Hilbert, D. – G.
mathematician and philosopher of mathematics. Born in Königsberg, he also
studied and served on the faculty there, accepting Weber’s chair in mathematics
at Göttingen in 1895. He made important contributions to many different areas
of mathematics and was renowned for his grasp of the entire discipline. His
more philosophical work was divided into two parts. The focus of the first,
which occupied approximately ten years beginning in the early 1890s, was the
foundations of geometry and culminated in his celebrated Grundlagen der
Geometrie (1899). This is a rich and complex work that pursues a variety of
different projects simultaneously. Prominent among these is one whose aim is to
determine the role played in geometrical reasoning by principles of continuity.
Hilbert’s interest in this project was rooted in Kantian concerns, as is
confirmed by the inscription, in the Grundlagen, of Kant’s synopsis of his
critical philosophy: “Thus all human knowledge begins with intuition, goes from
there to concepts and ends with ideas.” Kant believed that the continuous could
not be represented in intuition and must therefore be regarded as an idea of
pure reason – i.e., as a device playing a purely regulative role in the
development of our geometrical knowledge (i.e., our knowledge of the spatial
manifold of sensory experience). Hilbert was deeply influenced by this view of
Kant’s and his work in the foundations of geometry can be seen, in large part,
as an attempt to test it by determining whether (or to what extent) pure geometry
can be developed without appeal to principles concerning the nature of the
continuous. To a considerable extent, Hilbert’s work confirmed Kant’s view –
showing, in a manner more precise than any Kant had managed, that appeals to
the continuous can indeed be eliminated from much of our geometrical reasoning.
The same basic Kantian orientation also governed the second phase of Hilbert’s
foundational work, where the focus was changed from geometry to arithmetic and
analysis. This is the phase during which Hilbert’s Program was developed. This
project began to take shape in the 1917 essay “Axiomatisches Denken.” (The 1904
paper “Über die Grundlagen der Logik und Arithmetik,” which turned away from
geometry and toward arithmetic, does not yet contain more than a glimmer of the
ideas that would later become central to Hilbert’s proof theory.) It higher
order Hilbert, David 381 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 381 reached its
philosophically most mature form in the 1925 essay “Über das Unendliche,” the 1926
address “Die Grundlagen der Mathematik,” and the somewhat more popular 1930
paper “Naturerkennen und Logik.” (From a technical as opposed to a
philosophical vantage, the classical statement is probably the 1922 essay
“Neubegründung der Mathematik. Erste Mitteilung.”) The key elements of the
program are (i) a distinction between real and ideal propositions and methods
of proof or derivation; (ii) the idea that the so-called ideal methods, though,
again, playing the role of Kantian regulative devices (as Hilbert explicitly
and emphatically declared in the 1925 paper), are nonetheless indispensable for
a reasonably efficient development of our mathematical knowledge; and (iii) the
demand that the reliability of the ideal methods be established by real (or finitary)
means. As is well known, Hilbert’s Program soon came under heavy attack from
Gödel’s incompleteness theorems (especially the second), which have commonly
been regarded as showing that the third element of Hilbert’s Program (i.e., the
one calling for a finitary proof of the reliability of the ideal systems of
classical mathematics) cannot be carried out. Hilbert’s Program, a proposal in
the foundations of mathematics, named for its developer, the German
mathematician-philosopher David Hilbert, who first formulated it fully in the
1920s. Its aim was to justify classical mathematics (in particular, classical
analysis and set theory), though only as a Kantian regulative device and not as
descriptive science. The justification thus presupposed a division of classical
mathematics into two parts: the part (termed real mathematics by Hilbert) to be
regulated, and the part (termed ideal mathematics by Hilbert) serving as
regulator. Real mathematics was taken to consist of the meaningful, true
propositions of mathematics and their justifying proofs. These proofs –
commonly known as finitary proofs – were taken to be of an especially
elementary epistemic character, reducing, ultimately, to quasi-perceptual
intuitions concerning finite assemblages of perceptually intuitable signs
regarded from the point of view of their shapes and sequential arrangement.
Ideal mathematics, on the other hand, was taken to consist of sentences that do
not express genuine propositions and derivations that do not constitute genuine
proofs or justifications. The epistemic utility of ideal sentences (typically
referred to as ideal propositions, though, as noted above, they do not express
genuine propositions at all) and proofs was taken to derive not from their
meaning and/or evidentness, but rather from the role they play in some formal
algebraic or calculary scheme intended to identify or locate the real truths.
It is thus a metatheoretic function of the formal or algebraic properties
induced on those propositions and proofs by their positions in a larger
derivational scheme. Hilbert’s ideal mathematics was thus intended to bear the
same relation to his real mathematics as Kant’s faculty of pure reason was
intended to bear to his faculty of understanding. It was to be a regulative
device whose proper function is to guide and facilitate the development of our
system of real judgments. Indeed, in his 1925 essay “Über das Unendliche,”
Hilbert made just this point, noting that ideal elements do not correspond to
anything in reality but serve only as ideas “if, following Kant’s terminology,
one understands as an idea a concept of reason which transcends all experience
and by means of which the concrete is to be completed into a totality.” The
structure of Hilbert’s scheme, however, involves more than just the division of
classical mathematics into real and ideal propositions and proofs. It uses, in
addition, a subdivision of the real propositions into the problematic and the
unproblematic. Indeed, it is this subdivision of the reals that is at bottom
responsible for the introduction of the ideals. Unproblematic real
propositions, described by Hilbert as the basic equalities and inequalities of
arithmetic (e.g., ‘3 ( 2’, ‘2 ‹ 3’, ‘2 ! 3 % 3 ! 2’) together with their
sentential (and certain of their bounded quantificational) compounds, are the
evidentially most basic judgments of mathematics. They are immediately
intelligible and decidable by finitary intuition. More importantly, they can be
logically manipulated in all the ways that classical logic allows without
leading outside the class of real propositions. The characteristic feature of
the problematic reals, on the other hand, is that they cannot be so
manipulated. Hilbert gave two kinds of examples of problematic real
propositions. One consisted of universal generalizations like ‘for any
non-negative integer a, a ! 1 % 1 ! a’, which Hilbert termed hypothetical
judgments. Such propositions are problematic because their denials do not bound
the search for counterexamples. Hence, the instance of the (classical) law of
excluded middle that is obtained by disjoining it with its denial is not itself
a real proposition. Consequently, it cannot be manipulated in all the ways
permitted by classical logic without going outside the class of real propositions.
Similarly for the other kind of problematic real discussed by Hilbert, which
was a bounded existential quantification. Every such sentence has as one of its
classical consequents an unbounded existential quantification of the same
matrix. Hence, since the latter is not a real proposition, the former is not a
real proposition that can be fully manipulated by classical logical means
without going outside the class of real propositions. It is therefore
“problematic.” The question why full classical logical manipulability should be
given such weight points up an important element in Hilbert’s thinking: namely,
that classical logic is regarded as the preferred logic of human thinking – the
logic of the optimally functioning human epistemic engine, the logic according
to which the human mind most naturally and efficiently conducts its inferential
affairs. It therefore has a special psychological status and it is because of
this that the right to its continued use must be preserved. As just indicated,
however, preservation of this right requires addition of ideal propositions and
proofs to their real counterparts, since applying classical logic to the truths
of real mathematics leads to a system that contains ideal as well as real
elements. Hilbert believed that to justify such an addition, all that was
necessary was to show it to be consistent with real mathematics (i.e., to show
that it proves no real proposition that is itself refutable by real means).
Moreover, Hilbert believed that this must be done by finitary means. The proof
of Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem in 1931 brought considerable pressure
to bear on this part of Hilbert’s Program even though it may not have
demonstrated its unattainability.
Hintikka, J.
Non-Indo-European Finnish philosopher who emigrated Finland early on to become
the first Finnish Griceian (vide his contribution in P. G. R. I. C. E.) with contributions to logic, philosophy of
mathematics, epistemology, linguistics and philosophy of language, philosophy
of science, and history of philosophy. His work on distributive normal forms
and model set techniques yielded an improved inductive logic. Model sets differ
from Carnap’s state-descriptions in being partial and not complete descriptions
of “possible worlds.” The techniques simplified metatheoretical proofs and led
to new results in e.g. probability theory and the semantic theory of
information. Their main philosophical import nevertheless is in bridging the
gap between proof theory and model theory. Model sets that describe several
possible “alternative” worlds lead to the possible worlds semantics for modal
and intensional logics. Hintikka has used them as a foundation for the logic of
propositional attitudes (epistemic logic and the logic of perception), and in
studies on individuation, identification, and intentionality. Epistemic logic
also provides a basis for Hintikka’s logic of questions, in which
conclusiveness conditions for answers can be defined. This has resulted in an
interrogative model of inquiry in which knowledge-seeking is viewed as a
pursuit of conclusive answers to initial “big” questions by strategically
organized series of “small” questions (put to nature or to another source of
information). The applications include scientific discovery and explanation.
Hintikka’s independence-friendly logic gives the various applications a unified
basis. Hintikka’s background philosophy and approach to formal semantics and
its applications is broadly Kantian with emphasis on seeking-andfinding methods
and the constitutive activity of the inquirer. Apart from a series of studies
inspired by Kant, he has written extensively on Aristotle, Plato, Descartes,
Leibniz, Frege, and Wittgenstein. Hintikka’s academic career has been not only
in Finland, chiefly at the University of Helsinki, but (especially) in the
United States, where he has held professorships at Stanford, Florida State, and
(currently) Boston University. His students and co-workers in the Finnish
school of inductive logic and in other areas include Leila Haaparanta (b.1954),
Risto Hilpinen (b.1943), Simo Knuuttila (b.1946), Martin Kusch (b.1959), Ilkka
Niiniluoto (b.1946), Juhani Pietarinen (b.1938), Veikko Rantala (b.1933),
Gabriel Sandu (b.1954), Matti Sintonen (b.1951), and Raimo Tuomela (b.1940).
Hintikka set, also called model set, downward saturated set, a set (of a
certain sort) of well-formed formulas that are all true under a single
interpretation of their non-logical symbols (named after Jaakko Hintikka). Such
a set can be thought of as a (partial) description of a logically possible
state of affairs, or possible world, full enough to make evident that the world
described is indeed possible. Thus it is required of a Hintikka set G that it
contain no atomic formula and its negation, that A, B 1 G if A 8 B 1 G, that A
1 G or B 1 G if A 7 B 1 G, and so forth, for each logical constant.
Hippocrates (fifth
century B.C.), semilegendary Greek physician from Cos. Some sixty treatises
survive under his name, but it is doubtful whether he was the author of any of
them. The Hippocratic corpus contains material from a wide variety of
standpoints, ranging from an extreme empiricism that rejected all grand theory
(On Ancient Medicine) to highly speculative theoretical physiology (On the
Nature of Man, On Regimen). Many treatises were concerned with the accurate
observation and classification of diseases (Epidemics) rather than treatment.
Some texts (On the Art) defended the claims of medicine to scientific status
against those who pointed to its inaccuracies and conjectural status; others
(Oath, On Decorum) sketch a code of professional ethics. Almost all his
treatises were notable for their materialism and rejection of supernatural
“explanations”; their emphasis on observation; and their concern with the
isolation of causal factors. A large number of texts are devoted to gynecology.
The Hippocratic corpus became the standard against which later doctors measured
themselves; and, via Galen’s rehabilitation and extension of Hippocratic
method, it became the basis for Western medicine for two millennia.
historicism, the doctrine
that knowledge of human affairs has an irreducibly historical character and
that there can be no ahistorical perspective for an understanding of human
nature and society. What is needed instead is a philosophical explication of
historical knowledge that will yield the rationale for all sound knowledge of
human activities. So construed, historicism is a philosophical doctrine
originating in the methodological and epistemological presuppositions of
critical historiography. In the mid-nineteenth century certain German thinkers
(Dilthey most centrally), reacting against positivist ideals of science and
knowledge, rejected scientistic models of knowledge, replacing them with
historical ones. They applied this not only to the discipline of history but to
economics, law, political theory, and large areas of philosophy. Initially
concerned with methodological issues in particular disciplines, historicism, as
it developed, sought to work out a common philosophical doctrine that would
inform all these disciplines. What is essential to achieve knowledge in the
human sciences is to employ the ways of understanding used in historical
studies. There should in the human sciences be no search for natural laws;
knowledge there will be interpretive and rooted in concrete historical
occurrences. As such it will be inescapably perspectival and contextual
(contextualism). This raises the issue of whether historicism is a form of
historical relativism. Historicism appears to be committed to the thesis that
what for a given people is warrantedly assertible is determined by the
distinctive historical perspective in which they view life and society. The
stress on uniqueness and concrete specificity and the rejection of any appeal
to universal laws of human development reinforce that. But the emphasis on
cumulative development into larger contexts of our historical knowledge puts in
doubt an identification of historicism and historical relativism. The above
account of historicism is that of its main proponents: Meinecke, Croce,
Collingwood, Ortega y Gasset, and Mannheim. But in the twentieth century, with
Popper and Hayek, a very different conception of historicism gained some
currency. For them, to be a historicist is to believe that there are
“historical laws,” indeed even a “law of historical development,” such that
history has a pattern and even an end, that it is the central task of social
science to discover it, and that these laws should determine the direction of
political action and social policy. They attributed (incorrectly) this doctrine
to Marx but rightly denounced it as pseudo-science. However, some later
Marxists (Lukács, Korsch, and Gramsci) were historicists in the original
nonPopperian sense as was the critical theorist Adorno and hermeneuticists such
as Gadamer.
Hobbes, Thomas. English
philosopher whose writings, especially the English version of Leviathan (1651),
strongly influenced all of subsequent English moral and political philosophy.
He also wrote a trilogy comprising De Cive (1642; English version,
Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society, 1651), De Corpore
(On the Body, 1655), and De Homine (On Man, 1658). Together with Leviathan (the
revised Latin version of which was published in 1668), these are his major
philosophical works. However, an early draft of his thoughts, The Elements of
Law, Natural and Political(also known as Human Nature and De Corpore Politico),
was published without permission in 1650. Many of the misinterpretations of
Hobbes’s views on human nature come from mistaking this early work as
representing his mature views. Hobbes was influential not only in England, but
also on the Continent. He is the author of the third set of objections to
Descartes’s Meditations. Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-politicus was deeply
influenced by Hobbes, not only in its political views but also in the way it
dealt with Scripture. Hobbes was not merely a philosopher; he was mathematical
tutor to Charles II and also a classical scholar. His first published work was
a translation of Thucydides (1628), and among his latest, about a half-century
later, were translations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Hobbes’s philosophical
views have a remarkably contemporary sound. In metaphysics, he holds a strong
materialist view, sometimes viewing mental phenomena as epiphenomenal, but
later moving toward a reductive or eliminative view. In epistemology he held a
sophisticated empiricism, which emphasized the importance of language for
knowledge. If not the originator of the contemporary compatibilist view of the
relationship between free will and determinism (see The Questions Concerning
Liberty, Necessity and Chance, 1656), he was one of the primary influences. He
also was one of the most important philosophers of language, explicitly noting
that language is used not only to describe the world but to express attitudes
and, performatively, to make promises and contracts. One of Hobbes’s
outstanding characteristics is his intellectual honesty. Though he may have
been timid (he himself claims that he was, explaining that his mother gave
birth to him because of fright over the coming of the Spanish Armada), his
writing shows no trace of it. During more than half his long lifetime he
engaged in many philosophical controversies, which required considerably more
courage in Hobbes’s day than at present. Both the Roman Catholic church and
Oxford University banned the reading of his books and there was talk not only
of burning his books but of burning Hobbes himself. An adequate interpretation
of Hobbes requires careful attention to his accounts of human nature, reason,
morality, and law. Although he was not completely consistent, his moral and
political philosophy is remarkably coherent. His political theory is often
thought to require an egoistic psychology, whereas it actually requires only
that most persons be concerned with their own self-interest, especially their
own preservation. It does not require that most not be concerned with other
persons as well. All that Hobbes denies is an undifferentiated natural
benevolence: “For if by nature one man should love another (that is) as man,
there could no reason be returned why every man should not equally love every
man, as being equally man.” His argument is that limited benevolence is not an
adequate foundation upon which to build a state. Hobbes’s political theory does
not require the denial of limited benevolence, he indeed includes benevolence
in his list of the passions in Leviathan: “Desire of good to another,
BENEVOLENCE, GOOD WILL, CHARITY. If to man generally, GOOD NATURE.”
Psychological egoism not only denies benevolent action, it also denies action
done from a moral sense, i.e., action done because one believes it is the
morally right thing to do. But Hobbes denies neither kind of action. But when
the words [’just’ and ‘unjust’] are applied to persons, to be just signifies as
much as to be delighted in just dealing, to study how to do righteousness, or
to endeavor in all things to do that which is just; and to be unjust is to neglect
righteous dealing, or to think it is to be measured not according to my
contract, but some present benefit. Hobbes’s pessimism about the number of just
people is primarily due to his awareness of the strength of the passions and
his conviction that most people have not been properly educated and
disciplined. Hobbes is one of the few philosophers to realize that to talk of
that part of human nature which involves the passions is to talk about human
populations. He says, “though the wicked were fewer than the righteous, yet
because we cannot distinguish them, there is a necessity of suspecting,
heeding, anticipating, subjugating, self-defending, ever incident to the most
honest and fairest conditioned.” Though we may be aware of small communities in
which mutual trust and respect make law enforcement unnecessary, this is never
the case when we are dealing with a large group of people. Hobbes’s point is
that if a large group of people are to live together, there must be a common
power set up to enforce the rules of the society. That there is not now, nor
has there ever been, any large group of people living together without such a
common power is sufficient to establish his point. Often overlooked is Hobbes’s
distinction between people considered as if they were simply animals, not
modified in any way by education or discipline, and civilized people. Though
obviously an abstraction, people as animals are fairly well exemplified by
children. “Unless you give children all they ask for, they are peevish, and cry,
aye and strike their parents sometimes; and all this they have from nature.” In
the state of nature, people have no education or training, so there is
“continual fear, and danger of violent death, and the life of man, [is]
solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” But real people have been brought
up in families; they are, at least to some degree, civilized persons, and how
they will behave depends on how they are brought up. Hobbes does not say that
society is a collection of misfits and that this is why we have all the trouble
that we do – a position congenial to the psychological egoist. But he does
acknowledge that “many also (perhaps most men) either through defect of mind,
or want of education, remain unfit during the whole course of their lives; yet
have they, infants as well as those of riper years, a human nature; wherefore
man is made fit for society not by nature, but by education.” Education and
training may change people so that they act out of genuine moral motives. That
is why it is one of the most important functions of the sovereign to provide
for the proper training and education of the citizens. In the current debate
between nature and nurture, on the question of behavior Hobbes would come down
strongly on the side of nurture. Hobbes’s concept of reason has more in common
with the classical philosophical tradition stemming from Plato and Aristotle,
where reason sets the ends of behavior, than with the modern tradition stemming
from Hume where the only function of reason is to discover the best means to
ends set by the passions. For Hobbes, reason is very complex; it has a goal,
lasting selfpreservation, and it seeks the way to this goal. It also discovers
the means to ends set by the passions, but it governs the passions, or tries
to, so that its own goal is not threatened. Since its goal is the same in all
people, it is the source of rules applying to all people. All of this is
surprisingly close to the generally accepted account of rationality. We
generally agree that those who follow their passions when they threaten their
life are acting irrationally. We also believe that everyone always ought to act
rationally, though we know that few always do so. Perhaps it was just the
closeness of Hobbes’s account of reason to the ordinary view of the matter that
has led to its being so completely overlooked. The failure to recognize that
the avoidance of violent death is the primary goal of reason has distorted
almost all accounts of Hobbes’s moral and political philosophy, yet it is a
point on which Hobbes is completely clear and consistent. He explicitly says
that reason “teaches every man to fly a contra-natural dissolution [mortem
violentam] as the greatest mischief that can arrive to nature.” He continually
points out that it is a dictate of right reason to seek peace when possible
because people cannot “expect any lasting preservation continuing thus in the
state of nature, that is, of war.” And he calls temperance and fortitude
precepts of reason because they tend to one’s preservation. It has not
generally been recognized that Hobbes regarded it as an end of reason to avoid
violent death because he often talks of the avoidance of death in a way that
makes it seem merely an object of a passion. But it is reason that dictates
that one take all those measures necessary for one’s preservation; peace if
possible, if not, defense. Reason’s dictates are categorical; it would be a
travesty of Hobbes’s view to regard the dictates of reason as hypothetical
judgments addressed to those whose desire for their own preservation happens to
be greater than any conflicting desire. He explicitly deplores the power of the
irrational appetites and expressly declares that it is a dictate of reason that
one not scorn others because “most men would rather lose their lives (that I
say not, their peace) than suffer slander.” He does not say if you would rather
die than suffer slander, it is rational to do so. Hobbes, following Aristotle,
regards morality as concerned with character traits or habits. Since morality
is objective, it is only those habits that are called good by reason that are
moral virtues. “Reason declaring peace to be good, it follows by the same
reason, that all the necessary means to peace be good also; and therefore that
modesty, equity, trust, humanity, mercy (which we have demonstrated to be
necessary to peace), are good manners or habits, that is, virtues.” Moral
virtues are those habits of acting that the reason of all people must praise.
