not on that account annihilated.” Hegel, Science of Logic sublimation Philosophy of mind [from Latin sublimare, to elevate] For Freud, a process of adapting the libidinal instinct, directing it away from its sexual aim and discharging it in areas other than sexuality. Through sublimation, the claims of the ego can be met without repression and libidinal energy can fuel social and creative efforts. On Freud’s account, sublimation is thus contrasted with repression. “The most important vicissitude which an instinct can undergo seems to be sublimation; here both object and aim are changed, so that what was originally a sexual instinct finds satisfaction in some achievement which is no longer sexual but has a higher social or ethical valuation.” Freud, Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 18 sublime Aesthetics The feeling of awe, respect, majesty, astonishment and even horror aroused by vastly great and overwhelmingly powerful objects, such as the starry sky at night, huge mountains, towering cliffs, volcanoes, or raging seas. The concept can be traced to the Greek rhetorician Longinus. The Latin translation De Sublimitate (1674) of his book Peri Hupsos (On the Impressiveness of Style) made the sublime a central notion for eighteenth-century aesthetics. J. Addison, E. Burke, and Kant all distinguish sublimity from beauty as a basic species of artistic excellence. While the beautiful arouses pleasure and inspires love, the sublime commands respect and inspires the elevation of the soul. How, then, can we enjoy what causes us to feel horror and fear? Kant claimed that the sentiment of the sublime shows us that we are rational beings who transcend nature and legislate over sense. The sublime is the triumph of reason and is the bridge that enables us to turn from the vulgar and common to our real moral freedom. But others suggest that the feeling engendered by the vast spectacle of nature makes us feel that we are insignificant parts of nature. Postmodern aesthetics revives the distinction between the beautiful and the sublime and claims that while the beautiful is associated with the apprehension of form and rule, the sublime is associated with the formless and the resistance to rule. “The sublime moves, the beautiful charms . . . The sublime must always be great; the beautiful can also be small. The sublime must be simple; the beautiful can be adorned and ornamented.” Kant, Observations on the Feelings of the Beautiful and Sublime substance, Greek ousia. Like on (being), ousia comes from ousa, the singular feminine normative participle of einai, to be] Plato used on and ousia synonymously. Aristotle classifies different kinds of being, and substance is being in its first sense, namely, the ultimate reality. In the Categories, Aristotle defined substance as the ultimate subject that underlies everything else, and he also distinguished between primary substance (the sensible individual) and secondary substance (species and genus). In the Metaphysics, substance is the focal meaning of being. However, the category of substance is divided into form, matter, and the composite of matter and form. If substance is still subject, matter will be primary substance. But Aristotle held this to be impossible, with separation and tode ti (a this) presented as more important criteria to decide what is substance. According to these new criteria, form is substance in its primary sense, and the composite is substance in a derivative sense. Species and genus, which are secondary substances in the Categories, are rejected as substances. This has given rise to the problem explaining the relation between form and the universal. Substance as a translation of ousia gained its currency historically because of the medieval philosopher Boethius’ influential commentary on the Categories in which substance and subject coincide, but the word ‘substance’ has no etymological connection with ousia, and is not a precise translation of the notion of ousia in the Metaphysics. Alternative English translations of ousia include essence, entity, and reality. “It follows, then, that ‘substance’ has two senses, (a) the ultimate substratum, which is no longer predicated of anything else, and that which, being a ‘this’, is also separated – and of this nature is the shape or form of each thing.” Aristotle, Metaphysics. Descartes’s criterion for substance is virtually the same as Aristotle’s subject criterion. He defined substance as that whose existence does not depend on other things and claimed that there is, strictly speaking, only one substance, namely God. However, although God is the only uncreated substance, created substances may be recognized because, although they need the concurrence of God in order to exist, they are independent of any other created things, such as accidents or modes. Instead, created substances are the bearers of properties, modes, and accidents. A created substance for Descartes can be a thinking thing (res cogitans) or mind, or it can be an extended thing (res extensa) or body. All other modes are reducible to these two orders of existence. For thinking substance, thought is its principal attribute, because a thinking substance without thought is unintelligible. For corporeal substance, extension is its principal attribute, because a corporeal substance without extension is unintelligible. Thought and extension are the only two principal attributes that constitute, respectively, the essence of thinking and corporeal substances. Where there are two principal attributes there are two substances. This is to say, no existent substance can be a substance of more than one kind of attribute. This is the dualism of Descartes. “By substance, we can understand nothing else than a thing which so exists that it needs no other thing in order to exist.” Descartes, Principles of Philosophy. Influenced by Spinoza, Hegel claimed that there is only one substance, that is, the absolute. In contrast to Spinoza, Hegel’s absolute as substance is also subject. For Descartes, individual subjects are thinking substances, and for Leibniz, monads as substances have self-consciousness. Hegel developed these ideas and held that substance as subject is the movement of positing itself and of developing into its contrary, and is further unified by the movement to a higher unity. By repeating such a movement, substance generates and dissolves its attributes, that is, its appearance. Substance and attributes are mutually inclusive, for substance can be substance only through revealing itself in its attributes. The development of substance is the reflection into self of the subject, and the subject makes itself what it becomes. “Substance is accordingly the totality of the accidents, revealing itself in them as their absolute negativity (that is to say, as absolute power) and at the same time as the wealth of all content.” Hegel, Logic. Starting with the traditional Aristotelian claim that substance is the ultimate subject of predicates, Leibniz claimed that all the predicates of a given subject are contained within the concept of that subject, including every past and future state of that subject. He then asked what it is for a substance to have an attribute, that is, what is the foundation of and reason for all the predicates that can truly be asserted of that substance. In answering this question, he reverted in some sense to the pre-Cartesian view of hylomorphism, arguing that because a substance is a being that subsists in itself, it has a principle of action within itself. It has a substantial form analogous to the soul that organizes and systematizes all the functions and activities of the substance. The essence of a substance is its primitive force of action. Later Leibniz called his substances monads. Since a substance as a subject contains all its predicates, changes in monads are not due to the effect of external causes but rather to the unfolding of their own internal natures. Each monad is completely self-contained and perfect, although there is a pre-established harmony among monads giving the impression of interaction. “This being promised, we can say it is the nature of an individual substance or complete being to have a concept so complete that it is sufficient to make us understand and deduce from it all the predicates of the subject to which the concept is attributed.” Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics. The notion of substance that Locke inherited was the Aristotelian notion, from the Categories, of an underlying subject (substratum). Locke believed in the real existence of substance in the world. For the perceived qualities and properties carry the supposition of a substratum and can not be thought to exist by themselves. Hence, as a matter of necessity of thought we must infer a substance as the ground of the qualities. We find in nature certain groups of simple ideas in constant and uniform conjunction and tend to believe that there is a substratum behind them. As long as there is any sensible quality, substance can not be dismissed. However, the real essence of such a substance is unclear. Our ideas are limited to sensation and reflection, and do not reach sufficiently far to provide knowledge of the nature of substance. The ideas we have of substance are complex ideas; they are nothing but the collection of simple ideas of qualities, products of our mental operations. In all, substance has no positive content but only a supposition that it supports qualities. We know nothing about this supposition itself. Locke’s criticism of the concept of substance paves the way for Berkeley and Hume to deny the existence of material substance and was a crucial step in the development of empiricism. “Because, as I have said, not imagining how these simple ideas can subsist by themselves, we accustom ourselves to suppose some substratum wherein they do exist, and from which they do result, which therefore we call substance.” Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The standard definition Spinoza offered for substance is something which is “in itself ” and “conceived through itself.” The former part of this definition is similar to Aristotle’s definition of substance as subject, and the determination of the later part means that the concept of substance is formed without need to think about anything else. For otherwise the knowledge of substance would have to be dependent on the knowledge of something else, which would be another substance. Unlike Descartes, Spinoza did not refer to created things as substances. For him, substance was causa sui, its own cause. Extension and thought are attributes that constitute the essence of substance. But two attributes do not constitute two beings or two different substances. One substance can instantiate more than one attribute. There cannot be two distinct substances of the same nature. Substance is necessary, infinite, eternal, unique, and all-inclusive. Spinoza called substance God or nature. Substance for Spinoza was therefore identical with a wholly self-sufficient, all-embracing reality. This pantheistic notion of substance allowed Spinoza to challenge Descartes’s dualism, although the relation between substance and attributes in Spinoza is much disputed. “By substance I understand that which is in itself and is conceived through itself.” Spinoza, Ethics substantial chain, see vinculum substantiale substantial form: a notion originating in Aristotle’s metaphysics and fully developed by the scholastics. It is the internal principle of a thing that accounts for it being a substance of a certain kind. The substantial form of a thing is the goal of its behavior and its explanatory principle. Early modern scientists and philosophers rejected the notion of substantial form, preferring to explain natural phenomena in terms of size, figure, and motion alone. However, Albinos held that this mechanistic philosophy was insufficient, for it failed to account for the inner action and the organic unity of a thing. Leibniz rehabilitated substantial forms and took them to be a principle of change and unity. He held them to be true unities or real entities. A corporeal substance is composed of indeterminate and passive matter and determining form that acts as the cause and explanation of its properties. This determining form is its substantial form and corresponds to the soul in human beings. Leibniz differed from the scholastics in his use of the term, for he claimed that this form is a general explanatory principle that supplies nature with organic activity, and did not use substantial forms to account for particular natural phenomena. For Leibniz, a form is an activity or entelechy, and a substantial form is a primitive force and first entelechy. “In order to find these real entities I was forced to have recourse to a formal atom, since a material thing cannot be both material and, at the same time, perfectly indivisible, that is, endowed with a true unity. Hence, it was necessary to restore, and, as it were, to rehabilitate the substantial forms which are in such disrepute today.” Leibniz, Philosophical Essays substantive universal: A sort of linguistic universal that belongs to the description of the substantive universal properties of a language, in contrast to a formal universal, which gives the abstract universal properties of language. Accordingly, substantive universals contribute to determining the vocabulary for the description of language. According to this notion, all languages must have certain substantive phonetic elements for phonetic representation, certain specific central features of syntax, and certain semantic features to provide a universal framework for semantic description. “A study of substantive universals claims that items of a particular kind in any language must be drawn from a fixed class of items.” Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax substitutional quantifier, see objectual quantifier substratum, Gr. hupokeimenon, that which underlies, hence the subject or bearer of properties] In the Categories, Aristotle defined substance as the substratum because it underlies the other categories, and he used substance and substratum virtually interchangeably. In the Metaphysics, he divided the category of substance into form, matter, and the composite of form and matter. While the composite is the substratum of properties, matter is the substratum of form. If substance still meant mainly “that which underlies,” matter would be the ultimate subject and therefore primary substance. But Aristotle now claimed that instead of being a substratum, (primary) substance is that which is separate and a this (tode ti). Thus, although matter is the subject of form, this does not give matter a better claim than form to being substance. sufficient condition: a condition in the presence of which a specific thing must exist or a specific event must occur: if A, then B. The condition can also be stated at a formal level: if A is true, then B is true. If one is seriously ill, then one will be weak. Hence, being ill is a sufficient condition for being weak. In contrast, a necessary condition must be present for a thing to exist or for an event to occur, but does not guarantee that the thing will exist or the event occur. If A is a sufficient condition of B, then B is a necessary condition for A. A condition can be necessary and sufficient, unnecessary and sufficient, or necessary and insufficient. If it is unnecessary and insufficient, it is not a condition. Conditions can be parts of other conditions, so that, as in Mackie’s account of causation, we can have an insufficient but necessary part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition. “The substratum is that of which everything else is predicated, while it is itself not predicated of anything else.” Aristotle, Metaphysics “A sufficient condition for the occurrence of an event is a circumstance in whose presence the event must occur.” Copi, Introduction to Logic subsumption theory of explanation, another expression for covering law model sufficient reason, the principle of Metaphysics A law that can be traced to the medieval philosopher Abelard, but is usually associated with Leibniz. In its most common formulation, it is the claim that there is nothing without a reason for being thus and not otherwise. Leibniz formulated the principle in a number of ways, and applied it freely, depending on how he defined sufficient reason at a given time. Sometimes he took it, together with the principle of non-contradiction, as one of the two great principles used in reasoning. Sometimes sufficient reason was a form of a priori proof founded on the nature of the subject and predicate terms in every true proposition, no matter whether it is necessary or contingent. Sometimes sufficient reason meant efficient cause and, in particular, final cause. In this case, the principle is not concerned with the logical relation between subject and predicate, but with the cause of events and the existence of things. It is the basis of Leibniz’s rejection of Newtonian absolute space and time. Sometimes the principle of the best or perfection is also said to be a version of the principle of sufficient reason. success verb, see achievement verb such Metaphysics, ancient Greek philosophy [Greek toionde] For Aristotle, a kind, common nature or common predicate. Form, as toionde, is a universal form. Such, which is general, contrasts with a this (tode ti), which is individual. Aristotle claimed that by separating an idea (toionde) from the things exemplifying it and by thus making the idea a this, Plato made many mistakes in his Theory of Forms or Ideas. Aristotle tried to keep a clear distinction between a this and such by claiming that substance is a this and that an idea, as a universal, is not a substance. “. . . no common predicate indicates a ‘this’, but rather a ‘such’. If not, many difficulties follow and especially the ‘third man’.” Aristotle, Metaphysics sufficient and necessary condition, see necessary condition “The principle of sufficient reason, namely, that nothing happens without a reason why it should be so rather than otherwise.” Leibniz, Philosophical Essays suicide: Deliberately and voluntarily ending one’s life with the aim of self-destruction. Suicide is distinguished from sacrificing one’s life as a means to achieve another end and from engaging in actions or a way of life that risks one’s life. From Plato and Aristotle onward, there has been controversy whether suicide is morally justified. On one view, suicide should be morally prohibited on the grounds that life is divine, that suicide causes harm to one’s family and community, and that suicide is an offense to God who created life. In contrast, suicide is claimed to be a self-regarding act that lies outside the prohibition on harming others. It is claimed that without stronger objections, the right should be recognized to determine when to terminate one’s own life. Aquinas and Kant argued against suicide, while Hume argued in favor of tolerating it. These different attitudes lead to controversy whether we should intervene if somebody has the intention of committing suicide. If suicide is immoral, then we are obliged to prevent it. If suicide is morally justifiable, the intervention beyond advice will be paternalistic interference that violates the agent’s rights. Suicide has been frequently discussed in contemporary applied ethics through its relations with the issues of euthanasia and assisted suicide. “Let us here endeavour to restore men to their native liberty, by examining all the common arguments against suicide, and showing that that action may be free from every imputation of guilt or blame, according to the sentiments of all the ancient philosophers.” Hume, On Suicide summum bonum: a good without any qualification and an absolute end in itself. All other goods are pursued for its sake, for they are good because of this supreme good. Hence, the concept of a supreme end unites all other ends and is the crown for any system of ends. Ethically, the summum bonum is the moral ideal of a possible state of affairs in which a morally perfect being is supremely happy and also worthy of being supremely happy. Different moral theories offer different accounts of what constitutes the summun bonum, such as pleasure, happiness, self-actualization, contemplation, a good will, fulfillment of duty, or obedience to God. Metaphysically it is regarded as the ultimate principle and the source of value and being. Critics question whether a system of ends requires a highest good to be intelligible. “And I wish to point out certain conclusions which appear to follow, with regard to the nature of the Summum Bonum, or the state of things which would be the most perfect we can conceive.” G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica Sun, simile of the: device used by Plato in the Republic to illuminate the nature of the Form of the Good, knowledge of which the guardians must attain. The simile is based on the distinction between the visible world and the world of the Forms. As the source of light in the visible world, the sun enables both the eye to see and the object of sight to be seen. Furthermore, it causes the process of generation and growth. The roles played by the Good in relation to the world of the Forms correspond to the roles played by the sun in relation to the visible world. The Good enables both the mind to know and the Forms to be known. Furthermore, it is the cause of being and reality of the Forms. As the Sun is beyond sight, light, and process in its power, the Good is beyond truth, knowledge, and being in its power and dignity. The sovereignty of the Good illustrated in this simile is obscure and its interpretation remains a subject of dispute, but as a metaphysical attempt to establish a fundamental principle for any explanation, the simile has exerted a great influence on many subsequent metaphysical systems. In the Republic, the simile of Sun is complemented by the simile of Line and the simile of the Cave. “What the Good itself is in the world of thought in relation to the intelligence and things known, the sun is in the visible world, in relation to sight and things seen.” Plato, Republic superego, see ego supererogation, Latin super, beyond + erogare, to pay out] The category of good actions that go beyond the requirements of common morality, such as risking one’s own life to save another. Supererogatory deeds are often arduous and costly. They are encouraged by morality as meritorious and are worthy of praise or honor. Nevertheless, one has no obligation to do them, and their omission is neither morally wrong nor subject to moral blame. Supererogation aims at a moral ideal rather than the standard of common morality. Chisholm classifies supererogation as one of five kinds of morally appraised actions, along with actions that are morally obligatory, indifferent, forbidden, and offensive. Some versions of utilitarianism eliminate the possibility of supererogatory acts, because the need to maximize happiness leaves no room to distinguish between the requirements of ordinary morality and acts that go beyond them. Some claim that such positions demand too much from ordinary moral agents, who do not aspire to the moral lives of saints or heroes. “Superergatory virtue is shown by acts of exceptional sacrifice for the benefit of others. Such acts are praiseworthy and not regarded as irrational, but they are not thought either morally or rationally required.” T. Nagel, The View from Nowhere Superman, see Übermensch supernatural theology, another name for revealed theology superstructure: The metaphor of base and superstructure, or foundation and superstructure, is of fundamental importance to the methodology of historical materialism. The economic structure is said to be the foundation on which the state, including the police, army, courts and bureaucracy, and ideology are built. The state is called legal/political superstructure, while the ideology is called the ideological superstructure. The superstructure arises because of the conflict of interests of different classes inherent in the economical base and is thus determined by the base. The function of the superstructure is to keep the base intact by keeping the collective interests of the ruling class intact. This is accomplished by the sanctioned and coercive regulation of the legal/political superstructure and by the persuasive force of the ideological superstructure. When the development of the productive forces brings changes in the relations of production, Marx claims that the superstructure will consequentially be transformed. The distinction between base and superstructure depends on there being an explanatory priority given to the base in its relations with the superstructure, but this priority need not be absolute. Writers disagree concerning the autonomy of the superstructure in its own affairs and the power it has in shaping the base. “The totality of these relations of production forms the economic structure of society, the real basis from which rises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond specific forms of social consciousness.” Marx, Preface to the Critique of Political Economy supervenience: a term which can be traced to G. E. Moore, but which gained wider use through the work of R. M. Hare. Hare used it for the claim that moral or evaluative properties such as goodness must supervene upon natural properties such as intelligence, health, and kindness. If something has the moral property in virtue of having the natural property and if anything having the natural property would in virtue of having it also have the moral property, then the moral property supervenes upon the natural property. If two things are alike in all descriptive respects, the same evaluative properties must be applied to both of them. On this view, good is supervenient upon underlying natural properties, although it is not reducible to them. Davidson extended this notion to the philosophy of mind, and claims that mental properties are supervenient upon physical properties. If two things are alike in all physical properties, they can not differ in mental properties, but the mental can not be reduced to the physical. Supervenient physicalism offers an alternative to reductionist identity theory. Supervenience is an irreducible relation of dependence upon base properties by supervenient properties. The term has a wide application. In ontology, mereological supervenience can be used to describe the relation between part and whole. In epistemology, properties such as being justifiable or reasonable are said to be supervenient properties. Recently, weak, strong, and global supervenience have been introduced by J. Kim. For the actual world or a given possible world, property A weakly supervenes on property B, if anything in that world having B also has A. Across different possible worlds, A strongly supervenes on B if any individual having B will also have A across all of those worlds. For global supervenience, if the histories of two worlds agree in all of their subvening respects, the worlds will also be indiscernible in their supervening respects. Supervenient properties are also called consequential characteristics or tertiary qualities. The latter notion was introduced by Bosanquet for the aspects of beauty and sublimity which we recognize in nature but which are not features of nature. “Entity Q supervenes on entity P if and only if every possible world that contains P contains Q.” D. Armstrong, Universals supposition, f. supponere, to put something under, the signification of a term in a proposition. The doctrine of suppositio, one of the most significant parts of medieval logic, was developed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Through recognition of the ambiguity of a term, medieval logicians devoted themselves to classifying the various types of suppositio a term may have in the context of a proposition. A distinction between simple supposition (suppositio simplex) and personal supposition (suppositio personalis) was drawn. The former signifies a common nature, and the latter signifies an individual. This corresponds somewhat to the distinction between suppositio discreta, which directly refers to an individual, and suppositio communis, which refers to many. Suppositio personalis was further divided by William of Ockham into suppositio determinata, which can be explained by reference to one individual, and suppositio confusa, which involves all or many individuals of the species. Suppositio confusa has two main types: mobile and distributiva. There is also a kind of material supposition, suppositio materialis, by which a word refers to itself. Logicians differed about the types of supposition and the relations among the types. This difficult doctrine is of contemporary interest through its relevance to issues of meaning and reference. “Supposition is the signification that a certain kind of term has in the context of a proposition.” Broadie, Introduction to Medieval Logic surface structure, see deep structure surprise examination paradox Logic A semantic paradox, also called the examination paradox or prediction paradox. A teacher announces that there will be a surprise examination next week. Then a student claims that such an examination can not occur. The examination can not be on Friday (the last working day of the week), for at that time it would not be a surprise. It can not be on Thursday. For if there is no examination given on Wednesday, we will know that it will come either on Thursday or Friday, but since Friday has been ruled out, Thursday will be the only day left, and then the examination will not be a surprise. The other days can be eliminated in the same manner. Hence there can be no surprise examination next week. Some critics argue that if the student calculates that the surprise examination can not take place on Friday (or any other given day), it would be a surprise if it were to take place then and that it therefore could take place on any day of the week. The paradox was originally observed by a mathematics teacher in Stockholm during the Second World War, when he heard a declaration from the authorities that, as an exercise, there would be a surprise air-raid alarm some day during the next week, during which people should go to an air-raid shelter. “The class’s argument falls into two parts: one applies to whether there can be an unexpected examination on the last day, Friday; the other takes forward the negative conclusion on this issue, and purports to extend it to the other days.” Sainsbury, Paradoxes survival, problem of: Traditionally the problem of immortality, concerning whether the self or soul can survive bodily death and also concerning the form that survival might take. Some philosophers argue that the soul could exist on its own after death, with a continuation of its earthly identity and with mental capacities very much like those of its embodied state. Others argue that preserving one’s identity and capacities would require either the resurrection of one’s earthly body or its replacement by a special body. Others argue that survival is unintelligible without a continuing relationship with a living body and that survival of bodily death is therefore impossible. A different problem of survival is extensively discussed by Derek Parfit, and distinguished by him from the problem of personal identity. Imagine that my brain is divided into two halves and that each half is transplanted into the skull of a new body. If character and memories were related to both sides of the brain, the result of successful transplantation would be that two persons would have my character and my apparent memories. To which of them am I identical? Not to one of them alone, because the other would have equally good claim to be me. Not to both of them, because then two distinct individuals existing at the same time would be identical to each another, and our notion of identity makes this impossible. Nevertheless I do survive. On this basis, Parfit argues that the problem of survival and the problem of identity should be distinguished. While identity can not be settled in this case, we can answer the question of survival. Identity is a one–one relation, while survival can be a one– many relation. While identity is an all-or-nothing relation, that is, either X and Y are identical or X and Y are completely distinct, most of the relations which matter in survival are relations of degree. I can survive as two persons who share a common past in me without being either or both of them. If survival is what matters to me, I can give up my concern for identity. Parfit’s separation of these two problems attempts to end the long-standing debate about personal identity, and it also has moral consequences regarding how I conceive of myself and how I value my future happiness as compared to the happiness of others. Since what matters in our continued existence is constituted mainly by relations of degree, Parfit believes that we have reason to diminish our self-absorption and our self-concern. “ ‘Will I survive?’ seems . . . equivalent to ‘Will there be some person alive who is the same person as me?” Parfit, “Personal Identity,” in Philosophical Review 80 survival of the fittest: the central idea of social Darwinism. A trait is fitting if it helps its species to survive. Fitness is a key concept in Darwin’s explanation of differential reproduction. According to his theory of evolution, the various species evolved as the result of the action of an environment that favored the survival of some organisms while destroying others. Social Darwinism applies this idea to the explanation of the development of society and claims that economic competition produces human progress. The idea is fully expressed by Herbert Spencer, who claimed in Social Statistics that just as competition in the natural world ensures that only the fittest survive, so free competition in the economic world ensures that only the most capable individuals survive and rise to the top. Society favors those who both understand the conditions of existence and are able to meet their requirements. He thought that competition and its outcome are necessary for the development of the human race. Social Darwinism and the notion of the survival of the fittest are now widely rejected in science and morality. “The phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ has been used, ever since Herbert Spencer first coined it, to describe an individualistic law showing such . . . as co-operation, love and altruism to be unreal, a law which (somewhat mysteriously) both demands and predicts that they should always give way to self-interest.” Midgley, Evolution as a Religion suspension of judgment Ancient Greek philosophy, epistemology [Greek epoche, also translated as suspension of belief ] A key term in ancient skepticism for the epistemological stance, which does not deny or affirm anything. It is an attitude of indifference to the nature of a thing, arising from the modes of skepticism. Since our sensations tell us neither truth nor falsehood, we should be uncommitted and resist any temptation to hazard opinions. According to the skeptics, suspension of judgment may lead to tranquility and therefore to happiness. “Broadly speaking, suspension of judgement comes about because of the setting of things in opposition.” Empiricus, Outline of Pyrrhonism syllogism Logic [from Greek sullogismos, argument] Aristotle’s famous logical achievement, described in his Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics. A syllogism is a formally valid inference to a conclusion from two premises (a major premise and a minor premise). The premises and the conclusion all have subjectpredicate forms. The premise containing the predicate of the conclusion is the major premise, and the premise containing the subject of the conclusion is the minor premise. The term that appears in both premises but does not appear in the conclusion is the middle term. The subject-predicate relation is either affirmative or negative and is either universal or particular, yielding four kinds of propositions in syllogism: all x is y, no x is y, some x is y, and some x is not y, symbolized in traditional logic by the letters A, E, I, O respectively. Syllogisms can be divided into four figures according to the different positions of the middle term in the premises, although Aristotle only describes the first three, with the fourth figure added by medieval logicians. In each figure the different possible combinations of forms of premise result in different moods, but not all moods are valid. An example of the first mood of the first figure (called Barbara) is: All men are mortal, Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal. Syllogism was the core of the first abstract and rigorous system of logic, and dominated logic until the nineteenth century. However, since it only deals with subject-predicate relations, its scope of application is limited, and even as an account of predication it has been superseded by modern predicate calculus. “A syllogism is discourse in which, certain things being stated, something other than what is stated follows of necessity from their being so.” Aristotle, Prior Analytics symbol, see sign/symbol symbolic logic, another term for mathematical logic symmetric relation: a relation R between two terms, X and Y, is symmetric if and only if XRY entails YRX and YRX entails XRY. For example, from “Smith is the brother of John,” we can infer that “John is the brother of Smith.” A relation R is asymmetric if XRY entails not YRX. For example, from “Smith is the father of Peter,” we can infer that “Peter is not the father of Smith.” A relation R between two terms can also be non-symmetric, that is, neither symmetric nor asymmetric. For example, from “John likes Jane,” we can not tell whether or not Jane likes John. “What all cases of equivalence have in common, is mainly the mark of a symmetrical relation, namely, the two axioms: If A = B, then B = A; If A = B, and B = C, then A = C.” Russell, The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. II sympathy, Greek sym, together + pathos, passion] A general disposition or propensity to feel what others around us are feeling and to be affected or moved by this feeling. We are delighted if we observe others who are delighted, and feel sorrow if we observe others in pain. For Hume, sympathy is a part of human nature. In contrast to reason, it is the basis for forming what we regard to be virtues and vices. In a further development of Hume’s view, Adam Smith held, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, that sympathy is an analogous emotion that arises in spectators from imaginatively putting themselves in the situation that causes the feeling in the agent. Sympathy is what Hutcheson called moral sense and what Hume called approbation. All of these are different expressions for sentiment. For British theorists of moral sentiments, sympathy is our ground for making moral judgments and moral rules. “Pity and compassion are words appropriated to signify our fellow feeling with the sorrow of others. Sympathy, though its meaning was, perhaps originally the same, may now, however, without much impropriety, be made use of to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.” Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments syncategorematic, from Greek syn, with + kategoria, category] A term introduced by medieval logicians. Categorematic terms were originally those falling under Aristotle’s ten categories to denote entities of ten different kinds, with each forming an independent meaningful unit as an expression. Later, any term that stands for something and can serve as a subject or predicate in a categorical proposition was considered to be categorematic. In contrast, syncategorematic terms are those terms that can not function to refer to anything but have to be used together with categorematic terms. They are terms such as “and,” “or,” “not,” “if,” “every,” “some,” “only,” and “except.” Because they do not stand for anything, they do not have meaning in isolation. Although they need other terms to make a meaningful unit of language, they have special logical importance because they show the form of a statement. The notion of a syncategorematic term has now been replaced in modern logic by the notion of a logical constant or topic-neutral expression. “Such words are called syncategorematic because they are only capable of being used along with others in predication.” Joseph, An Introduction to Logic syndicalism, ffrom French syndicat, trade union] A socialist theory based on the experiences of the French trade union movement. Syndicalism claimed that the working class should adopt direct action against capitalism through trade unions or other working-class organizations. The general strike was regarded as the most important weapon. Militant syndicalism advocated class war and the destruction of capitalism by armed violence. Classical syndicalism distrusted political and state activity and rejected all state-oriented politics. It envisaged the reconstruction of society according to a federal formation of local workers’ units after the abolition of the state. “The term ‘syndicalism’ has two meanings. It can denote simply trade unionism in a neutral sense. On the other hand, it signifies revolutionary or militant trade unionism, devoted to the overthrow of capitalism and the state. The usual mechanism of overthrow was the general strike.” Plant, Modern Political Thought synonym: a relation between things or expressions. Two things are synonymous if they share the same expression, and the expression applies to them for the same reason. For instance, both a man and a horse are called ‘“animal,” in the sense that both of them are living things that can move themselves. Thus both a man and a horse are synonymous with regard to the expression “animal.” Synonymity today is more likely to be ascribed to expressions than to things. Two expressions are synonymous if they have the same meaning. Usually, an expression can be replaced with its synonym without affecting the truth-value of the proposition in which it occurs, although this does not apply to propositional attitudes or other opaque or non-extensional contexts. “A word is synonymous to a word or phrase if the substitution of the one for the other in a sentence always yields an equivalent sentence.” Quine, Theories and Things syntactical ambiguity, an alternative expression for structural ambiguity syntactical sentence, see pseudo-object sentence syntax Logic, philosophy of language [from Greek syn, together + taxis, order or arrangement] The rules of sentence construction that indicate how sentences may be formed out of diverse kinds of words. The syntactic rules for each language distinguish those combinations of words that are acceptable from those that are unacceptable. Syntactics is the study concerned with the formal aspects of sentence formation, that is, the structural relationships among symbols in a language, in contrast to semantics, which studies questions of meaning or truth in a language. According to Russell, early Wittgenstein, and the logical positivists, the syntax or grammar of ordinary languages like English is ambiguous and allows the same grammatical form to be used for both meaningful and meaningless utterances. For instance, “Caesar is a prime number” is grammatically correct but logically meaningless. On this view, the grammar of ordinary language becomes a central source of metaphysical nonsense masquerading as intelligible discourse. Consequently, these philosophers suggest that a major task of philosophy is to construct a logical syntax in which grammatical and logical structures coincide. Syntax is also discussed in recent philosophy as a result of the work of N. Chomsky. He argues for the existence of an innate universal grammar, in part from the impossibility of children acquiring the complex syntax of natural language on empiricist principles. “If grammatical syntax corresponds exactly to logical syntax, pseudo-statements could not arise.” Carnap, “The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language,” in Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism syntax words, see object words synthesis Epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind [from Greek syn, with, together + tithenai, put, place, literally, putting together] A mental process of drawing together separate items or ideas and combining them in some way as a whole. Synthesis also means the outcome of such a mental process. In general, synthesis moves from the simple to the complex, in contrast to analysis, which breaks up a whole into its constituents and its manner of combination. Kant made sophisticated use of the notions of synthesis and analysis in The Critique of Pure Reason. In Hegel’s dialectics, synthesis is the third stage of a triadic process, involving both thought and reality, of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. It reconciles both thesis and antithesis by preserving what is rational in them and rejecting what is irrational through what Hegel calls sublation. “Synthesis may be defined as the discovery of a complex consisting of given constituents combined in a given manner.” Russell, Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. VII synthesis (Kant) Metaphysics, epistemology The act of unifying or combining the manifold representations in intuition into one consciousness or one cognition. It is the act of combining intuitions and concepts. The forms of sensible intuition, space and time, organize appearances in experience to a certain extent, but this is not enough. The intuited manifold still needs to be connected and put together. This is the job of synthesis, which is the main act of the understanding or the unity of apperception. Since this act is logical, not physical, Kant calls it intellectual synthesis. Since acts of synthesis take place a priori, not in the empirical time-series but rather added to experience, Kant also calls it transcendental synthesis. Synthesis plays an essential role in knowledge by allowing intuition to enter into concepts and providing them with contents that they would otherwise lack. Without synthesis, nothing can be thought or known. Some critics argue that Kant’s elaborate account of synthesis provides an unnecessary transcendental psychology to deal with important logical or metaphysical problems. “By synthesis, in its most general sense, I understand the act of putting together different representations, and of grasping what is manifold in them in one knowledge.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason synthetic a priori judgment Epistemology, metaphysics Judgments may be divided into analytic judgments, in which the predicate adds nothing new to the subject, and synthetic judgments, in which the predicate can not be extracted from the analysis of the subject. A priori judgments are independent of experience and are hence universal, necessary, and immune to rejection by experience, while a posteriori judgments require empirical justification. Kant claimed that there is a kind of judgment that is at once synthetic and a priori. Such judgments do not derive their truth solely from the meanings of the words in the sentences expressing them, but express something that can not be refuted by experience. They are universally agreed by reason and apodictically certain. Kant argued that not all a priori truths are analytical and that certain fundamental truths of mathematics, science, and philosophy are synthetic a priori. He then asked how synthetic a priori judgments are possible and, through their possibility, how metaphysics is possible. He saw this question as setting the central task of the Critique of Pure Reason. In order to answer this question, he established the existence of a priori intuitions (space and time) and a priori concepts (the categories) and related them to possible empirical knowledge. The notion of synthetic a priori judgment was held to be self-contradictory by logical positivists, who argued that the analytic–synthetic distinction and the a priori–a posteriori distinction are identical. Quine has also rejected this notion on the grounds that we can not draw the analytic–synthetic distinction without circularity. Kripke has accepted Kant’s distinctions, but has introduced the notion of the necessary a posteriori in his essentialism. Some critics argue that the achievements of the first Critique can be detached from Kant’s account of synthetic a priori judgments. “We can confidently say that certain pure synthetic knowledge a priori is real and given, namely, pure mathematics and pure natural science; for both contain propositions which are everywhere recognised, partly as apodictically certain by mere reason, partly by universal agreement from experience, and yet as independent of experience.” Kant, Prolegomena systematic ambiguity Logic A term introduced in Russell’s theory of types. An expression is systematically ambiguous if it seems to be applicable to objects of different types. Systematic ambiguity is similar to the way that a common noun may be used to label either a thing of a given kind or a picture of such a thing or the way that a word may be used to refer to itself. Such an expression has to be differently interpreted according to the order of the propositions in which it occurs. But without the theory of types, the different meanings would not have been noticed. The word “class” is systematically ambiguous because it has different meanings when used at different levels in the hierarchy of types. This is the case for all existential propositions with the expression “there are.” Systematic ambiguity has come to refer to a property that a term has if it means different things in different applications. We need special signs, such as particular modifying words or quotation marks, to remove this sort of ambiguity. “The word ‘there is’ is a word having ‘systematic ambiguity’, i.e., having a strictly infinite number of different meanings which it is important to distinguish.” Russell, Logic and Knowledge tabula rasa: a metaphor for the soul or mind as a blank or empty tablet at birth. The phrase comes from the Latin translation of Aristotle’s De Anima 429b30–430a3, where Aristotle said that the soul is like a writing tablet that is potentially whatever is thinkable, though actually it is nothing until it has thought. The phrase was widely used in scholasticism to express the idea that there is nothing in intellect that was not first in the senses. The phrase has been especially associated with Locke, although he adopted this expression not in his Essay, but in other works. Instead, Locke used some associated metaphors: mind is a white paper, a dark room, or an empty cabinet. His point is that there are no innate moral and logical principles inscribed on the mind before birth and that at the beginning of cognition the mind is a void and passive entity, a receptacle awaiting ideas from experience. The mind, however, has the potential to acquire ideas and knowledge. This is the cornerstone of his empiricism. “There is the question whether the soul in itself is completely blank like a writing tablet on which nothing has as yet been written – a tabula rasa – as Aristotle and the author of the Essay maintain.” Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding tacit belief: A person may have an unlimited number of beliefs at any time. Those that he explicitly asserts or that figure in his internal soliloquy can be called his explicit beliefs. But many others are implied by these explicit beliefs but are not themselves explicit because, for example, he has not drawn the necessary inferences at that moment. These are called tacit beliefs. Some tacit beliefs play a causal role in behavior, but it is difficult to distinguish tacit beliefs that have a causal role from tacit beliefs that do not have a causal role. “Call ‘tacit’ any belief that one really has but has not explicitly entertained.” Churchland, Neurophilosophy tacit knowledge: In addition to explicit knowledge-how and knowledge-that, Chomsky introduced another sort of knowledge, that is, the speaker’s unconscious knowledge of the grammatical rules of his language. This tacit knowledge is the basis for linguistic competence. Chomsky argues that a child does not know that these are the rules, but can easily master the intricate set of specific rules that distinguish what is grammatical from what is not grammatical. This suggests that the child already has knowledge of the language, but that this knowledge is not learned and can not be explained in empiricist terms such as stimulus control, conditioning, or analogy. He claims that tacit knowledge must belong to an innate faculty and that the study of language should provide insight into human psychology. The idea of tacit knowledge is the core of Chomsky’s Cartesian linguistics. “Chomsky suggested that we might have tacit knowledge – propositional knowledge which we are unaware of having and cannot report having, which nevertheless guides out behaviours.” D’Agostino, Chomsky’s System of Ideas Tarski, Alfred, Warsaw-born philosopher, a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton and taught at University of California, Berkeley. Tarski is best known for his semantic theory of truth, according to which a theory of truth for a language is adequate if we can derive within it every instance of the schema “ ‘P’ is true if and only if P,” where ‘P’ is the name of the sentence in a metalanguage and P is the sentence itself. This theory is the basis of truth-conditional semantics, and Tarski also developed an axiomatic theory of formal systems, a theory of logical consequence, and a theory of definability. Tarski’s most important papers are collected in Logic, Semantics, and Metamathematics (1956), and other works include Introduction to Logic and to the Methodology of the Deductive Sciences (1941) and Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science (1962). Taste: sensitivity to the aesthetic properties of objects and the aesthetic intuition and response that enable one to tell, for example, what is beautiful or elegant. Taste is a major conception of eighteenthcentury aesthetics. Shaftesbury and Hutcheson regarded taste as a quasi-perceptual inner sense, akin to moral sense, but for Kant it is simply a special operation of our normal cognitive faculties. There exist vast differences of taste among different cultures and different individuals. This makes taste appear to be purely subjective and a matter of personal preference. However, for some aesthetic objects there seems to be widespread – even cross-cultural and timeless – agreement in taste. Hence, Hume sought to ascertain the grounds of this intersubjective agreement. For Kant, the judgment of taste is subjective, but since it addresses the formal features of an object rather than its content, it is universally valid. Others believe that taste is a product of cultivation, demanding training and upbringing. People with the same social and educational background are more likely than people with diverse backgrounds to have the same taste regarding the same objects. “Taste is the ability to judge an object, or a way of presenting it, by means of a liking or a disliking devoid of all interest. The Object of such a liking is called beautiful.” Kant, Critique of Judgement Tautology, from Greek tauto, the selfsame + logos, word or expression, literally, repetition of what has been said] A logical formula which is true whatever the truth-possibilities of its constituent propositional variables. Thus, a tautology takes the truth-value “true” for every truth-combination in a truth-table. Its truth can not be established by experience and need not be so established. The denial of a tautology is a contradiction. A tautology is not concerned with any subject-matter, and says nothing about the world, but exhibits the logical properties of genuine propositions or restates the same idea in different words. The study of tautology is of great importance in logic. “In one of these cases the proposition is true for all the truth-possibilities of the elementary propositions. We say that the truth-conditions are tautological.” Wittgenstein, Tractatus Taylor, Charles (1931– ) Canadian moral and political philosopher, Professor at University of Oxford and McGill University. Taylor argues against a mechanistic scientific account of man in favor of a philosophical anthropology that situates the self and language within a context of history, morality, culture, and society. His study of Hegel and his own developing thought have contributed to communitarian views of politics, ethics, and the self. His sense of historical diversity in the formation of the self has enriched his discussion of a multicultural politics of recognition. His major works include The Explanation of Behaviour (1964), Hegel (1975), Philosophical Papers, 2 vols. (1985), Sources of the Self (1989), The Ethics of Authenticity (1991), and Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition (1992). techne: Greek, craft or art, normally meaning skill] A skill in contrast to a natural capacity. Plato regularly asked whether virtue is techne and so teachable. Aristotle took techne to be a rational discipline concerned with production (poiesis). He held that as productive science it contrasts both to demonstrative science (theoretikos) and to practical reason (phronesis), which is concerned with action. In this sense, techne is skill in producing plus knowledge of the nature of relevant things. Despite Aristotle’s distinction between practical reason and techne, his examples of practical reason often turn out to be illustrations of techne. “A techne is the same as a state involving true reason concerned with production.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics teleological argument for the existence of God, from Greek telos, end. Also called the argument from design, an argument seeking to derive the existence of God from the teleological order of the world, resting on an analogy with the relation between an intelligent craftsman and human artifacts. Aquinas’ fifth way of proving God’s existence is a teleological argument. According to this argument, since everything in the world shows some order, regularity, or purpose in its behavior, there must be a supreme intelligence, namely God, outside the universe and directing natural things toward their ends. A classical version of the argument from design was formulated by William Paley. The various parts of a watch cooperate in complex ways to produce the result of keeping time because the watch is designed by a watchmaker. The universe resembles a watch in the sense that it is a system of adaptations of means to ends. The only way to explain the complex and pervasive adaptation to ends in the universe is to postulate a supernatural designer. For the teleological argument, what is at stake is not merely that the universe displays order or regularity, but also that the order and regularity is directed toward ends. In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume formulated a similar version of the argument by comparing the world to a machine. However, Hume devoted much of this work to criticizing this argument, on the grounds that what the argument from design seeks to explain can be explained in alternative ways and that the teleological argument can not conclusively show the existence of God. Kant held that adaptation of things to the needs of other things in nature can suggest but can not prove the existence of a designer. Hume’s view is supported by the development of the Darwinian theory of evolution, which provides natural explanations of functional adaptation in the world. “Linked with the notion of design and order is that of purpose (hence the name Teleological Argument – from telos, ‘end’).” McPherson, The Philosophy of Religion teleological ethics, see consequentialism teleological explanation: To explain a property or behavior in terms of purpose (Greek telos). This sort of explanation was initiated by Socrates, and fully developed by Aristotle with his notion of final cause (Greek to hou heneka, for the sake of which a thing comes about). In medieval philosophy, teleological explanation presupposed a Divine and omniscient designer. Everything operates for a goal, and the goal is predetermined by God. Teleological explanation was vehemently criticized by early modern science and philosophy. However, Aristotle mainly applied his final-cause interpretation to living or organic things, and accounts for the function of each part of an organism by appeal to its contribution to the perfect state of the organism as a whole. This sort of teleological functionalism is still applicable in contemporary biology and social science, although some philosophers try to reduce such explanations to efficient causality. “The teleological form of explanation [is] an explanation in terms of reason rather than in terms of causes.” Ayer, The Concept of a Person and Other Essays teleological functionalism, see functionalism teleology, from Greek telos, the end or aim of a thing + logos, study] Aristotle assumed that everything that happens in the universe must be understood as the striving of something toward an end promoting its well-being or helping it to survive. He ascribes telos to plants and animals, believing that their behavior serves their needs and preserves their life. In view of the regularity in the natural world, he claims that nature itself must have an internal end or purpose. Aristotle did not admit a conscious, rational agent in his teleological explanation, but in the teleological argument or argument from design, the Christian tradition infers from the regularity in nature that there is a supernatural designer, God, who designed everything in the world to be of service to man. The theory of evolution denies the need to posit a purposive designer, but confirms that functional adaptation serves a purpose of survival in natural selection. Since purposive and functional activities are observed universally, teleology is much discussed in the philosophy of science. Whether functional or teleological explanation is a distinctive kind of explanation or can be reduced to causal explanation is a matter of controversy. “Questions about teleology are, broadly, to do with whether a thing has a purpose or is acting for the sake of a purpose, and if so, what that purpose is.” Woodfield, Teleology telishment Ethics A term proposed by John Rawls to indicate a crucial problem of the utilitarian view of punishment. Utilitarianism claims that punishment is justifiable only by reference to its probable consequences with regard to promoting public good or preventing crime, rather than because the wrongdoing itself merits punishment. Rawls suggests that we can imagine a situation in which the authority knows that a suspected criminal is innocent, but still imposes a harsh punishment on him because such an action can produce better social consequences. This practice should not be termed punishment, because the subject of suffering is not a wrongdoer. Rawls names it telishment. Telishment is intuitively wrong but seems to be justifiable according to the utilitarian view of punishment. “Try to imagine, then, an institution (which we may call ‘telishment’) which is such that the officials set up by it have authority to arrange a trial for the condemnation of an innocent man whenever they are of the opinion that doing so would be in the best interests of society.” Rawls, “Two Concepts of Rules,” in Acton (ed.), Philosophy of Punishment telos -- Greek, end, aim, or goal] For Aristotle, one of the four causes: the final cause for the sake of which a process occurs or something is done. According to Aristotle’s distinction between activity (energeia) and motion (kinesis), every action has an end, either an internal end in itself or an external end outside itself. By appealing to the telos, which is associated with the formal cause or even identical to it, Aristotle explained the generation of things and natural movement. He also called the characteristic function of a thing its end, because the benefit brought about by this function accounts for the existence of the thing and its aim. Thus cutting is the end of a knife. In his ethics, Aristotle connected telos with the good, happiness, and virtue. Every action is for an end, but happiness is the complete end (teleis). Telos as function and the associated notion of teleology are major, if controversial, concepts in contemporary science, especially biology and social science. “It is for the sake of the end (telos) that everyone does the other things.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics temperance Ethics, ancient Greek philosophy [Greek sophrosune, self-control or moderation in the satisfaction of bodily desire, from phronein, sound mind] A virtue discussed by both Plato and Aristotle. A temperate man has a mind sufficiently sound to control desires. He knows his own limitations and practices restraint in action. Plato’s dialogue Charmides sought a definition of temperance. In the Republic, temperance was described as a harmony between different classes in the ideal city and between different parts of the soul. In this harmony, the higher part controls the inferior part, with the consent of the latter. Aristotle understood temperance to be a mean state with regard to such desires such as eating, drinking, and sex. “Temperance is understood not to be carried away by the desires, but preserving a decent indifference toward them.” Plato, Phaedo temporal logic, another term for tense logic temporality Modern European philosophy For Heidegger, Dasein exists in relation to three temporal dimensions at once. Its Being is constituted by taking the past with it, by being concerned with the present, and by being the projection of the future. Hence, its Being is necessarily temporal. Temporality makes up the primordial meaning of Dasein’s being. The fundamental structures of Dasein, existentiality, facticity, and fallingness, are modes of the temporalizing of temporality. They respectively correspond to three ecstasis of temporality: the past, the present, and the future. Ecstacy literally means standing out, indicating that at each ecstacy Dasein stands out from the general flow of time and existence. Philosophers traditionally focus on the present and conceive time as a series of happenings or the occurrence of actual facts. In contrast, Heidegger claimed that temporality is an ecstatic unity that is independent of any chronological relations. Among the three ecstasis, the future is the primary phenomenon of the primordial authenticity of temporality. This ecastic unity is also called the transcendence of time or the transcendence of Dasein. “This phenomenon has the unity of a future which makes present in the process of having been; we designate it as ‘temporality’.” Heidegger, Being and Time temporally neutral term, see past-referring term tender-mindedness, see tough-mindedness tense logic Logic A formal logic about tense and temporality, concerned with the systematization of inference involving propositions containing tensed verbs or notions of change, process, and time. This area is not covered by standard logic, which presupposes that the relations of predicate expressions to their subjects is timeless and static. Tense logic holds that the world changes and that it is possible that the same thing has and has not a given property at different times. The truth-values of tensed statements about the past, present, and future vary at different times. This part of logic holds that terms such as before, after, now, next, always, and sometimes should match the formal patterns of modal logic. It introduces the operators P to stand for the past tense (“it was the case that”), T for the present tense (“it is now the case”) and F for the future tense (“it will be the case that”). It can also be presented as a many-valued system. The logic is said to have been heralded by J. N. Findley, but the first system was provided by A. N. Prior in Time and Modalities (1957) and was conceived as an alternative solution to the problem of future contingents. Rescher and von Wright are also important contributors to the development of tense logic. The logic is also called temporal logic, chronological logic, and the logic of change. “The object of chronological logic – ‘tense logic’, or ‘change logic’, as it has also been called by various logicians – is to systematise reasoning with propositions that have a temporal copula.” Rescher, Topics in Philosophic Logic term: Any word or phrase that denotes an individual or a class and functions as a single unit in expressing meaning. In Russell’s theory of meaning, a term is also an object that is referred to by a word or expression. He divides terms into two kinds: terms as things indicated by proper names and terms as concepts indicated by all other words. Hence, a man, a moment, a number, a class, a relation, a chimera, and anything else that can be mentioned are all terms. In a broad sense, a word that does not have its own meaning but determines the meaning of the proposition containing it is also a term, and hence we have the concept of a syncategorematic term. “Let us say that anything which is introduced, or can be introduced, into a remark by an expression is a term.” Strawson, Individuals tertiary quality tertiary quality, see supervenience tertium non datur Logic [Latin, there is no third] A way of expressing the law of excluded middle, that is, the law that every proposition is either true or false and that there is no third possibility. In contrast, tertium quid means that there is some third possibility. “Either one might, or one might not, have been otherwise. Tertium non datur.” Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis and Philosophical Method tertium quid, see tertium non datur Thales of Miletus (6th century bc) Born in Miletus, Ionia, flourished around 585 bc. Thales is regarded as the first philosopher in the history of Western Philosophy because he was the first to seek an explanation of nature in terms of reason rather than in terms of a supreme power. He claimed that a single element, water, underlies cosmic development. This conclusion was probably based on his observation that nourishment and living organisms come from moist things. thanatos, another expression for death instinct theism Philosophy of religion [from Greek theos, god] In opposition to atheism, the belief in the existence of God (monotheism) or gods (polytheism) as a personal being or beings. In contrast to deism, the belief that God transcends the world but is also immanent within it or within us; that God is perfect and is therefore omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good; and that God is the loving creator of the world who manifests himself to human beings through caring for us and communicating with us. In contrast to pantheism, theism claims that God exists independent of the world. Theism is the central feature in the monotheistic religious tradition of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Various arguments concerning the existence of God seek to establish theism, although critical responses are raised against each of its major claims. “Theism, common to traditional Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is the view that the cosmos is created and kept in existence by an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, supremely good being. It preserves some distinction between God and the creation, according to which the two are not identical however interwoven.” Taliaferro, in Bunnin and Tsui-James (eds.), Blackwell Companion to Philosophy theistic voluntarism, see voluntarism theodicy Philosophy of religion [from Greek theos, god + dike, justice, right, the justification of God] A term introduced by Leibniz in Theodicy: Essays on God’s Goodness, Man’s Freedom and the Origin of Evil (1710), but the basic problem was formulated by Boethius: Si Deus Justus – unde malum? (If God is righteous, why evil)? It is the part of theology that focuses on the reconciliation of the existence of God, as an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good and loving absolute being, with the existence of evil in the world. The human experience of suffering and guilt makes faith in God’s justice a problem. Either God is able to stop evil but he does not want to, in which case he is omnipotent but not good or just; or he wishes to prevent evil but fails to achieve this, in which case he is good but not omnipotent. The main task of theodicy is to provide positive reasons to justify God’s permission of the existence of moral and natural evil and to seek to prove that our world is the best of all possible worlds. “A response must explain God’s action, or lack of action, by presenting a suitable reason for the existence of the evil. This kind of response is traditionally called a theodicy, a vindication of God’s goodness.” Prevost, Probability and Theistic Explanation theological determinism Philosophy of religion A position initiated by St Augustine, holding that God is omnipotent and has determined everything that will occur. As a consequence, everything in this world depends on God for existence. In addition, God is omniscient and knows all truths from the beginning of time. All actions that men are going to perform are known by him in advance. One version also claims that because of God’s absolute goodness, this world is the best possible world. Theological determinism faces major difficulties in reconciling God’s foreknowledge with human self-determination and in reconciling God’s goodness with the existence of evil. “Theological determinism argues that since God is omniscient, he knows everything, the future included.” Lucas, The Freedom of the Will theological virtues, see charity theology Philosophy of religion [from Greek theos, god + logos, theory, study] For Aristotle, first philosophy as the contemplation of the fundamental principle or ultimate substance. In general, theology is a discipline that deals with the explanation and justification of the teachings, doctrines, and practices that constitute a religion. Each religion has its own theology, but in European thought, Christian theology has the greatest historical prominence as the rational account of Christian faith, although Jewish and Islamic theological writings have also had great influence. Christian theology is divided into many sub-disciplines, such as biblical theology, which tries to provide the precise ideas contained in the various biblical documents; historical theology, which traces the historical development of Christianity and the Christian Church; systematic theology, which aims at integrating into a coherent whole a wide array of fundamental religious beliefs; practical theology, which deals with the interaction of belief and behavior; and philosophical theology, which applies philosophical methods in order to clarify religious concepts and presuppositions. While the philosophy of religion exists to criticize these doctrines and to assess their philosophical implications, theology assesses a religion from within and acts as a spokesman rather than as a critic. There are nevertheless various debates among theologians about how to explain certain religious elements. Theology presupposes faith and tries to acquire knowledge of God by employing scholarly methods. It is faith seeking to understand itself. In Christianity, its goal is to serve salvation. “Theology is ‘the science of God’.” McPherson, The Philosophy of Religion Theophrastus, Lesbos-born philosopher, Aristotle’s disciple and successor as head of the Lyceum. Theophrastus preserved Aristotle’s works, but of his own writings, only two books on botany and some fragments are extant. On the Opinions of the Physical Philosophers, now lost, is believed to be the main source of later historians of the pre-Socratics. Characters is a typology of human ways of falling short of virtue. theoretical construct Epistemology, philosophy of science Also theoretical term, a term for something that is unobservable and postulated, such as force, atoms, field, or electrons. According to logical positivism, these postulated items do not really exist, and these concepts are merely economical devices or constructs that are used to explain observable phenomena. It has been a matter of dispute in the philosophy of science whether theoretical terms can be eliminated or replaced by observational terms. Scientific realists reject the notion of a theoretical construct as an interpretation of theoretical terms and accept that theoretical entities in true theories really exist. “. . . ‘theoretical constructs’ . . . cannot be mentioned in observation statements.” Pap, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science theoretical entity, see theoretical term theoretical language, see observation language theoretical pluralism, see anarchism (scientific) theoretical sentence Epistemology, philosophy of science In contrast to an observation sentence, a theoretical sentence is one whose meaning can not be determined by itself as a single sentence. It has meaning only within a theory to which it belongs. It makes sense only together with its theoretical context. Most sentences, apart from observation sentences, are theoretical. This term is central for Quine’s epistemic holism. “Theoretical sentences in general are defensible only pragmatically: we can but assess the structural merits of the theory which embraces them along with sentences directly conditioned to multifarious stimulations.” Quine, Word and Object theoretical term: Carl Hempel divided the vocabulary of empirical sciences into two classes: observational terms, which denote an observable entity or property, and theoretical terms, which denote an unobservable entity or property. Observational terms are terms such as long and red, whose applicability to a given situation can be determined through direct observation. Theoretical terms are terms such as electron and quark, which are intended to establish an explanatory connection among observables and to construct a scientific system. Theoretical terms denote theoretical entities, which are postulated hypothetically by a theory. It is not clear where to draw the distinction between the theoretical and observational, for the term “observable” can refer either to what can be observed merely by the unaided senses or to what can be observed by using sophisticated scientific instruments, the operation of which is understood in terms of a theory. In addition, there have been challenges to the empiricist account of theory and observation underpinning Hempel’s distinction and his claim that the principal role of theories is to explain empirical generalizations. There are important disputes concerning the real existence of theoretical entities. “Theoretical terms . . . usually purport to refer to not directly observable entities and their characteristics; they function . . . in scientific theories intended to explain empirical generalisations.” Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation theoretician’s dilemma: a dilemma formulated by Hempel, involving the ontological status of theoretical terms. It reflects the empirical tradition that the theoretical terms of modern sciences such as atom, field, and force are merely “convenient myths.” Theoretical terms either serve their purpose or do not. If they serve their purpose, they are unnecessary, because that purpose is to organize experiential data, and that can be done by laws that link observational antecedents to observational consequents without theoretical terms. If they do not serve their purpose, they are obviously unnecessary. Therefore theoretical terms are unnecessary. To escape this dilemma and avoid eliminating theoretical terms, philosophers normally reject or modify the first branch of the dilemma. Theoretical terms can have other functions that can not be reduced to those of observational terms. These proposed functions include explanation, observation of results, and economical summary. It is claimed that theoretical terms are a prerequisite of scientific growth and of certain forms of inductive reasoning. “If the terms and principles of a theory serve their purpose they are unnecessary, as just pointed out, and if they don’t serve their purpose, they are surely unnecessary. But given any theory, its terms and principles either serve their purpose or they don’t. Hence, the terms and principles of any theory are not necessary. This argument . . . will be called the theoretician’s dilemma.” Hempel, “The Theoretician’s Dilemma,” in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. II theoria -- Greek, vision of the real in the mind, hence contemplation or speculation, from theorein, to contemplate and theasthai, to gaze on, giving contemplation visual associations] In Aristotle’s Metaphysics, theoria is the activity that involves no change. It can provide the eternally and supremely happy life which is ascribed to the unmoved mover or God and is available only occasionally to men. In Aristotle’s ethics, theoria is distinguished from practical activities. This is the origin of the contrast between theory and practice, though theoria does not actually mean theory. Theoria is about eternal and unchanging objects and is the highest and best activity of which a human being is capable. A man engages in contemplation not qua man but in virtue of the divine intellect (nous) in him. Contemplation is higher than practical reason and is the supremely valuable life, providing complete human happiness. A tension between Aristotle’s claim that contemplation is the highest good and his commendation of practical virtue has been the subject of much dispute. Aristotle also distinguished theoretical or contemplative sciences, including theology, physics, and mathematics, from practical and productive sciences. Theoretical sciences have their end in themselves and are not pursued for practical purposes or utility. All of these senses of theoria are connected, but they are not in complete harmony with one another. “Complete happiness will be its activity expressing its proper virtue; and we have said that this activity is activity of contemplation.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics theory of knowledge, epistemology another name for theory of sentiments, see sentiment theory of value, see axiology theory-laden: a term introduced by Hanson. A concept, term, or statement that is theory-laden makes sense only in the light of a particular theory or set of principles. Even experience is always shaped by theoretical traditions and expectations. Every observational term and sentence is alleged to carry a theoretical load. This position challenges the view of logical positivism that a protocol statement is a theoretically neutral report of experience, and denies reducibility of theory-laden terms to a purely observational level of knowledge. The term implies a rejection of the influential dichotomy of theoretical terms and observational terms. “There is a sense, then, in which seeing is a ‘theoryladen’ undertaking. Observation of x is shaped by a priori knowledge of x.” Hanson, The Patterns of Discovery Grice’s theory-theory: A theory of mind concerning how we come to know about the propositional attitudes of others. It tries to explain the nature of ascribing certain thoughts, beliefs, or intentions to other persons in order to explain their actions. The theory-theory holds that in ascribing beliefs to others we are tacitly applying a theory that enables us to make inferences about the beliefs behind the actions of others. The theory that is applied is a set of rules embedded in folk psychology. Hence, to anticipate and predict the behavior of others, one engages in an intellectual process moving by inference from one set of beliefs to another. This position contrasts with another theory of mind, the simulation theory, which holds that we need to make use of our own motivational and emotional resources and capacities for practical reasoning in explaining actions of others. “So called ‘theory-theorists’ maintain that the ability to explain and predict behaviour is underpinned by a folk-psychological theory of the structure and functioning of the mind – where the theory in question may be innate and modularised, learned individually, or acquired through a process of enculturation.” Carruthers and Smith (eds.), Theories of Theories of Mind theosophy -- from Greek theo, god + sophia, wisdom, wisdom about God] A term first employed by the Neoplatonists for their own doctrine, which emphasizes the unity of religion and philosophy, and for one’s mystical acquaintance with the nature of God. The term was later used for several trends in German religious thought after the Renaissance, in particular the thinking of the Swedish natural philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg, which tended to blend the natural and the spiritual world and to combine rationalistic cosmology and biblical revelation. The term was also associated with the Theosophical Society, a movement initiated in 1875 by Helena Blavatsky, which aimed to introduce Eastern religions and metaphysics into Western thought. “[Theosophy] is the appropriate term for a theoretical cognition of divine nature and (God’s) existence that would suffice to explain both the character of the world and the vocation of the moral laws.” Kant, Critique of Judgement Theseus’ ship: After the hero Theseus accomplished his mission to sail to Crete to kill the Minotaur, his ship (Ship 1) was put on display in Athens. As the time went by, its original planks and other parts were replaced one by one with new materials until one day all of its parts were new, with none of its original parts remaining. Do we want to say that the completely rebuilt ship (Ship 2) is the same as the original or that it is a different ship? The case is further complicated. If all the original materials were kept and eventually used to construct a ship (Ship 3), would this ship be the same as the original? This example has inspired much discussion concerning the problems of identity and individuation. “To be something later is to be its closest continuer. Let us apply this view to one traditional puzzle about identity over time: the puzzle of the ship of Theseus.” Nozick, Philosophical Explanation thin theory of the good: For Rawls, primary goods are essential for pursuing any rational plan of life and are used to determine a thin conception of the good. A thin theory of the good explains why these primary goods are what any rational person would desire and it also gives insight into the notion of rationality that leads from these goods to the choice of principles of justice. Such an account is necessary to understand the motives and choices of participants in the original position. Once principles of justice are derived from the original position, we may develop a full conception of the good and therefore a full theory of the good. “We need what I have called the thin theory of the good to explain the rational preference for primary goods and to explicate the notion of rationality underlying the choice of principles in the original position.” Rawls, A Theory of Justice thing Metaphysics In a general sense, a thing is any item that can be referred to or named. It can be any constituent of a metaphysical world, including substances and properties, essences and accidents, particulars and universals, concrete and abstract objects. A material body is a thing, and so is a number, a relation, and an illusion. In this sense, “thing” is synonymous with “being” or “entity.” Along with other questions about things, metaphysicians have asked why there are things (“Why is there something rather than nothing?”) and what kinds of thing are fundamental. In a narrower and more technical sense, things have their own identity and possess qualities and relations. This concept of a thing is close to the concept of a substance or of an object. In sentences, things are designated by subjects rather than by predicates, which in turn introduce properties ascribed to things. In different theoretical contexts, a thing is what Frege calls an object of a proper name, what Quine calls the value of a bound variable, and what Strawson calls an individual. It is the nature of things in this latter sense that is a focus of contemporary metaphysics. “In its widest sense ‘thing’ can be applied to any object of reference whatever, to any possible subject of discourse . . . The kind of thing we are concerned with here is much more narrowly circumscribed. It is, essentially, an observable, spatiotemporal entity, a concrete object of perception.” Quinton, The Nature of Things thing-in-itself G. Ding an sich] Kant’s term, used interchangeably with noumenon, for things as they are independent of the conditions of possible experience and outside the legitimate application of the categories. A thing-in-itself contrasts with an appearance or phenomenon, which is a thing as it appears to us. Since the world of appearance is the only possible object of knowledge, the thing-initself is thinkable, but unknown. In using this term, Kant emphasized his claim that the thing-in-itself is the true correlate of sensibility. The central thesis of transcendental idealism holds that the objects given to us in experience are only appearances of things in themselves. Although things in themselves can not be known through the representations of our sensibility, we must postulate them because there can not be an appearance without anything that appears. This is a dogmatic point in Kant’s philosophy that has been criticized by later philosophers. Other philosophers have asked whether appearances and things in themselves are meant to be the same objects taken differently or different objects. There are problems with both answers. “The transcendental concept of appearances in space, on the other hand, is a critical reminder that nothing in space is a thing in itself, that space is not a form inhering in things in themselves as their intrinsic property, that objects in themselves are unknown to us.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason thing-language: Carnap’s term for the language that we use in speaking about the properties of observable things, such as “hot,” “cold,” “small,” “large,” “red,” and “blue.” It is the language to which all psychological statements and scientific statements are reducible. By introducing this term, Carnap intends to distinguish between the language of scientific theory and the language of ordinary things, and between a language requiring the use of instruments and a language not requiring it. He also claims that all statements in the thinglanguage about material objects can be reduced to statements about sense-experience. “Terms like ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ may be regarded as belonging to the thing-language, but not ‘temperature’ because its determination requires the application of a technical instrument.” Carnap, in Hanfling (ed.), Essential Readings in Logical Positivism thinking: a mental act displaying a person’s rationality, including theoretical contemplation and reasoning and practical deliberation. Traditionally, thinking is conceived to be an inner and conscious activity that is closely related to speech. For Plato and Aristotle, thinking (Greek noesis or dianoia) inherently involves cognitive consciousness of a universal object and the application of the universal to the particular. For Descartes, thinking (Latin cogitatio) comprises mental phenomena in general, and is the main attribute of the substance of mind. Along with many later rationalists and empiricists, Descartes considered that thinking is a process that brings concepts or ideas before the mind. For Hobbes, it is a dialogue in the soul involving the use of verbal images. For Berkeley and Hume, thinking is a sequential series of ideas or images in the mind. For Kant, thinking (German Denken) is cognition by means of concepts, although it is empty if it does not also involve sensory intuition. Ryle initiated a new approach to the notion of thinking. He argued that thinking is a disposition rather than something that must be done silently in the soul. In his later period, Ryle puts forward an adverbial account of thinking, claiming that it is an adverbial modification of activities and not itself an activity. Ryle’s approach has given rise to much debate. Some critics claim that developing an adequate account of thinking requires a richer body of theory about the mind, such as Fodor’s language of thought hypothesis. Price suggested that cognition in absence is another distinguishing feature of thinking. Thinking is usually distinguished from perception, imagination, and emotion. “We can all agree that thinking is rightly described as conceptual cognition.” Price, Thinking and Experience res cogitans: thinking substance Metaphysics, philosophy of mind The mind. Descartes’s term, in contrast to extended substance or corporeal substance, that is, body. This division is the main characteristic of Descartes’s dualism. While the principal attribute of extended substance is extension, the principal attribute of thinking substance is thinking. Descartes further divided thinking substances into those that possess and use a body and those that do not possess or use bodies. The former include human minds, while the latter include God and angels. Thinking substance is also called thinking thing (res cogitans), while extended substance is also called extended thing (res extensa). “A thinking substance is one which understands or wills or doubts or dreams or imagines or has sensory perceptions.” Descartes, The Philosophical Writings thinking thing, the English translation of res cogitans Third Man argument: Plato’s argument in Parmenides 132a–b to show that his own Theory of Forms involves an infinite regress. Plato’s own example concerns largeness, but following Aristotle scholars generally state the problem in terms of man. The basic principle to establish a Form is that when one sees a number of similar particulars, one will think that there must be something common to them all, and that thing is a Form. If, however, we consider the Form of man along with other particular men, there must also be something common to all of them, and that thing would be a third man in addition to particular men and the Form of man. But the process of adding something in common, begun with particular men, the Form of man and the third man, would go on indefinitely, leading to an infinite regress. There has been much debate whether this is a valid argument, whether it is a valid objection to the Theory of Forms, and whether Plato himself believed it to be valid. Gregory Vlastos has argued that two implicit premises are needed for the Third Man argument to succeed. The first premise, concerning self-predication, requires that what is predicated is itself a subject of that same predicate. The other premise, concerning non-identity, requires that what is predicated is something different from the subject of which it is predicated. The discussion that arose out of this interpretation has contributed greatly to our understanding of Plato and his relation to contemporary philosophy. It has also helped our understanding of Aristotle, who diagnosed the root of the problem of the Third Man as the separation of the Form from the particulars and Plato’s confusion of toionde (such) and tode ti (a this), that is, his confusion of the universal and the particular. “No common predicate indicates a this, but rather a such. If not, many difficulties follow and especially the ‘Third Man’.” Aristotle, Metaphysics Thirdness, see Firstness third-person perspective, see first-person perspective third realm: Frege’s term. Traditionally, philosophers contrast the realm of ideas or mental entities with the realm of material objects. Frege called mental entities the first realm and material objects the second realm. Based on his distinction between sense and reference, he claimed that there is a third realm of sense or thought. It is different from the realm of ideas because any idea needs a bearer (they are yours or mine), but the senses of words we use in communication exist independently of us. A true proposition is true no matter whether anyone takes it to be true or even entertains it. It is accessible to all in common, but its contents are immutable and immaterial. The third realm is also different from the realm of objective things we talk about or the realm of reference, for many names may have sense but lack reference. Thus senses or thoughts form a third realm between us and objects, and this realm leads us from the inner world of sense-impressions to the outer world of perceptible things. “So the result seems to be: thoughts are neither things of the outer world nor ideas. A third realm must be recognised. What belongs to this corresponds with ideas, in that it cannot be perceived by the senses, but with things, in that it needs no bearer to the contents of whose consciousness to belong.” Frege, “The Thought: A Logical Inquiry,” in Strawson (ed.), Philosophical Logic thisness, another expression for a this Thomism: The philosophical tradition founded by Thomas Aquinas and developed by his followers in the Catholic tradition. It tried to combine Aristotle’s philosophy with Christian teaching and claimed that all created things are a composition of existence and essence. It extensively applied the Aristotelian distinctions between form and matter and between actuality and potentiality to explain various relationships. Form is necessary being and matter is contingent being. God contains both essential being and contingent being. The soul is viewed as the substantial form of the body whilst also being regarded as immortal. Thomism represents a valuable contribution to the analyses of the relationship between reason and faith and the relationship between free will and determinism. We are free not in spite of God’s power, but because of it. Aquinas’ doctrine was condemned after his death, but was soon rehabilitated and he was canonized in 1323. Since the thirteenth century, Aquinas has been the Common Doctor for all Catholic schools of thought. Hence, it is not merely a partial school in scholasticism. It is often used as a synonym of scholasticism. In the neo-Thomist movement of the nineteenth century, the Catholic authorities declared again that the philosophy of Aquinas must be studied by all Catholic clergy. Thomism is recommended as the norm for theological teaching. More recently, philosophers such as P. T. Geach and A. J. P. Kenny have applied the methods of analytical philosophy to the issues and concepts of Thomism, including intentionality, action, freedom, being and essence, causation, and virtue. This is sometimes called analytical Thomism. “The foundation of Thomism was that reason supplemented faith, not denied it.” Leff, Medieval Thought Thoreau, Henry David (1817–62) American philosopher, born in Concord, Massachusetts, a major figure of New England transcendentalism. In his most important work, Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854), Thoreau compared nature and society, claiming that in contrast to the evil of any state, nature offers absolute freedom and the basis for a life of spontaneity. He pursued natural simplicity and practiced self-reliance in life. Thoreau provided a theory of civil disobedience that has had great practical influence. Thought: Normally, what we are aware of within our mind. For Frege, a thought is the sense of a sentence that can be used to make an assertion or to ask a question that is answerable “Yes” or “No.” The contents of thoughts can be true or false. Thoughts in this sense are logical or conceptual rather than a matter of individual psychology. Different individuals may share the same thought, although they can not share the same act of thinking. Thus, Frege called thought the third realm (the others being the physical and the psychological). If we take thought psychologically, the central tenet of traditional analytical philosophy is that the analysis of thought presupposes the analysis of language, and that language is prior to thought. In contrast, philosophy of thought argues that this priority in the order of analysis should be reversed. Fodor’s language of thought hypothesis holds that thought is a form of symbol manipulation with its own syntax and semantic properties. “The thought, in itself immaterial, clothes itself in the material garment of a sentence and thereby becomes comprehensible to us. We say a sentence expresses a thought.” Frege, “The Thought: A Logical Inquiry,” in Strawson (ed.), Philosophical Logic thought experiment: an attempt to test a hypothesis through an imagined situation when an actual experiment is impossible in practice or perhaps even in theory. It conceives of the consequences of an intervention in the world without actually intervening. This device is employed widely by philosophers and theoretical scientists. It exercises the imagination in order to show what is possible or impossible. Thought experiments can be used either destructively or constructively. A destructive use is directed against a theory, typically through a reductio ad absurdum argument, to show that a theory is internally inconsistent or conflicts with some well-entrenched belief. Constructive thought experiments proceed either from some unproblematic phenomena to a well-articulated theory or from a given background theory to a new conclusion. “A thought experiment is an experiment that purports to achieve its aim without the benefit of execution.” Sorenson, Thought Experiment three-valued logic: the earliest presentation of a three-valued system was elaborated by Lukasiewicz in the 1920s, motivated by his desire to provide a solution to the problem of future contingents. This problem was put forward by Aristotle in his example of the sea-battle tomorrow. Lukasiewicz reasoned: my presence in Warsaw at a certain time in the future is not settled at the present moment either positively nor negatively; it is therefore possible but not necessary that I shall be present in Warsaw at the stated future time; according to this presupposition, that I shall be present in Warsaw at that future time is neither true nor false at the present time; to say either that this is true or that this is false will be contradictory to the presupposition; so we need to deny the principle of bivalence, that is, that every statement is either true or false. He then argued that the possible should be an additional truth-value. If 1 is used to represent truth, 0 to represent falsity, the third value possible can be represented by 1/2. Hence we have more possible combinations of truthvalues from two component propositions. For instance, the truth-table of “not p” in three-valued logic is: P 1 1/2 0. Some logicians argue that bivalence does not necessarily entail determinism and that three-valued logic should have another basis, but this part of logic has been adopted and developed by Reichenbach, Putnam, Bochvar, and others. It has been a model for many-valued logic in general. “With a view to the future-contingency proposition of the third truth-value, Lukasiewicz introduced a modal operator of possibilities into his three-valued logic.” Rescher, Topics in Philosophic Logic ti esti, Greek term for what-it-is Tillich, Paul, Brandenburg-born existentialist philosopher of religion, taught at Frankfurt, Union Theological Seminary, Harvard, and Chicago. Tillich held that religious questions arise from human existential situations and that Christian faith is grounded in our ultimate concern. Because philosophy and theology address the same ontological question, although in different ways, Christianity can be used to provide solutions to human practical and existential problems. Tillich’s most important works include Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (1951–63), The Courage to Be (1952), and Dynamics of Faith (1957). Time: one of the most mysterious philosophical topics, but also one of the most richly discussed. Time concerns the progression and ordering of events in terms of before and after or in terms of past, present, and future. Time is commonly conceived to be a passage or a flowing stream, but this gives rise to the criticism of the myth of passage. Time is generally thought to have one dimension and an irreversible direction, but it is unclear what gives time its direction, whether there can be a backward temporal order, or how to account for the asymmetry between the past and the future. Zeno’s paradoxes raise fundamental questions about time as an infinite continuum and similar problems arise concerning space. Even with contemporary developments in mathematics, it remains disputable whether time is infinitely divisible. Plato claimed that time is created and is the moving image of eternity. Philosophers continue to debate whether time has a beginning and whether we can make sense of a timeless existence. Aristotle in Physics expressed many puzzles about the existence of time. Kant argued that time, like space, is a form of intuition and understood mathematical knowledge to be determined in relation to these forms. Kant gave time a crucial role in his account of the categories and their application to experience. Bergson distinguished between intellectualized physical time and duration, which as the time of consciousness is the real essence of time. The validity of McTaggart’s attack on the reality of time is still under debate. Another enduring dispute concerns whether time is absolute or relational. Heidegger’s account of temporality is fundamental to his account of human being. In existentialism, time is more subjectively conceived through its connection with the problem of human experience. “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know. If I wish to explain it to one that asks, I do not know.” Augustine, Confessions time, absolute:Newton maintained that time is absolute in virtue of being independent of physical events and having its own nature, flowing uniformly without regard and without relation to any external thing. Absolute time is mathematical time, in contrast to the relative or external clock time in common use. Absolute time is real, and relative time is only apparent. Newton represents one radical position in a lasting dispute whether time and space are absolute or relational. “Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another term is called duration.” Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy time-gap argument, another term for time-lag argument time-lag argument Epistemology Also called the time-gap argument, an argument, put forward by Russell in Human Knowledge, against the naive realist assumption that perception, such as seeing or hearing, is a matter of direct awareness. Science proves that light travels at a finite speed, with a time-gap between the transmission of light from an external object and the perception of the object. The light of the sun that strikes our eyes has taken a long time to reach us, so the sun that we see now is actually the sun that existed some time ago and that may have ceased to exist. Although its current non-existence would not affect the fact that we see it now, the immediate object of our visual experience is not actually identical with the sun that is being seen. The same case is applied to the hearing. If a gun is fired some distance from us, we first see the flash with a small time-lag and then hear the sound with a greater time-lag. Because there is time-lag in all perceptions, perception is not a direct confrontation, but a process. The object of experience is always internal. This denial of the immediacy of perception poses a threat to direct or naive realism, which claims that perception is concerned only with immediate objects in the present, and raises many problems about the nature of perception. “I have in mind the famous ‘time-lag’ argument. Some philosophers . . . claim that the connection between experiential and temporal presence is only apparent. The case of stellar explosions . . . shows that things (events) can be present in experience, after they cease to exist.” Valberg, The Puzzle of Experience time-preference, another expression for principle of fractional prudence time travel: Time is normally thought to be directed from the past toward the future, but we can raise the question whether it is logically possible to travel backward in time or to ascribe more than one direction to time. Travel into the past would necessarily involve backward causation, with some later events causally affecting earlier events. Some claim that if this were true a traveler could travel back to murder his ancestors and prevent his own birth, but David Lewis argues that backward travel does not imply that the traveler could change the past. We are normally thought to move at the same rate with everything else through time. The time elapsed from a traveler’s departure to his arrival is the same as the duration of the journey. But it might be logically possible for a traveler to move from his departure to his arrival with the time spent on his journey not equal to the clock time from departure to arrival. Would there, then, be two unequal lengths of time depending upon how we measure the same journey? Would this allow us to travel into the future in the way that backward time travel would allow us to move into the past? In general, time travel is a thought experiment for inquiring into the nature of time. “What is time travel? Inevitably, it involves a discrepancy between time and time.” D. Lewis, Philosophical Papers, vol. 1 timocracy Gr. time, honor + kratos, strength, power, rule by those valuing honor] A type of state that Plato described in the Republic, in contrast to the Ideal State. Because the rulers of a timocratic state value honor, the state is ruled by the spirited element instead of the rational element that governs the Ideal State. Consequently the unity of the state is undermined by timocratic rule. Parallel to the city, the timocratic man is also dominated by the spirited element in the soul. Self-interest diverts him from impartial ideals and causes inner instability. According to Plato, timocracy is the first stage in the degeneration of the Ideal State. “There is only one thing which appears in timocracy most clearly under the rule of the spirited part, namely the love of victory and of honours.” Plato, Republic to be, see is or being to be is to be perceived, see esse est percipi to ti en einai, Greek term for essence tode ti, Greek term for a this toionde, Greek term for “such” utterance. An understanding of such an expression involves understanding all the features of an utterance mentioned above and an ability to identify the utterance itself. The truth-value of a sentence containing a token-reflexive expression is liable to change as the relevant circumstances of the utterance change. “A token-reflexive expression is one like ‘I’, ‘here’, ‘now’, whose essential occurrence in a sentence renders that sentence capable of bearing different truth-values according to the circumstances of its utterance – by whom, when, and where it is uttered, to whom it is addressed, with what gestures it is accompanied, and so forth.” Dummett, Truth and Other Enigmas. token: Together with type, a pair of terms that was introduced by C. S. Peirce to classify different signs. A token (cognate with G. zeichen, and with Eng. ‘teach’) is “an actual existent thing or event which is a sign,” and type is “a law that is a sign” or “a definitely significant form.” A token shares the feature that identifies a type but is an instance or example of that type. A type is instantiated by different tokens. Different tokens resemble one another if they belong to the same type. In a sense, a token of a type is an instance of the type. Walking is a type, and this particular act of walking is a token. Strawson’s book Individuals is a type, while this copy of Individuals is a token. In a sense, this distinction is close to the distinction between the particular and the general. It has gained a wide currency in the philosophy of language, especially in the discussion of the relationship between a linguistic expression and an actual use of that expression, and also in the philosophy of mind. The identity theory of mind has been developed in two versions, respectively called type-type identity theory and token-token identity theory. token-token identity theory: one version of the identity theory of mind or central-state materialism, according to which there is a token-token identity between mental and physical states or events. Each token instance of a mental event is as a matter of fact the same as some token instance of a physical event. The mental event is simply the physical event seen from the inside. This theory contrasts with another version of the identity theory, the type-type identity theory, which suggests that there is a typetype identity between mental states or events and bodily states or events. It is difficult to specify and prove this token-token identity, and the importance of the theory can be questioned because it seems to exclude the provision of a theoretical basis of mental-physical identity promised by the type-type theory. “A single event which happens once and whose identity is limited to that one happening or a single place at any one instant of time. Such event or thing being significant only as occurring just when and where it does . . . I will venture to call a token.” C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers. “The thesis that for every token instance of a mental state, there will be some token neurophysiological event with which that token instance is identical. Such views were called ‘token-token identity theory’.” Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind token-reflexive: Also called indexical expressions, Hans Reichenbach’s term for expressions involving a reference back, reflexively, to their own token utterance, that is, to the speaker, place, time, or context of utterance. For example, to say that A is past amounts to saying that A is earlier than this toleration: refraining from acting against persons or practices that one disapproves of for religious or political reasons, on the grounds that all persons have the right to their own religious beliefs and other opinions. Toleration has been a touchstone of a democratic state and society. Locke’s A Letter on Toleration is the classic text on questions of toleration, especially with regard to religious toleration. Locke advocated extending to all things lawful in the constitution, although his own tolerance did not extend to atheists. Locke’s arguments for toleration included his view that a church has no right to persecute people and, more importantly, that human knowledge is so limited and open to error that we can never be sure that one religious opinion is right and another is wrong. Toleration supports a notion of liberty that is equal and impartial. It has, however, its own dilemma concerning tolerating the intolerant: if we tolerate an individual or group that lacks the spirit of tolerance, toleration can lead to our own destruction; if we refuse to tolerate the intolerant, we will sacrifice the principle of tolerance to expediency. “The toleration of those that differ from others in matters of religion, is so agreeable to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to the genuine reason of mankind, that it seems monstrous for men to be so blind, as not to perceive the necessity and advantage of it, in so clear a light.” Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration topic-neutral: Originally, Ryle’s term for logical constants, such as “of ” “not,” “every.” They are not endowed with special meanings, and are applicable to discourse about any subject-matter. They do not refer to any external object but function to organize meaningful discourse. J. J. C. Smart calls a term topic-neutral if it is noncommittal about designating something mental or something physical. Instead, it simply describes an event without judging the question of its intrinsic nature. In his central-state theory of mind, Smart develops a topic-neutral analysis of mental expressions and argues that it is possible to account for the situations described by mental concepts in purely physical and topic-neutral terms. “In this respect, statements like ‘I am thinking now’ are, as J. J. C. Smart puts it, topic-neutral. They say that something is going on within us, something apt for the causing of certain sorts of behaviour, but they say nothing of the nature of this process.” D. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of the Mind topos: for Aristotle, “a place in which arguments are to be found.” A topos is a standard procedure, pattern, or strategy for an argument, whatever its subjectmatter. The logical work in which Aristotle deals with various topoi is accordingly called the Topics. This is a handbook for conducting arguments in disputes. “One topos is to look and see if a man has described as an accident what belongs in another way.” Aristotle, Topics totalitarianism -- from Italian totalitario, absolute, complete, all-embracing] A form of rule, originally associated with Italian fascism, that places every politically significant element under the control of a highly centralized government. A totalitarian state generally has an official ideology and suppresses the plurality of thought and opinion. It has one dominant party, typically under a single leader, and co-opts or destroys any opposition. Competitive interest groups and other previously independent organizations are either suppressed or brought into a corporativist structure to express populist support. The whole society is hierarchically and cohesively organized. The economy, military, and mass media are tightly controlled, with a focus on alleged enemies used to maintain discipline and enthusiasm. There is no strict distinction between public and private or between party and state. Totalitarian rulers appear to organize their population into a disciplinary unity and can mobilize their resources to achieve one goal over a short time, but unacknowledged political conflicts beneath the surface and repression of public debate can have heavy costs, with some achievements more a matter of propaganda than efficiency. In the West, especially after the outbreak of the Second World War, totalitarianism became a pejorative term. Unlike authoritarian rule, a totalitarian regime not only denies individual freedom and human rights and requires order and stability, but also seeks to realize a specific ideology. As a doctrine, totalitarianism derives from older patterns of tyranny and despotism, but transforms them under the conditions of modernity. It is unclear to what extent a single theory of totalitarian rule can apply to regimes with different origins, formations, and ideologies. “Totalitarianism is a new form of dictatorship . . . It was characterised by the predominance of the leader of the victorious movement, who, with the aid of his subordinate elite and a manipulated ideology, aimed at total control over state, society and the individual.” Schapiro, Totalitarianism tough-mindedness: William James claimed that philosophy is first of all a kind of aesthetics for expressing some temperament or attitude toward the world rather than a kind of logic for seeking solutions to a set of problems. Philosophy is decided by the temperament of the philosopher. He further suggested that the history of philosophy is to a great extent a clash of two kinds of human temperaments, namely tough-minded and tender-minded temperaments. Tough-minded philosophers hold on to facts and declare that everything else is false, while tender-minded philosophers value certain principles rather than concentrate on facts. This distinction can be seen in the conflict of empiricists like Hume and rationalists like Hegel. The tension between tender-minded and tough-minded philosophers is further represented through tensions between intellectualistic and sensationalistic views, idealistic and materialistic views, optimistic and pessimistic views, religious and irreligious views, belief in free will and fatalism, monism and pluralism, and dogmatism and skepticism. James himself attempts to reconcile both temperaments in his radical empiricism. “The tough-minded are the men whose alpha and omega are facts.” W. James, Pragmatism tradition: the existing social customs, institutions, patterns of belief, and codes of behavior that are accepted by a community and form its culture. Every person belongs to at least one tradition and grows up through emulating or rebelling against what his traditions indicate. Tradition is inherited from previous generations and is transmitted, perhaps in an altered form, to future generations. It is the bond and continuity of a nationality, culture, or religion. In political philosophy, liberal individualism stresses rationality and personal rights and rejects tradition as a force that hampers social progress and personal freedom. Conservatism, on the other hand, believes that we should respect tradition, and that large-scale change, especially violent revolution, can only lead to calamity. This conservative view is shared by contemporary communitarian theory. In ethics, modern utilitarianism and deontology focus on interests, rights, and duties, but virtue ethics respects the role of tradition in the cultivation of virtues. A general criticism of modern morality is that it isolates rationality from tradition. “Self-contained traditions rarely raise questions of existence and reality. A member of such a tradition may ask whether a particular event has occurred and he may doubt a particular tale, but hardly anybody considers the ‘ontological implications’ of all terms, statements, and stories in a certain domain.” Feyerabend, Problems of Empiricism traditional logic: The logic in Aristotle’s works, especially his syllogistic logic, including also contributions made by the Stoics to what would now be called propositional calculus, and the contributions by medieval logicians to problems such as reference and modality. It is also called Aristotelian logic. Traditional logic has been superseded by modern symbolic or mathematical logic, initiated in Frege’s work, and is retained as a part of predicate logic. Modern logic holds that several basic assumptions in traditional logic, such as the claims that propositions are restricted to the subject-predicate form and that we must accept the principle of bivalence, are problematic. The core of traditional logic is the syllogism. “The doctrine of the syllogism is the main achievement of traditional logic.” Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory tranquility -- Greek ataraxia, non-disturbance. A key term in ancient skepticism for a state that is free from disturbance and remains untroubled, both intellectually and in ordinary life. Tranquility is both the outcome and reward of suspension of judgment. It emerges from a negative response to claims concerning the objectivity of values and accessibility of truth. Tranquility is what skepticism calls happiness. “We shall entitle the principles whose application is confined entirely within the limits of possible experience, immanent; and those, on the other hand, which profess to pass beyond these limits, transcendent.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason “As end the Sceptics name suspension of judgement, upon which tranquillity follows like a shadow.” Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. transcendental Metaphysics, epistemology Kant contrasted the transcendental with the transcendent. Something transcendent goes beyond the limits of experience, while the transcendental is related to the conditions of the possibility of experience. It is the form of knowledge that is concerned not with objects themselves, but with the modes in which we are able to know these objects, namely, with the conditions of possible experience. Generally, the transcendental is distinguished from the empirical and is associated with the a priori. Thus a system of a priori concepts might be called transcendental philosophy. Kant used the term transcendental to qualify many other terms, such as logic, aesthetic, analytic, dialectic, and deduction, in order to show that these topics are considered in terms of their role in establishing the conditions of the possibility of experience. These discussions use a type of reasoning called transcendental argument, the prime example of which is Kant’s transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding. transcendent -- from Latin trans, over, beyond + scandere, climb, being superior to, surpassing or separated from certain limits, in contrast to immanent] That which lies beyond certain crucial limits. In medieval philosophy, God was said to be transcendent because he goes beyond all the finite limits of this world and even beyond the scope of conceptual thinking. The scholastics also employed the term transcendentia for ontological predicates, such as thing, one, true, and good, that go beyond Aristotle’s classification of ten categories and are coextensive with the whole world of being. In Kant’s philosophy, transcendence has two different senses. First, there are principles that go beyond the limits of possible experience, including the psychological, cosmological, and theological ideas discussed in the transcendental dialectic. Secondly, things-in-themselves, which exist beyond the limits of possible experience are transcendent. Kant also called this transcendent reality. When transcendental ideas are thought to be transcendent realities, we have what Kant calls transcendental illusions. However, the use of transcendental in these contexts is confusing, because the transcendent is carefully distinguished by Kant from the transcendental, which concerns the conditions for the possibility of experience. Husserl claimed that intentional acts have an immanent transcendence, by which they are related to objects of our awareness that are not parts of consciousness. Heidegger employed the notion of transcendence for man’s experience of the whole as a whole, in contrast to the experience of oneself and parts of the whole. “I entitle transcendental all knowledge which is occupied not so much with objects as with the modes of our knowledge of objects in so far as this mode of knowledge is to be possible a priori.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason transcendental aesthetic [from Greek aisthesis, sensibility] The first part of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Aesthetics is now associated with problems of art, but Kant used the term in its root meaning concerning sensibility. The transcendental aesthetic is Kant’s view of sensory knowledge and deals chiefly with space, time, and mathematics. In contrast, the transcendental logic is concerned with the intellect. According to the traditional aesthetic, sensibility is passive receptivity, but Kant held that sensible perception has its own form and matter. In terms of his metaphysical exposition and transcendental exposition, he argued that space and time are a priori intuitions by which we structure the sensory. As a priori forms of sensible intuition, they are the forms of our sensibility and are not determinations that attach to the objects themselves. In other words, they are subjective conditions of sensibility. Through its account of the a priori construction of mathematical concepts in space and time, the transcendental aesthetic gives a preliminary answer to Kant’s central question of how synthetic a priori judgment is possible. It has been the basis for many later accounts of its central topics. “The science of all principles of a priori sensibility I call transcendental aesthetic.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason transcendental analytic: A division of the transcendental logic of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, the other division being the transcendental dialectic. In the analytic, Kant sought to discover by analysis the concepts and principles of pure reason. The transcendental analytic contains the central arguments of the Critique. It is divided into the analytic of concepts and the analytic of principles. The analytic of concepts includes the metaphysical deduction, which shows the number and character of the categories, and the transcendental deduction, which seeks to justify the objective validity of the categories. The analytic of principles presents the principles under which the categories may legitimately be related to sensibility in general, and includes discussions of the schematism of the pure concepts of the understanding, the system of all principles of pure understanding and the distinction of all objects into phenomena and noumena. The transcendental analytic is the central part of Kant’s critical philosophy and the core of his Copernican revolution. “Transcendental analytic consists in the dissection of all our a priori knowledge into the elements that pure understanding by itself yields.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason transcendental apperception: The term apperception was introduced by Leibniz for consciousness or reflective knowledge of an inner state that represents external things, but Kant argued that Leibniz’s understanding of apperception was empirical and diverse, without relation to the identity of the subject. In contrast, Kant called his own version transcendental apperception, pure apperception, or original apperception and used this notion as a crucial factor in the transcendental deduction. Transcendental apperception is the power to combine concept and intuition in knowledge, that is, to introduce order and regularity in appearances and thus to achieve a synthetic unity in accordance with the categories. This involves the transcendental unity of apperception or unity of consciousness as a purely formal notion of the unity of the subject of experience. Apperception is different from intuition, for while intuition is receptive, transcendental apperception is a spontaneous act that brings intuitions to a subject and enables them to be combined into a judgment. The transcendental unity of apperception has the form of “I think,” which can accompany all of one’s representations, and has synthesis as its main function. In unifying appearances, it must act in accord with the categories, but it is prior to the categories and is indeed their source. Transcendental apperception can not be further determined and is the highest principle in the sphere of human knowledge. This notion is the direct source of Fichte’s philosophy and exerted great influence on the later development of German idealism. There are many important problems in expounding and justifying Kant’s use of this difficult notion. “This pure original unchangeable consciousness I shall name transcendental apperception . . . The numerical unity of this apperception is thus the a priori ground of all concepts, just as the manifoldness of space and time is the a priori ground of the intuitions of sensibility.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason transcendental argument Metaphysics, epistemology An argument that starts from some accepted experience or fact to prove that there must be something which is beyond experience but which is a necessary condition for making the accepted experience or fact possible. The goal of a transcendental argument is to establish the transcendental dialectic truth of this precondition. If there is something X of which Y is a necessary condition, then Y must be true. This form of argument became prominent in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, where he argued that the existence of some fundamental a priori concepts, namely the categories, and of space and time as pure forms of sensibility, are necessary to make experience possible. In contemporary philosophy, transcendental arguments are widely proposed as a way of refuting skepticism. Wittgenstein used this form of argument to reject the possibility of a private language that only the speaker could understand. P. F. Strawson employs a transcendental argument to prove the perception-independent existence of material particulars and to reject a skeptical attitude toward the existence of other minds. There is disagreement about the kind of necessity involved in transcendental arguments, and Barry Stroud has raised important questions about the possibility of transcendental arguments succeeding. “A transcendental argument attempts to prove q by proving it is part of any correct explanation of p, by proving it a precondition of p’s possibility.” Nozick Philosophical Explanations transcendental deduction: For Kant, the argument to prove that certain a priori concepts are legitimately, universally, necessarily, and exclusively applicable to objects of experience. Kant employed this form of argument to establish the legitimacy of space and time as the forms of intuition, of the claims of the moral law in the Critique of Practical Reason, and of the claims of the aesthetic judgment of taste in the Critique of Judgement. However, the most influential example of this form of argument appeared in the Critique of Pure Reason as the transcendental deduction of the categories. The metaphysical deduction set out the origin and character of the categories, and the task of the transcendental deduction was to demonstrate that these a priori concepts do apply to objects of experience and hence to prove the objective validity of the categories. The strategy of the proof is to show that objects can be thought of only by means of the categories. In sensibility, objects are subject to the forms of space and time. In understanding, experienced objects must stand under the conditions of the transcendental unity of apperception. Because these conditions require the determination of objects by the pure concepts of the understanding, there can be no experience that is not subject to the categories. The categories, therefore, are justified in their application to appearances as conditions of the possibility of experience. In the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787), Kant extensively rewrote the transcendental deduction, although he held that the result remained the same. The first version emphasized the subjective unity of consciousness, while the second version stressed the objective character of the unity, and it is therefore possible to distinguish between a subjective and objective deduction. The second version was meant to clarify the argument, but remained extremely difficult to interpret and assess. The presence of the two versions of this fundamental argument makes interpretation even more demanding. Generally speaking, European philosophers prefer the subjective version, while Anglo-American philosophers prefer the objective version. The transcendental deduction of the categories was a revolutionary development in modern philosophy. It was the main device by which Kant sought to overcome the errors and limitations of both rationalism and empiricism and propelled philosophy into a new phase. “The explanation of the manner in which concepts can thus relate a priori to objects I entitle their transcendental deduction.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason transcendental dialectic: In Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, the part of the transcendental logic that is concerned with reason, especially with certain kinds of malfunction of reason. In contrast, the other part of transcendental logic, the transcendental analytic, is concerned with understanding. For Kant, dialectic means “pertaining to error or illusion” or “uncovering judgements which bear a semblance of truth but are in fact illusory.” These errors of human reason are natural, inevitable, and incurable, for they are rooted in the human demand for completeness and unity. Pure reason commits these errors when it mistakenly applies the categories to things-in-themselves, that is, things beyond the limits of experience, and mistakenly takes the Ideas of Reason to characterize something that is given in experience. These errors are the source of traditional metaphysics. The transcendental dialectic is Kant’s criticism of traditional ontology, especially as discussed by Wolff. It chiefly addresses three metaphysical disciplines: rational psychology, which discusses the soul or thinking subject as an empirical entity and leads to paralogisms; rational cosmology, which discusses appearance as a whole and leads to antinomies; and rational theology, which attempts to prove the existence of God and leads to the ideal of pure reason. “The transcendental dialectic will therefore content itself with exposing the illusion of transcendental judgements, and at the same time taking precautions that we be not deceived by it.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason transcendental ego: For Husserl, the phenomenological reduction leads to the discovery that whatever is in the world is only as object of our pure consciousness, that is, an object of the transcendental ego. This ego is the unity of the empirical ego’s stream of consciousness. It can not be bracketed because it is essentially entailed by the cogito. It is transcendental because it precedes the being of the world. This ego constitutes itself through its acts. It is self-aware and announces itself in its conscious acts. The transcendental ego, according to Husserl, is also one’s “ultimately constitutive subjectivity,” “ego in its full concreteness,” a “monad” and “the active subject of consciousness.” It is the source of all mental operations and plays crucial roles in the organization of experience and in the production of intentionality. This notion is intended to provide a starting-point for phenomenological reflection and to distinguish phenomenology from empirical sciences. “As transcendental ego I am thus the absolutely responsible subject of whatever has existential validity for me. Aware of myself as this ego, thanks to the transcendental reduction, I stand now above all worldly existence, above my own human life and existence as man.” Husserl, Shorter Works transcendental exposition: an argument in the transcendental aesthetic of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. According to the transcendental exposition of the concept of space, it is necessary for space to be an a priori intuition if synthetic a priori knowledge in geometry is possible. Although there is no mathematical discipline that is related to time as geometry is related to space, Kant claimed that it is necessary for time to be an a priori intuition if the body of a priori synthetic knowledge exhibited in the general doctrine of motion is possible. “I understand by a transcendental exposition the explanation of a concept, as a principle from which the possibility of other a priori synthetic knowledge can be understood.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. transcendental ideal, v. ideal. transcendental ideas, v. idea. transcendental illusion Epistemology, metaphysics Traditional metaphysics usually started from empirical or sensory illusions in order to show that the senses sometimes deceive us and that appearance is illusory. Kant claimed that traditional metaphysics was itself permeated by illusions, which arise from the deceptive extension of the concepts of pure understanding beyond the limits of experience or appearance to things-inthemselves. It takes regulative principles as knowledge of objects. These transcendental illusions are not generated by appearance, but are in contrast with it. They cheat us not by the senses, but by reason. Kant claimed that these illusions are natural and inevitable and result from the natural quest of reason for the absolute condition. The task of his critical philosophy was to determine the limits of human reason and to guard against the illegitimate transgression of these limits. His Critique of Pure Reason is divided into two parts: the transcendental analytic seeks to determine the legitimate sphere of pure reason; and the transcendental dialectic seeks to show how transcendental illusions result once reason does not observe its proper limits. “Transcendental illusion, on the other hand, does not cease even after it has been detected and its invalidity clearly revealed by transcendental criticism.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason transcendental logic Metaphysics, epistemology The main part of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, including both the transcendental analytic and the transcendental dialectic. Breaking from the pattern of general or traditional logic, which dealt strictly with the form of thoughts, transcendental logic not only excluded modes of knowledge which have empirical roots, but also sought to trace the origin of a priori knowledge. Transcendental logic used the table of judgments of traditional logic as a clue to determine the pure concepts of the understanding or categories and proceeded to determine how these a priori concepts have objective reference. Transcendental logic also sought to explain the inevitable illusions of reason by its tendency to employ the categories beyond the limits of experience. “Such a science, which should determine the origin, the scope, and the objective validity of such knowledge, would have to be called transcendental logic.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason transcendental object: A concept which, like noumenon or thing-in-itself, seems to designate an unknown object outside the limits of experience. The concept is adopted to show that there is something that lies at the basis of appearances and is the intelligible cause of the latter. The transcendental object is the intelligible correlate of sensible appearances. The postulation of its existence is the theoretical consequence of Kant’s belief that there can be no appearance without anything that appears. Although the transcendental object can be confused with the thing-in-itself, the two concepts have different functions. “This transcendental object cannot be separated from the sensible data, for nothing is then left through which it might be thought.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason transcendental paralogism, v. paralogism. transcendental philosophy Philosophical method, metaphysics, epistemology Kant’s term for an exhaustive and systematic analysis of the whole of a priori knowledge. In this philosophy, he sought to answer the question of how synthetic a priori judgments are possible and, more specifically, how the sciences are possible. Transcendental philosophy is distinguished from ontology because it is concerned only with the concepts and principles of understanding and reason and takes objects as something given and not in need of a philosophical account, although his actual discussion of objects is complex and puzzling. According to Kant, the Critique of Pure Reason was to lay down the fundamentals for the whole system of transcendental philosophy, but because the Critique was an essential but incomplete examination of synthetic a priori knowledge, it was not the whole system itself. “The critique of pure reason therefore will contain all that is essential in transcendental philosophy.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason transcendental place, v. transcendental reflection. transcendental reflection: an operation of mind prior to the construction of any objective judgment that synthesizes concepts and intuitions. This operation has the purpose of reflecting on or comparing the character of representations in order to decide whether they belong to understanding or to sensible intuitions. The act of comparison employs a list of so-called concepts of reflection or concepts of comparison, which have no reference to an object but are merely means for orienting judgment. These concepts include identity and difference, agreement and opposition, inner and outer, matter and form. These concepts are prone to amphiboly because they are applied both to concepts and intuitions. If we take them to be properties of objects, then ontological errors occur. These concepts of reflection are also called transcendental topics. According to the employment of these concepts in sensibility or in understanding, transcendental reflection assigns a place to a representation. This place is called the transcendental place. “The act by which I confront the comparison of representations with the cognitive faculty to which it belongs, and by means of which I distinguish whether it is as belonging to the pure understanding or to sensible intuition that they are to be compared with each other, I call transcendental reflection.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. transcendental synthesis, v. synthesis. transcendental topic, v. transcendental reflection. transcendental unity of apperception, v. transcendental apperception. transcendentalism: Also called “New England transcendentalism,” an early nineteenth-century spiritual and philosophical movement in the United States, represented by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. It was centered in the so-called The Transcendental Club in Boston, and published a quarterly journal The Dial. Influenced by German idealism and Romanticism, it claimed that there is a spirit of the whole, the over-soul, which is beyond the space and time of the everyday world but at the same time immanent in it, and which forms a higher spiritual reality. It advocated an ascetic lifestyle, emphasized selfreliance and communal living, and rejected contemporary civilization. The eventual goal of life is to achieve a mystical unity with this spiritual reality, that is, with nature. Transcendentalism is viewed as a mixture of speculative philosophy and semi-religious faith. This philosophical movement had a deep influence upon existentialism, James’s pragmatism, and contemporary environmental philosophy. In a broad sense, transcendentalism is any doctrine that emphasizes the transcendental, and is taken as a synonym of transcendental philosophy. In this sense, all types of absolute philosophy, especially those idealist systems that emphasize the transcendence of the Absolute over the finite world, are considered examples of transcendentalism. Thus, transcendentalists had aims differing from those of Kant’s transcendental philosophy, which criticized those who wished to extend knowledge beyond experience and instead sought to use a transcendental argument to establish the conditions for the possibility of experience. “The transcendentalists believed in man’s ability to apprehend absolute Truth, absolute Justice, absolute Rectitude, absolute goodness. They spoke of the Right, the True, the Beautiful as eternal realities which man can discover in the world and which he can incorporate into his life. And they were convinced of the unlimited perfectibility of man.” Werkmeister, A History of Philosophical Ideas in America. transformational grammar: The most powerful of the three kinds of grammar distinguished by Chomsky. The other two are finite-state grammar and phrasestructure grammar. Transformational grammar is a replacement for phrase-structure grammar that (1) analyzes only the constituents in the structure of a sentence; (2) provides a set of phrase-structure rules that generate abstract phrase-structure representations; (and 3) holds that the simplest sentences are produced according to these rules. Transformational grammar provides a further set of transformational rules to show that all complex sentences are formed from simple elements. These rules manipulate elements and otherwise rearrange structures to give the surface structures of sentences. Whereas phrase-structure rules only change one symbol to another in a sentence, transformational rules show that items of a given grammatical form can be transformed into items of a different grammatical form. For example, they can show the transformation of negative sentences into positive ones, question sentences into affirmative ones and passive sentences into active ones. Transformational grammar is presented as an improvement over other forms of grammar and provides a model to account for the ability of a speaker to generate new sentences on the basis of limited data. “The central idea of transformational grammar is determined by repeated application of certain formal operations called ‘grammatical transformations’ to objects of a more elementary sort.” Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax translation holism: a type of semantic holism that claims that the meaning of an expression is determined by its relations to many other expressions in its language. Translating the expression into another language can preserve its meaning only if its associative or inferential relations with other expressions in the home language are preserved in the expressions of the target language. To translate one sentence in isolation into another language will result in the distortion of its meaning. The thesis of translation holism seeks to recognize constraints on the expressive power of a language. “What we will call translation holism is the claim that properties like meaning the same as some formula or another of L are holistic in the sense that nothing can translate a formula of L unless it belongs to a language containing many (nonsynonymous) formulas that translate formulas of L.” Fodor and Lepore, Holism transmigration of the soul: a doctrine introduced into the Western tradition by Pythagoras, who might have been influenced by oriental mysticism. It claims that soul, which has an essential kinship with the divine and immortal, is a temporary sojourner in the body and may live through successive incarnations in various animal and human bodies. If it keeps itself pure, not being polluted by bodily passions, it may eventually return to its true or godlike state. If it sins, it will be punished by prolonged suffering in more miserable incarnations. A soul must therefore do its best to keep apart from body. Plato’s famous doctrine of recollection is based on the transmigration of the soul. The transmigration of the soul is also called metempsychosis [Greek meta, among, in company with + en, in + psyche, soul]. “First, that he [Pythagoras] maintains that the soul is immortal; next, that it changes into other kinds of living things, . . . Pythagoras seems to have been the first to bring these beliefs into Greece.” Diels and Kranz, Die Fregmente Der Vorsokratiker trans-world identity: Since Leibniz, it has been believed that each object exists in just one world. This is supported by the idealist doctrine of internal relations. Contemporary discussion of possible worlds is divided over this issue. Some philosophers insist that any object is confined to only one world and can not exist in more than one possible world. Thus, each individual is a world-bound individual. Other philosophers claim that the same individual can exist in a plurality of possible worlds. Accordingly, each individual, instead of being world-bound, becomes a trans-world individual. A problem arises about how to identify such an individual. A thing X is thought to exist in more than one world, Wn and Wm. Since only when Wn differs in at least one respect from Wm are they two worlds, X-in-Wn has at least some properties distinct from X-in-Wm. If this is so, X-in-Wn and X-in-Wm are discernible, and according to the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals, they are not identical. Some philosophers reject this claim, on the ground that each individual is identifiable in terms of its essence whatever world it is in. Other philosophers hold that trans-world identity is unintelligible. David Lewis developed a counterpart theory that claims that no individual inhabits more than one world, but any individual might have counterparts in other worlds that resemble it more or less closely in important respects of intrinsic quality and extrinsic relations. He thus replaces transworld identity of individuals with the trans-world resemblance of counterparts. “What comes from trans-world resemblance is not trans-world identity, but a substitute for transworld identity: the counterpart relation.” D. Lewis, Counterfactuals trial and error: A method of scientific invention and thought. A scientist formulates a hypothesis or a theory and then uses it to attempt to solve some definite problem. This is the step of testing or trial. If the hypothesis fails the trial and is confronted by counterexamples, it is generally rejected as erroneous. All theories are tentative hypotheses and trials. All experiments are performed in order to see whether theories work and to find where they go wrong. If a theory goes wrong, we formulate a new theory and test it by new observations and experiments. Popper viewed the development of empirical science as a continuous process of trial and error, which he calls conjecture and refutation. In using this method, we learn from our mistakes and achieve progress. He believed that conjecture and refutation is also the basic method of philosophy. “We must have a question before we can hope that observation or experiment may help us in any way to provide an answer or put in terms of the method of trial and error, the trial must come before the error.” Popper, The Poverty of Historicism. “God, who has been represented (that is, personated) thrice, may properly enough be said to be three persons; though neither the word person, nor Trinity be ascribed to him in the Bible.” tripartite definition of knowledge: The traditional standard analysis of propositional knowledge, initiated by Plato’s claim in Theaetetus (201c–202d), that knowledge is true belief plus a logos. It holds that knowledge is justified true belief and obtains when the following three conditions apply: A knows P if and only if (1) P is true, (2) A believes P, and (3) A is justified in believing P. This definition is seriously challenged by Gettier’s problem. “Because there are three parts to this definition it is called the tripartite definition or the tripartite account.” Dancy, Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology trinity: A Christian theological doctrine that God is one substance (Latin substantia, Greek ousia) consisting of three persons (Latin personae, Greek hypostaseis): Father, Son ( Jesus Christ), and Holy Spirit. Each of them is God, but there are not three Gods but one. The doctrine is based on remarks in the New Testament at 1 Epistles 5:7: “There be three that bear witnesses in heaven, the father, the word, and the Holy Spirit; and these Three are one.” Such an idea was influenced by Plotinus’ three hypostases. Our knowledge of the existence of three persons is through revelation. In the Christian tradition, each person is ascribed one peculiar attribute: paternity to the Father, filiation to the Son, and procession to the Holy Spirit. Procession is explained in two ways: either the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, or it proceeds from the Father and from the Son. This difference of interpretation leads to the division between Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Western Christianity. The are puzzles concerning the different persons of the Trinity. For example, the early Church also divided over the question of the nature of Jesus Christ. The monophysites held that there was one nature, which was both human and divine, and the dyphysites held that there were two separate natures. The monophysite doctrine, supported by some Eastern Churches, was criticized for being unintelligible. The dyphysite doctrine, adopted by the Roman Church, was criticized because it allowed only the human Jesus to suffer. Without divine suffering, Christian narrative about salvation becomes incoherent. Hobbes, Leviathan trivium, v. quadrivium trolley problem Ethics An ethical problem put forward by P. Foot in ‘The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect.’ Suppose that the only possible way to steer a runaway trolley is to move it from one track to another. One man is working on the first track, and five men are working on the other. Anyone working on the track the trolley enters will be killed. Most people would accept that the driver should steer the trolley to the track on which only one person is working because the death of five persons is worse than the death of one person. Now suppose that the trolley, left to itself, will enter the track on which five men are working and kill them. If you are a bystander who can change the course of the trolley, would it be morally required or morally permissible to interfere to switch the trolley to the other track, on which only one person would be killed? According to utilitarianism, you should switch the trolley. However, if you do not interfere, you have not done anything to make you responsible for the five deaths, while if you do interfere your act does make you responsible for one death. Your own integrity or moral rules about how to act might lead you to reject the utilitarian conclusion. The trolley problem touches on both the nature of morality and concrete moral perplexity. If the driver is right to steer the trolley onto the track with one person in order to save the lives of five persons, why is it wrong to execute an innocent man to stop a riot in which five innocent people will be killed? Or why is it morally wrong to save five patients who would die without transplants at the cost of killing one healthy man for his organs? In dealing with the trolley problem and these related questions, some philosophers turn to the principle of double effect, according to which a moral distinction between the intended and unintended consequences of an action can help to decide when bad consequences of an action are acceptable. “If what people who say ‘killing is worse than letting die’ mean by it is true, how is it that [the driver] may choose to turn that trolley? . . . I like to call this the trolley problem, in honour of Foot’s example.” Thomson and Parent, Rights, Restitution and Risk truth: while science seeks to determine what is true, philosophy asks what is the nature of truth. Traditionally, truth is contrasted with falsity. It is viewed as a property that has a bearer, although it is disputed what the bearer is. Some ascribe truth to sentences, others to propositions, statements, judgments, or utterances. Consequently, some ask what renders a proposition true, while others ask what renders a sentence or an utterance of a sentence true. What then does truth consist in? Since truth involves a relation to features of reality, a natural answer is that if a belief corresponds to reality it is true. This correspondence theory is the most widely held account of truth. However, this theory has many difficulties and the attempts to remove them have led to many alternative theories of truth, including the coherence theory of truth and the pragmatic theory of truth. Many contemporary philosophers challenge the traditional assumption that truth is a property of something and hold that truth neither has a bearer nor describes a proposition. This deflationary theory of truth has various versions. The best known is the redundancy theory of truth, but there are other versions. The disquotational theory of truth claims that “p is true” means the same as “p.” The performative theory of truth suggests that to say “p is true” amounts to performing a speech act of agreeing or repeating. Because it is like saying “ditto” after someone says that p, it is also called the ditto theory of truth. The minimalist theory of truth argues that saying “it is true that p” is necessarily equivalent to saying “p.” The semantic theory of truth also belongs to this group, although it tends to defend the traditional notion of correspondence. Nowadays, a theory of truth can have various orientations. It can be a theory of truth itself, a theory of the meaning of the word “true,” or a theory of the function of the truth predicate. Some theories might deal with all of these aspects. “Truth is the concern of all honest men: they try to espouse only true assertions, claims, theories, and so on. This is truth in extension. Philosophers worry also about truth in intension – that is about the concept of truth or the meaning of the term ‘truth’.” Pitcher (ed.), Truth. Truth is traditionally conceived to be an agreement between understanding and things. It is seen as a correspondence between objects and judgments and to be located in judgments. However, the etymological sense of the Greek word for truth, aletheia, is unconcealment or unhiddenness. On this ground, Heidegger claims that truth in its most primordial sense is Dasein’s disclosedness or uncoveredness, that is, Dasein’s openness to its possibilities. Being true means being uncovered. At this primordial level, untruth is the fallingness of Dasein being closed off. Truth is the basic constitution of Dasein and its existentiale. Truth in this sense is prior to language and judgment and is the ground of truth in the traditional sense. Heidegger held that it is possible to compare whether there is an agreement between understanding and things only after Dasein has shown itself. “The Being-true (truth) of the assertion must be understood as Being-uncovering.” Heidegger, Being and Time truth conditions: More fully expressed as truth and falsity conditions, the conditions under which a statement is true or false. In standard logic, the truth conditions of a composite formula are determined by the truth conditions of its components and by the truth-functional connectives linking its components. This can be shown in a truth-table. Truth-conditional semantics holds that we know the meaning of a statement if we know its truth conditions and that a theory of meaning for a language assigns truth conditions for all the statements of that language. For extensional contexts, if a statement in an argument is replaced by another statement with the same truth conditions, the validity of the original argument will not be altered. .“The truth conditions of a truth-functional formula are the ways in which the truth-value of any statement of the form of that formula is determined by the truth-values of its constituent statements.” Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory truth-functional constant, another term for truth-functional connective. truth-function: a relationship that holds if the truth or falsity of a compound depends on the truth or falsity of its components. A compound of this sort, composed of propositional variables and truth-functional connectives, is a truth-functional formula. If propositions are substituted for the propositional variables in a truth-functional formula, we obtain a truthfunctional statement, and its truth and falsity is determined entirely by the truth or falsity of its constituent statements and by the way in which the constituent statements are combined by truthfunctional connectives. If all of its constants are truthfunctional, a system of logic is truth-functional. “The whole meaning of a truth-function is exhausted by the statement of the circumstances under which it is true or false.” Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy truth-functional connective: Also called a truth-functional operator or truth-functional constant. These connectives are special signs for the various relations between sentences, propositions, or statements in a truth-functional system. They can not be used in isolation. Truth-functional connectives include: ~ (negation), ∧ (conjunction), ∨ (disjunction), ⊃ or → (implication), and ≡ or ↔ (equivalence). The role of these connectives is to determine the truth-value (the truth or falsity) of a truth-functional statement by the truth or falsity of its constituent statements. In daily language ~ is expressed by “not,” ∧ by “and,” ∨ by “either . . . or,” ⊃ or → by “if . . . then,” and ≡ or ↔ by “if and only if.” However, the logical connectives and their ordinary language counterparts can differ in IMPLICATURE or even in meaning. “Any sentential connective whose meaning can be captured in a truth-table is called a truthfunctional connective and is said to express a truthfunction.” Forbes, Modern Logic truth-functional operator, another term for truthfunctional connective. truth of fact, v. truth of reason. truth of reason: Leibniz established a contrast between truths of reason and truths of fact. Truths of reason, which he used interchangeably with necessary truths, are primary principles that themselves require no proof and propositions that can be established by analysis from primary principles. Truths of reason are not established on the basis of empirical investigations, but are necessary and true in all actual and possible worlds, so that not even God can change them. Truths of fact, in contrast, are propositions that are established through experience. They are not necessarily and universally true, but just happen to be true of something. They are capable of change, and their contradictories are possible. According to Leibniz, truths of reason are innate and need only reason to be discovered, while truths of fact or contingent truths are gained through the senses. “Truths of reason are necessary, and those of fact are contingent. The primary truths of reason are the ones to which I give the general names ‘identities’, because they seem to do nothing but repeat the same thing without telling us anything.” Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding truth-table. In the propositional calculus, the truth-value of a formula as a whole is determined by the truthvalues of its components. This can be shown by a truth-table. The application of a truth-table to a logical problem is called the truth-table or matrix method. If p and q are propositional variables representing two constituent statements, the truthtables of the formulae, ~ p (not p), p ∨ q (p or q), p ∧ q (p and q), p ⊃ q (if p then q) and p ≡ q (p if and only if q) can be shown in the following matrix: p q ~p p∨q p∧q p⊃q p≡q T T F F T F T F F F T T T T T F T F F F T F T T T F F T. These are the basic formulae, and the truthconditions of the more complicated truth-functional propositions can be decided by the systematic applications of these. The truth-table lays down the truth-conditions of a truth-functional formula, and states the rule for the use of truth-functional constants. The truth-table method is an easy way of establishing whether formulae are tautologies (logically necessary), self-contradictory (logically impossible), or contingent. “[T]ruth table . . . determines the truth or falsity of the function for each combination of the truthvalues of the elements.” Lewis and Langford, Symbolic Logic truth-table method, v. truth-table. truth-value: Classical logic assumes that every statement must be either true or false, and its truth or falsity is its truth-value. If the statement is true, its truth-value is truth; if it is false, its truth-value is falsity. That “Coal is white” is false, so we say that the sentence has the truth-value falsity. That “Snow is white” is true, so we say that the sentence has the truth-value truth. If two statements are identical, they have the same truth-value. The truth-value of a statement formed by using truth-functional connectives to combine component statements is calculated through the use of a truth-table. While the principle of bivalence in classical logic admits only two truth-values, some forms of modern logic deny this assumption and introduce three-valued or manyvalued logic. Strawson argues that there can be statements that lack truth-value, that is, statements that are neither true nor false and for which there is a truth-value gap. “The truth-value of a proposition is its truth if it is true, and its falsehood if it is false.” Russell, Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. VI truth-value gap: The lack of truth-value of a statement containing an expression that lacks reference. On some views, such a statement is neither true nor false. This phenomenon arises because the truth-value of a statement relies on the success or failure of the application to objects of the general terms it contains. But these general terms would be deprived of success or failure if a singular term in the statement failed to have reference. Other reasons for truth-value gaps include category mistakes, unsatisfied presuppositions, ambiguity, and vagueness. The existence of truth-value gaps makes deductive reasoning unreliable. There is controversy whether truth-value gaps are a defect of natural language or an inevitable consequence of the circumstances in which any language is used. “The claim that the radical failure of a definite singular term results in a truth-gap is in some cases more intuitively satisfactory, and in others less intuitively satisfactory, than the claim that it results in falsity.” Strawson, in Davidson and Hintikka (eds.), Words and Objections T-sentence: The basis of Tarski’s proposal for an adequacy condition on definitions of truth. A theory of truth for a language is adequate if every instance of the schema “X is true if and only if P” can be derived within it. In this schema, “P” can be replaced by any sentence of the object language and “X” is replaced by a name of the sentence that replaces “P.” “X” is in a metalanguage, that is, a language for talking about the object language. The general form of the schema is “(T) X is true if and only if P.” An instance of (T) would be “‘Snow is white’ is true in English if and only if snow is white,” where the object language sentence on the right-hand side is referred to by its quotation-marked name in the metalanguage on the left-hand side. According to Tarski, the T-sentence fixes the extension of the term “true” rather than its intension or meaning. The T-sentence is not a definition of truth, but any instance of it is a partial truth. Truth in general for a language will be a logical conjunction of all these partial definitions. “A theory of truth entails a T-truth for each sentence of the object language, and a T-sentence gives truth conditions.” Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation Tugendhat, Ernst, Büenn-born philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at University of Heidelberg and Free University of Berlin. Tugendhat has drawn on Frege and Heidegger to bring the rigor and clarity of analytic philosophy to bear on fundamental philosophical questions. His work on self-consciousness and self-determination brings together philosophy of mind and language and social philosophy. His major works include Tradition and Analytical Philosophy and SelfConsciousness and Self-Determination. tu quoque fallacy. Latin, you are another or you too] An argument of the form “if I face this charge, you face it equally.” In logic textbooks this is considered a variant of the ad hominem fallacy, for it does not establish its conclusion according to relevant facts or rational arguments, but instead attacks one’s opponent. This sort of argument is especially popular in political debates. For instance, A says to B, who accuses him of accepting illegal contributions in his election campaign: “If I used illegal contributions in my campaign, how about you? You took illegal contributions as well.” “The tu quoque fallacy is committed when one tries to reply to a charge made by an opponent by making the same or a similar against him.” Carney and Scheer, Fundamentals of Logic Turing, A. M. Maida-Vale-born philosopher, Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. Turing is famous for his fundamental development of computer theory and his practical development of the computer, as well as for his crucial code-breaking work in the Second World War. His conception of a machine that can perform any operation that a human mind can perform (a Turing machine) led him to ask whether there were criteria by which a person could distinguish the communications of the machine from the communications of a person. If not, he held that we would have no reason to reject a computational model of the mind. His major works include “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” in Mind 59 (1950), and Collected Works of A. M. Turing (1990). Turing machine Philosophy of mind, philosophy of language An imagined computer described by the British logician and mathematician Alan Turing. This computer would have a finite number of states S1, S2, S3 . . . Sn, and would operate by changing periodically from one state to another. In doing this it would interact with a paper tape of infinite length marked off into small squares. The machine would scan one square at a time and could “read” or “write” something. It could also erase what had been written. Furthermore, it could move the tape one square at a time to the left or right. When it reached a certain point and completed its task, it would stop itself. It would therefore be possible to give a complete description of each step of the machine. This is called a machine table. This result shows that the machine could do whatever other automata can do. If a machine of this sort could fool us into believing that it was a human being in a test in which we could not say whether the machine or a human was responding to our questions (a Turing test), there would be no grounds for distinguishing between the mental attributes we ascribe to the machine and those we ascribe to ourselves. This idea has had a great influence on the philosophy of mind, especially on artificial intelligence, and in the philosophy of language. “According to Turing, a Turing machine can carry out certain elementary operations . . . It is controlled by a program of instructions and each instruction specifies a condition and an action to be carried out if the condition is satisfied.” Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind Turing test: A thought experiment proposed by Maida-Vale-born philosopher A. M. Turing, who called it the imitation game, for showing that the abilities of digital computers are in principle indistinguishable from human intellectual capacities. In this test, a Turing machine and a human being are in a closed room but able to communicate with a human questioner outside the room via a teleprinter. Both the Turing machine and the human being answer the questions sent in by the questioner, who attempts to judge which answer is from the machine and which is from the man. Turing claimed that given a limited time for questioning the questioners would experience difficulty in distinguishing between the computer answers and the human answers. He predicted that at some point we would accept that machines could think, but critics argue that passing a Turing test is not a sufficient proof of intelligence. “Consider how a zimbo might perform in the Turing test, Alan Turing’s famous proposal (1950) of an operational test for thinking in a computer.” Dennett, Consciousness Explained Twardowski, K., Vienna-born philosopher, Professor of Philosophy, University of Lvov. Twardowski developed a rigorous philosophical method on the basis of Brentano’s descriptive psychology. He distinguished the unity of a mental act and its content from its external object and used this distinction to develop a general theory of objects. He used the distinction between a mental act and its product to develop a non-psychologistic account of logic. Twardowski’s work led to a flowering of Polish philosophy in the interwar period. His major works include On the Content and Object of Presentations. twin earth: A thought experiment concerning meaning and mental content, introduced by Putnam in his paper “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’ ” (1975). Imagine that elsewhere in space there is a duplicate of our planet that is exactly like it, except that the chemical composition of what we call water is H2O, but the chemical composition of what people on twin-earth call water is XYZ. Hence, although the minds and mental states of the inhabitants of twin-earth are like ours, when they utter the word “water,” they are referring to a substance composed of XYZ, while when we utter the word “water,” we are referring to a substance composed of H2O. Accordingly, if meaning were determined by mental states, our word “water” and their word “water” would have the same meaning. But the two words do not have the same meaning because our word applies to H2O and their word applies to XYZ. The meanings of words in a language are not merely in our minds but at least partly depend upon causal relations with external things. This is to reject the traditional conception of meaning according to which meanings are mental states and the intension of a word determines its extension. “One might hold that water is H2O in all worlds (the stuff called ‘water’ in W2 is not water) but ‘water’ does not have the same meaning in W1 and W2. If what was said before about the Twin Earth case was correct, then [this] is clearly the correct theory.” Putnam, Mind, Language and Reality two-factor theory: A theory of based on Putnam’s distinction between narrow content, which is entirely in the mind of a subject, and wide or broad content, which is at least partly individuated by the subject’s environment. On this theory, the two kinds of content are components or aspects of meaning. The narrow contents or internal states of the subject contribute to the meanings of psychological states and remain constant across changes in the environment. Hence, we may develop a theory of cognition that focuses on the same cognitive system amidst radically different environments. “This suggests a ‘two-factor’ semantic theory of psychological states: one factor, narrow content, is to be determined solely by nonrelational properties of the subject; the other factor, the truth condition, is to be determined in part by the subject’s environment.” Baker, Saving Belief two-place predicate, v. predicate. two principles of justice: Rawls argues that the participants in the original position behind the veil of ignorance would choose two principles of justice to determine the permanent basic structure of their society, whatever their position in society turns out to be. The two principles assign rights and duties and regulate the distribution of social and economical goods. The first principle calls for equal systems of basic liberties for all. The second principle applies to the distribution of social and economic goods. Unlike the first principle, it allows inequality, but this inequality is constrained by fair equality of opportunity and must benefit the least well off. Together these two principles form one conception of justice. The two principles, according to Rawls, have a lexical order, in which the first principle has an absolute priority over the second in a just or nearly just society. If one situation P is better than another situation S according to the first principle, then P must be preferred even if S would be better than P according to the second principle. In a just society, it would be irrational to trade basic liberties for social and economical gains. However, this priority applies only to societies with a highly developed civilization and economy. Within the second principle, fair equality of opportunity has lexical priority over the difference principle concerning benefit to the least advantaged. Critics claim that the rational actors of the original position would choose other principles of justice or that they could not choose any principles in the conditions specified. They also argue that Rawls’s principles would come into conflict with one another, for example because the inequality of the second principle would undermine the worth of the equal liberty of the first principle for the least advantaged. Much useful debate has emerged from such criticism. “I now wish to give the final statement of the two principles of justice for institutions . . . First principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all. Second principle: Social and economical inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both: (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just saving principle, and attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equalities of opportunity.” Rawls, A Theory of Justice Quinton’s thought experiment – “hardly thought out” – H. P. Grice. two-space myth: Space is ordinarily seen to be a unique individual. All real things are contained in one and the same space, and all spaces are part of the one space. In principle, every place can be reached from every other place by traveling through intermediate places. The spatial relation is symmetrical. Grice’s friend, A. M. Quinton devised a thought experiment to challenge this picture. Suppose that we have richly coherent and connected experience in our dreams just as we have in waking life, so that it becomes arbitrary to claim that our dream experience is not of an objectively existing world like the world of our waking experience. If the space of my waking world and my dream world are not mutually accessible, it is unlikely that we are justified in claiming to be living in a single spatially isolated world. Hence, space is not essentially singular. In assessing this account, we might distinguish between systematic and public physical space and fragmentary and private experiential space. The two-space myth raises questions about how we can justify moving from experiential space to objective space in the world as it is. “We can at least conceive circumstances in which we should have good reason to say that we know of real things located in two distinct spaces.” Quinton, “Spaces and Times,” Philosophy 37 types, theory of two-valued logic, another term for traditional logic two-world theory, see representative theory of perception type and token Philosophy of language, metaphysics A distinction drawn by Peirce, corresponding to the distinction between a species and an individual that is a member of this species. A token is a particular and individual sign or a single object or event. A type is a pattern that similar tokens exemplify or a class of similar tokens. A type is not a single thing or event and can only exist through the tokens by which it is embodied. A sentence token is a series of marks on paper or sound waves constituting an inscribed or spoken sentence, occurring at a definite space or existing for a definite period. A sentence type is a class to which different sentence tokens belong or the class of the many sayings of the same sentence. For example if one writes or utters “Socrates is a snubnosed philosopher,” and again “Socrates is a snubnosed philosopher,” these are two sentence tokens, but one sentence type. However, the criteria of identity for a sentence type are a matter of dispute. Some philosophers require typographical or auditory similarity, while others require sameness of meaning. “In order that a Type may be used, it has to be embodied in a Token which shall be a sign of the Type, and thereby of the object the Type signifies. I propose to call such a Token of a Type an instance of the Type.” Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. IV type-type identity: One version of the identity theory of mind, according to which every type of mental state or event is identical with some type of physical state or event. There are many views about what exactly is the correlation between the mental and the physical. The theory contrasts with another version of the identity theory, the token-token identity theory, which claims that each token mental event is identical with a token physical event. A problem for the type-type identity theory is that different people might have the same beliefs, but lack the same neural states. In addition, it is conceivable that non-humans have the same mental states as humans, but have different neural states. In spite of these difficulties, type-type identity might be needed if theoretical insight into the identity is to be achieved. “Most advocators of a dual aspect theory assert a type-type identity between the mental and the physical: that the identity of mental events and physical events is associated with systematic correlations between types of mental events and types of physical events.” Hodgson, The Mind Matters three-year old’s guide to Russell’s theory of types, the: types, theory of Logic Russell’s influential solution to the problem of logical paradoxes. The theory was developed in particular to overcome Russell’s paradox, which seemed to destroy the possibility of Frege’s logicist program of deriving mathematics from logic. Suppose we ask whether the set of all sets which are not members of themselves is a member of itself. If it is, then it is not, but if it is not, then it is. The theory of types suggests classifying objects, properties, relations, and sets into a hierarchy of types. For example, a class of type 0 has members that are ordinary objects; type 1 has members that are properties of objects of type 0; type 2 has members that are properties of the properties in type 1; and so on. What can be true or false of items of one type can not significantly be said about those of another type and is simply nonsense. If we observe the prohibitions against classes containing members of different types, Russell’s paradox and similar paradoxes can be avoided. The theory of types has two variants. The simple theory of types classifies different objects and properties, while the ramified theory of types further sorts types into levels and adds a hierarchy of levels to that of types. By restricting predicates to those that relate to items of lower types or lower levels within their own type, predicates giving rise to paradox are excluded. The simple theory of types is sufficient for solving logical paradoxes, while the ramified theory of type is introduced to solve semantic paradoxes, that is, paradoxes depending on notions such as reference and truth. “Any expression containing an apparent variable is of higher type than that variable. This is the fundamental principles of the doctrines of types.” Russell, Logic and Knowledge. overman, Übermensch: overman, the perfectionist ideal of life he offers as a goal to human beings when their former ideal, namely God, is dead. Übermensch is a worldly antithesis of God, a union of the strongest mind and strongest body. For Nietzsche, it is the realization of the profoundest human potentialities and gifts, the overcoming or negation of the mediocrities of the merely human. Übermensch involves no bifurcation of humanity. It is the creator of meaning of life and the full affirmation of life. It affirms the eternal recurrence, and in it the will to power attains its zenith. Human beings should transcend themselves and become supermen. They would thus be saved not by a divine Savior, but by the glorification of the human species. The aim of culture should be to produce supermen. For Nietzsche, any culture that generates a multitude of mediocrities must be sick and should be condemned. Human life, which has value only as a means of producing supermen, stands between beast and superman. Superman is the ideal man. Nietzsche does not mention any single example, but denies that either he or Zarathustra is a superman. “Behold, I teach you the Übermensch, the Übermensch is the meaning of earth. Let your will say: the Übermensch shall be the meaning of the earth.” Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra ugliness: as beauty is a general term representing positive aesthetic value, ugliness is a general term representing negative aesthetic value or aesthetic disvalue. Ugliness is the property of an object eliciting distaste and unappealing feelings. Corresponding to different modes of beauty, there are various modes of ugliness, such as the deformed, ill-placed, or disharmonious. Aesthetic evaluation of an object assesses its beauty and ugliness. Artists, however, can make beautiful depictions of ugly objects, thus using ugliness to reinforce the aesthetic value of the whole. “Beauty, or ugliness, was defined as the character of an object which is such that, in aesthetic contemplation, it yields to the contemplation feelings that are pleasant, or, respectively, unpleasant.” Ducasse, The Philosophy of Art Unamuno y Jugo, Miguel de, Bilbao-born existentialist philosopher and writer, born in Bilbao, Professor of Greek and Rector, University of Salamanca. Unamuno argued for a conception of human nature and the human predicament that focuses on our concrete embodiment and pervasive anxiety and the irrationality of our needs and our surrounding world. Our main task is to lead a life of authenticity in the face of a world that does not grant us immortality. His major works include The Tragic Sense of Life (1913). unconscious: For Leibniz, the unconscious comprises the appetitive intentions of a transcendent nature in the self, which subsequent German idealists called the blind will or the desire of which the mind is ignorant. Freud took over this term for a fundamental concept of his psychology. The unconscious comprises mental items or processes of which we are unaware, but which we can posit through interpretation of their indirect determination of phenomena such as dreams, slips of the tongue, humor, and neurotic behavior. A wide range of experience influences what we think and do although we are not conscious of it. According to Freud, the contents of the unconscious that are most important for his theory of the mind are repressed and unavailable to consciousness. The unconscious, however, is dynamic in the sense that it is active in the determination of behavior. The unconscious contrasts with the preconscious, which comprises latent elements of mind waiting to be discovered. The preconscious is sometimes loosely equated with the unconscious. According to Freud, what is conscious is only a small part of the mind, with most mental contents in the unconscious. The unconscious is a wider concept than the repressed, for while everything that is repressed is unconscious, not everything unconscious is repressed. In his early writings, Freud considered the opposition between the unconscious and the conscious to be a mental conflict. The unconscious has no organization, lacks differentiation, has no sense of morality, and is impersonal, yet it is the fertile source of culture and civilization. The dynamic unconscious is the defining preoccupation of psychoanalysis. In Freud’s later writings, the id takes over the attributes of the unconscious, although the ego also has an unconscious part. The theory of the unconscious was further developed by Jung and Lacan. “For the time being we possess no better name for psychical processes which behave actively but nevertheless do not reach the consciousness of the person concerned and that is all we mean by our ‘unconsciousness’.” Freud, Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 9 Verstehen. understanding (Heidegger) Modern European philosophy [German Verstehen] Traditional philosophy takes understanding to be one of the major cognitive abilities of the subject or mind and subordinates the question of the understanding to the problem of knowledge. Heidegger breaks with this tradition by claiming that understanding is a basic mode of Dasein’s being. Rather than discovering or making assertions about the particular facts of the world, understanding is the awareness of possibilities, that is, the disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) of the for-the-sake-ofwhich of Dasein’s being-in-the-world. Understanding operates in terms of projecting those possibilities that are tied to Dasein’s worldly situation. It has a threefold “fore” structure, that is fore-having, foresight, and fore-conception. In this way, understanding is Dasein’s self-understanding. While the state of mind, another mode of Dasein’s being, discloses facticity, that is, Dasein’s thrownness into this world, understanding becomes aware of its inevitable freedom. For Heidegger, the traditional conception of the understanding is derived from the understanding as the existential awareness of possibilities. Working out the possibilities projected in understanding is interpretation. Heidegger’s theory of understanding establishes the basis for the hermeneutic turn. “With the term ‘understanding’ we have in mind a fundamental existentiale, which is neither a definite species of cognition distinguished, let us say, from explaining and conceiving, nor any cognition at all in the sense of grasping something thematically.” Heidegger, Being and Time. Verstand, corresponding to Greek dianoia and Latin intellectio] Kant distinguished understanding from sensibility and reason. While sensibility is receptive, understanding is spontaneous. While understanding is concerned with the range of phenomena and is empty without intuition, reason, which moves from judgment to judgment concerning phenomena, is tempted to extend beyond the limits of experience to generate fallacious inferences. Kant claimed that the main act of understanding is judgment and called it a faculty of judgment. He claimed that there is an a priori concept or category corresponding to each kind of judgment as its logical function and that understanding is constituted by twelve categories. Hence understanding is also a faculty of concepts. Understanding gives the synthetic unity of appearance through the categories. It thus brings together intuitions and concepts and makes experience possible. It is a lawgiver of nature. Herder criticized Kant for separating sensibility and understanding. Fichte and Hegel criticized him for separating understanding and reason. Some neo-Kantians criticized him for deriving the structure of understanding from the act of judgment. “Now we can reduce all acts of the understanding to judgements, and the understanding may therefore be represented as a faculty of judgement.” Kant, Critique of Pure Reason understanding: One of Locke’s two main works is entitled An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. He took understanding to be a faculty of the mind and called it the most elevated faculty of the soul and a faculty that searches after truth. Understanding has a more fundamental importance than other faculties, such as sensation, reasoning, or memory. Locke divided the actions of the mind into two main parts: the power of thinking, which is called understanding, and the power of volition, which is called the will. He often used understanding interchangeably with the cognitive mind, rather than as just one of its faculties. The purpose of his Essay on human understanding is to “inquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent.” “Since it is the understanding that sets man above the rest of sensible beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion which he has over them, it is certainly a subject, even for its nobleness, worth our labour to inquire into.” Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding understanding/explanation -- German Verstehen, understanding and Erklarung, explanation] Ordinarily, the distinction between explanation and understanding is blurred, in part because explanation furthers our understanding. Yet in German philosophy of history, philosophy of social science, and hermeneutics, the two terms are sharply distinguished. Explanation is the subsumption of individual cases under hypothetically assumed general laws of nature and is the method characteristic of the natural sciences. In contrast, understanding is a cognitive mode peculiar to the social sciences. It is an empathic or participatory understanding of a given subject’s point of view by imaginatively putting oneself into the place of the subject. It is the reconstruction of the subject’s purposes, values, and meaning. The distinction was first drawn by Droysen, although he actually put forward a trichotomy: philosophical method (knowledge), physical method (explanation), and historical method (understanding). Dilthey fully elaborated the distinction between Verstehen and Erklarung, claiming that it forms the fundamental difference between the social sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) and the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) and that the distinction is the basis for the claim that the social sciences have a distinctive methodology. Max Weber believed that both Verstehen and Erklarung are necessary in the social sciences. “The German historian-philosopher Droysen appears to have been the first to introduce a methodological dichotomy which has had great influence. He coined for it the names explanation and understanding, in German Erklaren and Verstehen.” von Wright, Explanation and Understanding DISTRIBUTIO: undistributed middle: a logical fallacy in traditional syllogistic logic, resulting from the violation of the rule that the middle term (the term that appears twice in premises) must be distributed at least once in the premises. Any syllogism that commits this error is invalid. Consider “All philosophers are persons,” and “Some persons are bad.” No conclusion follows from these two premises because “persons” in the first premise is the predicate of an affirmative proposition, and in the second is the subject of a particular proposition. Neither of them is distributed. “If in a syllogism the middle term is distributed in neither premise, we are said to have a fallacy of undistributed middle.” Keynes, Formal Logic unexpected examination paradox, another name for surprise examination paradox unhappy consciousness: Hegel’s term for a consciousness that desires complete knowledge of itself but cannot obtain it. Hegel believed that self-consciousness proceeded in history from pre-history (the struggle for recognition) to Greece and Rome (Stoicism and skepticism) and medieval Christianity (unhappy consciousness). At the stage of skepticism, consciousness claims that all knowledge is relative to the subjective point of view. However, to make this claim meaningful, it must be assured that there is a universal point of view to see that all knowledge is thus relative. As a result, a skeptic has to admit that he is unable to justify these beliefs outside of his own contingently held point of view. He has a divided form of consciousness, with a tension between its subjective and objective points of view. Here skepticism gave way to the stage of unhappy consciousness. Such a consciousness is internally divided, for it has to assume both points of view. It is the consciousness of separation between man and nature and between man and man. Christianity’s message is a call to men to restore the lost unity of consciousness by bringing their subjective points of view into line with the impersonal eye of God. In general, the unhappy consciousness describes a form of life in which people’s conceptions of themselves and of what they claim to know involves an enduring state of crisis. Such a mental state is later called by Kierkegaard “despair.” “Hence the unhappy consciousness, the Alienated Soul which is the consciousness of self as a divided nature, a doubled and merely contradictory being.” Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit Einheit der Wisseschaft, Einheitswissenschaft: Grice, “Unity of Science and Teleology,” Logical positivists held that no essential differences in aim and method exist between the various branches of science. The scientists of all disciplines should collaborate closely with each other and should unify the vocabulary of sciences by logical analysis. According to this view, there is no sharp demarcation between natural sciences and social sciences. In particular, to establish universal laws in the social sciences may be difficult in practice, but it is not impossible in principle. Through Otto Neurath, this ideal of scientific unity became a program for logical positivists, who published a series of books in Vienna under the heading Unified Science. After the dissolution of the Vienna Circle, Neurath renamed the official journal Erkenntnis as The Journal of Unified Science, and planned to continue publication of a series of works in the United States under the general title The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. He thought that the work would be similar in historical importance to the eighteenth-century French Encyclopédie under the direction of Diderot. Unfortunately, this work was never completed, although Carnap and Morris published some volumes originally prepared for it under the title Foundations of the Unity of Science. “We have repeatedly pointed out that the formation of the constructional system as a whole is the task of unified science.” Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World uniformity of nature: a principle claiming that nature is uniform and that consequently the future will resemble the past and that generalizations holding for observed cases will apply to unobserved cases so long as the background conditions remain sufficiently similar. In traditional epistemology, Francis Bacon and J. S. Mill assumed the principle to be the ground for the validity of inductive reasoning and scientific predictions. The aim of science is to find uniformity. But Hume argued that the principle can only be justified by induction and thus that justifying induction by appeal to the principle involves vicious circularity or question-begging. Popper, in his rejection of inductive method, claimed that the uniformity of nature is a matter of faith. “The belief in the uniformity of nature is the belief that everything that has happened or will happen is an instance of some general law to which there are no exceptions.” Russell, The Problems of Philosophy unity of consciousness, see transcendental apperception Universalium: omething is universal if it pertains to all members of a class or is unlimited, such as a universal law. In logic, universal statements (A and E statements in traditional logic) are contrasted with particular statements (I and O statements). A universal expresses abstract features, such as justice, beauty, wisdom, and goodness, and such universals give rise to many major and persisting problems in the history of philosophy. The concept of a universal can be traced to Plato’s conception of idea or form (eidos) and Aristotle’s katholou. Ideas or forms are the common characteristics which many particulars share and which are the object of knowledge. Katholou [Greek kata, belonging to + holou, the whole] is defined as being predicated of many, while a particular is predicated of nothing else. Both Plato and Aristotle contrasted universals with particulars. Plato’s theory of ideas is regarded as the first and most penetrating discussion of the problems of universals, although Aristotle’s treatment of the problem from the point of view of predication is currently widely followed. Since Plato and Aristotle, the debate about the nature and status of universals has run through the whole history of philosophy. Many rival theories have been proposed, the most important of which include realism, nominalism, and conceptualism. Realism claims that universals are mind-independent objective entities, which can in principle be exemplified or instantiated by a number of different things. On the basis of this objective entity, predicateexpressions can be applied to many subjects. Nominalism holds that a universal is not an objective entity but is only a general name or word. Our ability to apply these general words is based on their linguistic function established by convention. The major representatives of nominalism include William of Ockham and Thomas Hobbes. Conceptualism, usually associated with the British empiricists, suggests that universals are mind-dependent concepts or thoughts, constructed by the mind after experiencing particular things. Each position has its strengths as well as famous weaknesses. There are many further versions under each general heading. Plato and Aristotle, for instance, are realists, but their doctrines have striking differences. Wittgenstein in his later philosophy proposed an account of family resemblance as complicated networks of overlapping similarities to replace our mistaken demand for properties that are common to all members of a class. “By the term ‘universal’ I mean that which is of such a nature as to be predicated of many subjects, by ‘individual’ that which is not thus predicated. Thus, ‘man’ is a universal, ‘Callias’ an individual.” Aristotle, De Interpretatione universal characteristic, another expression for universal symbolistic universal grammar: Also called general grammar or philosophical grammar. In contrast to particular grammar, which is the grammar peculiar to a particular language, universal grammar refers to the deep-seated regularities in linguistic categories, rules, and processes that underlie the diversity of natural languages. It consists of a set of genetically determined rules and principles common to all natural languages. Universal grammar is rooted in human linguistic capacity and is the necessary and sufficient natural condition for any language to be possible. It is a basic biological endowment of the initial state of the human mind. Because of universal grammar, a child can effortlessly acquire language. According to Chomsky, the idea of a universal grammar was common for eighteenthcentury linguists such as Beattie and Du Marsa, but was ignored by modern linguistics. He revived the notion and believes that without being supplemented by a universal grammar, a grammar of a particular language cannot provide a full account of the speaker-hearer’s competence. The natural necessity of universal grammar as a condition of the possibility of language can be compared with the a priori intuitions and categories that were held by Kant to be the transcendentally necessary conditions for the possibility of experience. “Such a ‘universal grammar’ (to modify slightly a traditional usage) prescribes a schema that defines implicitly the indefinite class of ‘attainable grammars’; it formulates principles that determines how each such system relates sound and meaning; it provides a procedure of evaluation for grammars of the appropriate form.” Chomsky, Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar universal proposition Logic In traditional logic, propositions of the form “all s are p” or “all s are not p” are called universal propositions, in contrast to particular propositions, which have the form “some s are p” or “some s are not p.” The form “all s are p,” which is equivalent to “every s is p,” is the form of a universal affirmative proposition and is symbolized as “A.” The form “all s are not p,” which is equivalent to “no s is p,” is the form of a universal negative proposition and is symbolized as “E.” In modern predicate calculus, a universal affirmative proposition “all s are p” is analyzed as “for all x, if x is s and x is p.” Unlike particular propositions, universal propositions do not contain referring expressions and therefore lack existential import. “The grammatical subjects of universal propositions, however expressed, are not referring expressions.” D. Mitchell, An Introduction to Logic universal quantifier: Frege suggests that the universal categorical statements of traditional logic, that is, “All s are p,” and “All s are not p,” can be read respectively as “For all x, if x is s, then x is p,” and “For all x, if x is s, then x is not p.” The former can be symbolized as “(x) (sx → px), and the latter as “(x) (sx → ~px).” (x) is called the “universal quantifier” and means that “For all x . . .” or “For every x . . .” The universal quantifier and the existential quantifier (There exists an x . . . ) have been crucial in the development of modern predicate logic and the philosophy dependent upon it. The universal quantifier is also symbolized as “∀(x).” “The universal quantifier (x) may be read ‘each object x is such that . . .’.” Quine, Theories and Things Deutero-Esperanto. universal symbolistic. Also called universal characteristic, Leibniz’s project for providing a system of symbols or an artificial language for overcoming the deficiencies of natural language and for representing rational thought more accurately and effectively. For Leibniz it is a universal system of writing and an “alphabet of human thought.” Through the combination of the letters of this alphabet and through the analysis of the words produced from them, we can discover and judge everything. To establish a universal language for communication among different languages was not a new idea, but Leibniz attempted to extend the notion of such a language to form an art of discovery and an art of judgment. He believed that it would be one of the greatest inventions if it succeeded. There is much dispute among scholars about the scope, nature, and significance of this project. On one reading, the universal symbolistic is intended to be a type of ideal language, a language composed of real characters capable of expressing symbolically the contents of thought. On this reading, it is the predecessor of the ideal language proposed by some modern analytical philosophers. On another reading, this project is concerned only with the form, not the content, of rational thought. It is a plan for a general science of form and for expressing the logical relations among concepts and propositions. On this reading, the universal characteristic is a precursor of modern symbolic logic. On a further reading, Leibniz’s thought developed from the ambitious project of constructing a system representing content to a less ambitious project that was concerned solely with the form of logical reasoning. “I should still hope to create a kind of universal symbolistic in which all truths of reason would be reduced to a kind of calculus.” Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters universalium, ante rem see universalia, in rebus Universalium in re. universals existing within particular things, also called in rebus universalia] A position held by the Aristotelians about the ontological status of universals. It contrasts with the Platonist position universalia, ante rem [Latin, universals existing prior to or independently of the particular things that instantiate them, also called ante res universalia]. It is also contrasted with post rem universalia [Latin, universals existing after or derived from particular things, also called post res universalia], a view held by both nominalism and conceptualism. “We can adopt the view whose Latin tag is universalia in rebus, ‘universals in things’. We can think of a thing’s properties as constituents of the thing and think of the properties as universals. This may have been the position of Aristotle.” D. Armstrong, Universals and Scientific Realism universalium post rem, v. universaliium in re. Universalierung -- Universalizability: he idea that moral judgments should be universalizable can be traced to the Golden Rule and Kant’s ethics. In the twentieth century it was elaborated by Hare and became a major thesis of his prescriptivism. The principle states that all moral judgments are universalizable in the sense that if it is right for a particular person A to do an action X, then it must likewise be right to do X for any person exactly like A, or like A in the relevant respects. Furthermore, if A is right in doing X in this situation, then it must be right for A to do X in other relevantly similar situations. Hare takes this feature to be an essential feature of moral judgments. An ethical statement is the issuance of a universal prescription. Universalizability is not the same as generality, for a moral judgment can be highly specific and detailed and need not be general or simple. The universalizability principle enables Hare to avoid the charge of irrationality that is usually lodged against non-cognitivism, to which his prescriptivism belongs, and his theory is thus a great improvement on emotivism. “I have been maintaining that the meaning of the word ‘ought’ and other moral words is such that a person who uses them commits himself thereby to a universal rule. This is the thesis of universalizability.” Hare, Freedom and Reason universals of language, another expression for linguistic universals unknown entities, another term for metaphysical entities unmoved mover: The substance that initiates movement without itself being moved, also called the prime mover. In the later part of the Physics and Metaphysics XII, Aristotle developed a cosmological argument attempting to show that there must be an unmoved mover. Because time is eternal, without beginning and end, change, which is a concomitant of time, must also be eternal. The eternal and continuous change is the circular movement of the outer heavenly sphere. What produces this eternal motion? On analogy with the objects of our desires and thoughts and the intentional bodily movements for which they account, Aristotle inferred that there must be some ultimate object of desire and thought in the universe, a substance which acts on the outer sphere and then indirectly on the order of the whole universe. This substance moves not because it intends, but because it is loved and thought. Thus it is an unmoved mover that is immune to change and thus has no matter or potentiality. It is pure actuality and pure selfreflective thought, with pure contemplation of itself as its object. The unmoved mover is also called God. But the Aristotelian God itself does not care or think about changes in the world, although the harmony and order of the world are due to the imitation of the unmoved mover. While Aristotle’s God is a passive object of admiration, medieval philosophers, especially Thomas Aquinas, attempted to transform it into a conscious agent. “And since that which is moved and moves is intermediate, there is something, which moves without being moved, being eternal, substance and actuality.” Aristotle, Metaphysics unqualified good, v. qualified good. unsaturated: Frege’s distinction between saturated expressions and unsaturated expressions corresponds to the distinction between objects and concepts. A saturated expression refers to an object or argument and has a complete sense in itself, while an unsaturated expression refers to a concept or function and does not have a complete sense. For example, in the sentence “Socrates is the teacher of Plato,” “Socrates” and “Plato” are proper names and are saturated, while “. . . is the teacher of . . .” is unsaturated, for it has empty spaces that must be filled with saturated expressions before it gains a complete sense. “Statements in general . . . can be imagined to be split up into two parts; one complete in itself, and the other in need of supplementation, or ‘unsaturated’.” Frege, “Function and Concept,” Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege unwritten doctrines: doctrines ascribed to Plato, which he is said not to have written down but only to have taught to his pupils orally. Remarks by Aristotle are our chief source for these doctrines. The ideas are difficult and even impossible to reconstruct, but they are roughly like this. There are two ultimate principles, the One and the indefinite dyad, which generate the Forms, and through the Forms become the causes of everything. Forms are numbers, and between Forms and particulars there are indeterminate mathematical entities. While most Platonic scholars do not pay much attention to these ideas, the Tübingen school, headed by K. Gaiser and H. Kramer, claim that the unwritten doctrines represent the real essence of Plato’s philosophy and the dialogues are only a preliminary stage toward this serious philosophy. “It is true, indeed, that the account he gives in the Timaeus of the participant is different from what he says in his so-called ‘unwritten doctrines’.” Aristotle, Physics Gebrauch: use theory of meaning: The later Wittgenstein criticized the view that language has a single function that explains meaning and observed that language has a variety of uses. He claimed that the meaning of a word has to be understood in terms of its employment in the context of different languagegames. To give the meaning of an expression is to show how that expression enters into the languagegames in which it functions. He held that the meaning of a word is its use in a language. Instead of asking what a word means, we should ask how the word is used. An expression’s role in language determines its sense, and the sense of a sentence is its employment. Accordingly, to determine the meaning of an expression one must invoke the conditions under which it is appropriate to use it, including the states of mind of speakers or hearers in a given context. This account, which contrasts with Wittgenstein’s earlier picture theory of meaning, has been widely influential and has developed into many versions after Wittgenstein. Critics suggest that while a use account of meaning helps our understanding of the various roles of linguistic expressions, it is preliminary to a theory of meaning rather than a theory in its own right. “As a tool of analysis, the use theory of meaning can provide us only with certain data, i.e. raw material for philosophical analysis.” Searle, Speech Acts utilitarianism: a major meta-ethical theory, advanced by Bentham, J. S. Mill, Sidgwick, and many others, which suggests, broadly speaking, that the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by its utility, that is, the good (pleasant or happy) or bad (painful or evil) consequences it produces. The morally right action that one should choose is the one that will provide the greatest pleasure and least pain of all the alternatives. Because utilitarianism judges actions in terms of their consequences, it is a major representative of consequentialism. There are many species of utilitarianism, based on different understandings of action and consequences. There is a distinction between actutilitarianism and rule-utilitarianism; the former judges in terms of the consequences of particular actions, and the latter in terms of the consequence of adopting some general rules for sorts of actions. There is a distinction between egoistic and universalistic utilitarianism; the former considers the goodness or badness of the consequences for the agent himself, and the latter for all individuals involved. There is also a distinction between hedonistic and ideal utilitarianism; the former takes the goodness or badness of a consequence to depend only on its pleasure or pain, and the latter (represented by G. E. Moore) takes into account things other than pleasure, such as intellectual and aesthetic qualities. There is also a distinction between normative and descriptive utilitarianism, distinguishing how agents should act and how they actually do act. These various distinctions cut across one another. A recent version, called motive utilitarianism, defines the morality of actions in terms of the motives that give rise to them. Utilitarianism has played a great role in modern English and American society as the basic principle of morality and legislation. However, it has also been a subject of criticism in moral and political philosophy. The various versions of utilitarianism have weaknesses. Concentrating on its consequentialism, the main objections are: First, it is difficult to determine what consequences various possible actions would have; secondly, the action that will produce the greatest happiness is often not the morally right action; thirdly, utilitarianism focuses on the consequences of actions, but ignores the integrity of moral agents; finally, utilitarianism seeks to maximize the utility of consequences without regard to the distribution of utility among persons or among different periods in one person’s life. All these and other criticisms suggest that utilitarianism should be employed together with other moral principles, although its fundamental viewpoint is unlikely to be completely removed. “The chief reason for adopting the name ‘Utilitarianism’ was, indeed, merely to emphasise the fact that right and wrong conduct must be judged by its results.” G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica utilitarianism, act: Act-utilitarianism judges the rightness of an action in terms of the good or bad consequences that the action itself can produce. We should pursue the action that will produce the greatest happiness in every circumstance. It contrasts with ruleutilitarianism, which judges the rightness of an action in terms of the good or bad consequences that ensue from following general moral rules of conduct, such as “keep promises” and “never lie,” rather than from performing a particular action. According to rule-utilitarianism, we should pursue the action that conforms to a set of moral rules whose general observance would maximize utility. Classical utilitarians such as Bentham, Mill, and Sidgwick are generally considered as act-utilitarians, though they themselves were not aware of this distinction. Act-utilitarianism can also be defined in terms of expected utility rather than the utility of actual consequences. The basic difficulty for act-utilitarianism is how to assess with certainty the consequences of an action considered in itself. It is also criticized for ignoring the agent’s integrity or desires. Sometimes it is disputed whether the distinction between act-utilitarianism and rule-utilitarianism is sound. Moral theorists such as Hare believe that if a certain action is right, it must be the case that any action just like it in relevant aspects will also be right. “Assuming that the objections to act-utilitarianism are conclusive, the choice of a general theory of obligation seems to lie between some kind of formalism and at least something like ruleutilitarianism.” Brandt, Ethical Theory utilitarianism, ideal Ethics W. D. Ross’s term, for the type of utilitarianism initiated by Moore. In contrast to classical or hedonistic utilitarianism, which claims that consequences are good or bad depending only on pleasure or pain, Moore claims that things other than pleasure, such as knowledge and the enjoyment of beautiful objects, also determine the goodness of consequences. “In fact the theory of ‘Ideal Utilitarianism’, if I may for brevity refer so to the theory of Professor Moore, seems to simplify unduly our relations to our fellows.” Ross, The Right and the Good. utility: what is useful or good and leads to pleasure or happiness. Utility is the property that generates happiness or felicity, but more often it is directly identified with happiness. Utility has been an important consideration in ethics since the ancient Greeks. Hume believed that it is the measure of all virtues. Since Bentham advanced the principle of utility, there has been a specific ethical theory called utilitarianism. For utilitarianism, utility is the sole criterion for judging whether an act is right or wrong. If an act produces utility, it is right; otherwise, it is wrong. Bentham also proposed a calculus of felicity to determine the amount of utility or happiness produced by an action and to allow comparisons between actions. In many circumstances, however, an act that brings about the greatestutility is not the act that we morally approve. Furthermore, there are many problems in measuring and comparing different kinds of utilities. Attempts to identify happiness and utility might involve a misunderstanding of happiness. Problems also arise because utilitarians seek to maximize utility without regard to its distribution among people or among different periods in an individual life. “By utility is meant that property in any object whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness . . . or . . . to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered.” Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. utility calculus, see hedonistic calculus utopia: from Greek ou, not + topos, place, literally, a place that does not exist] A word first used in Sir Thomas More’s book Utopia, in which he depicts an ideal state that has perfect economic, social, political, legal, and religious structures. Similar descriptions of an imaginary ideal state can be found in such works as Plato’s Republic, Tommaso Campanella’s The City of the Sun (1612), Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627), Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888), William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890), and H. G. Wells’s A Modern Utopia (1905). Utopia is generally conceived to be an unrealizable, impractical, and purely imaginary ideal state. Unrealistic political and social theories are described as utopian, especially those proposing fanciful schemes of education to change human nature or placing the hope of realizing the ideal state upon the character of great rulers. Utopian theories are often criticized for not being based on human experience. Nevertheless, they represent human aspirations and have always served as an instrument for political criticism. Marx called the work of his predecessors utopian socialism, in contrast to his own scientific socialism, which he argued was grounded on the analysis of existing class conflicts in capitalism. “The ideal of utopia, the perfect society, has long exerted a powerful influence upon the thinking, feeling, and action of human beings.” Richter (ed.), Utopias. utopian engineering: Popper’s term for a methodological approach to bringing about social and political change. Utopian engineers draw up an initial blueprint of society as a whole and then attempt to realize this ideal state by deciding the best means to achieve the predetermined ends. This approach entails large-scale social revolution and is represented by the program for society in Plato’s Republic. In contrast, piecemeal engineering focuses on existing social problems and practices to propose a series of relatively modest individual changes. According to Popper, piecemeal engineering is a rational means of pursuing change, while utopian engineering, because it aims at a perfect state, will demand centralized rule and lead to dictatorship. Although utopian engineering starts with an apparently good plan, it can lead to disaster because of the complex realities of human nature and of social life. All change produces unintended as well as intended consequences. With piecemeal engineering it is easier to recognize when unintended consequences are negative and to trace these consequences to their origins in order to eliminate or to control them. “The Platonic approach I have in mind can be described as that of utopian engineering, as opposed to another kind of social engineering which I consider as the only rational one, and which may be described by the name of piecemeal engineering.” Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies. vacuous occurrence: if replacing a descriptive term t in a proposition p by other grammatically appropriate constants does not affect the truth-value of p, then t occurs vacuously in p. If a change of meaning of a term in an argument a does not affect the validity of the argument, then the term occurs vacuously in a. In a tautology or a self-contradictory proposition, all descriptive terms occur vacuously. Vacuous occurrence contrasts with essential occurrence. With essential occurrence, the replacement of a term t will affect the truth-value of the proposition in which it occurs, and a change of meaning of a term in an argument will affect the validity of the argument. “By vacuous occurrence of a descriptive constant (i.e. either individual constant or predicate constant) is meant that the truth-value of the sentence does not change if any other admissible descriptive constant is substituted.” Pap, Elements of Analytic Philosophy vagum: The indeterminacy of the field of application of an expression, in contrast to precision. For instance, the expression “young man” is vague since the point at which its appropriate application to a person begins and ends cannot be precisely defined. Vagueness should be distinguished from ambiguity, by which a term has more than one meaning. The vagueness of an expression is due to a semantic feature of the term itself, rather than to the subjective condition of its user. Vagueness gives rise to borderline cases, and propositions with vague terms lack a definite truth-value. For this reason, Frege rejected the possibility of vague concepts, although they are tolerated in recent work in vague or fuzzy logic. Various paradoxes arise due to the vagueness of words, including the ancient sorites paradox. It is because of its intrinsic vagueness that some philosophers seek to replace ordinary language with an ideal language. But ordinary language philosophers hold that this proposal creates a false promise of eliminating vagueness. Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance in part is a model of meaning that tolerates vagueness. As a property of expressions, vagueness extends to all sorts of cognitive representations. Some philosophers hold that there can be vagueness in things as well as in the representation of things. “A representation is vague when the relation of the representing system to the represented system is not one–one, but one–many.” Russell, Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. IX. validity: a property attributed to an inference or an argument, which can be defined both syntactically, in terms of the axioms or rules of a logical system, and semantically, in terms of interpretations or models. Suppose that A 1, A 2, A 3, . . . are premises, and A 0 is a conclusion. Syntactic validity means that A 0 is derivable from A 1, A 2, A 3, . . . If all the premises are true and the inference complies with the rules of logic, then the inference or argument is valid. Semantic validity means that A 0 is true if according to interpretations or models in non-logical language A 1, A 2, A 3, . . . are true. The task of traditional logic is to establish the rules of syntactic validity. Validity is not the same as truth, for truth is a property ascribed to propositions or statements rather than to inferences or arguments. “An argument is valid if and only if it is logically impossible for all the premises to be true yet the conclusion false.” Sainsbury, Logical Form. Value – validum, f. valere, to have worth, to be strong. Its original sense, the worth of a thing, appears in economics. In the nineteenth century German philosophers such as the neo-Kantians, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche expanded the sense of value and used it as a major technical notion in their philosophy. Marx’s distinction between use-value and exchangevalue was a basic feature of his account of economy and society. The conception of value can be traced to the idea of the Good in Socrates and Plato. Its use is associated with distinctions between fact and value and between is and ought in modern philosophy. The general study of value, including ethical and aesthetic value, is called axiology. In ethics, something has value if it is good or worthwhile, although negative values are also possible. Generally speaking, value means the quality of a thing that makes it desirable, useful, or an object of interest. Value has been understood in terms of the subjective appreciation or as something projected onto objects by a subject. In this sense “valuable” amounts to “being judged to have value.” On this view, objects can have different values for different individuals, groups, or nations. A contrasting claim is that there can be objective value independent of subjective appreciation, although philosophers disagree over the sense in which value is meant to be objective. There are various classifications of value. Most commonly, there are distinctions among extrinsic or instrumental value (good as a means for some end), intrinsic value (good as an end in itself ), and inherent value (the basis for our seeing something as desirable). In logic, value is the result of applying a function to an argument. For instance, “7” is the value of applying the function “x + y” to the arguments “3” and “4.” “Values express the objective will. Ethical values in particular result from the combination of many lives and sets of interests in a single set of judgements.” T. Nagel, The View from Nowhere. value, intrinsic. In its ordinary sense, intrinsic value is the value a thing has to most people in normal circumstances, in contrast to the value that the same thing has for special persons in special circumstances. This latter might be called sentimental value. For instance, a lover’s gift might have little intrinsic value, but great sentimental value to the loved one. In another sense, intrinsic value is objective value, that is, the value a thing has independent of anything else, so that it would have its value even if it were the only thing that existed. This sense seems to be proposed by Moore. In its standard wider use, which can be traced to Aristotle’s notion of final good, intrinsic value is synonymous with what is intrinsically desirable or intrinsically good. This value is desirable for its own sake and worth pursuing in itself without reference to any other objects. In this sense, intrinsic value contrasts to extrinsic or instrumental value, which is not pursued for itself. “To say that a kind of value is ‘intrinsic’ means merely that the question whether a thing possesses it, and in what degree it possesses it, depends solely on the intrinsic nature of the thing in question.” G. E. Moore, Philosophical Studies value, theory of, see axiology value of a variable: A variable ranges over the members of a set. Any entity that falls within the range of the variable is a value of the variable. An expression designating a value of a variable can be substituted for the variable. In the sentential function “x is wise,” x is a variable, and Socrates is a member of its range and hence one of its values. Substituting “Socrates” for x yields the closed sentence or proposition “Socrates is wise.” On a substitutional rather than referential view, we can consider the expressions that can be substituted for a variable to be its values. “Specific terms within the range of meaning of a variable in a function are called ‘values’ of that variable.” Quine, Set Theory and Its Logic value word – A value word is a word used to express taste and preferences, to express decisions and choices, to criticize and evaluate, to advise, warn, persuade, praise, and encourage. Their function is to guide our own choices and those of other people by commending or prescribing. Typical examples are “good,” “right,” and “ought,” but any word, if used evaluatively, might count as a value word. Value words can be negative or positive. Judgments that contain value words are value judgments. Value words form the web of moral discourse, and the analysis of their implications and connections is one of the main jobs of moral philosophers, especially those concerned with meta-ethics. “The words with which moral philosophers have especially to do, which are usually called ‘value-words’, play many important parts.” Nowell-Smith, Ethics. variable. In predicate logic, x is called a variable in a general statement like “x is white” because it ranges over a domain of objects and can be replaced by any expression designating any object to which the predicate is applied. Generally, “x, y, z, …” are used in predicate logic as individual variables representing individuals. The domain of objects a variable ranges over is called the range of the variable. A term designating any object within this range can replace or substitute for the variable to produce a sentence. Variables can be divided into bound variables and free variables (Russell and Whitehead called them respectively real and apparent variables). A variable inside the scope of a quantifier is said to be bound, for example “x” in (∃x)Fx is bound by the quantifier “∃” (some). A variable not bound by any quantifier is free, for example “x” in Fx. In propositional logic, “p, q, r . . .” are used as propositional variables, representing propositions. “Those expressions in formulae, the replacement of which by a word or phrase would result in a sentence, are called free variables, or simply, variables.” Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory. Fraassen, B. van Goes-born philosopher. Van Fraassen rejects realism in the philosophy of science in favor of an anti-realist constructive empiricism. Scientific theories tell us what the world would be like if they were true, but we hold them for their empirical adequacy rather than for their truth. His work on quantum theory involves discussion of the interpretation of theories and the rejection of laws of nature in favor of symmetry. His discussions of space and time, scientific explanation, the logic of questions, a model semantics of scientific theories and free logic have all been influential. His major works include An Introduction to the Philosophy of Time and Space (1969), The Scientific Image (1980), Laws and Symmetry (1989), and Quantum Mechanics: An Empiricist View (1991). vegetarianism Ethics The moral attitude that we should not eat the meat of animals. Vegetarianism has existed for a long time in some religious traditions, but the term “vegetarian” did not become popular until the foundation of the Vegetarian Society in England in 1847. The issue of vegetarianism became more prominent with the rise of the animal liberation movement. Vegetarians argue that eating meat takes animals as a means to an end, and thus fails to respect them as beings with inherent value or with a right to respect. Different theorists provide different sorts of a moral basis for vegetarianism. Some argue that animals have interests, others argue that they have rights. All of these are controversial views. Vegetarian arguments depend on the criterion one takes as the basis of moral consideration. Tom Regan claims that an animal is a subject-of-a-life and that one is not permitted to eat anything that is a subject-of-alife. Peter Singer considers that sentience is the crucial grounds for moral treatment and that no sentient being can be used as food. For the animal liberation movement, the vegetarian lifestyle is fundamental as a personal means of shifting our moral consciousness toward animals. Generally, vegetarianism prohibits meat eating, but not animal products such as milk and eggs. An extreme form of vegetarianism that advocates the avoidance of all animal products is called veganism. “Killing animals for food normally means not only that the animals die but that they must be exploited throughout their lives in order to reduce the costs of production. Thus, the case for vegetarianism is strong whatever view we take of the value of animal life.” Singer, in Regan (ed.), Matters of Life and Death. veil of ignorance: the major condition that Rawls imposes in his original position on participants who are to determine by rational choice the principles of justice governing the basic structure of society. All participants are situated behind a veil of ignorance, where they have no knowledge of their particular characteristics, abilities, religious beliefs, and personal histories. They do not know the economic condition or political situation of their society or their own social status or class position. They have general theoretical knowledge about society and know that they are rational and will pursue primary goods whatever their circumstances and plan of life. The veil of ignorance is meant to guarantee that the choice made by the participants will not be biased by their specific interests or advantages, and to oblige them to determine principles impartially and objectively. It is not clear that persons behind the veil of ignorance would have enough knowledge to choose any conception of justice. If they know more about themselves and their society, the demand that they are unanimous in their conception of justice is at risk. It is also possible that individuals can be biased by their history even if they are ignorant of that history. “The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. This ensures that no one is advantaged or disadvantaged in the choice of principles by the outcome of natural chance or the contingency of social circumstances.” Rawls, A Theory of Justice. veil of perception, or veil of appearance. Locke and many later empiricists have claimed that what we perceive are not external objects themselves, but are sensory ideas or sense-data that are produced in our minds by external things. These ideas, like a veil, stand as intermediaries between the conscious subjects and external objects. Our senses can only show us sense-data or appearances. Such a theory is different from Platonism, which claims that perception and appearance are unreliable and that reality can be known only through the intellect. The view also differs from naive realism, which holds that what we sense is the object itself rather than its appearance, and from phenomenalism, which holds that external objects are constructed out of actual and possible sensedata. Because appearances can hide the real nature of things and prevent us from knowing reality as it is, the theory of the veil of perception has led to skeptical challenges to our knowledge of the external world. “We are restricted to the passing show on the veil of perception, with no possibility of extending our knowledge to the world beyond.” Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism Venn, J. Hull-born philosopher. His oeuvre includes The Logic of Chance (1866), Symbolic Logic (1881), and The Principles of Empirical or Inductive Logic (1889). In the first book, he established the frequency theory of probability according to which probability is identified with the statistic frequency of occurrence within a reference class. He invented the “Venn diagram,” which uses overlapping circles to check the validity of syllogistic deductions. Because he didn’t have a philosophical background, Grice calls him a ‘blue-collar practioner of the sciences.’ But Venn’s biographer complained. “He did have a philosophical education, a street-philosophical education.” VERIFICATIONISM. verification theory of meaning The theory of meaning advocated by the logical positivists and associated with the criterion of verifiability. The latter provides a criterion of meaningfulness for sentences, while the verification theory of meaning specifies the nature of meaning. According to the criterion, a sentence is cognitively meaningful if and only if it is logically possible for it to be verified. The meaning of a sentence is its method of verification, that is, the way in which it can be verified or falsified, particularly by experience. The theory has been challenged because the best formulations still exclude meaningful sentences and allow meaningless sentences. Critics also claim that the theory is a test for meaningfulness rather than a theory of meaning proper. Further, they claim that it fails to recognize that the interconnectedness of language might allow a sentence that cannot itself be verified to be meaningful. “The verification theory of meaning, which dominated the Vienna Circle, was concerned with the meaning and meaningfulness of sentences rather than words.” Quine, Theories and Things. Verificationism: A position fundamental to logical positivism, claiming that the meaning of a statement is its method of verification. Accordingly, apparent statements lacking a method of verification, such as those of religion and metaphysics, are meaningless. Theoretical expressions can be defined in terms of the experiences by means of which assertions employing them can be verified. In the philosophy of mind, behaviorism, which tries to reduce unobserved inner states to patterns of behavior, turns out to be a version of verificationism. Some philosophers require conclusive verification for a statement to be meaningful, while others allow any positive evidence to confer meaning. There are disputes whether every statement must be verified separately or theories can be verified as a whole even if some of their statements cannot be individually verified. Attempts to offer a rigorous account of verification have run into difficulties because statements that should be excluded as meaningless nevertheless pass the test of verification and statements that should be allowed as meaningful are excluded. “For over a hundred years, one of the dominant tendencies in the philosophy of science has been verificationism, that is, the doctrine that to know the meaning of a scientific proposition . . . is to know what would be evidence for that proposition.” Putnam, Mind, Language and Reality verisimilitude Philosophy of science [from Latin verisimilar, like the truth] The degree of approximation or closeness to truth of a statement or a theory. Popper defined it in terms of the difference resulting from truth-content minus falsity-content. The truthcontent of a statement is all of its true consequences, while the falsity-content of a statement is all of its false consequences. The aim of science is to find better verisimilitude. One theory has a better verisimilitude than competing theories if it can explain the success of competing theories and can also explain cases where the other theories fail. Popper emphasized that verisimilitude is different from probability. Probability is the degree of logical certainty abstracted from content, while verisimilitude is degree of likeness to truth and combines truth and content. “This suggests that we combine here the ideas of truth and content into one – the idea of a degree of better (or worse) correspondence to truth or of greater (or less) likeness or similarity to truth; or to use a term already mentioned above (in contradistinction to probability) the idea of (degrees of ) verisimilitude.” Popper, Conjectures and Refutations. Verstehen: Because understanding is a general notion, many English translations and philosophers leave the theoretical term Verstehen untranslated. In German philosophy of history and philosophy of social science, Verstehen is used for a cognitive mode peculiar to the study of human life and society. It is an empathic or participatory understanding of a subject’s point of view by imaginatively putting oneself into the place of the subject. Through hermeneutics or interpretation, it reconstructs the subject’s purposes, values, and meaning. In contrast, explanation (German Erklaren), which seeks causal relations and appeals to general laws, is the method characteristic of the natural sciences. Proponents of classical Verstehen theory rejected the claim that the social sciences should follow the natural sciences by searching for the objective meaning of the social world. The claims of Verstehen are opposed to scientism and positivism, although Max Weber argued that both Verstehen and Erklaren belong to the methodology of social science. The notion of Verstehen can be traced to Giambattista Vico and J. G. von Herder, but it was fully elaborated by Dilthey in order to demonstrate that the human sciences have a distinct methodology. Heidegger and Gadamer, however, view Verstehen not as a cognitive mode but as the essential feature of human beings situated in a world that projects infinite possibilities. “A Verstehen approach to the study of human beings is any which assumes that the inquiry cannot be modelled on natural sciences: any ‘humanistic’ or ‘non-scientist’ approach, to use other terms in common employment; an Erklaren approach is one which makes the contrary assumption.” Macdonald and Pettit, Semantic and Social Science. “via negativa,” A way of describing God who transcends human experience by denying limited qualities to God by the use of such adjectives as incorporeal and uncreated. It is claimed that we can come to know God by knowing what he is not. Via negativa is contrasted to via positiva, which ascribes to God positive attributes, such as omnipotence, omniscience, and absolute goodness. “The idea of God can be approached through the use of imagination (the via imaginative) and varies to the extent that it employs positive attributions (the via positiva) or negative (the via negativa).” Taliaferro, in Bunnin and Tsui-James (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy. via antiqua, see via moderna. via positiva, see via negative. via eminentiae, see via positive vicious circle. Circular reasoning, also called begging the question or petitio principii, makes use of the conclusion to be proved as a premise, and hence renders the argument invalid. A circular definition explains the definiens in terms of the definiedum and renders the definition empty. Circularity in these cases is vicious. According to Russell, paradoxes in the foundations of mathematics are due to vicious circularity, for they violate the vicious circle principle that “whatever involves all of a collection must not be one of the collection.” His theory of types is established on the basis of this principle and attempts to avoid all paradoxes of this sort. Not all circularities in argument or definition, however, are vicious. All deductions mean to derive the conclusion from the premises and hence the conclusion must have been implied in the premises. If the circle is large enough, and the argument or definition can still provide new knowledge, it is considered to be a virtuous circle. “The vicious circles in question all arise from supposing that a collection of objects may contain members which can only be defined by means of the collection as a whole.” Russell, Collected Papers of Betrand Russell, vol. VI. via moderna. A term for the nominalist movement that arose in the fourteenth century, influenced by the writings of William of Occam. It was opposed to the via antiqua, i. e., the realist schools that were dominant in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, including Thomism, Scotism, and Augustinianism. The movement emphasized logic and direct experience and rejected empty speculation and abstraction. Ockham’s razor, the principle that plurality is never to be posited without need, was the basic spirit of the movement. The advocates of the via moderna believed in the principle of the uniformity of nature and engaged actively in scientific research. The via moderna exerted a great impact on the later development of modern physics. “Ockham’s teachings had, rather, a stimulating effect. They awakened many somewhat independent thinkers who were united at least against the realism of the older scholastics. These ‘nominales’ (in the medieval sense) constituted the via moderna, which was not so much a school as a trend of thought.” Boehner (ed.), Ockham: Philosophic Writing. Der Weiner Kraus: a philosophical movement originated the leadership of Moritz Schlick by a group of philosophers who shared many basic ideas. The name derived from the manifesto of the movement “The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle.” Leading members of the circle included M. Schlick, R. Carnap, O. Neurath, F. Waismann, H. Feigl, and K. Gödel. Its philosophy, which is called “Logical Positivism” or “Logical Empiricism,” was introduced to Oxford by Ayer in his Language, Truth and Logic. The Vienna Circle’s journal Erkenntnis was its main medium of publicity, but it also published a series of monographs under the general title of “Einheitswissenschaft,” and organized many international congresses. The Vienna Circle disintegrated after the death in 1936 of Schlick, who was shot, and with the German invasion of Austria. Many members emigrated, one to Oxford (Weissmann). Neurath made great effort to keep the movement going. He changed the title of Erkenntnis into The Journal of Unified Science. Together with Carnap he initiated publication of a series of works at the University of Chicago under the general title The Encyclopedia of Unified Science. In spite of these efforts, the Vienna Circle was no longer a school. “The philosophers with whom I am in the closest agreement are those who compose the ‘Viennese circle’, under the leadership of Moritz Schlick, and are commonly known as logical positivists.” Ayer, Logic, Truth and Language. vicious circle principle: Before Russell, Poincaré noticed that many paradoxes stem from viciously circular definitions, which he called impredicative definitions. Russell formulates a vicious circle principle to solve the various paradoxes at the foundation of mathematics. It has several versions, including “whatever involves all of a collection must not be one of the collection”; “if, provided a certain collection had a total, it would have a member only definable in terms of that total, then the said collection is not total”; or “whatever contains an apparent variable must not be a possible value of that variable.” For Russell, all set theories that violate this principle are unintelligible and unsound. Corresponding to this principle, Russell established his theory of the hierarchy of types, according to which, whatever contains an apparent variable belongs to a different type from the possible values of that variable. Hence no paradox will arise. “These fallacies . . . are to be avoided by what may be called the ‘vicious-circle principle’; that is ‘no totality can contain members defined in terms of itself ’.” Russell, Logic and Knowledge Vico, Giambattista. Napoli-born philosopher, taught at University of Naples. In his major work The New Science (1725, with revised editions 1730 and 1744), Vico developed a speculative philosophy of history. He argued that because what is true and what is made are convertible, we can only know what we have made. As a consequence, man must be understood historically, and language is significant for historical understanding. He held that the history of each nation develops in determined recurring cycles of the divine, the heroic, and the rational, and that at any given stage a society presents a coherent structure. He also claimed that the study of history and other humane disciplines is methodologically distinct from the study of natural science. vinculum substantiale: A controversial doctrine in Leibniz’s later thought. Only monads are real in nature, and everything else is composed of them. A plurality of monads constitutes a corporeal substance if and only if they are united by a vinculum substantiale (a substantialchain); otherwise, things would be mere phenomena. Thus, vinculum substantiale is necessary for the substantiality and unity of corporeal substance. It is itself a substantial thing, but not a monad or an accident. Leibniz introduced this doctrine in order to account for the miracle of transubstantiation, but it was criticized by Russell and others as being inconsistent with the general tenet of his theory of monads, within which monads themselves are responsible for the unity of corporeal substances. “If that substantial chain (vinculum substantiale) for monads did not exist, all bodies, together with all of their qualities, would be nothing but well-founded phenomena.” Leibniz, Philosophical Essays. virtue: Gr. arete, also translated as excellence. In English, virtue is a transliteration from Latin virtus, manliness. In Greece, virtue was not only human excellence or moral virtue, but also the excellence of anything in performing its essential function. Excellence at cutting is the virtue of a knife; excellence at seeing is the virtue of eyes. The traditional Greek human virtues are generally thought to include courage, temperance, piety, justice, and wisdom, but there were conflicting beliefs about them. Socrates devoted all of his life to clarifying the meaning of these virtues, claiming crucially that virtue is knowledge. One main aspect of Plato’s theory of ideas was to establish the metaphysical foundation for moral virtues and to determine how a man should live. Aristotle inferred on the basis of its original meaning that virtue is a thing’s good performance of its functions and that human virtue is the excellence of man in performing his rational function. A good man performs well activities involving thought. Since a man not only has the ability to think, but also has the ability to control his desire and conduct by reason, Aristotle divides virtue into intellectual virtue, including, among others, practical wisdom (phronesis) and theoretical wisdom (theoria or contemplation), and moral or ethical virtues (excellence of character). These latter are internalized dispositions of action, desire, and feeling closely connected with practical wisdom. Aristotle’s ethics is essentially a theory of virtue. For Epicurus, virtue is necessary for happiness not because it is an essential ingredient, but because it is a means to its attainment. For Stoicism, virtue is a pattern of behavior that follows from a disposition perfectly in tune with the rationality of nature, and it is the only good worthy of choice. In its later development, moral virtue is understood differently in different cultures. The seven Christian cardinal virtues include Plato’s four virtues in the Republic (courage, temperance, wisdom, and justice), plus faith, hope, and love. In addition to the nature of virtues, philosophers have explored relations among the virtues themselves, relations between virtues and non-virtuous states, the place of virtues in our psychology and their role in achieving happiness. Virtues offer a basis for ethical life rivaling those provided by Kantian principles or utilitarian calculation of happiness, although an account of ethics might reasonably include principles, consequences, and virtues. A recent revival of virtue ethics has been motivated in part by dissatisfaction with the abstract universal nature of the main alternative views, and is intended to correct this through the emphasis on cultivating virtues in concrete human individuals. “Virtue, then, is a state that decides, (consisting) in a mean, the mean relative to us, which is defined by reference to reason, i.e., to the reason by reference to which the intelligent person could define it. It is a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. In contrast to the Aristotelian tradition, which defined virtue as a settled habit or disposition, Kant defined virtue as a struggle and as a moral strength of will in overcoming temptation to transgress the law, that is, in resisting urges and inclinations opposed to the demands of duty. A virtuous person has a strong sense of duty or a strong reverence for the moral law. Kant claimed that the traditional virtues are valuable only as a means to the ends of a good will, but he also ascribed to virtue an important place in his moral theory. He divided his Metaphysics of Morals into two parts: the doctrine of rights, which is a doctrine of morality in general, and the doctrine of virtue, which concerns duties that do not come under external laws. The doctrine of virtue is also divided into two parts. The first deals with duties of virtues to oneself as both an animal being and as a moral being, and the second deals with the duties of virtues to others. “The capacity and considered resolve to withstand a strong but unjust opponent is fortitude, and with respect to what opposes the moral disposition within us, virtue (moral fortitude).” Kant, Metaphysics of Morals. virtus – arête -- virtue ethics: An ethical theory that takes virtue as primary and asserts that the central question of ethics, “How should I live?,” can be construed as “What kind of person should I be?” Its goal is to describe types of character that are admired within a certain culture or society. For the ancient Greeks, ethics was something concerned with character (êthos), and hence ethics was understood as virtue ethics. Most Socratic dialogues examine the common beliefs about what virtue is. Plato in his Republic discussed four cardinal virtues and then connected them to different parts of the soul. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is the most celebrated system of virtue ethics. He connected virtue with human function and telos, divided virtue into intellectual and moral virtues, and argued that a full virtue is a disposition to choose and act and is the mean state between deficiency and excess relative to a person that is prescribed by practical reason. For the Stoics, virtue lay in conformity to nature, and the virtuous life was self-sufficient. Virtue ethics continued to develop in the medieval era, especially in Aquinas, but declined with the rise of modern ethical theories, in particular utilitarianism and deontology, which take it that morality must be determined by the calculation of utility of the consequences of action or by the rules and principles governing moral actions. Since the midtwentieth century there has been a revival of virtue ethics, represented by Anscombe, MacIntyre, Williams, Foot, von Wright, and Annette Baier. It claims that modern ethical theories cannot help us to deal with many moral problems and that the focus of ethical consideration must shift from the agent’s action to the agents themselves and to their ambitions and projects. Virtue ethics is essentially a neoAristotelian position. However, while some virtue theorists tend to give up all modern principle-based ethics, others argue that Aristotelian ethics fails to deal with the moral problems regarding the relationship among human beings and must be revised. The major issues discussed in virtue ethics include the formation of character, practical reason, moral education, connections between character and friendship, and the analysis of specific traits such as courage, loyalty, shame, guilt, and many traditional vices. This is a newly exploited area and much discussion is still going on. Although such an approach cannot do all the work of ethics, it is valuable for uncovering the character-forming area of life that has long been ignored by other moral theories. “ ‘Virtue ethics’ is a term of art, initially introduced to distinguish an approach in normative ethics which emphasizes the virtue, or moral character, in contrast to an approach which emphasizes duties or rules (deontology) or one which emphasizes the consequences of actions (utilitarianism).” Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics. virtuous circle, v. circulus vitiosus. visual field Epistemology The totality of a person’s visual sense-impressions or immediate perceptions at a given time. This field includes all true or false visual data immediately acquired without any element of inference. It is a mental field of vision, rather than the range of external spatial things that are available to a person’s eye. Parallel notions include other sensory fields connected with touch, hearing, taste, and smell. All these together form the notion of a sense-field. “Whenever I open my eyes I am aware of a coloured field of view, which I will call a ‘visual field’.” Broad, Scientific Thought vitalism: the doctrine that holds that living organisms owe their characteristics to some special vital principle, which is subject to different laws from those governing physical matter, so the behavior of living things cannot be sufficiently explained in mechanistic or materialistic terms. Thus this doctrine, in opposition to mechanistic explanations of life, insists on a fundamental distinction between organic and inorganic phenomena. Aristotle, as the ancestor of vitalism, claims that the life of an animal consists in a psyche (Greek, soul), which by teleological causation accounts for the morphological development of the organism. In modern times, the French philosopher Bergson forcefully argued for vitalism, using the concept of élan vital (life force). Vitalism is challenged by the development of molecular genetics, which tends to support the view that physiological processes also follow the laws of physics and chemistry. “Aristotle thought that there was a vegetable soul in every plant or animal, and something similar has been widely believed by vitalists.” Russell, Human Knowledge. Vlastos, G. Istanbul-born in Istanbul, Professor of philosophy at Queen’s University, Ontario, Cornell University, Princeton University, and University of California, Berkeley. Vlastos used the methods of analytic philosophy to identify and examine philosophical questions arising in the works of Plato. His discussion of the Third Man argument in the Parmenides and his attempt to distinguish the philosophical method of Socrates from Plato’s later philosophical development have had great influence. His major works include Platonic Studies (1973) and Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (1991). Void: a term introduced by the Greek atomists Leucippus and Democritus for empty space. Earlier Greek thinkers held that what is must have a bodily form, but the atomists argued that what has no bodily form also really exists, and that is the void. On Aristotle’s interpretation, the void is not a continuous space, but is rather what occurs in between bodies, while Epicurus described the void simply as the space that bodies may and may not occupy. The conception of the void enabled atomism to explain how plurality and movementare possible and in this way reacted to the Eleatic challenge that denied the possibility of plurality and movement. It was also the first abstract conception of passive and empty space, which was indispensable to classical physics, although discarded by quantum mechanics. “Democritus . . . calls space by these names – ‘the void’, ‘nothing’ and ‘the infinite’, while each individual atom he calls ‘hing’ (‘nothing’ without ‘not’), the compact and being.” Aristotle, On Democritus volition: he act of will which precedes a bodily movement, sometimes used as a synonym for choosing, determining, or preferring. Volition is presented as the ground of the distinction between intentional or voluntary action and mere behavior. On this basis, we infer that many actions are voluntary, willed, or caused by volition. According to the Cartesian tradition, the will is an entity that acts to translate our ideas into voluntary actions. This doctrine came under fire from Ryle, who claimed that there is neither direct nor indirect evidence to prove the existence of volitions. Furthermore, if volitions are said to be mental acts and to be the basis of voluntary actions, we may ask whether volitions are voluntary or involuntary. If they are voluntary, then the voluntary acts are themselves preceded by a voluntary act, and we enter an infinite regress; if they are involuntary, there will be an absurd result that voluntary acts are based on involuntary mental acts. There are various attempts to solve this dilemma, but none has gained general approval. The later Wittgenstein also claimed that if we view volitions as acts of willing, we will be confronted with the consequence that one could will willing. It is uncertain whether new theoretical approaches to the mind and mental states will revive interest in volitions and the will. “Volitions have been postulated as special acts, or operations, ‘in the mind’, by means of which a mind gets its ideas translated into facts.” Ryle, The Concept of Mind Voltaire, François-Marie, Paris-born philosopher, a leading Encyclopedist. In the spirit of empiricism and humanism, Voltaire wrote extensively on various topics in metaphysics, religion, ethics, and political philosophy. He introduced John Locke’s empiricism and Newton’s scientific methods to France and fought for individual rights and religious tolerance. In his satirical novel Candide (1759), he attacked the optimism of Leibniz’s claim that this is the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire’s major philosophical writings include Philosophical Letters (1733), Treatise on Tolerance (1763), Philosophical Dictionary (1764), and The Philosophy of History (1766). Voluntas – voluntarism: Any philosophical position that holds the concept of will as the central explanatory principle. Will is the origin of all order, of essence and moral laws. To be meaningful is to be willed. In contrast, reason is subordinate to will and is even rejected as idle. Will is a higher faculty than the intellect. The tradition of voluntarism in Western philosophy is associated with the tradition of irrationalism. It was a predominant aspect of fourteenth-century and fifteenthcentury medieval thought and has been a trend in modern and contemporary philosophy. In different fields, it is presented in different forms, including doxastic voluntarism, which claims that believing is willing; ethical voluntarism, which proposes that the will is the ultimate source of moral value; metaphysical voluntarism, which claims that the will is the ultimate principle of reality and rejects determinism and intellectualism; and theological or theistic voluntarism, which holds that religious beliefs are not determined by reason and claims that God’s will is the moral law. “This term [of voluntarism], classical but in need of clarification, was applied to both man and God. We know it in its application to man – that is, in terms of the problem of beatitude, one asks by what power of the intellect or the will the soul enters into the possession of the absolute good, into the enjoyment of the divine trinity.” Vignaux, Philosophy in the Middle Ages. hekousia-akousia -- The terms, employed by Aristotle, are more comprehensive than ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary. A voluntary action is performed by an agent who has the initiative in himself and involves neither compulsion nor reluctance. The agent knows the important circumstances that will affect the result of his action. An involuntary action is done under threat of force or owing to ignorance. Sometimes Aristotle ascribes voluntary actions also to animals and children, although generally he confines them to those agents he believes to be capable of rational desire. The voluntary-involuntary distinction is used to determine the conditions for ascribing responsibility. A man is responsible only for what he has done voluntarily. “These receive praise or blame when they are voluntary, but pardon, sometimes even pity, when they are involuntary.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Vorstellung. G. putting forward; normally translated as representation] In addition to being a term for representation, Vorstellung is employed as a counterpart of the British empiricist terms “idea” or “sense-datum” and is used in a variety of ways by different philosophers. For these reasons, many authors prefer not to translate it into English. For Kant, representations include sensations, intuitions, concepts, and ideas and thus appear in sensibility, understanding, and reason. Representations provide the elements that are combined in judgment. The categories are representations, and the “I think” that must be able to accompany all my representations is a representation. Representations can be as ephemeral and subjective as sensations and as robust and objective as spatio-temporal objects, that is, Kantian appearances. Ideas, for Kant, differing radically from empiricist ideas, are representations that go beyond the possibility of experience. Hegel contrasted Vorstellung with “concept.” Schopenhauer claimed that “the world is my Vorstellung (representation).” “Kant in effect makes his philosophical startingpoint a notion of Vorstellung or an ‘idea’. This ‘idea’ or experience can be thought of as the interface between the experiencing mind, the subject, and something in the world, an object.” Podro, The Manifold in Perception. voting paradox: a paradox relating to social choice discovered by Condorcet in 1785. It is a special case of “Arrow’s paradox.” Suppose that three voters, John, Sam, and David, vote to choose one among three candidates A, B, C. John’s sequential ordering of preference is A>B>C; Sam’s ordering is B>C>A; and David’s ordering is C>A>B. The consequence of voting according to these preferences will be that a majority prefers A to B, a majority prefers B to C, and a majority prefers C to A. Hence, although each individual has an ordering of choice, no ranking in society that is consistent with that ordering will emerge. This indicates the difficulty of transmitting the aggregation of individual preferences into a social choice. It also shows that the majority rule principle, which is supposed to be the essence of democracy, is less clear than is supposed to be the case. For if election is sequential, the social choice would change cyclically without a change in individual preferences. “The best known example of a voting procedure’s producing an irrational result is given in the so-called ‘paradox of voting’ which had already been fully characterised in the nineteenth century.” Pettit, Judging Justice Ward, J. Hull-born philosopher Professor of Mental Philosophy, Cambridge. According to Ward’s analysis of mind, mental experience has three modes: cognitive, affective, and conative. Cognition determines feeling, and feeling determines conation. He replaced the prevailing associationist psychology with a type of genetic psychology. His major works include Naturalism and Agnosticism (1899), The Realm of Ends (1911), and Psychological Principles (1918). warranted assertibility: A term introduced by John Dewey as a substitute for knowledge or truth in order to indicate that knowledge is gained as a result of an ongoing, self-correcting process of inquiry, rather than as a result of internal mental activity. An assertion is a judgment arrived at after determining the significance of the related data. If this assertion does the work that it is supposed to do, it is warranted. Any warranted assertion must be refined and justified by being subjected to continuous testing through public experience. From the viewpoint of warranted assertibility, there is no absolute truth known by rational insight with certainty, and knowledge is not a system of truths. “If inquiry begins in doubt, it terminates in the institution of conditions which remove need for doubt. The latter state of affairs may be designated by the words belief and knowledge. For reasons that I shall state later I prefer the words ‘warranted assertibility’.” Dewey, Logic. wayward causal chain: Also called a deviant causal chain or causal deviance. In normal causation, if a person performs an action because he intends to do it, then his intention is the cause of his doing it. But sometimes causation can go astray and deviate from the normal route in intentional action, perception, meaning, or memory. For example, because Smith is angry with Jones, Smith decides to go to Jones’s home to injure him. On the way, he drives recklessly and hurts somebody. The injured person happens to be Jones. In such a case, Smith realizes his intention to hurt Jones, but that occurs only as an accidental consequence. Does this mean that Smith does the hurting intentionally in this case? The existence of wayward causal chains creates problems for the analysis of normal causal chains. “Since there may be wayward causal chains, we cannot say that if attitudes that would rationalise x cause an agent to do x, then he does x intentionally.” Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events. weakness of will, v. egcrateia. Weber, M. Erfurt-born philosophe. While accepting the distinction between natural and human sciences, Weber maintained that sociology needs Verstehen, but does not exclude causal explanation. He argued that social science must employ “ideal types” as heuristc devices in the analysis of concrete social events. His account of authority distinguished three types: traditional authority, charismatic authority, and the rational-legal authority that is characteristic of modern bureaucratic society. He sought to understand the “rationality” of social processes in terms of a theory of social action, in which the “rational deliberation” of each actor takes account of the likely deliberation of other actors (“co-operative rationality”). His interest in the relations between religion and social and economic conditions led to his influential theory that the development of European capitalism can be explained in terms of the ascetic secular consequences of Protestant theology. Weber’s most influential works are The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–5) and Economy and Society (1922). wedge argument: a species of the slippery slope argument, elaborated by Bishop Sullivan against legalizing active euthanasia. Once a single instance of direct killing is approved of by society, we have admitted the thin edge of a wedge. We will then inevitably concede more cases by pressing the wedge forward and eventually put all life at risk. To avoid this terrible consequence, we should outlaw from the very beginning any mercy killing. But many philosophers reject this argument on the grounds that we are reasonable enough to distinguish between justifiable killing and unjustifiable killing. Weil, S., Paris-born philosopher. Weil claimed that a crucial conflict between themechanical necessity of the universe and the human expectation of good gives rise to human frustration, a state that can be overcome by relinquishing individuality in contemplative mystic experience. She applied her Christian Platonism in developing an egalitarian social and political philosophy. Weil’s major works include Gravity and Grace (1946), Waiting for God (1950), The Notebooks of Simone Weil, 3 vols. (1951–6), and Oppression and Liberty (1955). welfare: welfare and its relations to rights, needs, and equality are familiar topics in contemporary political philosophy. Welfare can be discussed regarding individuals and regarding society. Individual welfare concerns good for the individual, but there is debate concerning whether individual good should be understood in terms of the satisfaction of actual preferences, of needs, or of well-informed, long-term interests. Social welfare concerns the overall good for society. Some believe that all social goods can be reduced to individual goods and that every aspect of social goods can be derived from individual goods. It follows from this view, which is called welfarism, that a state should focus on individual goods. Others argue that some types of social goods are irreducible. This debate leads to a further difference. Unlike traditional political thinking, for which the primary goal of a state is the security of its citizens, contemporary political philosophy considers that the main function of a modern state is to promote welfare and justice. According to some, however, the state should promote individual goods, while others believe that the state should maximize social welfare. A welfare state takes a basic minimum of material welfare for its citizens to be a primary concern of policy making. “[T]o permit in a single instance the direct killing of an innocent person would be to admit a most dangerous wedge that might eventually put all life in a precarious condition.” Sullivan, in Kohl (ed.),“ ‘Welfare’ is a vague term. It may refer only to means to physical well being, such as food, housing, and medical care. Or it may include also some means to mental or spiritual well being, such as education, art galleries, museums, and theatres.” Beneficent Euthanasia, Raphael, Problems of Political Philosophy welfarism: f the overall good of society is a function of the individual welfare of its members, the state can promote its welfare by promoting the welfare of its citizens. According to welfarism, all social goods can be reduced to individual goods, and every aspect of social goods can be derived from individual goods. Hence, a state should focus on individual goods, through means such as health insurance, free education, unemployment benefits, and child allowances, to promote the good of society. This account of the role of the state contrasts with the eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury view that the main function of the state is to protect the security of its citizens from both outward invasion and internal instability. The idea of welfarism, which is considered by some to be state paternalism, has been adopted more in Western European countries than in the United States. In recent years, with a shortage of funding and misgivings about the alleged negative effects of welfare on its recipients, the positive picture of welfare has come under pressure. “Welfarism, requiring that the goodness of a state of affairs be a function only of the utility information regarding that state.” Sen, On Ethics and Economics eudaemonia: well-being. Some philosophers prefer the translation “well-being” to “happiness” to catch the peculiarity of what Plato and Aristotle called eudaimonia, in contrast to the modern notion of happiness. Eudaimonia as a state of satisfaction is not for one moment or one day, but a matter for one’s whole life. As an important independent notion in modern ethics, well-being roughly means what it is for a single life to go well. “I shall use the expression well-being for such a state.” B. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. well-formed formula: n expression or a string of symbols in a logical system that conforms to the formation rules of that system. It is equivalent to a grammatical sentence in natural languages. A simple well-formed formula is formed out the basic vocabulary of the formal system and its deductive rules, while a complicated well-formed formula is constructed out of the simple well-formed formulae of the system. All well-formed formulae can be explained within that system. If the formula contains a variable not bound by a quantifier (a free variable), it is an open well-formed formula; otherwise, it is a closed one. “Well-formed formula” is generally abbreviated as wff. Since there is no interest in ill-formed formulae, well-formed formulae are often simply called formulae. Axioms and theorems of a system are among its well-formed formulae. “Consider the class of all permutations of some set of elements of a language we shall use ‘L’. The formation rules of L divides the class of all possible permutations into two mutually exclusive subclasses, one of which will comprise all of the grammatically permissible or well-formed formulations (for short, ‘wffs’) of L; the other subclass will comprise the expressions which, made up of elements of L, are nevertheless not grammatically correct expressions of L.” Rudner, Philosophy of Social Science. well-founded phenomena: Also called true phenomena or real phenomena, Leibniz’s term for material bodies. In his later metaphysics, only monads exist in nature, and all other things are not true substances but only phenomena. Their unity can not be explained merely in terms of the modification of extension. Thus material bodies do not form a part of Leibniz’s fundamental ontology. Instead, they are composed of monads and their individual modifications. Their existence is to be explained in terms of the existence of monads and their properties, which are the foundations of the phenomenal derivative force exerted by material things in motion. Material bodies are aggregates of true substances (or monads). On this basis, Leibniz called material bodies well-founded phenomena or the result of monads. “I showed that bodies are only aggregates that constitute a unity accidentally, or by extrinsic denomination and, to that extent, are all well-founded phenomena.” Leibniz, Philosophical Essays Weyl, Hermann, Hamburg-born philosopher of mathematics and science, Professor at University of Göttingen, University of Zurich, and Princeton University. Weyl contributed to the development of the general theory of relativity and later advocated Brouwer’s intuitionism within a unified philosophy of mathematics and science. His major works include Space-Time-Matter (1921), Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science (1949), and Symmetry (1952). wff, abbreviation of well-formed formula ti esti; what-it-is Ancient Greek philosophy, metaphysics, ti esti, the essential nature of a thing or the object of a definition, from the question ti esti, what is this thing?, what is it? as used to seek the general and essential nature of a thing] The philosophy of Socrates consists in seeking the what-it-is of such things as justice and courage. Finding out what-it-is depends on what is. Only when a thing is, can one ask what it is. Aristotle classified ten kinds of being or categories. In the broad sense, each kind of being has its what-it-is, for example, Socrates is a man or white is a kind of color. In a narrow sense, what-it-is is only used for the category of substance because in Aristotle’s theory of being, the existence of all secondary categories depends on substance. Just as he distinguished being in its primary sense from being in secondary senses, he also distinguished what-it-is in its primary sense from what-it-is in its subordinate senses. The primary sense belongs to substance, and the subsidiary senses belong to the other categories. On this basis Aristotle usually used what-it-is as a synonym of substance. “For in one sense the being meant is what it is or a this.” Aristotle, Metaphysics Whewell, W. Lancaster-born philosopher, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In History of the Inductive Sciences, 3 vols. (1837) and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840), Whewell rejected establishing a logic of induction to parallel the logic of deduction and argued that to understand induction we must examine how it works in history. Induction requires non-inferential acts to colligate or bind together observed facts. He introduced the notion of consilience to describe how, in the course of induction, seemingly diverse phenomena provide evidence that suggests an unforeseen scientific hypothesis. Against J. S. Mill, he took a Kantian view that some principles are presuppositions, rather than results, of empirical knowledge. Whitehead, A. N., Ramsgate-born philosopher taught at Cambridge, London, and Harvard. In Principia Mathematica (1910–13), Russell and Whitehead sought to reduce mathematics to logic. After he moved to Harvard in 1924, Whitehead’s interest turned from logic and philosophy of science to metaphysics. Process and Reality (1929) developed the philosophy of organism into a comprehensive metaphysical system of “process philosophy.” In opposition to the modern tendency to the “bifurcation of nature,” in which philosophers divide reality into different parts with different degrees of reality, Whitehead sought to develop a single system encompassing all the interrelations of all objects. He understood nature in terms of a process of becoming and held that the most fundamental metaphysical component of reality is an actual occasion in this process, while a nexus of actual occasions can inherit characteristics in serial order to become enduring objects. Applying this theory to theology, he initiated process theology. His other important books include Science and the Modern World (1925), Adventures of Ideas (1933), and Modes of Thought (1938). wide content, see narrow content wide states, see narrow states Wiggins, D. London-born philosopher. He wrote “H. P. Grice” for the British Academy. of metaphysics, mind, and ethics, born in London, Professor of Philosophy, Birkbeck College, London and Professor of Logic, University of Oxford. Wiggins’s discussion of identity, sortals, and substances led to a moderate essentialism in which individuals must belong to kinds but do not have individual essences. He holds that persons are animals who are conscious of themselves as conscious continuants and interpret one another according to norms, principles, and desiderata that can be compared to Grice’s conventions of implicature and Quine and Davidson’s principle of charity. His major works include Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity (1967), Sameness and Substance (1980), and Needs, Values and Truth (1987). Will: the human ability to desire something, to choose and decide courses of action and to initiate actions according to one’s choice or decision. The will is a wish that we believe we are capable of realizing through effort. The act of will, or volition, contains both cognitive and conative elements. Will has been a puzzling topic for philosophers. Plato first characterizes it as a part of the soul, along with reason and appetite (or bodily desire), although philosophers disagree whether Greek philosophy had a fully developed conception of the will. Descartes considered the will to be a faculty of mind. This traditional faculty view was rejected by Ryle, who provided a behaviorist account of will. Consistency between will and reason is often seen to be a virtue. If will fails to follow reason, it is called weakness of will [Greek akrasia]. Weakness of will, free will and determinism, and free will and moral responsibility have been major issues in ethics. Hume claimed that passion rather than reason mainly determines one’s behavior and that reason alone could never be a sufficient motive for any action of the will. For Kant, a good will, which is reason in its practical employment, is the basis for rational ethics. Schopenhauer sees will as the first principle in his The World as Will and Idea. Will remains a subject of intense interest and controversy in contemporary philosophy. “Willing, then, can be defined as wishing, involving a decision, that has as its object something that is to be realized by ourselves and that we confidently expect to take place as a result of our desiring it.” Brentano, The Foundation and Construction of Ethics will. Kant distinguished between “Wille” and “Willkür,” – the latter cognate with English ‘choose’ – vide D. F. Pears. although both are translated as will in English. As the power of self-determination, Wille is the source of ought and obligation. It is not a product or discovery of the understanding, but is a faculty of acting according to a conception of law. It is generally associated with freedom, autonomy, and spontaneity, and as practical reason itself it is the home of the moral law. “Willkür” is the capacity for decision or choice, which is both determined by Wille and affected by sensuous inclinations. It is thus heteronomous. It chooses between the imperatives stemming from Wille and the desires. With this distinction, Kant set aside the traditional problem about the relation between free will and determinism. His separation between the will as practical reason and the will capacity for choice was claimed by Nietzsche to make the will only a hypostatization. “Insofar as it is combined with the consciousness of the capacity of its action to produce its object, it is called will, or choice [Willkur], if not so combined, its act is called a wish. The faculty of desire whose internal ground of determination and consequently, even whose likings are found in the reason of the subject is called the Will [der Wille].” Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals will of all Political philosophy Rousseau’s term for the aggregate of the private and individual wills of members of a society. The will of all is the total of what all persons individually want. A particular will involves what one wants for oneself alone and does not take into consideration the interests of others. Since each private will conflicts with other private wills, a civil society needs a general will that is directed to the common interest. A general will is not the will of all, but Rousseau claims that it can be determined from the will of all by finding what is common to all once the conflicting elements in the will of all are cancelled. It is not clear that we can determine the general will in this way or that the general will is a good basis for deciding the policy of a state. Possibly a state should allow a certain amount of conflict. Critics of Rousseau argue that his emphasis on the general will would allow intolerance through a form of totalitarian democracy. “There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will; the latter considers only the common interest, while the former takes private interest into account, and is no more than a sum of particulars.” Rousseau, The Social Contract will to believe: A term introduced by W. James as the title for one of his most influential essays. He argued that on many occasions we are forced to choose one of two alternatives, where there are no intellectual grounds for choosing one rather than the other. Then we must let emotion or passion determine our decision in terms of the effect that each choice would have upon our states of mind or subsequent life. Accordingly, we have no rational basis for deciding the question whether God exists, but we tend to believe in God’s existence because this would provide us with a ground for optimism. The same applies to the choice between believing in free will and believing in determinism. Critics argue that the lack of a rational basis for choice does not legitimate a non-rational basis and that the burden of proof is not satisfied by determining emotional consequences. “I have brought with me tonight . . . an essay in justification of faith, a defence of our right to develop a believing attitude in religious matter, in spite of the fact that our merely logical intellect may not have been coerced. ‘The will to believe’, accordingly, is the title of my paper.” W. James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays. will to power: Nietzsche’s term for the most basic human drive to attain a higher and more perfect state, an insatiable desire to manifest power and a drive to employ and exercise power. For him, life itself is the will to power. This drive is characterized by self-overcoming and sublimation. It is a disposition to get power in self-control, art, and philosophy. It is life-affirming rather than a desire to dominate others. For Nietzsche, philosophy is the most spiritual expression of the will to power. Nietzsche’s book The Will to Power was edited by his sister from a series of fragments, headings, and reflections. It was once regarded as a source of fascist ideology, but this view is untenable upon serious scholarly examination. The will to power as a hypothesis to explain the world and the nature of reality is also a metaphysical doctrine. Nietzsche claimed that the world is the will to power. The world is viewed as a monster of energy, eternally self-creating and eternally self-destroying. The will of power is meant to be the basis for explaining all changes. It is neither being nor becoming, but is a tendency of all forces to extend their influence in relation to all other forces in determining the intelligible character of the world. The will to power is also called “efficient force,” “quanta of force,” or “driving force.” Despite Nietzsche’s attack on metaphysics, Heidegger held that the will to power is Nietzsche’s answer to the metaphysical question about the essence of what is. “Indeed life itself has been defined as an increasingly efficient inner adaptation to external circumstances (Herbert Spencer). But this is to misunderstand the essence of life, its will to power. We overlook the prime importance which the spontaneous, aggressive, expansive, re-interpreting, re-directing and formative powers have, which ‘adaptation’ follows only when they have had their effect.” Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals Occam, Occam, Sy.-born philosopher, the father of nominalism, according to which universals are only names invented by the mind to talk about similarities. He claimed that everything that exists is particular and emphasized empirical methods. “Ockham’s razor,” that is, the principle of parsimony requiring us to avoid positing the existence of unnecessary entities, is drawn from Ockham’s nominalism. His writings include Summa Logicae and the Treatise on Predestination and God’s Foreknowledge of the Contingent Future. Williams, B. A. Owen (1929–2003) Welsh philosopher, educated at Oxford, and taught at Oxford, Williams distinguished modern moral philosophy from a more general conception of ethics. He criticized both Kantian and utilitarian moral philosophy because they claimed objective universality for their principles and pursued moral theory rather than taking account of each person’s integrity and the projects central to individual ethical lives. He held that ethics should answer the Greek question of how we should live, and was influenced by Nietzsche’s naturalism in working out his own response. His discussions on moral luck, integrity, the distinction between internal and external reasons, the distinction between thick and thin ethical concepts, personal identity and the self have initiated significant debates that have helped to shape contemporary ethics. His most important work is Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985) and other books include Morality: An Introduction to Ethics (1972), Utilitarianism: For and Against (with J. J. C. Smart) (1973), Problems of the Self (1973), Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry (1978), Moral Luck (1981), Shame and Necessity (1993), and Truth and Truthfulness (2002). Winch, P.. London-born philosopher of social science, Professor of Philosophy, King’s College, London. Winch is best known for his use of themes from Wittgenstein’s later philosophy to reject a social science modeled on natural science. He held that to understand another society one must understand the practices in which its concepts and the criteria of their legitimate application are entrenched. His main works include The Idea of a Social Science (1958) and Ethics and Action (1972). Sapiens: sophia: Cicero: ‘sapientia,’ as in Homo The Wise. usually translated as wisdom Ancient Greek philosophy, epistemology. In a popular sense, skillfulness in some craft. A wise person is the master of any skill, in contrast to an unskilled laborer, and this is a practical aspect to its meaning. However, Aristotle offered a technical account of wisdom as knowledge of general principles and absolutely first causes. This wisdom is concerned with permanent truths, including both demonstrative knowledge and knowledge of undemonstrable premises. In this use, wisdom is contrasted with craft and practical reason. In the Metaphysics, Aristotle claimed that he was seeking wisdom in this sense. Hence, sophia is equivalent to first philosophy. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle considered wisdom to be a higher kind of intellectual virtue than practical reason. “Wisdom is the most exact form of knowledge.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Wisdom, J. London-born philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at University of Cambridge and Oregon. Wisdom was deeply influenced by the philosophy of Wittgenstein, first through the early Wittgenstein’s notion of logical analysis and then through the later Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophical theories as verbal recommendations. He shared Wittgenstein’s perplexity at what philosophers say, but held that this puzzlement responded to real insight into the diversity and complexity of logic as well as arising from confusion. He, nevertheless, adopted Wittgenstein’s concentration on concrete examples and suspicion of general theories. His main works include Other Minds (1952) and Philosophy and Psycho-Analysis (1953). Witters: Austrian-British philosopher, born in Vienna, Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge. Wittgenstein’s philosophical career was divided into two periods. The early period, culminating in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), was concerned with the logical structure of language and the relation between language and reality. Wittgenstein held that the world is a world of facts rather than things and that a perspicuous representation of facts required a language in which every genuine proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions. Propositions can picture facts in virtue of facts and propositions having the same logical form. Logical form itself can not be said, but, like the propositions of metaphysics, ethics, and religion, can only be shown. Philosophy is an activity of clarifying thought and of distinguishing between what can be said and what can only be shown. The Tractatus ends with the injunction: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Another work of his early period is Notebooks 1914–1916 (1961). Works of the transition between Wittgenstein’s early and later philosophy include “Some Remarks on Logical Form” (1966), Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge, 1930–1932 (1980), Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations Recorded by Friedrich Waismann (1979), and Philosophical Remarks (1975). The main work of Wittgenstein’s later period is the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations (1953), in which Wittgenstein was mainly concerned with how ordinary language works, the philosophy of psychology, and the philosophy of mathematics. To replace the unified account of language in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein saw language as comprising a variety of radically diverse “languagegames” that are grounded in practices constituting a form of life. Rather than asking for meaning as a psychological or abstract entity, we should attend to the use of words and sentences. Since language use involves following rules in a public practice, there cannot be a private language that only the speaker can understand. All of these views have initiated intense discussion in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and other philosophical fields. Other works of his later period include The Blue and Brown Books (1961), “Notes for Lectures on ‘Private Experience’ and ‘Sense-data’ ” (1968), Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1968), Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics (1975), On Certainty (1969), and Zettel (1967). There are significant differences between Wittgenstein’s early philosophy and his later philosophy, but philosophers disagree about how to judge their continuity and discontinuity of purpose, method, and philosophical outcome. Wolff, C. Breslau-born rationalist philosopher, a follower of Leibniz. Wolff formulated a comprehensive metaphysical system that elaborated Leibniz’s doctrines within the framework of the principal notions of the Aristotelian scholastic tradition. In his system, Wolff took ontology, the science of being in general, as first philosophy and emphasized the role of natural reason in setting out three special disciplines: rational cosmology, rational psychology, and rational theology. His work shaped later German philosophy, especially through its influence on Kant and Hegel. Kant, in particular, sought to reconcile insights drawn from Hume with those he derived from Wolff ’s Leibnizian system. Wolff ’s most important philosophical work was First Philosophy or Ontology (1729). Wollheim, R. A. Examined by H. P. Grice (“What’s two times two?”) London-born, philosopher of art, mind, and psychoanalysis, born in London, Professor of Philosophy, University College, London, Columbia University, University of California, Berkeley and Davis. Wollheim held that pictorial representation can be understood in terms of “seeing in.” We both see the marks on a flat canvas and see in these marks three-dimensional scenes. He argued that the intentions of artists to cause particular experiences in the viewers of their work can not be eliminated from our understanding of art. Wollheim introduced concepts from psychoanalytic theory into his aesthetics, moral philosophy, and philosophy of mind, and he was a sympathetic philosophical commentator on Freud. His major works include Art and Its Objects, The Thread of Life, and The Mind and its Depths. Wollstonecraft, M.: radical social philosopher and feminist. Wollstonecraft rejected Edmund Burke’s criticism of the French Revolution and argued that equality and freedom from false authority are the basis for the full development of men and women. She held that women were excluded from this fulfillment through the enforcement of social subservience and lack of education, but also through an incomplete and distorted conception of reason. Her major works include A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) and Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). World 1, see World 3 World 2, see World 3 World 3: According to Popper, traditional philosophy has recognized two worlds. The first is material and the second is conscious and mental. Popper developed a new conceptual schema of a threefold world. World 1 is the material world, which includes all physical objects and states. World 2 is the mental world, which includes immediate perceptual experiences, other mental states, and behavioral dispositions. World 3 includes objective contents of thought, including problems, theories, criticisms and their unintended consequences. World 3 is essentially a world of storage, including the records of human intellectual efforts that are preserved in libraries and museums. The content of thought is the product of individual human minds, but once thoughts are produced, they transcend their producers, and are independent of anybody who thinks or expresses them. They bring with themselves all sorts of consequences and problems which we, their makers, do not intend or foreseeand cannot control. They causally affect us and become objects of our knowledge and even the main object of World 2. In this sense, the contents of thought are autonomous and have their own logic of development that cannot be reduced to either World 1 or World 2. Although World 3 is human-made, its autonomy makes it similar to Plato’s world of forms or ideas. This world is timeless and results in the evolution of human language. Through his account of World 3, Popper developed not only a new ontological classification, but also a new justification for the objectivity of knowledge. World 3 provides an argument against sociological relativism and psychologism. The account of the nature and existence of such a separate world has provoked critical discussion, some of which focuses on the relation between World 3 and World 2. “We can call the physical world ‘World 1’, the world of our conscious experience ‘World 2’, and the world of the logical contents of books, libraries, computer memories, and suchlike ‘World 3’.” Popper, Objective Knowledge world agent: another term for ideal observer. anima mundi: world soul. Some philosophers argue that if the universe is in harmonious celestial motion, there must an animating principle or soul to control it, just as the human soul controls the human body. Accordingly, the world should be viewed as an animated living organism, the soul of which is the world soul. The idea of a world soul was popular in pre-Socratic philosophy and was well elaborated in Plato’s Timaeus, in which the world is endowed with a soul by a creator or Demiurge. The human soul should be modeled on the world soul to achieve harmony among its different parts. This doctrine of the world soul was developed in Stoicism and Neoplatonism and through them in medieval philosophy. It was revived by Schelling and plays a role in contemporary environmental philosophy.“Already in the most ancient times it was believed that the world was pervaded by an animating principle, called the world-soul.” Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature. Wright, C.: b. Bagshot, Sy. BPhil Oxon, All Souls. Philosopher, he has pursued a philosophical program based on intuitionist logic and anti-realist semantics in parallel to similar work by M. A. E. Dummett. Wright has essays on Frege, Wittgenstein, meaning, truth, identity, and vagueness. His oeuvre includes Wittgenstein on the Foundations of Mathematics (1980), Frege’s Conception of Numbers as Objects, Realism, Meaning and Truth, Truth and Objectivity, and Realism: Rules and Objectivity. Wright, G. H. von. Succeeded Witters as professor of philosophy at Camridge. As an original analytic philosopher, von Wright made significant philosophical contributions in several fields. He significantly developed the theory of eliminative induction pioneered by Bacon and Mill and modern modal logic, and founded deontic logic by extending the formalism of modal logic to ethics. He contributed to ethics and value theory, and explored differences between natural causation and human action and related differences between the methods of physical sciences and those of the social sciences. He criticized the misuse of science in modern culture and society and sought a return to a more humanistic tradition. His works include: The Logical Problem of Induction, A Treatise on Induction and Probability, An Essay on Modal Logic, The Varieties of Goodness, Norm and Action, Explanation and Understanding, Causality and Determinism, The Tree of Knowledge and Other Essays, and In the Shadow of Descartes. Xenophanes: Colophon-born philosopher. Xenophanes rejected traditional accounts of the gods and initiated philosophical theology by arguing that God is single, motionless, and unlike human beings. He held that God shapes all things by the thought of his mind. Xenophanes, the first known epistemologist, sharply distinguished between knowledge and opinion and held that reality is uniformly concealed from men. His philosophical thought was traditionally seen to have led on to the doctrines of Parmenides. Xenophon: Athens-born philosopher, follower of Socrates. Xenophon’s writings, including Memorabilia, Apology of Socrates, Symposium, and Oeconomicus, are a major source of our knowledge of the historical Socrates, supplementing the picture that emerges from Plato’s dialogues. Xenophon sought to defend Socrates against the charges of impiety and corrupting the Athenian youth and portrayed Socrates as a teacher of virtue. His writings offer anecdotes expressing Socrates’ personality rather than his philosophical thought and do not explore Socrates’ irony. Zeno – Citium-born Hellenistic philosopher, founder of Greek Stoicism. Zeno accepted the Cynic principlesthat one should live in accord with nature and that one should act as a citizen of the universe rather than of a particular city, but provided positive interpretations of these principles. He held logos to be the dominating force of the physical universe and human nature to be rational, with virtue as the only good. He initiated the division of philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics. Because only a few fragments of his work survived, it is difficult to distinguish his contributions to Stoicism from those of other leading Stoics, such as Cleanthesand Chrisippus. Zeno: of Elea (b. c. 470 BC) Greek philosopher, disciple of Parmenides. In pursuing Parmenides’ rejection of change, Zeno advanced several arguments involving paradox to reject the possibility of plurality and motion. These arguments involve fundamental concepts, such as time, space, infinity, and divisibility, and demonstrate the power of speculative reasoning. Zeno’s arguments, which are known through Aristotle’s discussion of them, still excite the interest of philosophers and mathematicians. Zeno’s paradoxes Ancient Greek philosophy, logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics Zeno of Elea established a series of arguments against plurality and motion; these arguments are mutually related, with the aim of defending the thesis of his teacherParmenides that what is is one and unchanging. These arguments are preserved by Aristotle in the Physics and by the Greek commentators on this book. Most of these discussions, however, are very compressed, and this has given rise to very diverse interpretations. As a result there are various versions of each argument. The two main arguments against plurality are as follows: (1) If there is a plurality of things, they are both (a) so small as to have no magnitude, and so large as to be infinite. The proof of (a) is: the plurality must be composed of a number of indivisible units; but if the unit has magnitude, it must be divisible; if it is indivisible, it has no magnitude; and the composite of a number of non-magnitude units has no magnitude. The proof of is: if there are many things, each must have magnitude; otherwise neither their addition nor their subtraction will make any difference to another thing, and will be nothing at all; if there is a plurality of things with magnitude, then a thing composed of them must have at least two separate magnitudes, and each of them has magnitude and can be further divisible; since this process can go on forever, a thing will be unlimitedly large. (2) If there is a plurality of things, they must be both (a) limited and unlimited. The proof of (a) is: if there are many things, there must be just as many of them as they are, and neither more nor less; but if there are just as many as they are, they are limited. The proof of is: if there are many things, there are always other things between things that are there; and between these in turn other things; thus the things that are are unlimited. The paradoxes against motion are four: the Dichotomy, Achilles and the Tortoise, the Flying Arrow, and the Moving Rows; the so-called Stadium paradox is ambiguous in that some think it is a reworking of the Dichotomy, and others that it is a reworking of the Moving Rows. Sometimes just these four paradoxes are called Zeno’s paradoxes. The general implication of Zeno’s paradoxes is that they expose the intrinsic difficulties in the instinctive assumptions of ordinary human experience about plurality, motion, space, and time, though some argue that he has a particular target, which is the confusion between the geometrical point, arithmetical unit, and the physical magnitude in the Pythagoreans. These paradoxes involve the problem of whether space and time are infinitely divisible, and whether they are composed of indivisibles. These are basic philosophical conceptions and are also the fundamental mathematical conceptions, so Zeno’s paradoxes attract endless interest from both philosophers and mathematicians; and there is still dispute as to whether Zeno’s arguments are valid, and how to refute them. The method used by Zeno in these paradoxes is reductio ad absurdum, which had great influence on the development of dialectic and philosophical reasoning. “At some time in the first half of the fifth century bc, Zeno invented the set of paradoxes on which his successors have sharpened their wits.” G. Owen, Logic, Science and Dialectic. zero method: a method manifesting the underlying form of language by constructing a tautology through a combination of signs. Because of their tautologous form, these signs completely cancel out the significance of their material content. The zero method is a logical method of constructing a model on the assumption of complete rationality. Someone who is imperfectly rational might consider that the propositions have content even though they are tautologies. “The propositions of logic demonstrate the logical properties of propositions by combining them so as to form propositions that say nothing. This method could also be called zero-method.” Wittgenstein, Tractatus, zoroastrianism: A Persian religion that started in the sixth century bc and whose dominance in that area was not replaced until the rise of Islam in the seventh century ad. Its scriptures are called the Avesta, and its founder was the prophet Zarathustra (Gr. Zoroaster). Its characteristic feature is its dualism. The force of darkness and evil (Angra Mainyu) is equally matched with the force of light and goodness (Ahura Mazda), and they are locked in a struggle from the beginning of the world to its end. Hence Zoroastrianism is not troubled by the paradox that arises from attempting to reconcile God’s omnipotence and evil in the world. Parts of its teachings were assimilated by Mithraism and zoroastrianism manichaeism: there are still Zoroastrian believers around Bombay, India. The term is familiar in the contemporary philosophical world largely because Nietzsche employed Zarathustra as his spokesman in “Thus Implicated Zarathustra.” “The religion of struggle is dualistic. Zoroastrianism is the classic example, and in this type man participates in the cosmic conflict.” Macquarrie, Twentieth-Century Religious Thought.