It is interesting to note that it is only in De Homine that Hobbes explicitly
acknowledges that on this account, prudence, temperance, and courage are not
moral virtues. In De Cive he distinguishes temperance and fortitude from the
other virtues and does not call them moral, but he does not explicitly deny
that they are moral virtues. But in De Homine, he explicitly points out that
one should not “demand that the courage and prudence of the private man, if
useful only to himself, be praised or held as a virtue by states or by any
other men whatsoever to whom these same are not useful.” That morality is
determined by reason and that reason has as its goal self-preservation seems to
lead to the conclusion that morality also has as its goal self-preservation.
But it is not the selfpreservation of an individual person that is the goal of
morality, but of people as citizens of a state. That is, moral virtues are
those habits of persons that make it rational for all other people to praise
them. These habits are not those that merely lead to an individual’s own
preservation, but to the preservation of all; i.e., to peace and a stable
society. Thus, “Good dispositions are those that are suitable for entering into
civil society; and good manners (that is, moral virtues) are those whereby what
was entered upon can be best preserved.” And in De Cive, when talking of
morality, he says, “The goodness of actions consist[s] in this, that it [is] in
order to peace, and the evil in this, that it [is] related to discord.” The
nature of morality is a complex and vexing question. If, like Hobbes, we regard
morality as applying primarily to those manners or habits that lead to peace,
then his view seems satisfactory. It yields, as he notes, all of the moral
virtues that are ordinarily considered such, and further, it allows one to
distinguish courage, prudence, and temperance from the moral virtues. Perhaps
most important, it provides, in almost self-evident fashion, the justification
of morality. For what is it to justify morality but to show that reason favors
it? Reason, seeking self-preservation, must favor morality, which seeks peace
and a stable society. For reason knows that peace and a stable society are
essential for lasting preservation. This simple and elegant justification of
morality does not reduce morality to prudence; rather it is an attempt, in a
great philosophical tradition stemming from Plato, to reconcile reason or
rational self-interest and morality. In the state of nature every person is and
ought to be governed only by their own reason. Reason dictates that they seek
peace, which yields the laws of nature, but it also allows them to use any
means they believe will best preserve themselves, which is what Hobbes calls
The Right of Nature. Hobbes’s insight is to see that, except when one is in
clear and present danger, in which case one has an inalienable right to defend
oneself, the best way to guarantee one’s longterm preservation is to give up
one’s right to act on one’s own decisions about what is the best way to
guarantee one’s long-term preservation and agree to act on the decisions of
that single person or group who is the sovereign. If all individuals and groups
are allowed to act on the decisions they regard as best, not accepting the
commands of the sovereign, i.e., the laws, as the overriding guide for their
actions, the result is anarchy and civil war. Except in rare and unusual cases,
uniformity of action following the decision of the sovereign is more likely to
lead to long-term preservation than diverse actions following diverse
decisions. And this is true even if each one of the diverse decisions, if
accepted by the sovereign as its decision, would have been more likely to lead
to long-term preservation than the actual decision that the sovereign made.
This argument explains why Hobbes holds that sovereigns cannot commit
injustice. Only injustice can properly be punished. Hobbes does not deny that
sovereigns can be immoral, but he does deny that the immorality of sovereigns
can properly be punished. This is important, for otherwise any immoral act by
the sovereign would serve as a pretext for punishing the sovereign, i.e., for
civil war. What is just and unjust is determined by the laws of the state, what
is moral and immoral is not. Morality is a wider concept than that of justice
and is determined by what leads to peace and stability. However, to let justice
be determined by what the reason of the people takes to lead to peace and
stability, rather than by what the reason of the sovereign decides, would be to
invite discord and civil war, which is contrary to the goal of morality: a
stable society and peace. One can create an air of paradox by saying that for
Hobbes it is immoral to attempt to punish some immoral acts, namely, those of
the sovereign. Hobbes is willing to accept this seeming paradox for he never
loses sight of the goal of morality, which is peace. To summarize Hobbes’s
system: people, insofar as they are rational, want to live out their natural
lives in peace and security. To do this, they must come together into cities or
states of sufficient size to deter attack by any group. But when people come
together in such a large group there will always be some that cannot be
trusted, and thus it is necessary to set up a government with the power to make
and enforce laws. This government, which gets both its right to govern and its
power to do so from the consent of the governed, has as its primary duty the
people’s safety. As long as the government provides this safety the citizens
are obliged to obey the laws of the state in all things. Thus, the rationality of
seeking lasting preservation requires seeking peace; this in turn requires
setting up a state with sufficient power to keep the peace. Anything that
threatens the stability of the state is to be avoided. As a practical matter,
Hobbes took God and religion very seriously, for he thought they provided some
of the strongest motives for action. Half of Leviathan is devoted to trying to
show that his moral and political views are supported by Scripture, and to
discredit those religious views that may lead to civil strife. But accepting
the sincerity of Hobbes’s religious views does not require holding that Hobbes
regarded God as the foundation of morality. He explicitly denies that atheists
and deists are subject to the commands of God, but he never denies that they
are subject to the laws of nature or of the civil state. Once one recognizes
that, for Hobbes, reason itself provides a guide to conduct to be followed by
all people, there is absolutely no need to bring in God. For in his moral and
political theory there is nothing that God can do that is not already done by
reason. .
Hohenheim, Theophrastus
Bombastus von. See PARACELSUS. Hohfeld, Wesley Newcomb (1879–1918), American
jurist who taught at Stanford and Yale. His main contribution to legal and
moral theory was his identification of eight fundamental legal conceptions: One
person X has a legal duty to a second person Y to do some act A when the law
requires X to do A for Y. X has a legal privilege (or liberty) in face of Y to
do A when X has no legal duty to Y not to do A. X has a legal right (or claim)
against Y that Y do A when Y has a legal duty to X to do A. X has a legal
no-right against Y that Y not do A when Y has a legal liberty in face of X to
do A. X has a legal power over Y to effect some legal consequence C for Y when
there is some voluntary action of X that will bring about C for Y. X has a
legal disability in face of Y to effect C when there is no action X can perform
that will bring about C for Y. X has a legal liability in face of Y to effect C
when Y has a legal power to effect C for X. X has a legal immunity against Y
from C when Y has no legal power over X to effect C. Moral philosophers have
adapted Hohfeld’s terminology to express analogous moral conceptions. In
jurisprudence or ethics, these fundamental conceptions provide something like
atoms into which all more complex legal or moral relationships can be analyzed.
In logic, these conceptions reveal pairs of correlatives, such as a claim of X
against Y and a duty of Y to X, each of which implies the other, and pairs of
opposites, such as a duty of X to Y and a liberty of Y in face of X, which are
contradictories. In the theory of rights, his distinctions between liberties,
claims, powers, and immunities are often used to reveal ambiguities in the
language of rights or to classify species of rights.
Hölderlin, Johann Christian
Friedrich: German poet, novelist, and dramatist. He studied at Tübingen, where
he befriended Schelling and Hegel, and at Jena, where he met Schiller and
Fichte. Since Hölderlin never held an academic position or published any of his
philosophical writings, his influence on philosophy was primarily through his
personality, conversations, and letters. He is widely viewed as the author of
the so-called “Oldest System-Program of German Idealism,” a fragment that
culminates in an exaltation of poetry and a call for a new “mythology of
reason.” This theme is illustrated in the novel Hyperion (1797/99), which
criticizes the subjective heroism of ethical idealism, emphasizes the sacred
character of nature, and attempts to conflate religion and art as “overseers of
reason.” In his veneration of nature and objections to Fichte’s treatment of
the “Not-I,” Hölderlin echoed Schelling’s Naturphilosophie. In his Hellenism
and his critique of the “philosophy of reflection” (see Ueber Sein und Urteil
[“On Being and Judgment”]) he anticipated and influenced Hegel. In Hölderlin’s
exaltation of art as alone capable of revealing the nature of reality, he
betrayed a debt to Schiller and anticipated Romanticism. However, his view of
the poet possesses a tragic dimension quite foreign to Schelling and the
younger Romantics. The artist, as the interpreter of divine nature, mediates
between the gods and men, but for this very reason is estranged from his
fellows. This aspect of Hölderlin’s thought influenced Heidegger. D.Br. holism,
any of a wide variety of theses that in one way or another affirm the equal or
greater reality or the explanatory necessity of the whole of some system in
relation to its parts. In philosophy, the issues of holism (the word is more
reasonably, but less often, spelled ‘wholism’) have appeared Hohenheim,
Theophrastus Bombastus von holism 390 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 390
traditionally in the philosophy of biology, of psychology, and especially of
the human sciences. In the context of description, holism with respect to some
system maintains that the whole has some properties that its parts lack. This
doctrine will ordinarily be trivially true unless it is further held, in the
thesis of descriptive emergentism, that these properties of the whole cannot be
defined by properties of the parts. The view that all properties of the wholes
in question can be so defined is descriptive individualism. In the context of
explanation, holism with respect to some object or system maintains either (1)
that the laws of the more complex cases in it are not deducible by way of any
composition laws or laws of coexistence from the laws of the less complex cases
(e.g., that the laws of the behavior of people in groups are not deducible by
composition laws or laws of coexistence from the laws of solitary behavior), or
(2) that all the variables that constitute the system interact with each other.
This denial of deducibility is known also as metaphysical or methodological
holism, whereas affirming the deducibility is methodological individualism. In
a special case of explanatory holism that presupposes descriptive emergentism,
holism is sometimes understood as the thesis that with respect to some system
the whole has properties that interact “back” with the properties of its parts.
In the philosophy of biology, any of these forms of holism may be known as
vitalism, while in the philosophy of psychology they have been called Gestalt
doctrine. In the philosophy of the social sciences, where ‘holism’ has had its
most common use in philosophy, the many issues have often been reduced to that
of metaphysical holism versus methodological individualism. This terminology
reflected the positivists’ belief that holism was non-empirical in postulating
social “wholes” or the reality of society beyond individual persons and their
properties and relations (as in Durkheim and other, mostly Continental,
thinkers), while individualism was non-metaphysical (i.e., empirical) in
relying ultimately only on observable properties in describing and explaining
social phenomena. More recently, ‘holism’ has acquired additional uses in
philosophy, especially in epistemology and philosophy of language. Doxastic or
epistemic holism are theses about the “web of belief,” usually something to the
effect that a person’s beliefs are so connected that their change on any topic
may affect their content on any other topic or, perhaps, that the beliefs of a
rational person are so connected. Semantic or meaning holism have both been
used to denote either the thesis that the meanings of all terms (or sentences)
in a language are so connected that any change of meaning in one of them may
change any other meaning, or the thesis that changes of belief entail changes
of meaning.
hologram, the image of an
object in three dimensions created and reproduced by the use of lasers.
Holography is a method for recording and reproducing such images. Holograms are
remarkable in that, unlike normal photographs, every part of them contains the
complete image but in reduced detail. Thus a small square cut from a hologram
can still be laser-illuminated to reveal the whole scene originally
holographed, albeit with loss of resolution. This feature made the hologram
attractive to proponents of the thesis of distribution of function in the
brain, who argued that memories are like holograms, not being located in a
single precise engram – as claimed by advocates of localization of function –
but distributed across perhaps all of the cortex. Although intriguing, the
holographic model of memory storage failed to gain acceptance. Current views
favor D. O. Hebb’s “cell assembly” concept, in which memories are stored in the
connections between a group of neurons.
homoeomerous (from Greek
homoiomeres, ‘of like parts’), having parts, no matter how small, that share
the constitutive properties of the whole. The derivative abstract noun is
‘homoeomery’. The Greek forms of the adjective and of its corresponding
privative ‘anhomoeomerous’ are used by Aristotle to distinguish between (a)
nonuniform parts of living things, e.g., limbs and organs, and (b) biological
stuffs, e.g., blood, bone, sap. In spite of being composed of the four
elements, each of the biological stuffs, when taken individually and without
admixtures, is through-and-through F, where F represents the cluster of the
constitutive properties of that stuff. Thus, if a certain physical volume
qualifies as blood, all its mathematically possible subvolumes, regardless of
size, also qualify as blood. Blood is thus homoeomerous. By contrast, a face or
a stomach or a leaf are anhomoeomerous: the parts of a face are not a face,
etc. In Aristotle’s system, the homoeomery of the biological stuffs is tied to
his doctrine of the infinite divisibility of matter. The distinction is
prefigured in Plato (Protagoras 329d). The term ‘homoeomerous’ is stricter in
its application than the ordinary terms ‘homogeneous’ and ‘uniform’. For we may
speak of a homogeneous entity even if the properties at issue are identically
present only in samples that fall above a certain size: the color of the sea
can be homogeneously or uniformly blue; but it is not homoeomerously blue. The
adjective homoiomeres, -es, and the noun homoiomereia also occur – probably
tendentiously, under the influence of Aristotle’s usage – in our ancient
sources for a pre-Aristotelian philosopher, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, with
reference to the constituent “things” (chremata) involved in the latter’s
scheme of universal mixture. Moreover, the concept of homoeomery has played a
significant role outside ancient Greek philosophy, notably in twentieth-century
accounts of the contrast between mass terms and count terms or sortals.
homomorphism, in model
theory, a structurepreserving mapping from one structure to another. A
structure consists of a domain of objects together with a function specifying
interpretations, with respect to that domain, of the relation symbols, function
symbols, and individual symbols of a given language. Relations, functions, and
individuals in different structures for a language L correspond to one another
if they are interpretations of the same symbol of L. To call a mapping
“structure-preserving” is to say (1) that if objects in the first structure
bear a certain relation to one another, then their images in the second
structure (under the mapping) bear the corresponding relation to one another,
(2) that the value of a function for a given object (or ntuple of objects) in
the first structure has as its image under the mapping the value of the
corresponding function for the image of the object (or n-tuple of images) in
the second structure, and (3) that the image in the second structure of an
object in the first is the corresponding object. An isomorphism is a
homomorphism that is oneto-one and whose inverse is also a homomorphism.
See also MODEL THEORY.
R.Ke. homonymy. See AMBIGUITY. homoousian. See HOMOOUSIOS. homoousios (Greek,
‘of the same substance’), a concept central to the Christian doctrine of the
Trinity, enshrined in the Nicene Creed of A.D. 381. It attests that God the Son
(and by extension the Spirit) is of one and the same being or substance (ousia)
as the Father. Reflecting the insistence of Athanasius against Arianism that Christ
is God’s eternal, coequal Son and not a creature, the Nicene homoousios is also
to be differentiated from a rival formula, homoiousios (Greek, ‘of similar
substance’), which affirms merely the Son’s likeness in being to God. Though
notoriously and superficially an argument over one Greek iota, the issue was
philosophically profound and theologically crucial whether or not Jesus of
Nazareth incarnated God’s own being, revealed God’s own truth, and mediated
God’s own salvation. See also TRINITARIANISM. A.E.L. homuncular functionalism.
See FUNCTIONALISM.
homunculus (from Latin,
‘little man’), a miniature adult held to inhabit the brain (or some other
organ) who perceives all the inputs to the sense organs and initiates all the
commands to the muscles. Any theory that posits such an internal agent risks an
infinite regress (sometimes called the homunculus fallacy), since we can ask
whether there is a little man in the little man’s head, responsible for his
perception and action, and so on. Many familiar views of the mind and its
activities seem to require a homunculus. For instance, models of visual
perception that posit an inner picture as its product homoromery homunculus 392
4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 392 apparently require a homunculus to look
at the picture, and models of action that treat intentions as commands to the
muscles apparently require a homunculus to issue the commands. It is never an
easy matter to determine whether a theory is committed to the existence of a
homunculus that vitiates the theory, and in some circumstances, homunculi can
be legitimately posited at intermediate levels of theory: “Homunculi are
bogeymen only if they duplicate entire the talents they are rung in to explain.
If one can get a team or committee of relatively ignorant, narrow-minded, blind
homunculi to produce the intelligent behavior of the whole, this is progress”
(Dennett, Brainstorms, 1978). Theories (in philosophy of mind or artificial
intelligence or cognitive science) that posit such teams of homunculi have been
called homuncular functionalism by William Lycan. D.C.D. Horkheimer, Max
(1895–1973), German philosopher, the leading theorist of the first generation
of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Both as director of the Institute
for Social Research and in his early philosophical essays published in the
Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Horkheimer set the agenda for the
collaborative work of the Frankfurt School in the social sciences, including
analyses of the developments of state capitalism, the family, modern culture,
and fascism. His programmatic essays on the relation of philosophy and the
social sciences long provided the philosophical basis for Frankfurt School
social criticism and research and have profoundly influenced Habermas’s
reformulation of Frankfurt School critical theory. In these essays, such as
“The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for
Social Research” (1931), Horkheimer elaborated a cooperative relation between
philosophy and the social sciences through an interdisciplinary historical
materialism. His “Traditional and Critical Theory” (1937) develops the
distinction between “critical” and “traditional” theories in terms of basic
goals: critical theories aim at emancipating human beings rather than
describing reality as it is now. In the darkest days of World War II Horkheimer
began collaborating with Adorno on The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1941), in
which they see the origins of modern reason and autonomy in the domination of
nature and the inner self. This genealogy of modern reason argues that myth and
enlightenment are inseparably “entwined,” a view proposed primarily to explain
the catastrophe in which Europe found itself. While Horkheimer thought that a
revised notion of Hegelian dialectics might lead beyond this impasse, he never
completed this positive project. Instead, he further developed the critique of
instrumental reason in such works as Eclipse of Reason (1947), where he argues
that modern institutions, including democracy, are under the sway of formal and
instrumental rationality and the imperatives of self-preservation. While he did
little new work after this period, he turned at the end of his life to a
philosophical reinterpretation of religion and the content of religious experience
and concepts, developing a negative theology of the “completely Other.” His
most enduring influence is his clear formulation of the epistemology of
practical and critical social inquiry oriented to human emancipation. See also
CRITICAL THEORY, FRANKFURT SCHOOL. J.Bo.
hormic psychology. See
MCDOUGALL. Ho Yen (d.A.D. 249), Chinese philosopher, an early leader of the
Neo-Taoist movement. Ho Yen brought into currency the idea of “non-being” (wu)
in explaining the tao and the origin of being. Without limit and inexhaustible,
the tao constitutes the totality of all there is. Formless and nameless, it is
a creative vital energy (ch’i) that through a process of differentiation
produces heaven and earth and the myriad creatures. Ho Yen is also famous for
his view that the sage does not have emotions (ch’ing). This is because the
sage is exceptionally endowed with pure ch’ienergy, which precludes emotional
disturbance. Ethically, this further translates into a critique of hypocrisy
and the abuse of power that Ho Yen considered the bane of Chinese society.
See also CH’ING,
NEO-TAOISM. A.K.L.C. hsiao, Chinese team meaning ‘filial piety’. Hsiao refers
both to a virtue and to acts manifesting that virtue. Originally, hsiao had to
do with the proper performance of one’s parents’ funeral rituals and sacrifices
to one’s ancestors. Later, hsiao came to encompass the proper treatment of
one’s parents while they are alive. Hsiao is fundamental to Confucianism in
that showing proper respect for one’s parents is thought to be related to
respect for legitimate political authority. See also CONFUCIANISM, LI2.
B.W.V.N. hsien, in Chinese philosophy, divine “immortals” or “transcendents” –
spiritual beings who have attained the tao and are characterized by
transcendence and immortality; a central ideal in Horkheimer, Max hsien 393
4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 393 religious Taoism. The idea has its
roots in ancient Chinese religion; in its mature form, it signifies a being
constituted by the purest and most potent form of vital energy (ch’i), which
renders him/ her beyond the limitations of mundane life. Thus, hsien are often
characterized by the power of flight. In poetry and philosophic discourse,
hsien evokes fulfillment and freedom, especially from desire and the vagaries
of human striving. In religious Taoism, there is an important debate whether
immortality can be achieved through effort. Various methods that fall under the
general rubrics of “internal alchemy” (nei-tan) and “external alchemy”
(wai-tan) have been devised to bring about the perfected state. See also CH’I,
TAOISM. A.K.L.C. Hsi K’ang (A.D.223–62), Chinese philosopher, a key
representative of Neo-Taoism. Hsi K’ang’s philosophy centers on the concept of
tzu-jan – naturalness or, literally, what is of itself so – which depicts the
inherent order of the Taoist universe. Nature conforms to “necessary
principles” (pi-jan chih li); individuals receive an energy endowment (ch’i) at
birth of varying richness that defines their nature and capacity. While
endowment is inborn, self-cultivation directed at dispelling self-interest can
substantially enhance one’s physical and spiritual well-being. In ethics and
politics, Hsi K’ang thus advocates going beyond the orthodox teachings of
Confucianism (ming-chiao), which emphasize learning, conformity, and tradition.
Hsi is also famous for his musical theory that “sounds do not have sorrow or
joy” (sheng wu ai-lo): while sounds are naturally produced, emotions involve
subjective and cognitive reactions. See also CH’I, NEO-TAOISM. A.K.L.C. hsin1,
Chinese term meaning ‘heart’, ‘mind’, ‘feeling’. Generally, the hsin is both
the physical organ we call the heart, and the faculty of appetition, cognition,
and emotion, but the precise nature and proper role of hsin is one of the
fundamental issues dividing Chinese philosophers. Mencius speaks of “four
hearts,” associating a particular virtue and set of emotional and cognitive
capacities with each. Chuang Tzu suggests that we “fast” (chai), rather than
cultivate, the hsin, letting ourselves be guided instead by the ch’i. Hsün Tzu
holds that the hsin should control and sublimate the desires. In
Neo-Confucianism, the hsin is conceived as a fully developed moral sense,
present in every human, whose proper functioning is obscured by selfish desires.
NeoConfucians differ over whether hsin is identical with principle (li) and
nature (hsing).
See also CONFUCIANISM,
LI1, MENCIUS, NEO-CONFUCIANISM. B.W.V.N. hsin2, Chinese term meaning ‘trust’,
‘faith’, ‘trustworthiness’, ‘honest’. In early texts, hsin is the mutual trust
of sincerity between worshiper and spirit. The Chinese character for this word
consists of two elements representing ‘person’ and ‘speech’, and this provides
a reliable guide to its root sense: being true to one’s word. Hsin became one of
the cardinal Confucian virtues: trustworthiness or honesty (but only in service
to what is right). In Buddhist contexts, hsin can mean ‘faith’ in the religious
sense, e.g., the Pure Land School’s practice of faith in Amitabha Buddha. This
influenced Neo-Confucianism and is manifested in their faith in a perfect,
innate moral faculty. See also CHINESE PHILOSOPHY, NEO-CONFUCIANISM. P.J.I.
hsing, Chinese
philosophical term generally agreed to be derived from ‘sheng’ (life, growth),
and usually translated as ‘nature’. In its earliest use as a term distinct from
‘sheng’, it probably referred to the tendency or direction of development that
a thing will realize if unobstructed (e.g. it is the hsing of a sprout to grow
into a fullgrown plant and the hsing of water to flow downward), and the hsing
of human beings is also supposed to be their proper course of development. The
concept hsing probably entered philosophical discourse with the development of
the school of thought associated with Yang Chu (fifth–fourth century B.C.),
which regarded the hsing of human beings as the tendency to live a life of a
certain span in good health and with sensory desires appropriately satisfied.
It subsequently became a central concept in Confucian thought, though
understood differently by different Confucian thinkers. Mencius (fourth century
B.C.) regarded the moral way of life as a full realization of the hsing of
human beings, which is constituted by the direction of development indicated by
certain incipient moral inclinations of the heart/mind (hsin); hsing is good in
that it has a moral direction. Hsün Tzu (third century B.C.) regarded the moral
way of life as a transformation of the hsing of human beings, which comprises
primarily self-regarding desires human beings have by birth; hsing is evil in
that unregulated pursuit of satisfaction of such desires leads to strife and
disorder. Different views of hsing continued to evolve; but ever since the view
that Mencius was the true transmitter of Confucius’s teachings became established,
Hsi K’ang hsing 394 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 394 largely through the
efforts of Chu Hsi (1130– 1200), the idea that the hsing of human beings is
good has been a central tenet of Confucian thought. See also CONFUCIANISM.
K.-l.S. hsing-erh-shang, in Chinese philosophy, formless or metaphysical. In
part one of the I-Ching (the Book of Changes) there is a statement that what is
hsing-erh-shang is called tao (the Way), and what is hsing-er-hsia (with form)
is called ch’i, a concrete thing. In the Chinese way of thinking, tao and ch’i
are understood to be inseparable from each other; as tao is both transcendent
and immanent, it permeates things, and things must not be cut off and alienated
from their metaphysical origin.
See also CHINESE PHILOSOPHY.
S.-h.L. hsing-ming, in Chinese philosophy, “forms and names,” an important
philosophical concept associated with Legalism and the Huang–Lao School (the
school of the Yellow Emperor and Lao Tzu), which flourished during the Warring
States period and the early Han dynasty (third– second century B.C.). The
narrower meaning of the term has to do with a system of law and punishment,
designed especially to keep state officials in check. More broadly, hsing-ming
points to a vision of order, in which all “names” (ming) should correspond to
their underlying “form” (hsing) or reality. Applied to politics, this suggests
that the ruler must discern the workings of the cosmos, ensure that officials
perform their assigned duties, and allow the people to prosper in the perceived
natural order of things. See also CHINESE LEGALISM. A.K.L.C. Hsiung Shih-li
(1885–1968), Chinese contemporary New Confucian philosopher. He was a
revolutionary when young and later studied Wei-shih (Vijnanavada,
‘Consciousness-Only’) philosophy at the China Buddhist Institute under Ou-yang
Ching-wu (1871–1943). But, dissatisfied, he developed his New Wei-shih
philosophy of creativity based on the insights he derived from the I-Ching. He
became influential and had Mou Tsung-san, T’ang Chün-i, and Hsü Fu-kuan among
his disciples. After the Communist takeover in 1949, he still rejected
materialism, but embraced a radical social philosophy that was not shared by
most of his former disciples. See also CHINESE PHILOSOPHY, HSÜ FUKUAN, I-CHING,
T’ANG CHÜN-I. S.-h.L.
Hsü Fu-kuan (1903–82),
Chinese intellectual and historian who served directly under Chiang Kai-shek at
one time, but became a critic of the Nationalist government after it moved to
Taiwan in 1949. He founded Democratic Review, the influential magazine that
spread the ideas of contemporary New Confucians. He also started the Department
of Chinese at Tunghai University in 1955 and invited Mou Tsung-san to join the
staff to form another center of New Confucianism other than New Asia College in
Hong Kong. He characterized his own position as between academic studies and
politics, and between historical scholarship and philosophical understanding.
His magnum opus was the three-volume History of Han Thought; his works on
Chinese literature and art were also widely quoted. See also CH’IEN MU, HSIUNG
SHIH-LI, T’ANG CHÜN-I. S.-h.L. Hsü Hsing (c.315 B.C.), Chinese philosopher, a
member of the Tillers or Agriculture School (Nung Chia). The Tillers believed
that in antiquity Shen Nung, the Divine Farmer, had ruled without reward,
punishment, or administration over a decentralized utopia of small communities
where all, including the ruler, lived by their own labor. Accordingly, Hsü
Hsing attacked contemporary rulers who did not plow the fields but rather lived
off the labor of others. He also sought to stabilize grain prices by
controlling supply: grain would be stored in good years and distributed in bad
ones. R.P.P. & R.T.A.
Hsün Tzu (third century
B.C.), a tough-minded Confucian philosopher best known for his opposition to
Mencius’s conception of the inherent goodness of human nature. For Hsün Tzu,
the essential nature of human beings is bad in the sense of possessing a
problematical motivational hsing-erh-shang Hsün Tzu 395 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999
7:39 AM Page 395 structure: every human seeks to satisfy his/her desires;
unless guided by li (propriety) and i (rightness), these desires inevitably
lead to conflict especially in view of the scarcity of goods and the native
human tendency toward partiality for one’s own benefits and for those of one’s
close relations. Significantly, the li or rules of proper behavior perform
three basic functions: delimiting, supportive, and ennobling. The first draws
the boundaries of proper conduct; the second provides channels for satisfaction
of desires within these boundaries; and the third provides sources for
ennobling personal character in accordance with jen (benevolence) and i
(rightness). Hsün Tzu is also noted for emphasizing law as a supplement to li
(rules of proper conduct); the need of argumentation to resolve ethical
disagreement; the importance of clarity of mind, as opposed to pi (obscuration)
in the pursuit of ethical knowledge; and the importance of Confucian classics
in character education. See also MENCIUS. A.S.C.
Huai Nan Tzu, an ancient
Chinese syncretic compendium of knowledge. It was compiled by an academy of
scholars residing under the patronage of one of the most prominent literary
figures of the age, Liu An, Prince of Huai Nan, and presented to the imperial
court of Emperor Wu in about 140 B.C. The twenty treatises that make up the
text include technical tracts on astronomy, topography, and calendrics, as well
as original reconfigurations of the ideas and beliefs that flourished in the
formative period of classical Chinese philosophy. In many ways, it is a Han
dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 220) summary of existing knowledge, and like most
Chinese documents it is practical and prescriptive. As a political document, it
is syncretic, blending Confucian, Legalist, and Taoist precepts to recommend a
kind of practicable Taoist alternative to political centralism. R.P.P. &
R.T.A
Huang–Lao (Chinese,
‘School of the Yellow Emperor and Lao Tzu’), an eclectic school (c. third
century B.C.) purportedly based on the teachings of the mythic Yellow Emperor
and Lao Tzu, advocating a kind of Realpolitik Taoism stressing reliance on
methods of ruling (e.g., rewards and punishments) and the power of political
and social structures. Huang–Lao sought to establish a perfectly organized state,
which tzu jan (naturally) runs smoothly, in which the ruler reigns (not rules)
through wu wei (non-action). Huang–Lao’s mystical side concerns its claim that
only the ruler can attain the unifying vision needed for such organization and
that this vision is achieved through the practice of stillness and hsü
(tenuousness). P.J.I. Huang Tsung-hsi (1610–95), Chinese philosopher and
historian. A student of Liu Tsung-chou (1578–1645), the last great
Neo-Confucian philosopher in the Ming dynasty, he compiled Ming-ju-hsüeh-an and
Sung-Yüan-hsüeh-an, important anthologies and critical accounts of the
Neo-Confucianists of the Ming dynasty and Sung and Yüan dynasties. He also
wrote Ming-i-taifang-lu (“Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince”), in
which he denounced the system of government working only for the selfish
interest of the ruler. This work exerted great influence in the last days of
the Chinese empire. See also CHINESE PHILOSOPHY, CHU HSI, WANG YANGMING.
S.-h.L. Hu Hung, also called Wu-feng (1100–55), Chinese Neo-Confucian
philosopher and an important figure in the Hunan School. According to him, hsin
(mind/heart) is the outward manifestation of hsing (human nature); one must
first understand the nature of jen (humanity) before one can practice moral
cultivation. Professor Mou Tsung-san believed that Hu Hung succeeded Chou
Tun-yi, Chang Tsai, and Ch’eng Hao, representing a third line of thought other
than those of Ch’eng–Chu and Lu–Wang.
See also CHANG TSAI,
CH’ENG HAO, CHOU TUN-YI, CHU HSI, NEO-CONFUCIANISM. S.-h.L. Hui Shih (c.380–305
B.C.), Chinese philosopher, prime minister of the state of Wei, and a leading
member of the School of Names (ming chia, also referred to as pien che, the
Dialecticians or Sophists). As a friend and debating partner of the Taoist
philosopher Chuang Tzu, Hui Shih parried Chuang Tzu’s poetic, rhapsodic, and
meditationbased intuitions with sophisticated logic and analytic rigor. An
advocate of the Mohist idea of impartial concern for others (chien ai) and an
opponent of war, he is most famous for his Ten Paradoxes, collected in the
Chuang Tzu. Though Hui Shih’s explanations are no longer extant, paradoxes such
as “I go to Yüeh today but arrived yesterday” and “The south has no limit yet
has a limit” raise issues of relativity and perspectivism with respect to
language, values, and concepts such as space and time.
humanism, a set of
presuppositions that assigns to human beings a special position in the scheme
Huai Nan Tzu humanism 396 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 396 of things.
Not just a school of thought or a collection of specific beliefs or doctrines,
humanism is rather a general perspective from which the world is viewed. That
perspective received a gradual yet persistent articulation during different
historical periods and continues to furnish a central leitmotif of Western
civilization. It comes into focus when it is compared with two competing
positions. On the one hand, it can be contrasted with the emphasis on the
supernatural, transcendent domain, which considers humanity to be radically
dependent on divine order. On the other hand, it resists the tendency to treat
humanity scientifically as part of the natural order, on a par with other
living organisms. Occupying the middle position, humanism discerns in human
beings unique capacities and abilities, to be cultivated and celebrated for
their own sake. The word ‘humanism’ came into general use only in the
nineteenth century but was applied to intellectual and cultural developments in
previous eras. A teacher of classical languages and literatures in Renaissance
Italy was described as umanista (contrasted with legista, teacher of law), and
what we today call “the humanities,” in the fifteenth century was called studia
humanitatis, which stood for grammar, rhetoric, history, literature, and moral
philosophy. The inspiration for these studies came from the rediscovery of
ancient Greek and Latin texts; Plato’s complete works were translated for the
first time, and Aristotle’s philosophy was studied in more accurate versions
than those available during the Middle Ages. The unashamedly humanistic flavor
of classical writings had a tremendous impact on Renaissance scholars. Here,
one felt no weight of the supernatural pressing on the human mind, demanding
homage and allegiance. Humanity – with all its distinct capacities, talents,
worries, problems, possibilities – was the center of interest. It has been said
that medieval thinkers philosophized on their knees, but, bolstered by the new
studies, they dared to stand up and to rise to full stature. Instead of
devotional Church Latin, the medium of expression was the people’s own language
– Italian, French, German, English. Poetical, lyrical self-expression gained
momentum, affecting all areas of life. New paintings showed great interest in
human form. Even while depicting religious scenes, Michelangelo celebrated the
human body, investing it with instrinsic value and dignity. The details of
daily life – food, clothing, musical instruments – as well as nature and
landscape – domestic and exotic – were lovingly examined in paintings and
poetry. Imagination was stirred by stories brought home by the discoverers of
new lands and continents, enlarging the scope of human possibilities as
exhibited in the customs and the natural environments of strange, remote
peoples. The humanist mode of thinking deepened and widened its tradition with
the advent of eighteenth-century thinkers. They included French philosophes
like Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau, and other European and American figures –
Bentham, Hume, Lessing, Kant, Franklin, and Jefferson. Not always agreeing with
one another, these thinkers nevertheless formed a family united in support of
such values as freedom, equality, tolerance, secularism, and cosmopolitanism.
Although they championed untrammeled use of the mind, they also wanted it to be
applied in social and political reform, encouraging individual creativity and
exalting the active over the contemplative life. They believed in the
perfectibility of human nature, the moral sense and responsibility, and the
possibility of progress. The optimistic motif of perfectibility endured in the
thinking of nineteenth- and twentiethcentury humanists, even though the
accelerating pace of industrialization, the growth of urban populations, and
the rise in crime, nationalistic squabbles, and ideological strife leading to
largescale inhumane warfare often put in question the efficacy of humanistic
ideals. But even the depressing run of human experience highlighted the appeal
of those ideals, reinforcing the humanistic faith in the values of endurance,
nobility, intelligence, moderation, flexibility, sympathy, and love. Humanists
attribute crucial importance to education, conceiving of it as an all-around
development of personality and individual talents, marrying science to poetry
and culture to democracy. They champion freedom of thought and opinion, the use
of intelligence and pragmatic research in science and technology, and social
and political systems governed by representative institutions. Believing that
it is possible to live confidently without metaphysical or religious certainty
and that all opinions are open to revision and correction, they see human
flourishing as dependent on open communication, discussion, criticism, and
unforced consensus.
humanism, civic humanism,
civic 397 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 397 human nature, a quality or
group of qualities, belonging to all and only humans, that explains the kind of
being we are. We are all two-footed and featherless, but ‘featherless biped’
does not explain our socially significant characteristics. We are also all both
animals and rational beings (at least potentially), and ‘rational animal’ might
explain the special features we have that other kinds of beings, such as angels,
do not. The belief that there is a human nature is part of the wider thesis
that all natural kinds have essences. Acceptance of this position is compatible
with many views about the specific qualities that constitute human nature. In
addition to rationality and embodiment, philosophers have said that it is part
of our nature to be wholly selfinterested, benevolent, envious, sociable,
fearful of others, able to speak and to laugh, and desirous of immortality.
Philosophers disagree about how we are to discover our nature. Some think
metaphysical insight into eternal forms or truths is required, others that we
can learn it from observation of biology or of behavior. Most have assumed that
only males display human nature fully, and that females, even at their best,
are imperfect or incomplete exemplars. Philosophers also disagree on whether
human nature determines morality. Some think that by noting our distinctive
features we can infer what God wills us to do. Others think that our nature
shows at most the limits of what morality can require, since it would plainly
be pointless to direct us to ways of living that our nature makes impossible.
Some philosophers have argued that human nature is plastic and can be shaped in
different ways. Others hold that it is not helpful to think in terms of human
nature. They think that although we share features as members of a biological
species, our other qualities are socially constructed. If the differences
between male and female reflect cultural patterns of child rearing, work, and
the distribution of power, our biologically common features do not explain our
important characteristics and so do not constitute a nature.
human rights. See RIGHTS.
human sciences. See WEBER. Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1767–1835), German statesman,
scholar, and educator, often regarded as the father of comparative linguistics.
Born in Potsdam, Wilhelm, with his younger brother Alexander, was educated by
private tutors in the “enlightened” style thought suitable for future Prussian
diplomats. This included classical languages, history, philosophy, and
political economy. After his university studies in law at Frankfurt an der Oder
and Göttingen, his career was divided among assorted diplomatic posts, writing
on a broad range of topics, and (his first love) the study of languages. His
broad-ranging works reveal the important influences of Herder in his conception
of history and culture, Kant and Fichte in philosophy, and the French
“Ideologues” in linguistics. His most enduring work has proved to be the Introduction
(published in 1836) to his massive study of the Kawi language spoken on Java.
Humboldt maintained that language, as a vital and dynamic “organism,” is the
key to understanding both the operations of the human mind and the distinctive
differences characteristic of various national cultures. Every language
possesses a distinctive inner form that shapes, in a way reminiscent of Kant’s
more general categories, the subjective experiences, the worldview, and
ultimately the institutions of a given nation and its culture. While all later
comparative linguists are indebted to both his empirical studies and his
theoretical insights, such philosophers of culture as Dilthey and Cassirer
acknowledge him as establishing language as a central concern for the human
sciences. J.P.Su. Hume, David (1711–76), Scottish philosopher and historian who
may be aptly considered the leading neo-skeptic of the early modern period.
Many of Hume’s immediate predecessors (Descartes, Bayle, and Berkeley) had
grappled with important elements of skepticism. Hume consciously incorporated
many of these same elements into a philosophical system that manages to be both
skeptical and constructive. Born and educated in Edinburgh, Hume spent three
years (1734–37) in France writing the penultimate draft of A Treatise of Human
Nature. In middle life, in addition to writing a wide-ranging set of essays and
short treatises and a long History of England, he served briefly as companion
to a mad nobleman, then as a military attaché, before becoming librarian of the
Advocates Library in Edinburgh. In 1763 he served as private secretary to Lord
Hertford, the British ambassador in Paris; in 1765 he became secretary to the
embassy there and then served as chargé d’affaires. In 1767–68 he served in Lonhuman
nature Hume, David 398 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 398 don as
under-secretary of state for the Northern Department. He retired to Edinburgh
in 1769 and died there. Hume’s early care was chiefly in the hands of his
widowed mother, who reported that young David was “uncommon wake-minded” (i.e.,
uncommonly acute, in the local dialect of the period). His earliest surviving
letter, written in 1727, indicates that even at sixteen he was engaged in the
study that resulted in the publication (1739) of the first two volumes of A
Treatise of Human Nature. By the time he left college (c.1726) he had a
thorough grounding in classical authors, especially Cicero and the major Latin
poets; in natural philosophy (particularly that of Boyle) and mathematics; in
logic or theory of knowledge, metaphysics, and moral philosophy; and in
history. His early reading included many of the major English and French poets
and essayists of the period. He reports that in the three years ending about
March 1734, he read “most of the celebrated Books in Latin, French &
English,” and also learned Italian. Thus, although Hume’s views are often
supposed to result from his engagement with only one or two philosophers (with
either Locke and Berkeley, or Hutcheson or Newton), the breadth of his reading
suggests that no single writer or philosophical tradition provides the
comprehensive key to his thought. Hume’s most often cited works include A
Treatise of Human Nature (three volumes, 1739–40); an Abstract (1740) of
volumes 1 and 2 of the Treatise; a collection of approximately forty essays
(Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, first published, for the most part,
between 1741 and 1752); An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748); An
Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (1751); The Natural History of
Religion (1757); a six-volume History of England from Roman times to 1688
(1754–62); a brief autobiography, My Own Life (1777); and Dialogues concerning
Natural Religion (1778). Hume’s neo-skeptical stance manifests itself in each
of these works. He insists that philosophy “cannot go beyond experience; and
any hypothesis, that pretends to discover the ultimate original qualities of
human nature, ought at first to be rejected as presumptuous and chimerical.” He
says of the Treatise that it “is very sceptical, and tends to give us a notion
of the imperfections and narrow limits of the human understanding.” But he goes
well beyond the conventional recognition of human limitations; from his
skeptical starting place he projects an observationally based science of human
nature, and produces a comprehensive and constructive account of human nature
and experience. Hume begins the Treatise with a discussion of the “elements” of
his philosophy. Arguing that it is natural philosophers (scientists) who should
explain how sensation works, he focuses on those entities that are the
immediate and only objects present to the mind. These he calls “perceptions”
and distinguishes into two kinds, “impressions” and “ideas.” Hume initially
suggests that impressions (of which there are two kinds: of sensation and of
reflection) are more forceful or vivacious than ideas, but some ideas (those of
memory, e.g.) do sometimes take on enough force and vivacity to be called
impressions, and belief also adds sufficient force and vivacity to ideas to
make them practically indistinguishable from impressions. In the end we find
that impressions are clearly distinguished from ideas only insofar as ideas are
always causally dependent on impressions. Thomas Reid charged that the
allegedly representative theory of perception found in Descartes and Locke had
served as a philosophical Trojan horse leading directly to skeptical despair.
Hume was fully aware of the skeptical implications of this theory. He knew well
those sections of Bayle and Locke that reveal the inadequacy of Descartes’s
attempts to prove that there is an external world, and also appreciated the
force of the objections brought by Bayle and Berkeley against the
primary–secondary quality distinction championed by Locke. Hume adopted the
view that the immediate objects of the mind are always “perceptions” because he
thought it correct, and in spite of the fact that it leads to skepticism about
the external world. Satisfied that the battle to establish absolutely reliable
links between thought and reality had been fought and lost, Hume made no
attempt to explain how our impressions of sensation are linked to their
entirely “unknown causes.” He instead focused exclusively on perceptions qua
objects of mind: As to those impressions, which arise from the senses, their
ultimate cause is, in my opinion, perfectly inexplicable by human reason, and
‘twill always be impossible to decide with certainty, whether they arise
immediately from the object, or are produc’d by the creative power of the mind,
or are deriv’d from the author of our being. Nor is such a question any way
material to our present purpose. We may draw inferences from the coherence of
our perceptions, whether they be true or Hume, David Hume, David 399 4065h-l.qxd
08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 399 false; whether they represent nature justly, or be
mere illusions of the senses. Book I of the Treatise is an effort to show how
our perceptions cohere to form certain fundamental notions (those of space and
time, causal connection, external and independent existence, and mind) in
which, skeptical doubts notwithstanding, we repose belief and on which “life
and action entirely depend.” According to Hume, we have no direct impressions
of space and time, and yet the ideas of space and time are essential to our
existence. This he explains by tracing our idea of space to a “manner of
appearance”: by means of two senses, sight and touch, we have impressions that
array themselves as so many points on a contrasting background; the imagination
transforms these particulars of experience into a “compound impression, which
represents extension” or the abstract idea of space itself. Our idea of time
is, mutatis mutandis, accounted for in the same way: “As ‘tis from the
disposition of visible and tangible objects we receive the idea of space, so
from the succession of ideas and impressions we form the idea of time.” The
abstract idea of time, like all other abstract ideas, is represented in the
imagination by a “particular individual idea of a determinate quantity and
quality” joined to a term, ‘time’, that has general reference. Hume is often
credited with denying there is physical necessity and that we have any idea of
necessary connection. This interpretation significantly distorts his intent.
Hume was convinced by the Cartesians, and especially by Malebranche, that
neither the senses nor reason can establish that one object (a cause) is
connected together with another object (an effect) in such a way that the
presence of the one entails the existence of the other. Experience reveals only
that objects thought to be causally related are contiguous in time and space,
that the cause is prior to the effect, and that similar objects have been
constantly associated in this way. These are the defining, perceptible features
of the causal relation. And yet there seems to be more to the matter. “There
is,” he says, a “NECESSARY CONNECTION to be taken into consideration,” and our
belief in that relation must be explained. Despite our demonstrated inability
to see or prove that there are necessary causal connections, we continue to
think and act as if we had knowledge of them. We act, for example, as though
the future will necessarily resemble the past, and “wou’d appear ridiculous” if
we were to say “that ‘tis only probable the sun will rise to-morrow, or that
all men must dye.” To explain this phenomenon Hume asks us to imagine what life
would have been like for Adam, suddenly brought to life in the midst of the
world. Adam would have been unable to make even the simplest predictions about
the future behavior of objects. He would not have been able to predict that one
moving billiard ball, striking a second, would cause the second to move. And
yet we, endowed with the same faculties, can not only make, but are unable to
resist making, this and countless other such predictions. What is the
difference between ourselves and this putative Adam? Experience. We have
experienced the constant conjunction (the invariant succession of paired
objects or events) of particular causes and effects and, although our
experience never includes even a glimpse of a causal connection, it does arouse
in us an expectation that a particular event (a “cause”) will be followed by
another event (an “effect”) previously and constantly associated with it.
Regularities of experience give rise to these feelings, and thus determine the
mind to transfer its attention from a present impression to the idea of an
absent but associated object. The idea of necessary connection is copied from these
feelings. The idea has its foundation in the mind and is projected onto the
world, but there is nonetheless such an idea. That there is an objective
physical necessity to which this idea corresponds is an untestable hypothesis,
nor would demonstrating that such necessary connections had held in the past
guarantee that they will hold in the future. Thus, while not denying that there
may be physical necessity or that there is an idea of necessary connection,
Hume remains a skeptic about causal necessity. Hume’s account of our belief in
future effects or absent causes – of the process of mind that enables us to
plan effectively – is a part of this same explanation. Such belief involves an
idea or conception of the entity believed in, but is clearly different from
mere conception without belief. This difference cannot be explained by
supposing that some further idea, an idea of belief itself, is present when we
believe, but absent when we merely conceive. There is no such idea. Moreover,
given the mind’s ability to freely join together any two consistent ideas, if
such an idea were available we by an act of will could, contrary to experience,
combine the idea of belief with any other idea, and by so doing cause ourselves
to believe anything. Consequently, Hume concludes that belief can only be a
“different MANNER of conceiving an object”; it is a livelier, Hume, David Hume,
David 400 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 400 firmer, more vivid and
intense conception. Belief in certain “matters of fact” – the belief that
because some event or object is now being experienced, some other event or
object not yet available to experience will in the future be experienced – is
brought about by previous experience of the constant conjunction of two
impressions. These two impressions have been associated together in such a way
that the experience of one of them automatically gives rise to an idea of the
other, and has the effect of transferring the force or liveliness of the
impression to the associated idea, thereby causing this idea to be believed or
to take on the lively character of an impression. Our beliefs in continuing and
independently existing objects and in our own continuing selves are, on Hume’s
account, beliefs in “fictions,” or in entities entirely beyond all experience.
We have impressions that we naturally but mistakenly suppose to be continuing,
external objects, but analysis quickly reveals that these impressions are by
their very nature fleeting and observer-dependent. Moreover, none of our
impressions provides us with a distinctive mark or evidence of an external
origin. Similarly, when we focus on our own minds, we experience only a
sequence of impressions and ideas, and never encounter the mind or self in
which these perceptions are supposed to inhere. To ourselves we appear to be
merely “a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each
other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and
movement.” How do we, then, come to believe in external objects or our own
selves and self-identity? Neither reason nor the senses, working with
impressions and ideas, provide anything like compelling proof of the existence
of continuing, external objects, or of a continuing, unified self. Indeed,
these two faculties cannot so much as account for our belief in objects or
selves. If we had only reason and the senses, the faculties championed by,
respectively, the rationalists and empiricists, we would be mired in a
debilitating and destructive uncertainty. So unfortunate an outcome is avoided
only by the operation of an apparently unreliable third faculty, the
imagination. It, by means of what appear to be a series of outright mistakes
and trivial suggestions, leads us to believe in our own selves and in
independently existing objects. The skepticism of the philosophers is in this
way both confirmed (we can provide no arguments, e.g., proving the existence of
the external world) and shown to be of little practical import. An irrational
faculty, the imagination, saves us from the excesses of philosophy: “Philosophy
wou’d render us entirely Pyrrhonian,” says Hume, were not nature, in the form
of the imagination, too strong for it. Books II and III of the Treatise and the
Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals reveal Hume’s concern to explain
our moral behavior and judgments in a manner that is consistent with his
science of human nature, but which nonetheless recognizes the irreducible moral
content of these judgments. Thus he attempted to rescue the passions from the
ad hoc explanations and negative assessments of his predecessors. From the time
of Plato and the Stoics the passions had often been characterized as irrational
and unnatural animal elements that, given their head, would undermine
humankind’s true, rational nature. Hume’s most famous remark on the subject of
the passions, “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions,”
will be better understood if read in this context (and if it is remembered that
he also claims that reason can and does extinguish some passions). In contrast
to the long-standing orthodoxy, Hume assumes that the passions constitute an
integral and legitimate part of human nature, a part that can be explained
without recourse to physical or metaphysical speculation. The passions can be
treated as of a piece with other perceptions: they are secondary impressions
(“impressions of reflection”) that derive from prior impressions and ideas.
Some passions (pride and humility, love and hatred) may be characterized as
indirect; i.e., they arise as the result of a double relation of impressions
and ideas that gives them one form of intentional character. These passions
have both assignable causes (typically, the qualities of some person or some
object belonging to a person) and a kind of indirect object (the person with
the qualities or objects just mentioned); the object of pride or humility is
always oneself, while the object of love or hatred is always another. The
direct passions (desire, aversion, hope, fear, etc.) are feelings caused
immediately by pleasure or pain, or the prospect thereof, and take entities or
events as their intentional objects. In his account of the will Hume claims
that while all human actions are caused, they are nonetheless free. He argues
that our ascriptions of causal connection have all the same foundation, namely,
the observation of a “uniform and regular conjunction” of one object with
another. Given that in the course of human affairs we observe “the same
uniformity and regular operation of natural principles” found in the physical
world, and that this uniformity results in an expectation of exactly the sort
produced by physHume, David Hume, David 401 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page
401 ical regularities, it follows that there is no “negation of necessity and
causes,” or no liberty of indifference. The will, that “internal impression we
feel and are conscious of when we knowingly give rise to” any action or
thought, is an effect always linked (by constant conjunction and the resulting
feeling of expectation) to some prior cause. But, insofar as our actions are
not forcibly constrained or hindered, we do remain free in another sense: we
retain a liberty of spontaneity. Moreover, only freedom in this latter sense is
consistent with morality. A liberty of indifference, the possibility of
uncaused actions, would undercut moral assessment, for such assessments
presuppose that actions are causally linked to motives. Morality is for Hume an
entirely human affair founded on human nature and the circumstances of human
life (one form of naturalism). We as a species possess several notable
dispositions that, over time, have given rise to morality. These include a
disposition to form bonded family groups, a disposition (sympathy) to
communicate and thus share feelings, a disposition – the moral sense – to feel
approbation and disapprobation in response to the actions of others, and a
disposition to form general rules. Our disposition to form family groups
results in small social units in which a natural generosity operates. The fact
that such generosity is possible shows that the egoists are mistaken, and
provides a foundation for the distinction between virtue and vice. The fact
that the moral sense responds differently to distinctive motivations – we feel
approbation in response to well-intended actions, disapprobation in response to
ill-intended ones – means that our moral assessments have an affective but
nonetheless cognitive foundation. To claim that Nero was vicious is to make a
judgment about Nero’s motives or character in consequence of an observation of
him that has caused an impartial observer to feel a unique sentiment of
disapprobation. That our moral judgments have this affective foundation
accounts for the practical and motivational character of morality. Reason is
“perfectly inert,” and hence our practical, actionguiding moral distinctions
must derive from the sentiments or feelings provided by our moral sense. Hume
distinguishes, however, between the “natural virtues” (generosity, benevolence,
e.g.) and the “artificial virtues” (justice, allegiance, e.g.). These differ in
that the former not only produce good on each occasion of their practice, but
are also on every occasion approved. In contrast, any particular instantiation
of justice may be “contrary to the public good” and be approved only insofar as
it is entailed by “a general scheme or system of action, which is
advantageous.” The artificial virtues differ also in being the result of
contrivance arising from “the circumstances and necessities of life.” In our
original condition we did not need the artificial virtues because our natural
dispositions and responses were adequate to maintain the order of small,
kinshipbased units. But as human numbers increased, so too did the scarcity of
some material goods lead to an increase in the possibility of conflict,
particularly over property, between these units. As a consequence, and out of
self-interest, our ancestors were gradually led to establish conventions
governing property and its exchange. In the early stages of this necessary development
our disposition to form general rules was an indispensable component; at later
stages, sympathy enables many individuals to pursue the artificial virtues from
a combination of self-interest and a concern for others, thus giving the fully
developed artificial virtues a foundation in two kinds of motivation. Hume’s
Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and his Enquiry concerning the
Principles of Morals represent his effort to “recast” important aspects of the
Treatise into more accessible form. His Essays extend his human-centered
philosophical analysis to political institutions, economics, and literary
criticism. His best-selling History of England provides, among much else, an
extended historical analysis of competing Whig and Tory claims about the origin
and nature of the British constitution. Hume’s trenchant critique of religion
is found principally in his Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Natural
History of Religion, and Dialogues. In an effort to curb the excesses of
religious dogmatism, Hume focuses his attention on miracles, on the argument
from design, and on the origin of the idea of monotheism. Miracles are putative
facts used to justify a commitment to certain creeds. Such commitments are
often maintained with a mind-numbing tenacity and a disruptive intolerance
toward contrary views. Hume argues that the widely held view of miracles as
violations of a law of nature is incoherent, that the evidence for even the
most likely miracle will always be counterbalanced by the evidence establishing
the law of nature that the miracle allegedly violates, and that the evidence
supporting any given miracle is necessarily suspect. His argument leaves open
the possibility that violations of the laws of nature may have occurred, but
shows that beliefs about such events lack the force of evidence needed to justify
the arrogance and intolerance that characterizes so many of the religious.
Hume’s critique of the argument from design has a similar effect. This argument
purports to show that our well-ordered universe must be the effect of a
supremely intelligent cause, that each aspect of this divine creation is well
designed to fulfill some beneficial end, and that these effects show us that
the Deity is caring and benevolent. Hume shows that these conclusions go well
beyond the available evidence. The pleasant and well-designed features of the
world are balanced by a good measure of the unpleasant and the plainly botched.
Our knowledge of causal connections depends on the experience of constant
conjunctions. Such connections cause the vivacity of a present impression to be
transferred to the idea associated with it, and leave us believing in that
idea. But in this case the effect to be explained, the universe, is unique, and
its cause unknown. Consequently, we cannot possibly have experiential grounds
for any kind of inference about this cause. On experiential grounds the most we
can say is that there is a massive, mixed effect, and, as we have through
experience come to believe that effects have causes commensurate to them, this
effect probably does have a commensurately large and mixed cause. Furthermore,
as the effect is remotely like the products of human manufacture, we can say
“that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote
analogy to human intelligence.” There is indeed an inference to be drawn from
the unique effect in question (the universe) to the cause of that effect, but
it is not the “argument” of the theologians nor does it in any way support
sectarian pretension or intolerance. The Natural History of Religion focuses on
the question of the origin of religion in human nature, and delivers a
thoroughly naturalistic answer: the widespread but not universal belief in
invisible and intelligent power can be traced to derivative and easily
perverted principles of our nature. Primitive peoples found physical nature not
an orderly whole produced by a beneficent designer, but arbitrary and fearsome,
and they came to understand the activities of nature as the effect of petty powers
that could, through propitiating worship, be influenced to ameliorate their
lives. Subsequently, the same fears and perceptions transformed polytheism into
monotheism, the view that a single, omnipotent being created and still controls
the world and all that transpires in it. From this conclusion Hume goes on to
argue that monotheism, apparently the more sophisticated position, is morally
retrograde. Monotheism tends naturally toward zeal and intolerance, encourages
debasing, “monkish virtues,” and proves itself a danger to society: it is a
source of violence and a cause of immorality. In contrast, polytheism, which
Hume here regards as a form of atheism, is tolerant of diversity and encourages
genuine virtues that improve humankind. From a moral point of view, at least
this one form of atheism is superior to theism.
Hu Shih (1891–1962),
Chinese philosopher and historian and a famous liberal intellectual in
contemporary China. He studied at Columbia University under Dewey, and brought
pragmatism to China. He was the Chinese ambassador to the United States during
World War II and later headed the Academia Sinica in Taipei. A versatile
writer, he helped to initiate the vernacular movement in Chinese literature;
published his Ancient History of Chinese Philosophy in 1919, the first history
of Chinese philosophy written from a modern point of view; and advocated
wholesale Westernization or modernization of China. A reformist committed to
the democratic ideal, he remained an anti-Communist throughout his life.
Husserl, Edmund
(1859–1938), German philosopher and founder of phenomenology. Born in Prossnits
(now Proste v jov in the Czech Republic), he studied science and philosophy at
Leipzig, mathematics and philosophy at Berlin, and philosophy and psychology at
Vienna and Halle. He taught at Halle (1887–1901), Göttingen (1901– 16), and
Freiburg (1916–28). Husserl and Frege were the founders of the two major
twentiethcentury trends. Through his work and his influence on Russell,
Wittgenstein, and others, Frege inspired the movement known as analytic
philosophy, while Husserl, through his work and his influence on Heidegger,
Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and others, established the movement known as
phenomenology. Husserl began his academic life as a mathematician. He studied
at Berlin with Kronecker and Weierstrass and wrote a dissertation in
mathematics at Vienna. There, influenced by Brentano, his interests turned
toward philosohumors Husserl, Edmund 403 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page
403 phy and psychology but remained related to mathematics. His habilitation,
written at Halle, was a psychological-philosophical study of the concept of
number and led to his first book, The Philosophy of Arithmetic (1891). Husserl
distinguishes between numbers given intuitively and those symbolically
intended. The former are given as the objective correlates of acts of counting;
when we count things set out before us, we constitute groups, and these groups
can be compared with each other as more and less. In this way the first few
numbers in the number series can be intuitively presented. Although most
numbers are only symbolically intended, their sense as numbers is derived from
those that are intuitively given. During 1890–1900 Husserl expanded his
philosophical concerns from mathematics to logic and the general theory of
knowledge, and his reflections culminated in his Logical Investigations
(1900–01). The work is made up of six investigations preceded by a volume of
prolegomena. The prolegomena are a sustained and effective critique of
psychologism, the doctrine that reduces logical entities, such as propositions,
universals, and numbers, to mental states or mental activities. Husserl insists
on the objectivity of such targets of consciousness and shows the incoherence
of reducing them to the activities of mind. The rest of the work examines signs
and words, abstraction, parts and wholes, logical grammar, the notion of
presentation, and truth and evidence. His earlier distinction between intuitive
presentation and symbolic intention is now expanded from our awareness of
numbers to the awareness of all sorts of objects of consciousness. The contrast
between empty intention and fulfillment or intuition is applied to perceptual
objects, and it is also applied to what he calls categorial objects: states of
affairs, relationships, causal connections, and the like. Husserl claims that
we can have an intellectual intuition of such things and he describes this
intuition; it occurs when we articulate an object as having certain features or
relationships. The formal structure of categorial objects is elegantly related
to the grammatical parts of language. As regards simple material objects,
Husserl observes that we can intend them either emptily or intuitively, but
even when they are intuitively given, they retain sides that are absent and
only cointended by us, so perception itself is a mixture of empty and filled
intentions. The term ‘intentionality’ refers to both empty and filled, or
signitive and intuitive, intentions. It names the relationship consciousness
has toward things, whether those things are directly given or meant only in
their absence. Husserl also shows that the identity of things is given to us
when we see that the object we once intended emptily is the same as what is
actually given to us now. Such identities are given even in perceptual experience,
as the various sides and aspects of things continue to present one and the same
object, but identities are given even more explicitly in categorial intuition,
when we recognize the partial identity between a thing and its features, or
when we directly focus on the identity a thing has with itself. These phenomena
are described under the general rubric of identitysynthesis. A weakness in the
first edition of Logical Investigations was the fact that Husserl remained
somewhat Kantian in it and distinguished sharply between the thing as it is
given to us and the thing-in-itself; he claimed that in his phenomenology he
described only the thing as it is given to us. In the decade 1900–10, through
deeper reflection on our experience of time, on memory, and on the nature of
philosophical thinking, he overcame this Kantian distinction and claimed that
the thing-in-itself can be intuitively given to us as the identity presented in
a manifold of appearances. His new position was expressed in Ideas Pertaining
to a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy (1913). The book was
misinterpreted by many as adopting a traditional idealism, and many thinkers
who admired Husserl’s earlier work distanced themselves from what he now
taught. Husserl published three more books. Formal and Transcendental Logic
(1929) was written right after his retirement; Cartesian Meditations (1931),
which appeared in French translation, was an elaboration of some lectures he
gave in Paris. In addition, some earlier manuscripts on the experience of time
were assembled by Edith Stein and edited by Heidegger in 1928 as Lectures on
the Phenomenology of Inner Time-Consciousness. Thus, Husserl published only six
books, but he amassed a huge amount of manuscripts, lecture notes, and working papers.
He always retained the spirit of a scientist and did his philosophical work in
the manner of tentative experiments. Many of his books can be seen as
compilations of such experiments rather than as systematic treatises. Because
of its exploratory and developmental character, his thinking does not lend
itself to doctrinal summary. Husserl was of Jewish ancestry, and after his
death his papers were in danger from the Nazi regime; they were covertly taken
out of Germany by a Belgian scholar, Herman Husserl, Edmund Husserl, Edmund 404
4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 404 Leo Van Breda, who, after World War II,
established the Husserl Archives at Louvain. This institution, with centers at
Cologne, Freiburg, Paris, and New York, has since supervised the critical
edition of many volumes of Husserl’s writings in the series Husserliana.
Husserl believes that things are presented to us in various ways, and that
philosophy should be engaged in precise description of these appearances. It
should avoid constructing large-scale theories and defending ideologies. It
should analyze, e.g., how visual objects are perceived and how they depend on
our cognitive activity of seeing, focusing, moving about, on the correlation of
seeing with touching and grasping, and so on. Philosophy should describe the
different ways in which such “regions of being” as material objects, living
things, other persons, and cultural objects are given, how the past and the
present are intended, how speech, numbers, time and space, and our own bodies
are given to us, and so on. Husserl carries out many such analyses himself and
in all of them distinguishes between the object given and the subjective
conscious activity we must perform to let it be given. The phenomenological
description of the object is called noematic analysis and that of the
subjective intentions is called noetic analysis. The noema is the object as
described phenomenologically, the noesis is the corresponding mental activity,
also as described by phenomenology. The objective and the subjective are
correlative but never reducible to one another. In working out such
descriptions we must get to the essential structures of things. We do so not by
just generalizing over instances we have experienced, but by a process he calls
“free variation” or “imaginative variation.” We attempt in our imagination to
remove various features from the target of our analysis; the removal of some
features would leave the object intact, but the removal of other features would
destroy the object; hence, when we come upon the latter we know we have hit on
something essential to the thing. The method of imaginative variation thus
leads to eidetic intuition, the insight that this or that feature belongs to
the eidos, the essence, of the thing in question. Eidetic intuition is directed
not only toward objects but also toward the various forms of intentionality, as
we try to determine the essence of perception, memory, judging, and the like.
Husserl thinks that the eidetic analysis of intentionality and its objects
yields apodictic truths, truths that can be seen to be necessary. Examples
might be that human beings could not be without a past and future, and that
each material perceptual object has sides and aspects other than those
presented at any moment. Husserl admits that the objects of perceptual
experience, material things, are not given apodictically to perception because
they contain parts that are only emptily intended, but he insists that the
phenomenological reflection on perceptual experience, the reflection that
yields the statement that perception involves a mixture of empty and filled
intentions, can be apodictic: we know apodictically that perception must have a
mixture of empty and filled intentions. Husserl did admit in the 1920s that
although phenomenological experience and statements could be apodictic, they
would never be adequate to what they describe, i.e., further clarifications of
what they signify could always be carried out. This would mean, e.g., that we
can be apodictically sure that human beings could not be what they are if they
did not have a sense of past and future, but what it is to have a past and
future always needs deeper clarification. Husserl has much to say about
philosophical thinking. He distinguishes between the “natural attitude,” our
straightforward involvement with things and the world, and the
“phenomenological attitude,” the reflective point of view from which we carry
out philosophical analysis of the intentions exercised in the natural attitude
and the objective correlates of these intentions. When we enter the
phenomenological attitude, we put out of action or suspend all the intentions
and convictions of the natural attitude; this does not mean that we doubt or
negate them, only that we take a distance from them and contemplate their
structure. Husserl calls this suspension the phenomenological epoché. In our
human life we begin, of course, in the natural attitude, and the name for the
processs by which we move to the phenomenological attitude is called the
phenomenological reduction, a “leading back” from natural beliefs to the
reflective consideration of intentions and their objects. In the
phenomenological attitude we look at the intentions that we normally look
through, those that function anonymously in our straightforward involvement
with the world. Throughout his career, Husserl essayed various “ways to
reduction” or arguments to establish philosophy. At times he tried to model the
argument on Descartes’s methodical doubt; at times he tried to show that the world-directed
sciences need the further supplement of phenomenological reflection if they are
to be truly scientific. One of the special features of the natural attitude is
that it simply accepts the world as a background or horizon for all our more
particular experiences and beliefs. The world is not a large thing nor is it
the sum total of things; it is the horizon or matrix for all particular things
and states of affairs. The world as noema is correlated to our world-belief or
world-doxa as noesis. In the phenomenological attitude we take a distance even
toward our natural being in the world and we describe what it is to have a
world. Husserl thinks that this sort of radical reflection and radical
questioning is necessary for beginning philosophy and entering into what he
calls pure or transcendental phenomenology; so long as we fail to question our
world-belief and the world as such, we fail to reach philosophical purity and
our analyses will in fact become parts of worldly sciences (such as psychology)
and will not be philosophical. Husserl distinguishes between the apophantic and
the ontological domains. The apophantic is the domain of senses and
propositions, while the ontological is the domain of things, states of affairs,
relations, and the like. Husserl calls “apophantic analytics” the science that
examines the formal, logical structures of the apophantic domain and “formal
ontology” the science that examines the formal structures of the ontological
domain. The movement between focusing on the ontological domain and focusing on
the apophantic domain occurs within the natural attitude, but it is described
from the phenomenological attitude. This movement establishes the difference
between propositions and states of affairs, and it permits scientific
verification; science is established in the zigzag motion between focusing on
things and focusing on propositions, which are then verified or falsified when
they are confirmed or disconfirmed by the way things appear. Evidence is the
activity of either having a thing in its direct presence or experiencing the
conformity or disconformity between an empty intention and the intuition that
is to fulfill it. There are degrees of evidence; things can be given more or
less fully and more or less distinctly. Adequation occurs when an intuition
fully satisfies an empty intention. Husserl also makes a helpful distinction
between the passive, thoughtless repetition of words and the activity of
explicit judging, in which we distinctly make judgments on our own. Explicit
thinking can itself fall back into passivity or become “sedimented” as people
take it for granted and go on to build further thinking upon it. Such
sedimented thought must be reactivated and its meanings revived. Passive
thinking may harbor contradictions and incoherences; the application of formal
logic presumes judgments that are distinctly executed. In our reflective
phenomenological analyses we describe various intentional acts, but we also
discover the ego as the owner or agent behind these acts. Husserl distinguishes
between the psychological ego, the ego taken as a part of the world, and the
transcendental ego, the ego taken as that which has a world and is engaged in
truth, and hence to some extent transcends the world. He often comments on the
remarkable ambiguity of the ego, which is both a part of the world (as a human
being) and yet transcends the world (as a cognitive center that possesses or
intends the world). The transcendental ego is not separable from individuals;
it is a dimension of every human being. We each have a transcendental ego,
since we are all intentional and rational beings. Husserl also devoted much
effort to analyzing intersubjectivity and tried to show how other egos and
other minds, other centers of conscious and rational awareness, can be
presented and intended. The role of the body, the role of speech and other
modes of communication, and the fact that we all share things and a world in common
are important elements in these analyses. The transcendental ego, the source of
all intentional acts, is constituted through time: it has its own identity,
which is different from that of the identity of things or states of affairs.
The identity of the ego is built up through the flow of experiences and through
memory and anticipation. One of Husserl’s major contributions is his analysis
of time-consciousness and its relation to the identity of the self, a topic to
which he often returns. He distinguishes among the objective time of the world,
the inner time of the flow of our experiences (such as acts of perception,
judgments, and memories), and a third, still deeper level that he calls “the
consciousness of inner time.” It is this third, deepest level, the
consciousness of inner time, that permits even our mental acts to be
experienced as temporal. This deepest level also provides the ultimate context
in which the identity of the ego is constituted. In one way, we achieve our
conscious identity through the memories that we store and recall, but these
memories themselves have to be stitched together by the deepest level of
temporality in order to be recoverable as belonging to one and the same self.
Husserl observes that on this deepest level of the consciousness of inner time,
we never have a simple atomic present: what we come to as ultimate is a moving
form Husserl, Edmund Husserl, Edmund 406 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page
406 that has a retention of the immediate past, a protention of that which is
coming, and a central core. This form of inner time-consciousness, the form of
what Husserl calls “the living present,” is prior even to the ego and is a kind
of apex reached by his philosophical analysis. One of the important themes that
Husserl developed in the last decade of his work is that of the life-world or
Lebenswelt. He claims that scientific and mathematical abstraction has roots in
the prescientific world, the world in which we live. This world has its own
structures of appearance, identification, evidence, and truth, and the
scientific world is established on its basis. One of the tasks of phenomenology
is to show how the idealized entities of science draw their sense from the
life-world. Husserl claims, e.g., that geometrical forms have their roots in
the activity of measuring and in the idealization of the volumes, surfaces,
edges, and intersections we experience in the life-world. The sense of the
scientific world and its entities should not be placed in opposition to the
life-world, but should be shown, by phenomenological analysis, to be a
development of appearances found in it. In addition, the structures and
evidences of the lifeworld itself must be philosophically described. Husserl’s
influence in philosophy has been very great during the entire twentieth
century, especially in Continental Europe. His concept of intentionality is
understood as a way of overcoming the Cartesian dualism between mind and world,
and his study of signs, formal systems, and parts and wholes has been valuable in
structuralism and literary theory. His concept of the life-world has been used
as a way of integrating science with wider forms of human activity, and his
concepts of time and personal identity have been useful in psychoanalytic
theory and existentialism. He has inspired work in the social sciences and
recently his ideas have proved helpful to scholars in cognitive science and
artificial intelligence.
See also BRENTANO,
INTENTIONALITY, KANT, PHENOMENOLOGY. R.So.
Hutcheson, Francis
(1694–1746), Scottish philosopher who was the chief exponent of the early
modern moral sense theory and of a similar theory postulating a sense of
beauty. He was born in Drumalig, Ireland, and completed his theological
training in 1717 at the University of Glasgow, where he later taught moral
philosophy. He was a Presbyterian minister and founded an academy for
Presbyterian youth in Dublin. Sparked by Hobbes’s thesis, in Leviathan (1651),
that human beings always act out of selfinterest, moral debate in the
eighteenth century was preoccupied with the possibility of a genuine
benevolence. Hutcheson characterized his first work, An Inquiry into the
Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), as a defense of the
nonegoistic moral sense theory of his more immediate predecessor, Shaftesbury,
against the egoism of Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733). His second work, An Essay
on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections with Illustrations on
the Moral Sense (1728), explores the psychology of human action, apparently influenced
by Butler’s classification of the passions (in his Sermons, 1726). Hutcheson
asserts the existence of several “internal” senses – i.e., capacities for
perceptual responses to concepts (such as one’s idea of Nero’s character), as
opposed to perceptions of physical objects. Among these internal senses are
those of honor, sympathy, morality, and beauty. Only the latter two, however,
are discussed in detail by Hutcheson, who develops his account of each within
the framework of Locke’s empiricist epistemology. For Hutcheson, the idea of
beauty is produced in us when we experience pleasure upon thinking of certain
natural objects or artifacts, just as our idea of moral goodness is occasioned
by the approval we feel toward an agent when we think of her actions, even if
they in no way benefit us. Beauty and goodness (and their opposites) are
analogous to Lockean secondary qualities, such as colors, tastes, smells, and
sounds, in that their existence depends somehow on the minds of perceivers. The
quality the sense of beauty consistently finds pleasurable is a pattern of
“uniformity amidst variety,” while the quality the moral sense invariably
approves is benevolence. A principal reason for thinking we possess a moral
sense, according to Hutcheson, is that we approve of many actions unrelated or
even contrary to our interests – a fact that suggests not all approval is
reason-based. Further, he argues that attempts to explain our feelings of
approval or disapproval without referring to a moral sense are futile: our
reasons are ultimately grounded in the fact that we simply are constituted to
care about others and take pleasure in benevolence (the quality of being
concerned about others for their own sakes). For instance, we approve of
temperance because overindulgence signifies selfishness, and selfishness is
contrary to benevolence. Hutcheson also finds that the ends promoted by the
benevolent person have a tendency to produce the greatest happiness for the
greatest number. Thus, since he regards being motivated by benevolence as what
makes actions morally good, Hutcheson’s theory is a version of motive
utilitarianism. On Hutcheson’s moral psychology, we are motivated, ultimately,
not by reason alone, but by desires that arise in us at the prospect of our own
or others’ pleasure. Hutcheson formulates several quantitative maxims that
purport to relate the strength of motivating desires to the degrees of good, or
benefit, projected for different actions – an analysis that anticipates
Bentham’s hedonic calculus. Hutcheson was also one of the first philosophers to
recognize and make use of the distinction between exciting, or motivating,
reasons and justifying reasons. Exciting reasons are affections, or desires,
ascribed to an agent as motives that explain particular actions. Justifying
reasons derive from the approval of the moral sense and serve to indicate why a
certain action is morally good. The connection between these two kinds of
reasons has been a source of considerable debate. Contemporary critics included
John Balguy (1686–1748), who charged that Hutcheson’s moral theory renders
virtue arbitrary, since it depends on whatever human nature God happened to
give us, which could just as well have been such as to make us delight in
malice. Hutcheson discussed his views in correspondence with Hume, who later
sent Hutcheson the unpublished manuscript of his own account of moral sentiment
(Book III of A Treatise of Human Nature). As a teacher of Adam Smith, Hutcheson
helped shape Smith’s widely influential economic and moral theories.
Hutcheson’s major works also include A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy
(originally published in Latin in 1742) and A System of Moral Philosophy
(1755).
See also BENTHAM, HUME, MORAL SENSE THEORY,
SMITH. E.S.R. Huygens, Christiaan (1629–95), Dutch physicist and astronomer who
ranked among the leading experimental scientists of his time and influenced
many other thinkers, including Leibniz. He wrote on physics and astronomy in
Latin (Horologium Oscillatorium, 1673; De Vi Centrifuga, 1703) and in French
for the Journal des Scavans. He became a founding member of the French Academy
of Sciences. Huygens ground lenses, built telescopes, discovered the rings of
Saturn, and invented the pendulum clock. His most popular composition,
Cosmotheoros (1699), inspired by Fontenelle, praises a divine architect and
conjectures the possible existence of rational beings on other planets. J.-L.S.
Hwajaeng-non. See KOREAN PHILOSOPHY. hyle, ancient Greek term for matter.
Aristotle brought the word into use in philosophy by contrast with the term for
form, and as designating one of the four causes. By hyle Aristotle usually
means ‘that out of which something has been made’, but he can also mean by it
‘that which has form’. In Aristotelian philosophy hyle is sometimes also
identified with potentiality and with substrate. Neoplatonists identified hyle
with the receptacle of Plato.
hylomorphism, the
doctrine, first taught by Aristotle, that concrete substance consists of form
in matter (hyle). The details of this theory are explored in the central books
of Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Zeta, Eta, and Theta).
hylozoism (from Greek
hyle, ‘matter’, and zoe, ‘life’), the doctrine that matter is intrinsically
alive, or that all bodies, from the world as a whole down to the smallest
corpuscle, have some degree or some kind of life. It differs from panpsychism
though the distinction is sometimes blurred – in upholding the universal
presence of life per se, rather than of soul or of psychic attributes. Inasmuch
as it may also hold that there are no living entities not constituted of
matter, hylozoism is often criticized by theistic philosophers as a form of
atheism. The term was introduced polemically by Ralph Cudworth, the
seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonist, to help define a position that is
significantly in contrast to soul–body dualism (Pythagoras, Plato, Descartes),
reductive materialism (Democritus, Hobbes), and Aristotelian hylomorphism. So
understood, hylozoism had many advocates in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
among both scientists and naturalistically minded philosophers. In the
twentieth century, the term has come to be used, rather unhelpfully, to
characterize the animistic and naive-vitalist views of the early Greek
philosophers, especially Thales, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, and Empedocles – who
could hardly count as hylozoists in Cudworth’s sophisticated sense.
Hypatia (c.370–415),
Greek Neoplatonist philosopher who lived and taught in Alexandria. She was
brutally murdered by a Christian mob Huygens, Christiaan Hypatia 408
4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 408 because of her associations with the
city’s prefect, who was in conflict with its aggressive archbishop, Cyril. She
is said to have written commentaries on certain mathematical works, but the only
certain trace of her literary activity is in her father Theon’s commentary on
book 3 of Ptolemy’s Almagest, which Theon says is Hypatia’s redaction. Hypatia
appears to have been a very popular philosophy teacher. She presumably
professed a standard Neoplatonist curriculum, using mathematics as a ladder to
the intelligible world. A good sense of her views can be gained from the
essays, hymns, and letters of her pupil Synesius, bishop of Ptolemais and an
eclectic man of letters. Hypatia’s modern fame can be traced back to the
anticlericalism of the Enlightenment; see, e.g., chapter 47 of Edward Gibbon’s
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1778). The most
influential representation of her appeared in Charles Kingsley’s didactic
historical novel Hypatia or New Foes with an Old Face (1853). The facts that –
according to ancient report – Hypatia was not only a brilliant person, but a
beautiful one who aroused the erotic passion of (at least) one student, and
that she was stripped naked before being slaughtered, seem to have contributed
to the revival of interest in her. See also NEOPLATONISM. I.M. hypostasis (from
Latin, ‘substance’), the process of regarding a concept or abstraction as an
independent or real entity. The verb forms ‘hypostatize’ and ‘reify’ designate
the acts of positing objects of a certain sort for the purposes of one’s
theory. It is sometimes implied that a fallacy is involved in so describing
these processes or acts, as in ‘Plato was guilty of the reification of
universals’. The issue turns largely on criteria of ontological commitment.
hypothetico-deductive
method, a method of testing hypotheses. Thought to be preferable to the method
of enumerative induction, whose limitations had been decisively demonstrated by
Hume, the hypothetico-deductive (H-D) method has been viewed by many as the
ideal scientific method. It is applied by introducing an explanatory hypothesis
resulting from earlier inductions, a guess, or an act of creative imagination.
The hypothesis is logically conjoined with a statement of initial conditions.
The purely deductive consequences of this conjunction are derived as
predictions, and the statements asserting them are subjected to experimental or
observational test. More formally, given (H • A) P O, H is the hypothesis, A a
statement of initial conditions, and O one of the testable consequences of (H •
A). If the hypothesis is ‘all lead is malleable’, and ‘this piece of lead is
now being hammered’ states the initial conditions, it follows deductively that
‘this piece of lead will change shape’. In deductive logic the schema is
formally invalid, committing the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent.
But repeated occurrences of O can be said to confirm the conjunction of H and
A, or to render it more probable. On the other hand, the schema is deductively
valid (the argument form modus tollens). For this reason, Karl Popper and his
followers think that the H-D method is best employed in seeking falsifications
of theoretical hypotheses. Criticisms of the method point out that infinitely
many hypotheses can explain, in the H-D mode, a given body of data, so that
successful predictions are not probative, and that (following Duhem) it is
impossible to test isolated singular hypotheses because they are always contained
in complex theories any one of whose parts is eliminable in the face of
negative evidence.
.
Ibn Bajja, Abu Bakr, in
Latin, Avempace (d.1139), Spanish Islamic philosopher who was exceptionally
well regarded by later Arabic authorities. During a career as a government
official and vizier he wrote important treatises on philosophy but appears to
have left most of them unfinished. One of them provides an important theory of
the conjunction of the intellect with the human, based in part on notions of
progressive abstraction of specific forms and the universality of the Active
Intellect. Another offers a political philosophy grounded in assumptions about
a representative of the virtuous city who exists within a hostile, erring city
as a solitary or aberrant “weed.” P.E.W. Ibn Daud, Abraham, also called Rabad
(c.1110– 80), Spanish Jewish historian and astronomer, a philosophic precursor
of Maimonides. Born in Córdova and schooled by a beloved uncle, Baruch Albalia,
in Jewish and Greco-Arabic learning, he fled the Almohad invasion of 1146,
settling in Christian Toledo, where he was martyred. His Sefer ha-Qabbalah
(1161; translated by Gerson Cohen as The Book of Tradition, 1967) finds
providential continuity in Jewish intellectual history. His Emunah Ramah (1161;
translated by Norbert Samuelson as The Exalted Faith, 1986) was written in
Arabic but preserved in Hebrew. It anchors Jewish natural theology and ethics
in Avicennan metaphysics, mitigated by a voluntaristic account of emanation and
by the assertion that God created matter. Ibn Daud saves human freedom by
holding that God knows undetermined events as possible. He defends prophecy as
an outpouring of the Active Intellect – or of God – on those whose natures and
circumstances permit their inspiration. Prophetic miracles are perfectly
natural alterations of the familiar characters of things. See also AVICENNA.
L.E.G. Ibn Gabirol, Solomon, in Latin, Avicebron (c.1020–c.1057), Spanish
Jewish philosopher and poet, the author (in Arabic) of The Source of Life, a classic
of Neoplatonic thought. This work was written without any explicit Jewish
associations, and was preserved only in a twelfth-century Latin translation,
the Fons vitae. Consequently, its author was assumed until the last century to
be Muslim or Christian. Jewish Neoplatonists and mystics until the Renaissance
were familiar with the work and its author, and its influence was felt in
Christian Scholastic circles as well. Ibn Gabirol’s philosophy is also
reflected in his epic Hebrew poem “The Royal Crown,” which merges the personal
and religious feelings of the poet with a verse summary of his metaphysical and
astronomical beliefs. The Fons vitae is a prolix and often inconsistent
treatise, but exhibits radical creativity. The influence of Proclus and of the
first Jewish Neoplatonist, the tenth-century Isaac Israeli, is also evident.
Ibn Gabirol superimposes on the traditional Neoplatonic triad of universal
substances, the Intellect, Soul, and Nature, another set of creative and more
fundamental hypostases, the One, Divine Will, and Form and Matter. In one of
his most radical formulations, this primordial Form and Matter are thought to
suffuse not only the entire world that proceeds from them, but to be found
within the One itself, Matter being identified with the divine essence, Form
with Divine Will. Matter here emerges as prior and more essential to the divine
being than Form; God by implication is identified primarily with potentiality
and becoming, a point not lost upon the mystics. See also JEWISH PHILOSOPHY.
A.L.I. Ibn Khaldun, ‘Abdurrahman (1332–1406), Arab historian, scholar, and
politician, the first thinker to articulate a comprehensive theory of
historiography and philosophy of history in his Muqaddima (final revision
1402), the introductory volume to his Universal History (Kitab al-’ibar,
1377–82). Born and raised in Tunis, he spent the politically active first part
of his life in northwestern Africa and Muslim Spain. He moved to Cairo in 1382
to pursue a career as professor of Maliki law and judge. Ibn Khaldun created in
the Muqaddima (English translation by F. Rosenthal, 1967) what he called an
“entirely original science.” He established a scientific methodology for
historiogra410 I phy by providing a theory of the basic laws operating in
history so that not only could the occurrences of the past be registered but
also “the how and why of events” could be understood. Historiography is based
on the criticism of sources; the criteria to be used are inherent probability
of the historical reports (khabar; plural: akhbar) – to be judged on the basis
of an understanding of significant political, economic, and cultural factors –
and their conformity with reality and the nature of the historical process. The
latter he analyzed as the cyclical (every three generations, c.120 years) rise
and decline of human societies (‘umran) insofar as they exhibit a political
cohesiveness (‘afabiya) in accepting the authority of a dynastic head of state.
Ibn Khaldun’s sources were the actual course of Islamic history and the
injunctions about political and social behavior found in the Greek/Persian/Arab
mirrors for princes and wisdom literature, welded together by an Aristotelian
teleological realism/empiricism; by contrast, he was critical of the
metaphysical Platonic utopias of thinkers like al-Farabi. His influence is to
be felt in later Arab authors and in particular in Ottoman historiography. In
the West, where he has been intensely studied since the eighteenth century, he
has been variously seen as the founder of sociology, economic history, and
other modern theories of state. (See A. Al-Azmeh, Ibn Khaldun, 1989.) See also
ARABIC PHILOSOPHY. D.Gu. Ibn Rushd.
See AVERROES. Ibn Sina.
See AVICENNA. Ibn Tufayl, Abu Bakr (d.1186), Spanish Islamic philosopher who
played an important role in promoting the philosophical career of Averroes. His
own contribution, however, is a famous philosophical fantasy, Hayy ibn Yaqzan –
an account of a solitary autodidact who grows up on a deserted island yet
discovers by his own unaided efforts a philosophical (Aristotelian) explanation
of the world and of divine truths. Later, having finally come in contact with
human civilization, this character also recognizes the necessity of religious
law and regulation for that other, essentially imperfect, society, although he
holds himself personally above this requirement. The work attracted
considerable attention in late seventeenth-century Europe following its
publication in 1671. See also ARABIC PHILOSOPHY. P.E.W. I-Ching (“Book of
Changes”), a Chinese divination manual that may have existed in some form as
early as the seventh century B.C. It was not philosophically significant until
augmented by a group of appendices, the “Ten Wings,” around 200 B.C. The book
has tremendously influenced Chinese thought since the Han dynasty, for at least
two reasons. First, it provided a cosmology that systematically grounded
certain ideas, particularly Confucian ethical claims, in the nature of the
cosmos. Second, it presented this cosmology through a system of loosely
described symbols that provided virtually limitless interpretive possibilities.
In order to “read” the text properly, one needed to be a certain kind of
person. In this way, the I-Ching accommodated both intuitionism and
self-cultivationism, two prominent characteristics of early Chinese thought. At
the same time, the text’s endless interpretive possibilities allowed it to be
used in widely different ways by a variety of thinkers. See also CHINESE
PHILOSOPHY, CONFUCIANISM. P.J.I.
icon. See PEIRCE. id. See
FREUD. idea, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whatever is
immediately before the mind when one thinks. The notion of thinking was taken
in a very broad sense; it included perception, memory, and imagination, in
addition to thinking narrowly construed. In connection with perception, ideas
were often (though not always – Berkeley is the exception) held to be
representational images, i.e., images of something. In other contexts, ideas
were taken to be concepts, such as the concept of a horse or of an infinite
quantity, though concepts of these sorts certainly do not appear to be images.
An innate idea was either a concept or a general truth, such as ‘Equals added
to equals yield equals’, that was allegedly not learned but was in some sense
always in the mind. Sometimes, as in Descartes, innate ideas were taken to be
cognitive capacities rather than concepts or general truths, but these
capacities, too, were held to be inborn. An adventitious idea, either an image
or a concept, was an idea accompanied by a judgment concerning the non-mental
cause of that idea. So, a visual image was an adventitious idea provided one
judged of that idea that it was caused by something outside one’s mind,
presumably by the object being seen. Ibn Rushd idea 411 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999
7:39 AM Page 411 See also BERKELEY, DESCARTES, HUME, LOCKE, PERCEPTION. G.S.P.
idea, clear and distinct.
See DESCARTES. idea, innate. See IDEA. idealism, the philosophical doctrine
that reality is somehow mind-correlative or mind-coordinated – that the real
objects constituting the “external world” are not independent of cognizing
minds, but exist only as in some way correlative to mental operations. The
doctrine centers on the conception that reality as we understand it reflects
the workings of mind. Perhaps its most radical version is the ancient Oriental
spiritualistic or panpsychistic idea, renewed in Christian Science, that minds
and their thoughts are all there is – that reality is simply the sum total of
the visions (or dreams?) of one or more minds. A dispute has long raged within
the idealist camp over whether “the mind” at issue in such idealistic formulas
was a mind emplaced outside of or behind nature (absolute idealism), or a
nature-pervasive power of rationality of some sort (cosmic idealism), or the
collective impersonal social mind of people in general (social idealism), or
simply the distributive collection of individual minds (personal idealism).
Over the years, the less grandiose versions of the theory came increasingly to the
fore, and in recent times virtually all idealists have construed “the minds” at
issue in their theory as separate individual minds equipped with socially
engendered resources. There are certainly versions of idealism short of the
spiritualistic position of an ontological idealism that (as Kant puts it at
Prolegomena, section 13, n. 2) holds that “there are none but thinking beings.”
Idealism need certainly not go so far as to affirm that mind makes or
constitutes matter; it is quite enough to maintain (e.g.) that all of the
characterizing properties of physical existents resemble phenomenal sensory
properties in representing dispositions to affect mind-endowed creatures in a
certain sort of way, so that these properties have no standing without reference
to minds. Weaker still is an explanatory idealism which merely holds that an
adequate explanation of the real always requires some recourse to the
operations of mind. Historically, positions of the generally idealistic type
have been espoused by numerous thinkers. For example, Berkeley maintained that
“to be [real] is to be perceived” (esse est percipi). And while this does not
seem particularly plausible because of its inherent commitment to omniscience,
it seems more sensible to adopt “to be is to be perceivable” (esse est
percipile esse). For Berkeley, of course, this was a distinction without a
difference: if something is perceivable at all, then God perceives it. But if
we forgo philosophical reliance on God, the matter looks different, and pivots
on the question of what is perceivable for perceivers who are physically
realizable in “the real world,” so that physical existence could be seen – not
so implausibly – as tantamount to observability-in-principle. The three
positions to the effect that real things just exactly are things as philosophy
or as science or as “common sense” takes them to be – positions generally
designated as Scholastic, scientific, and naive realism, respectively – are in
fact versions of epistemic idealism exactly because they see reals as
inherently knowable and do not contemplate mind-transcendence for the real.
Thus, the thesis of naive (“commonsense”) realism that ‘External things exist
exactly as we know them’ sounds realistic or idealistic according as one
stresses the first three words of the dictum or the last four. Any theory of
natural teleology that regards the real as explicable in terms of value could
to this extent be counted as idealistic, in that valuing is by nature a mental
process. To be sure, the good of a creature or species of creatures (e.g.,
their well-being or survival) need not be something mind-represented. But
nevertheless, goods count as such precisely because if the creatures at issue
could think about it, they would adopt them as purposes. It is this circumstance
that renders any sort of teleological explanation at least conceptually
idealistic in nature. Doctrines of this sort have been the stock-in-trade of
philosophy from the days of Plato (think of the Socrates of the Phaedo) to
those of Leibniz, with his insistence that the real world must be the best
possible. And this line of thought has recently surfaced once more in the
controversial “anthropic principle” espoused by some theoretical physicists.
Then too it is possible to contemplate a position along the lines envisioned in
Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre (The Science of Knowledge), which sees the ideal as
providing the determining factor for the real. On such a view, the real is not
characterized by the science we actually have but by the ideal science that is
the telos of our scientific efforts. On this approach, which Wilhelm Wundt
characterized as “ideal-realism” (Idealrealismus; see his Logik, vol. 1, 2d
ed., 1895), the knowledge that achieves adequation to the real idea, clear and
distinct idealism 412 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 412 (adaequatio ad
rem) by adequately characterizing the true facts in scientific matters is not
the knowledge actually afforded by present-day science, but only that of an
ideal or perfected science. Over the years, many objections to idealism have
been advanced. Samuel Johnson thought to refute Berkeley’s phenomenalism by
kicking a stone. He conveniently forgot that Berkeley goes to great lengths to
provide for stones – even to the point of invoking the aid of God on their
behalf. Moore pointed to the human hand as an undeniably mind-external material
object. He overlooked that, gesticulate as he would, he would do no more than
induce people to accept the presence of a hand on the basis of the
handorientation of their experience. Peirce’s “Harvard Experiment” of letting
go of a stone held aloft was supposed to establish Scholastic realism because
his audience could not control their expectation of the stone’s falling to
earth. But an uncontrollable expectation is still an expectation, and the
realism at issue is no more than a realistic thought-exposure. Kant’s famous
“Refutation of Idealism” argues that our conception of ourselves as mindendowed
beings presupposes material objects because we view our mind-endowed selves as
existing in an objective temporal order, and such an order requires the
existence of periodic physical processes (clocks, pendula, planetary
regularities) for its establishment. At most, however, this argument succeeds
in showing that such physical processes have to be assumed by minds, the issue
of their actual mind-independent existence remaining unaddressed. (Kantian
realism is an intraexperiential “empirical” realism.) It is sometimes said that
idealism confuses objects with our knowledge of them and conflates the real
with our thought about it. But this charge misses the point. The only reality
with which we inquirers can have any cognitive commerce is reality as we
conceive it to be. Our only information about reality is via the operation of mind
– our only cognitive access to reality is through the mediation of mind-devised
models of it. Perhaps the most common objection to idealism turns on the
supposed mind-independence of the real: “Surely things in nature would remain
substantially unchanged if there were no minds.” This is perfectly plausible in
one sense, namely the causal one – which is why causal idealism has its
problems. But it is certainly not true conceptually. The objector has to
specify just exactly what would remain the same. “Surely roses would smell just
as sweet in a minddenuded world!” Well . . . yes and no. To be sure, the
absence of minds would not change roses. But roses and rose fragrance and
sweetness – and even the size of roses – are all factors whose determination hinges
on such mental operations as smelling, scanning, measuring, and the like.
Mind-requiring processes are needed for something in the world to be
discriminated as a rose and determined to bear certain features.
Identification, classification, property attribution are all required and by
their very nature are all mental operations. To be sure, the role of mind is
here hypothetical. (“If certain interactions with duly constituted observers
took place, then certain outcomes would be noted.”) But the fact remains that
nothing could be discriminated or characterized as a rose in a context where
the prospect of performing suitable mental operations (measuring, smelling,
etc.) is not presupposed. Perhaps the strongest argument favoring idealism is
that any characterization of the real that we can devise is bound to be a
mind-constructed one: our only access to information about what the real is is
through the mediation of mind. What seems right about idealism is inherent in
the fact that in investigating the real we are clearly constrained to use our
own concepts to address our own issues – that we can learn about the real only
in our own terms of reference. But what seems right about realism is that the
answers to the questions we put to the real are provided by reality itself –
whatever the answers may be, they are substantially what they are because it is
reality itself that determines them to be that way.
idealism, Critical. See
KANT. idealism, transcendental. See KANT. ideal language, a system of notation
that would correct perceived deficiencies of ordinary language by requiring the
structure of expressions to mirror the structure of that which they represent.
The notion that conceptual errors can be corrected and philosophical problems
solved (or dissolved) by properly representing them in some such system figured
prominently in the writings of Leibniz, Carnap, Russell, Wittgenstein, and
Frege, among others. For Russell, the ideal, or “logically perfect,” language
is one in which grammatical form coincides with logical form, there are no
vague or ambiguous expresidealism, Critical ideal language 413 4065h-l.qxd
08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 413 sions, and no proper names that fail to denote.
Frege’s Begriffsschrift is perhaps the most thorough and successful execution of
the ideal language project. Deductions represented within this system (or its
modern descendants) can be effectively checked for correctness. See also
CARNAP, FORMAL LANGUAGE, LOGICAL FORM, RUSSELL. S.T.K. ideal market, a
hypothetical market, used as a tool of economic analysis, in which all relevant
agents are perfectly informed of the price of the good in question and the cost
of its production, and all economic transactions can be undertaken with no
cost. A specific case is a market exemplifying perfect competition. The term is
sometimes extended to apply to an entire economy consisting of ideal markets
for every good.
ideal observer, a
hypothetical being, possessed of various qualities and traits, whose moral
reactions (judgments or attitudes) to actions, persons, and states of affairs
figure centrally in certain theories of ethics. There are two main versions of
ideal observer theory: (a) those that take the reactions of ideal observers as
a standard of the correctness of moral judgments, and (b) those that analyze
the meanings of moral judgments in terms of the reactions of ideal observers.
Theories of the first sort – ideal observer theories of correctness – hold,
e.g., that judgments like ‘John’s lying to Brenda about her father’s death was
wrong (bad)’ are correct provided any ideal observer would have a negative
attitude toward John’s action. Similarly, ‘Alison’s refusal to divulge
confidential information about her patient was right (good)’ is correct
provided any ideal observer would have a positive attitude toward that action.
This version of the theory can be traced to Adam Smith, who is usually credited
with introducing the concept of an ideal observer into philosophy, though he
used the expression ‘impartial spectator’ to refer to the concept. Regarding
the correctness of moral judgments, Smith wrote: “That precise and distinct
measure can be found nowhere but in the sympathetic feelings of the impartial
and well-informed spectator” (A Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759). Theories of
a second sort – ideal observer theories of meaning – take the concept of an
ideal observer as part of the very meaning of ordinary moral judgments. Thus,
according to Roderick Firth (“Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer,”
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 1952), moral judgments of the form ‘x
is good (bad)’, on this view, mean ‘All ideal observers would feel moral
approval (disapproval) toward x’, and similarly for other moral judgments
(where such approvals and disapprovals are characterized as felt desires having
a “demand quality”). Different conceptions of an ideal observer result from
variously specifying those qualities and traits that characterize such beings.
Smith’s characterization includes being well informed and impartial. However,
according to Firth, an ideal observer must be omniscient; omnipercipient, i.e.,
having the ability to imagine vividly any possible events or states of affairs,
including the experiences and subjective states of others; disinterested, i.e.,
having no interests or desires that involve essential reference to any
particular individuals or things; dispassionate; consistent; and otherwise a
“normal” human being. Both versions of the theory face a dilemma: on the one
hand, if ideal observers are richly characterized as impartial, disinterested,
and normal, then since these terms appear to be moral-evaluative terms, appeal
to the reactions of ideal observers (either as a standard of correctness or as
an analysis of meaning) is circular. On the other hand, if ideal observers receive
an impoverished characterization in purely non-evaluative terms, then since
there is no reason to suppose that such ideal observers will often all agree in
their reactions to actions, people, and states of affairs, most moral judgments
will turn out to be incorrect.
ideal market ideational
theory of meaning 414 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 414 identity, the
relation each thing bears just to itself. Formally, a % b Q EF(Fa P Fb);
informally, the identity of a and b implies and is implied by their sharing of
all their properties. Read from left to right, this biconditional asserts the
indiscernibility of identicals; from right to left, the identity of
indiscernibles. The indiscernibility of identicals is not to be confused with a
metalinguistic principle to the effect that if a and b are names of the same
object, then each may be substituted for the other in a sentence without change
of truth-value: that may be false, depending on the semantics of the language
under discussion. Similarly, the identity of indiscernibles is not the claim
that if a and b can be exchanged in all sentential contexts without affecting
truth-value, then they name the same object. For such intersubstitutability may
arise when the language in question simply lacks predicates that could
discriminate between the referents of a and b. In short, the identity of things
is not a relation among names. Identity proper is numerical identity, to be
distinguished from exact similarity (qualitative identity). Intuitively, two
exactly similar objects are “copies” of each other; still they are two, hence
not identical. One way to express this is via the notions of extrinsic and
intrinsic properties: exactly similar objects differ in respect of the former
only. But we can best explain ‘instrinsic property’ by saying that a thing’s
intrinsic properties are those it shares with its copies. These notions appear
virtually interdefinable. (Note that the concept of an extrinsic property must
be relativized to a class or kind of things. Not being in San Francisco is an
extrinsic property of persons but arguably an intrinsic property of cities.)
While qualitative identity is a familiar notion, its theoretical utility is
unclear. The absolute notion of qualitative identity should, however, be distinguished
from an unproblematic relative notion: if some list of salient properties is
fixed in a given context (say, in mechanics or normative ethics), then the
exactly similar things, relative to that context, are those that agree on the
properties listed. Both the identity of indiscernibles and (less frequently)
the indiscernibility of identicals are sometimes called Leibniz’s law. Neither
attribution is apt. Although Leibniz would have accepted the former principle,
his distinctive claim was the impossibility of exactly similar objects:
numerically distinct individuals cannot even share all intrinsic properties.
Moreover, this was not, for him, simply a law of identity but rather an
application of his principle of sufficient reason. And the indiscernibility of
identicals is part of a universal understanding of identity. What distinguishes
Leibniz is the prominence of identity statements in his metaphysics and logical
theory. Although identity remains a clear and basic logical notion, identity
questions about problematic kinds of objects raise difficulties. One example is
the identification of properties, particularly in contexts involving reduction.
Although we know what identity is, the notion of a property is unclear enough
to pose systematic obstacles to the evaluation of theoretically significant
identity statements involving properties. Other difficulties involve personal
identity or the possible identification of numbers and sets in the foundations
of mathematics. In these cases, the identity questions simply inherit – and
provide vivid ways of formulating – the difficulties pertaining to such
concepts as person, property, or number; no rethinking of the identity concept
itself is indicated. But puzzles about the relation of an ordinary material
body to its constituent matter may suggest that the logician’s analysis of
identity does not cleanly capture our everyday notion(s). Consider a bronze
statue. Although the statue may seem to be nothing besides its matter,
reflection on change over time suggests a distinction. The statue may be melted
down, hence destroyed, while the bronze persists, perhaps simply as a mass or
perhaps as a new statue formed from the same bronze. Alternatively, the statue
may persist even as some of its bronze is dissolved in acid. So the statue
seems to be one thing and the bronze another. Yet what is the bronze besides a
statue? Surely we do not have two statues (or statuelike objects) in one place?
Some authors feel that variants of the identity relation may permit a
perspicuous description of the relation of statue and bronze: (1) tensed
identity: Assume a class of timebound properties – roughly, properties an
object can have at a time regardless of what properties it has at other times.
(E.g., a statue’s shape, location, or elegance.) Then a % t b provided a and b
share all timebound properties at time t. Thus, the statue and the bronze may
be identical at time t 1 but not at t 2. (2) relative identity: a and b may be
identical relative to one concept (or predicate) but not to another. Thus, the
statue may be held to be the same lump of matter as the bronze but not the same
object of art. identity identity 415 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 415 In
each case, only detailed study will show whether the variant notion can at once
offer a natural description of change and qualify as a viable identity concept.
(Strong doubts arise about (2).) But it seems likely that our everyday talk of
identity has a richness and ambiguity that escapes formal characterization.
identity, ‘is’ of. See
IS. identity, psychophysical. See PHYSICALISM. identity, theoretical. See
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. identity of indiscernibles, any of a family of principles,
important members of which include the following: (1) If objects a and b have
all properties in common, then a and b are identical. (2) If objects a and b
have all their qualitative properties in common, then a and b are identical.
(3) If objects a and b have all their non-relational qualitative properties in
common, then a and b are identical. Two questions regarding these principles
are raised: Which, if any, are true? If any are true, are they necessarily
true? Discussions of the identity of indiscernibles typically restrict the
scope of the principle to concrete objects. Although the notions of qualitative
and non-relational properties play a prominent role in these discussions, they
are notoriously difficult to define. Intuitively, a qualitative property is one
that can be instantiated by more than one object and does not involve being
related to another particular object. It does not follow that all qualitative
properties are non-relational, since some relational properties, such as being
on top of a brown desk, do not involve being related to some particular object.
(1) is generally regarded as necessarily true but trivial, since if a and b
have all properties in common then a has the property of being identical with b
and b has the property of being identical with a. Hence, most discussions focus
on (2) and (3). (3) is generally regarded as, at best, a contingent truth since
it appears possible to conceive of two distinct red balls of the same size,
shade of color, and composition. Some have argued that elementary scientific
particles, such as electrons, are counterexamples to even the contingent truth
of (3). (2) appears defensible as a contingent truth since, in the actual
world, objects such as the red balls and the electrons differ in their
relational qualitative properties. It has been argued, however, that (2) is not
a necessary truth since it is possible to conceive of a world consisting of
only the two red balls. In such a world, any qualitative relational property
possessed by one ball is also possessed by the other. Defenders of the
necessary truth of (2) have argued that a careful examination of such
counterexamples reveals hidden qualitative properties that differentiate the
objects. See also IDENTITY, INDIVIDUATION, LEIBNIZ, PROPERTY, SUBSTANCE. A.C.
identity of persons.
See PERSONAL IDENTITY.
identity theory. See PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. identity thesis. See PHILOSOPHY OF
MIND. ideographic. See WINDELBAND. ideology, generally a disparaging term used
to describe someone else’s political views which one regards as unsound. This
use derives from Marx’s employment of the term to signify a false consciousness
shared by the members of a particular social class. For example, according to
Marx, members of the capitalist class share the ideology that the laws of the
competitive market are natural and impersonal, that workers in a competitive
market are paid all that they can be paid, and that the institutions of private
property in the means of production are natural and justified. See also
MARXISM, POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. J.P.St. ideo-motor action, a theory of the will
according to which “every representation of a movement awakens in some degree
the actual movement which is its object” (William James). Proposed by
physiologist W. B. Carpenter, and taught by Lotze and Renouvier, ideo-motor
action was developed by James. He rejected the regnant analysis of voluntary
behavior, which held that will operates by reinstating “feelings of
innervation” (Wundt) in the efferent nerves. Deploying introspection and
physiology, James showed that feelings of innervation do not exist. James
advanced ideo-motor action as the psychological basis of volition: actions tend
to occur automatically when thought, unless inhibited by a contrary idea. Will
consists in fixing attention on a identity, ‘is’ of ideo-motor action 416
4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 416 desired idea until it dominates
consciousness, the execution of movement following automatically. James also
rejected Bain’s associationist thesis that pleasure or pain is the necessary
spring of action, since according to ideo-motor theory thought of an action by
itself produces it. James’s analysis became dogma, but was effectively attacked
by psychologist E. L. Thorndike (1874– 1949), who proposed in its place the
behavioristic doctrine that ideas have no power to cause behavior, and argued
that belief in ideo-motor action amounted to belief in sympathetic magic. Thus
did will leave the vocabulary of psychology. See also JAMES, VOLITION. T.H.L.
idols of the cave. See BACON, FRANCIS. idols of the marketplace. See BACON,
FRANCIS. idols of the mind. See BACON, FRANCIS. idols of the theater. See
BACON, FRANCIS. idols of the tribe. See BACON, FRANCIS. iff, an abbreviation
for ‘if and only if’ that is used as if it were a single propositional operator
(connective). Another synonym for ‘iff’ is ‘just in case’. The justification for
treating ‘iff’ as if it were a single propositional connective is that ‘P if
and only if Q’ is elliptical for ‘P if Q, and P only if Q’, and this assertion
is logically equivalent to ‘P biconditional Q’. See also BICONDITIONAL. R.W.B.
ignoratio elenchi. See INFORMAL FALLACY. Il’in, Ivan Aleksandrovich
(1883–1954), Russian philosopher and conservative legal and political theorist.
He authored an important two-volume commentary on Hegel (1918), plus extensive
writings in ethics, political theory, aesthetics, and spirituality. Exiled in
1922, he was known for his passionate opposition to Bolshevism, his extensive
proposals for rebuilding a radically reformed Russian state, church, and
society in a post-Communist future, and his devout Russian Orthodox spirituality.
He is widely regarded as a master of Russian language and a penetrating
interpreter of the history of Russian culture. His collected works are
currently being published in Moscow. See also RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY. P.T.G.
illation. See INDUCTION. illative. See INDUCTION. illative sense. See NEWMAN.
illicit process of the major. See SYLLOGISM. illicit process of the minor. See
SYLLOGISM. illocutionary act. See SPEECH ACT THEORY. illocutionary force. See
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, SPEECH ACT THEORY. illocutionary force potential. See
SPEECH ACT THEORY. illusion, argument from. See PERCEPTION. image theory of
meaning. See MEANING. image theory of memory. See MEMORY. imagination, the
mental faculty sometimes thought to encompass all acts of thinking about something
novel, contrary to fact, or not currently perceived; thus: “Imagine that
Lincoln had not been assassinated,” or “Use your imagination to create a new
design for roller skates.” ‘Imagination’ also denotes an important
perception-like aspect of some such thoughts, so that to imagine something is
to bring to mind what it would be like to perceive it. Philosophical theories
of imagination must explain its apparent intentionality: when we imagine, we
always imagine something. Imagination is always directed toward an object, even
though the object may not exist. Moreover, imagination, like perception, is
often seen as involving qualia, or special subjective properties that are
sometimes thought to discredit materialist, especially functionalist, theories
of mind. The intentionality of imagination and its perceptual character lead
some theories to equate imagination with “imaging”: being conscious of or
perceiving a mental image. However, because the ontological status of such
images and the nature of their properties are obscure, many philosophers have
rejected mental images in favor of an adverbial theory on which to imagine
something red is best analyzed as imagining “redly.” Such theories avoid the
difficulties associated with mental images, but must offer some other way to
account for the apparent intentionality of imagination as well as its
perceptual character. Imagination, in the hands of Husserl and Sartre, becomes
a particularly apt subject for phenomenology. It is also cited as a faculty
that idols of the cave imagination 417 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 417
separates human thought from any form of artificial intelligence. Finally,
imagination often figures prominently in debates about possibility, in that
what is imaginable is often taken to be coextensive with what is possible.
See also CONCEIVABILITY,
IDEA, INTENTIONALITY, PERCEPTION, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. L.-M.R. imaging. See
IMAGINATION. immanence, a term most often used in contrast to ‘transcendence’
to express the way in which God is thought to be present in the world. The most
extreme form of immanence is expressed in pantheism, which identifies God’s
substance either partly or wholly with the world. In contrast to pantheism,
Judaism and Christianity hold God to be a totally separate substance from the
world. In Christianity, the separateness of God’s substance from that of the
world is guaranteed by the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Aquinas held that
God is in the world as an efficient cause is present to that on which it acts.
Thus, God is present in the world by continuously acting on it to preserve it
in existence. Perhaps the weakest notion of immanence is expressed in
eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury deism, in which God initially creates the
world and institutes its universal laws, but is basically an absentee landlord,
exercising no providential activity over its continuing history. See also
DEISM, NATURAL RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, TRANSCENDENCE. W.L.R. immanent
causation. See AGENT CAUSATION. immaterial. See DISEMBODIMENT. immaterialism,
the view that objects are best characterized as mere collections of qualities:
“a certain colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to
go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple”
(Berkeley, Principles, 1). So construed, immaterialism anticipates by some two
hundred years a doctrine defended in the early twentieth century by Russell.
The negative side of the doctrine comes in the denial of material substance or
matter. Some philosophers had held that ordinary objects are individual
material substances in which qualities inhere. The account is mistaken because,
according to immaterialism, there is no such thing as material substance, and
so qualities do not inhere in it. Immaterialism should not be confused with
Berkeley’s idealism. The latter, but not the former, implies that objects and
their qualities exist if and only if they are perceived. See also BERKELEY,
IDEALISM, PHENOMENALISM. G.S.P. immediacy, presence to the mind without
intermediaries. The term ‘immediate’ and its cognates have been used
extensively throughout the history of philosophy, generally without much
explanation. Descartes, e.g., explains his notion of thought thus: “I use this
term to include everything that is within us in a way that we are immediately
aware of it” (Second Replies). He offers no explanation of immediate awareness.
However, when used as a primitive in this way, the term may simply mean that
thoughts are the immediate objects of perception because thoughts are the only
things perceived in the strict and proper sense that no perception of an
intermediary is required for the person’s awareness of them. Sometimes
‘immediate’ means ‘not mediated’. (1) An inference from a premise to a
conclusion can exhibit logical immediacy because it does not depend on other
premises. This is a technical usage of proof theory to describe the form of a
certain class of inference rules. (2) A concept can exhibit conceptual
immediacy because it is definitionally primitive, as in the Berkeleian doctrine
that perception of qualities is immediate, and perception of objects is defined
by the perception of their qualities, which is directly understood. (3) Our
perception of something can exhibit causal immediacy because it is not caused by
intervening acts of perception or cognition, as with seeing someone immediately
in the flesh rather than through images on a movie screen. (4) A
belief-formation process can possess psychological immediacy because it
contains no subprocess of reasoning and in that sense has no psychological
mediator. (5) Our knowledge of something can exhibit epistemic immediacy
because it is justified without inference from another proposition, as in
intuitive knowledge of the existence of the self, which has no epistemic
mediator. A noteworthy special application of immediacy is to be found in
Russell’s notion of knowledge by acquaintance. This notion is a development of
the venerable doctrine originating with Plato, and also found in Augustine,
that understanding the nature of some object requires that we can gain
immediate cognitive access to that object. Thus, for Plato, to understand the
nature imaging immediacy 418 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 418 of beauty
requires acquaintance with beauty itself. This view contrasts with one in which
understanding the nature of beauty requires linguistic competence in the use of
the word ‘beauty’ or, alternatively, with one that requires having a mental
representation of beauty. Russell offers sense-data and universals as examples
of things known by acquaintance. To these senses of immediacy we may add
another category whose members have acquired special meanings within certain
philosophical traditions. For example, in Hegel’s philosophy if (per
impossibile) an object were encountered “as existing in simple immediacy” it
would be encountered as it is in itself, unchanged by conceptualization. In
phenomenology “immediate” experience is, roughly, bracketed experience.
See also BERKELEY,
EPISTEMOLOGY, IDEA, INFERENTIAL KNOWLEDGE, PERCEPTION, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. T.V.
immediate inference. See INFERENCE. immortality. See DISEMBODIMENT, SOUL.
impartiality, a state or disposition achieved to the degree that one’s actions
or attitudes are not influenced in a relevant respect by which members of a
relevant group are benefited or harmed by one’s actions or by the object of
one’s attitudes. For example, a basketball referee and that referee’s calls are
impartial when the referee’s applications of the rules are not affected by
whether the calls help one team or the other. A fan’s approval of a call lacks
impartiality if that attitude results from the fan’s preference for one team
over the other. Impartiality in this general sense does not exclude
arbitrariness or guarantee fairness; nor does it require neutrality among
values, for a judge can be impartial between parties while favoring liberty and
equality for all. Different situations might call for impartiality in different
respects toward different groups, so disagreements arise, for example, about
when morality requires or allows partiality toward friends or family or
country. Moral philosophers have proposed various tests of the kind of
impartiality required by morality, including role reversibility (Kurt Baier),
universalizability (Hare), a veil of ignorance (Rawls), and a restriction to
beliefs shared by all rational people (Bernard Gert). See also ETHICS, HARE,
RAWLS, UNIVERSALIZABILITY. W.S.-A.
imperative, categorical.
See KANT. imperative, hypothetical. See KANT. imperfect duty. See DUTY, KANT.
imperfect rights. See GROTIUS. implication, a relation that holds between two
statements when the truth of the first ensures the truth of the second. A
number of statements together imply Q if their joint truth ensures the truth of
Q. An argument is deductively valid exactly when its premises imply its
conclusion. Expressions of the following forms are often interchanged one for
the other: ‘P implies Q’, ‘Q follows from P’, and ‘P entails Q’. (‘Entailment’
also has a more restricted meaning.) In ordinary discourse, ‘implication’ has
wider meanings that are important for understanding reasoning and communication
of all kinds. The sentence ‘Last Tuesday, the editor remained sober throughout
lunch’ does not imply that the editor is not always sober. But one who asserted
the sentence typically would imply this. The theory of conversational
implicature explains how speakers often imply more than their sentences imply.
The term ‘implication’ also applies to conditional statements. A material
implication of the form ‘if P, then Q’ (often symbolized ‘P P Q’ or ‘P / Q’) is
true so long as either the if-clause P is false or the main clause Q is true;
it is false only if P is true and Q is false. A strict implication of the form
‘if P, then Q’ (often symbolized ‘P Q’) is true exactly when the corresponding
material implication is necessarily true; i.e., when it is impossible for P to
be true when Q is false. The following valid forms of argument are called
paradoxes of material implication: Q. Therefore, P / Q. Not-P. Therefore, P /
Q. The appearance of paradox here is due to using ‘implication’ as a name both
for a relation between statements and for statements of conditional form. A
conditional statement can be true even though there is no relation between its components.
Consider the following valid inference: Butter floats in milk. Therefore, fish
sleep at night / butter floats in milk. Since the simple premise is true, the
conditional conclusion is also true despite the fact that the nocturnal
activities of fish and the comparative densities of milk and butter are
completely unreimmediate inference implication 419 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39
AM Page 419 lated. The statement ‘Fish sleep at night’ does not imply that
butter floats in milk. It is better to call a conditional statement that is
true just so long as it does not have a true if-clause and a false main clause
a material conditional rather than a material implication. Strict conditional
is similarly preferable to ‘strict implication’. Respecting this distinction,
however, does not dissolve all the puzzlement of the so-called paradoxes of
strict implication: Necessarily Q. Therefore, P Q. Impossible that P.
Therefore, P Q. Here is an example of the first pattern: Necessarily, all
rectangles are rectangles. Therefore, fish sleep at night all rectangles are
rectangles. ‘All rectangles are rectangles’ is an example of a vacuous truth,
so called because it is devoid of content. ‘All squares are rectangles’ and ‘5
is greater than 3’ are not so obviously vacuous truths, although they are
necessary truths. Vacuity is not a sharply defined notion. Here is an example
of the second pattern: It is impossible that butter always floats in milk yet
sometimes does not float in milk. Therefore, butter always floats in milk yet
sometimes does not float in milk fish sleep at night. Does the if-clause of the
conclusion imply (or entail) the main clause? On one hand, what butter does in
milk is, as before, irrelevant to whether fish sleep at night. On this ground,
relevance logic denies there is a relation of implication or entailment. On the
other hand, it is impossible for the if-clause to be true when the main clause
is false, because it is impossible for the if-clause to be true in any
circumstances whatever. See also COUNTERFACTUALS, FORMAL LOGIC, IMPLICATURE,
PRESUPPOSITION, RELEVANCE LOGIC. D.H.S. implication, paradoxes of. See
IMPLICATION. implication, strict. See IMPLICATION. implicature, a pragmatic
relation different from, but easily confused with, the semantic relation of
entailment. This concept was first identified, explained, and used by H. P.
Grice (Studies in the Way of Words, 1989). Grice identified two main types of
implicature, conventional and conversational. A speaker is said to
conversationally implicate a proposition P in uttering a given sentence,
provided that, although P is not logically implied by what the speaker says,
the assumption that the speaker is attempting cooperative communication
warrants inferring that the speaker believes p. If B says, “There is a garage
around the corner” in response to A’s saying, “I am out of gas,” B
conversationally implicates that the garage is open and has gas to sell. Grice
identifies several conversational maxims to which cooperative speakers may be
expected to conform, and which justify inferences about speakers’ implicatures.
In the above example, the implicatures are due to the Maxim of Relevance.
Another important maxim is that of Quantity (“Make your contribution as
informative as is required”). Among implicatures due to the Maxim of Quantity
are scalar implicatures, wherein the sentence uttered contains an element that
is part of a quantitative scale. Utterance of such a sentence conversationally
implicates that the speaker does not believe related propositions higher on the
scale of informativeness. For instance, speakers who say, “Some of the zoo
animals escaped,” implicate that they do not believe that most of the zoo
animals escaped, or that all of the zoo animals escaped. Unlike conversational
implicatures, conventional implicatures are due solely to the meaning of the
sentence uttered. A sentence utterance is said by Grice to conventionally
implicate a proposition, p, if the meaning of the sentence commits the speaker
to p, even though what the sentence says does not entail p. Thus, uttering “She
was poor but she was honest” implicates, but does not say, that there is a
contrast between poverty and honesty. See also PRESUPPOSITION. M.M. implicit
definition.
See BETH’s DEFINABILITY
THEOREM, DEFINITION. imposition, a property of terms resulting from a
linguistic convention to designate something. Terms are not mere noises but
significant sounds. Those designating extralinguistic entities, such as ‘tree’,
‘stone’, ‘blue’, and the like, were classified by the tradition since Boethius
as terms of first imposition; those designating other terms or other linguistic
items, such as ‘noun’, ‘declension’, and the like, were classified as terms of
second imposition. The distinction between terms of first and second imposition
belongs to the realm of written and spoken language, while the parallel
distinction between terms of first and second implication, paradoxes of
imposition 420 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 420 intention belongs to the
realm of mental language: first intentions are, broadly, thoughts about trees,
stones, colors, etc.; second intentions are thoughts about first intentions.
See also INTENTIONALITY, METALANGUAGE. I.Bo. impredicative definition, the
definition of a concept in terms of the totality to which it belongs. Russell,
in the second (1925) edition of Principia Mathematica, introduced the term
‘impredicative’, prohibiting this kind of definition from the conceptual
foundations of mathematics, on the grounds that they imply formal logical
paradoxes. The impredicative definition of the set R of all sets that are not
members of themselves in Russell’s paradox leads to the self-contradictory
conclusion that R is a member of itself if and only if it is not a member of
itself. To avoid antinomies of this kind in the formalization of logic, Russell
first implemented in his ramified type theory the vicious circle principle,
that no whole may contain parts that are definable only in terms of that whole.
The limitation of ramified type theory is that without use of impredicative
definitions it is impossible to quantify over all mathematical objects, but
only over all mathematical objects of a certain order or type. Without being
able to quantify over all real numbers generally, many of the most important
definitions and theorems of classical real number theory cannot be formulated.
Russell for this reason later abandoned ramified in favor of simple type
theory, which avoids the logical paradoxes without outlawing impredicative
definition by forbidding the predication of terms of any type (object, property
and relation, higher-order properties and relations of properties and
relations, etc.) to terms of the same type. See also DEFINITION, PHILOSOPHY OF
MATHEMATICS, QUANTIFICATION, SET-THEORETIC PARADOXES, TYPE THEORY. D.J.
impredicative property. See TYPE THEORY. impression. See HUME. improper symbol.
See SYNCATEGOREMATA. inclusive disjunction. See DISJUNCTIVE PROPOSITION.
incoherence, self-referential. See SELF-REFERENTIAL INCOHERENCE.
incommensurability, in the philosophy of science, the property exhibited by two
scientific theories provided that, even though they may not logically
contradict one another, they have reference to no common body of data.
Positivist and logical empiricist philosophers of science like Carnap had long
sought an adequate account of a theoryneutral language to serve as the basis
for testing competing theories. The predicates of this language were thought to
refer to observables; the observation language described the observable world
or (in the case of theoretical terms) could do so in principle. This view is
alleged to suffer from two major defects. First, observation is infected with
theory – what else could specify the meanings of observation terms except the
relevant theory? Even to perceive is to interpret, to conceptualize, what is
perceived. And what about observations made by instruments? Are these not
completely constrained by theory? Second, studies by Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and
others argued that in periods of revolutionary change in science the adoption
of a new theory includes acceptance of a completely new conceptual scheme that
is incommensurable with the older, now rejected, theory. The two theories are
incommensurable because their constituent terms cannot have reference to a
theory-neutral set of observations; there is no overlap of observational
meaning between the competitor theories; even the data to be explained are
different. Thus, when Galileo overthrew the physics of Aristotle he replaced
his conceptual scheme – his “paradigm” – with one that is not logically
incompatible with Aristotle’s, but is incommensurable with it because in a
sense it is about a different world (or the world conceived entirely
differently). Aristotle’s account of the motion of bodies relied upon occult
qualities like natural tendencies; Galileo’s relied heavily upon contrived
experimental situations in which variable factors could be mathematically
calculated. Feyerabend’s even more radical view is that unless scientists
introduce new theories incommensurable with older ones, science cannot possibly
progress, because falsehoods will never be uncovered. It is an important
implication of these views about incommensurability that acceptance of theories
has to do not only with observable evidence, but also with subjective factors,
social pressures, and expectations of the scientific community. Such acceptance
appears to threaten the very possibility of developing a coherent methodology
for science.
See also PARADIGM,
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, THEORETICAL TERM. R.E.B. incompatibilism. See FREE WILL
PROBLEM. impredicative definition incompatibilism 421 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999
7:39 AM Page 421 incompleteness. See COMPLETENESS. incompleteness theorem. See
GöDEL’s INCOMPLETENESS THEOREMS. incomplete symbol. See LOGICAL CONSTRUCTION,
RUSSELL, SYNCATEGOREMATA, THEORY OF DESCRIPTIONS. incompossible. See
COMPOSSIBLE. inconsistent triad, (1) most generally, any three propositions
such that it cannot be the case that all three of them are true; (2) more
narrowly, any three categorical propositions such that it cannot be the case
that all three of them are true. A categorical syllogism is valid provided the
three propositions that are its two premises and the negation (contradiction)
of its conclusion are an inconsistent triad; this fact underlies various tests
for the validity of categorical syllogisms, which tests are often called
“methods of” inconsistent triads. See also ANTILOGISM, SYLLOGISM. R.W.B.
incontinence. See AKRASIA. incorrigibility. See PRIVILEGED ACCESS. indenumerable.
See INFINITY. independence. See DEPENDENCE. independence, logical. See
INDEPENDENCE RESULTS. independence, probabilistic. See PROBABILITY.
independence, statistical. See PROBABILITY. independence results, proofs of
non-deducibility. Any of the following equivalent conditions may be called
independence: (1) A is not deducible from B; (2) its negation - A is consistent
with B; (3) there is a model of B that is not a model of A; e.g., the question
of the non-deducibility of the parallel axiom from the other Euclidean axioms
is equivalent to that of the consistency of its negation with them, i.e. of
non-Euclidean geometry. Independence results may be not absolute but relative,
of the form: if B is consistent (or has a model), then B together with - A is
(or does); e.g. models of non-Euclidean geometry are built within Euclidean
geometry. In another sense, a set B is said to be independent if it is
irredundant, i.e., each hypothesis in B is independent of the others; in yet
another sense, A is said to be independent of B if it is undecidable by B,
i.e., both independent of and consistent with B. The incompleteness theorems of
Gödel are independence results, prototypes for many further proofs of
undecidability by subsystems of classical mathematics, or by classical
mathematics as a whole, as formalized in ZermeloFraenkel set theory with the
axiom of choice (ZF ! AC or ZFC). Most famous is the undecidability of the
continuum hypothesis, proved consistent relative to ZFC by Gödel, using his
method of constructible sets, and independent relative to ZFC by Paul J. Cohen,
using his method of forcing. Rather than build models from scratch by such
methods, independence (consistency) for A can also be established by showing A
implies (is implied by ) some A* already known independent (consistent). Many
suitable A* (Jensen’s Diamond, Martin’s Axiom, etc.) are now available.
Philosophically, formalism takes A’s undecidability by ZFC to show the question
of A’s truth meaningless; Platonism takes it to establish the need for new
axioms, such as those of large cardinals. (Considerations related to the
incompleteness theorems show that there is no hope even of a relative
consistency proof for these axioms, yet they imply, by way of determinacy
axioms, many important consequences about real numbers that are independent of
ZFC.) With non-classical logics, e.g. second-order logic, (1)–(3) above may not
be equivalent, so several senses of independence become distinguishable. The
question of independence of one axiom from others may be raised also for
formalizations of logic itself, where many-valued logics provide models. See
also FORCING, GÖDEL’s INCOMPLETENESS THEOREMS, SET THEORY. J.Bur. indeterminacy
argument. See SKEPTICISM. indeterminacy of translation, a pair of theses
derived, originally, from a thought experiment regarding radical translation
first propounded by Quine in Word and Object (1960) and developed in his
Ontological Relativity (1969), Theories and Things (1981), and Pursuit of Truth
(1990). Radical translation is an imaginary context in which a field linguist
is faced with the challenge of translating a hitherto unknown language.
Furthermore, it is stipulated that the linguist has no access to bilinguals and
that the language to be translated is historically unrelated to that of the
linguist. Presumably, the only data the linguist has to go on are the
observable behaviors of incompleteness indeterminacy of translation 422
4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 422 native speakers amid the publicly
observable objects of their environment. (1) The strong thesis of
indeterminacy, indeterminacy of translation of theoretical sentences as wholes,
is the claim that in the context of radical translation a linguist (or
linguists) could construct a number of manuals for translating the (natives’)
source language into the (linguists’) target language such that each manual
could be consistent with all possible behavior data and yet the manuals could
diverge with one another in countless places in assigning different target-language
sentences (holophrastically construed) as translations of the same
source-language sentences (holophrastically construed), diverge even to the
point where the sentences assigned have conflicting truth-values; and no
further data, physical or mental, could single out one such translation manual
as being the uniquely correct one. All such manuals, which are consistent with
all the possible behavioral data, are correct. (2) The weak thesis of
indeterminacy, indeterminacy of reference (or inscrutability of reference), is
the claim that given all possible behavior data, divergent target-language
interpretations of words within a source-language sentence could offset one
another so as to sustain different targetlanguage translations of the same
source-language sentence; and no further data, physical or mental, could single
out one such interpretation as the uniquely correct one. All such
interpretations, which are consistent with all the possible behavioral data,
are correct. This weaker sort of indeterminacy takes two forms: an ontic form
and a syntactic form. Quine’s famous example where the source-language term
‘gavagai’ could be construed either as ‘rabbit’, ‘undetached rabbit part’,
‘rabbithood’, etc. (see Word and Object), and his proxy function argument where
different ontologies could be mapped onto one another (see Ontological
Relativity, Theories and Things, and Pursuit of Truth), both exemplify the
ontic form of indeterminacy of reference. On the other hand, his example of the
Japanese classifier, where a particular three-word construction of Japanese can
be translated into English such that the third word of the construction can be
construed with equal justification either as a term of divided reference or as
a mass term (see Ontological Relativity and Pursuit of Truth), exemplifies the
syntactic form of indeterminacy of reference.
See also MEANING,
PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. R.F.G. indeterminacy principle. See
QUANTUM MECHANICS. indeterminate. See VAGUENESS. index. See PEIRCE. indexical,
a type of expression whose semantic value is in part determined by features of
the context of utterance, and hence may vary with that context. Among
indexicals are the personal pronouns, such as ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he’, ‘she’, and
‘it’; demonstratives, such as ‘this’ and ‘that’; temporal expressions, such as
‘now’, ‘today’, ‘yesterday’; and locative expressions, such as ‘here’, ‘there’,
etc. Although classical logic ignored indexicality, many recent practitioners,
following Richard Montague, have provided rigorous theories of indexicals in
the context of formal semantics. Perhaps the most plausible and thorough
treatment of indexicals is by David Kaplan (b.1933; a prominent American
philosopher of language and logic whose long-unpublished “Demonstratives” was
especially influential; it eventually appeared in J. Almog, J. Perry, and H.
Wettstein, eds., Themes from Kaplan, 1988). Kaplan argues persuasively that
indexical singular terms are directly referential and a species of rigid
designator. He also forcefully brings out a crucial lesson to be learned from
indexicals, namely, that there are two types of meaning, which Kaplan calls
“content” and “character.” A sentence containing an indexical, such as ‘I am
hungry’, can be used to say different things in different contexts, in part
because of the different semantic contributions made by ‘I’ in these contexts.
Kaplan calls a term’s contribution to what is said in a context the term’s
content. Though the content of an indexical like ‘I’ varies with its context, it
will nevertheless have a single meaning in the language, which Kaplan calls the
indexical’s character. This character may be conceived as a rule of function
that assigns different contents to the indexical in different contexts. See
also PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, TOKEN-REFLEXIVE. M.M. Indian philosophy. See
BUDDHISM, HINDUISM, JAINISM. indicator, logical. See LOGICAL INDICATOR.
indicator word. See LOGICAL INDICATOR. indifference, liberty of. See FREE WILL
PROBLEM, HUME. indifference, principle of. See PRINCIPLE OF INDIFFERENCE.
indeterminacy principle indifference, principle of 423 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999
7:39 AM Page 423 indirect consequentialism. See BUTLER. indirect discourse,
also called oratio obliqua, the use of words to report what others say, but without
direct quotation. When one says “John said, ‘Not every doctor is honest,’ “ one
uses the words in one’s quotation directly – one uses direct discourseto make
an assertion about what John said. Accurate direct discourse must get the exact
words. But in indirect discourse one can use other words than John does to
report what he said, e.g., “John said that some physicians are not honest.” The
words quoted here capture the sense of John’s assertion (the proposition he
asserted). By extension, ‘indirect discourse’ designates the use of words in
reporting beliefs. One uses words to characterize the proposition believed
rather than to make a direct assertion. When Alice says, “John believes that
some doctors are not honest,” she uses the words ‘some doctors are not honest’
to present the proposition that John believes. She does not assert the
proposition. By contrast, direct discourse, also called oratio recta, is the
ordinary use of words to make assertions. See also INTENSIONALITY, QUANTIFYING
IN, REFERENTIALLY TRANSPARENT. T.M. indirect intention. See INTENTION. indirect
knowledge. See BASING RELATION. indirect passions. See HUME. indirect proof.
See REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM. indirect sense. See OBLIQUE CONTEXT. indirect speech
act. See SPEECH ACT THEORY. indiscernibility of identicals, the principle that
if A and B are identical, there is no difference between A and B: everything
true of A is true of B, and everything true of B is true of A; A and B have
just the same properties; there is no property such that A has it while B lacks
it, or B has it while A lacks it. A tempting formulation of this principle,
‘Any two things that are identical have all their properties in common’, verges
on nonsense; for two things are never identical. ‘A is numerically identical with
B’ means that A and B are one and the same. A and B have just the same
properties because A, that is, B, has just the properties that it has. This
principle is sometimes called Leibniz’s law. It should be distinguished from
its converse, Leibniz’s more controversial principle of the identity of
indiscernibles. A contraposed form of the indiscernibility of identicals – call
it the distinctness of discernibles – reveals its point in philosophic
dialectic. If something is true of A that is not true of B, or (to say the same
thing differently) if something is true of B that is not true of A, then A and
B are not identical; they are distinct. One uses this principle to attack
identity claims. Classical arguments for dualism attempt to find something true
of the mind that is not true of anything physical. For example, the mind,
unlike everything physical, is indivisible. Also, the existence of the mind,
unlike the existence of everything physical, cannot be doubted. This last
argument shows that the distinctness of discernibles requires great care of
application in intentional contexts. See also IDENTITY, INTENSIONALITY. D.H.S.
individual. See METAPHYSICS. individualism.
See POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
individualism, descriptive. See HOLISM. individualism, methodological. See
METHODOLOGICAL HOLISM. individuation, (1) in metaphysics, a process whereby a
universal, e.g., cat, becomes instantiated in an individual – also called a particular
e.g., Minina; (2) in epistemology, a process whereby a knower discerns an
individual, e.g., someone discerns Minina. The double understanding of
individuation raises two distinct problems: identifying the causes of
metaphysical individuation, and of epistemological individuation. In both cases
the causes are referred to as the principle of individuation. Attempts to
settle the metaphysical and epistemological problems of individuation
presuppose an understanding of the nature of individuality. Individuality has
been variously interpreted as involving one or more of the following:
indivisibility, difference, division within a species, identity through time,
impredicability, and non-instantiability. In general, theories of individuation
try to account variously for one or more of these. Individuation may apply to
both substances (e.g., Minina) and their features (e.g., Minina’s fur color),
generating two different sorts of theories. The theories of the metaphysical
individuation of substances most often proposed identify six types of
principles: a bundle of features (Russell); space indirect consequentialism
individuation 424 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 424 and/or time
(Boethius); matter (Aristotle); form (Averroes); a decharacterized, sui generis
component called bare particular (Bergmann) or haecceity (Duns Scotus); and
existence (Avicenna). Sometimes several principles are combined. For example,
for Aquinas the principle of individuation is matter under dimensions (materia
signata). Two sorts of objections are often brought against these views of the
metaphysical individuation of substances. One points out that some of these
theories violate the principle of acquaintance,since they identify as
individuators entities for which there is no empirical evidence. The second
argues that some of these theories explain the individuation of substances in
terms of accidents, thus contradicting the ontological precedence of substance
over accident. The two most common theories of the epistemological individuation
of substances identify spatiotemporal location and/or the features of
substances as their individuators; we know a thing as an individual by its
location in space and time or by its features. The objections that are brought
to bear against these theories are generally based on the ineffectiveness of
those principles in all situations to account for the discernment of all types
of individuals. The theories of the metaphysical individuation of the features
of substances fall into two groups. Some identify the substance itself as the
principle of individuation; others identify some feature(s) of the substance as
individuator(s). Most accounts of the epistemological individuation of the
features of substances are similar to these views. The most common objections
to the metaphysical theories of the individuation of features attempt to show
that these theories are either incomplete or circular. It is argued, e.g., that
an account of the individuation of features in terms of substance is incomplete
because the individuation of the substance must also be accounted for: How
would one know what tree one sees, apart from its features? However, if the
substance is individuated by its features, one falls into a vicious circle.
Similar points are made with respect to the epistemological theories of the
individuation of features. Apart from the views mentioned, some philosophers
hold that individuals are individual essentially (per se), and therefore that
they do not undergo individuation. Under those conditions either there is no
need for a metaphysical principle of individuation (Ockham), or else the
principle of individuation is identified as the individual entity itself
(Suárez).
See also BUNDLE THEORY,
IDENTITY, METAPHYSICS, PRINCIPIUM INDIVIDUATIONIS. J.J.E.G. indubitability. See
PRIVILEGED ACCESS. induction, (1) in the narrow sense, inference to a
generalization from its instances; (2) in the broad sense, any ampliative
inference – i.e., any inference where the claim made by the conclusion goes
beyond the claim jointly made by the premises. Induction in the broad sense
includes, as cases of particular interest: argument by analogy, predictive
inference, inference to causes from signs and symptoms, and confirmation of
scientific laws and theories. The narrow sense covers one extreme case that is
not ampliative. That is the case of mathematical induction, where the premises
of the argument necessarily imply the generalization that is its conclusion.
Inductive logic can be conceived most generally as the theory of the evaluation
of ampliative inference. In this sense, much of probability theory, theoretical
statistics, and the theory of computability are parts of inductive logic. In
addition, studies of scientific method can be seen as addressing in a less
formal way the question of the logic of inductive inference. The name
‘inductive logic’ has also, however, become associated with a specific approach
to these issues deriving from the work of Bayes, Laplace, De Morgan, and
Carnap. On this approach, one’s prior probabilities in a state of ignorance are
determined or constrained by some principle for the quantification of ignorance
and one learns by conditioning on the evidence. A recurrent difficulty with
this line of attack is that the way in which ignorance is quantified depends on
how the problem is described, with different logically equivalent descriptions
leading to different prior probabilities. Carnap laid down as a postulate for
the application of his inductive logic that one should always condition on
one’s total evidence. This rule of total evidence is usually taken for granted,
but what justification is there for it? Good pointed out that the standard
Bayesian analysis of the expected value of new information provides such a
justification. Pure cost-free information always has non-negative expected
value, and if there is positive probability that it will affect a decision, its
expected value is positive. Ramsey made the same point in an unpublished
manuscript. The proof generalizes to various models of learning uncertain
evidence. A deductive account is sometimes presented indubitability induction
425 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 425 where induction proceeds by
elimination of possibilities that would make the conclusion false. Thus Mill’s
methods of experimental inquiry are sometimes analyzed as proceeding by
elimination of alternative possibilities. In a more general setting, the
hypothetico-deductive account of science holds that theories are confirmed by
their observational consequences – i.e., by elimination of the possibilities
that this experiment or that observation falsifies the theory. Induction by
elimination is sometimes put forth as an alternative to probabilistic accounts
of induction, but at least one version of it is consistent with – and indeed a
consequence of – probabilistic accounts. It is an elementary fact of
probability that if F, the potential falsifier, is inconsistent with T and both
have probability strictly between 0 and 1, then the probability of T
conditional on not-F is higher than the unconditional probability of T. In a
certain sense, inductive support of a universal generalization by its instances
may be a special case of the foregoing, but this point must be treated with
some care. In the first place, the universal generalization must have positive
prior probability. (It is worth noting that Carnap’s systems of inductive logic
do not satisfy this condition, although systems of Hintikka and Niiniluoto do.)
In the second place, the notion of instance must be construed so the “instances”
of a universal generalization are in fact logical consequences of it. Thus ‘If
A is a swan then A is white’ is an instance of ‘All swans are white’ in the
appropriate sense, but ‘A is a white swan’ is not. The latter statement is
logically stronger than ‘If A is a swan then A is white’ and a complete report
on species, weight, color, sex, etc., of individual A would be stronger still.
Such statements are not logical consequences of the universal generalization,
and the theorem does not hold for them. For example, the report of a man 7 feet
11¾ inches tall might actually reduce the probability of the generalization
that all men are under 8 feet tall. Residual queasiness about the foregoing may
be dispelled by a point made by Carnap apropos of Hempel’s discussion of
paradoxes of confirmation. ‘Confirmation’ is ambiguous. ‘E confirms H’ may mean
that the probability of H conditional on E is greater than the unconditional
probability of H, in which case deductive consequences of H confirm H under the
conditions set forth above. Or ‘E confirms H’ may mean that the probability of
H conditional on E is high (e.g., greater than .95), in which case if E
confirms H, then E confirms every logical consequence of H. Conflation of the
two senses can lead one to the paradoxical conclusion that E confirms E & P
and thus P for any statement, P.
See also CONFIRMATION,
MATHEMATICAL INDUCTION, MILL’s METHODS, PROBLEM OF INDUCTION. B.Sk. induction,
eliminative. See INDUCTION. induction, intuitive. See ROSS. induction, mathematical.
See MATHEMATICAL INDUCTION. induction, new riddle of. See GRUE PARADOX.
induction, problem of. See PROBLEM OF INDUCTION. inductive clause. See
MATHEMATICAL INDUCTION. inductive definition. See DEFINITION. inductive
explanation. See COVERING LAW MODEL. inductive justification. See
JUSTIFICATION. inductive probability. See PROBABILITY. inductivism, a
philosophy of science invented by Popper and P. K. Feyerabend as a foil for
their own views. According to inductivism, a unique a priori inductive logic
enables one to construct an algorithm that will compute from any input of data
the best scientific theory accounting for that data. See also ALGORITHM, DUHEM,
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. B.Sk. infallibility. See PRIVILEGED ACCESS. inference,
the process of drawing a conclusion from premises or assumptions, or, loosely,
the conclusion so drawn. An argument can be merely a number of statements of
which one is designated the conclusion and the rest are designated premises.
Whether the premises imply the conclusion is thus independent of anyone’s
actual beliefs in either of them. Belief, however, is essential to inference.
Inference occurs only if someone, owing to believing the premises, begins to
believe the conclusion or continues to believe the conclusion with greater
confidence than before. Because inference requires a subject who has beliefs,
some requirements of (an ideally) acceptable inference do not apply to abstract
arguments: one must believe the premises; one must believe that the premises
support the conclusion; neither of these beliefs induction, eliminative
inference 426 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 426 may be based on one’s
prior belief in the conclusion. W. E. Johnson called these the epistemic
conditions of inference. In a reductio ad absurdum argument that deduces a
self-contradiction from certain premises, not all steps of the argument will
correspond to steps of inference. No one deliberately infers a contradiction.
What one infers, in such an argument, is that certain premises are inconsistent.
Acceptable inferences can fall short of being ideally acceptable according to
the above requirements. Relevant beliefs are sometimes indefinite. Infants and
children infer despite having no grasp of the sophisticated notion of support.
One function of idealization is to set standards for that which falls short. It
is possible to judge how nearly inexplicit, automatic, unreflective,
lessthan-ideal inferences meet ideal requirements. In ordinary speech, ‘infer’
often functions as a synonym of ‘imply’, as in ‘The new tax law infers that we
have to calculate the value of our shrubbery’. Careful philosophical writing
avoids this usage. Implication is, and inference is not, a relation between
statements. Valid deductive inference corresponds to a valid deductive
argument: it is logically impossible for all the premises to be true when the
conclusion is false. That is, the conjunction of all the premises and the
negation of the conclusion is inconsistent. Whenever a conjunction is
inconsistent, there is a valid argument for the negation of any conjunct from
the other conjuncts. (Relevance logic imposes restrictions on validity to avoid
this.) Whenever one argument is deductively valid, so is another argument that
goes in a different direction. (1) ‘Stacy left her slippers in the kitchen’
implies (2) ‘Stacy had some slippers’. Should one acquainted with Stacy and the
kitchen infer (2) from (1), or infer not-(1) from not-(2), or make neither
inference? Formal logic tells us about implication and deductive validity, but
it cannot tell us when or what to infer. Reasonable inference depends on
comparative degrees of reasonable belief. An inference in which every premise
and every step is beyond question is a demonstrative inference. (Similarly,
reasoning for which this condition holds is demonstrative reasoning.) Just as
what is beyond question can vary from one situation to another, so can what
counts as demonstrative. The term presumably derives from Aristotle’s Posterior
Analytics. Understanding Aristotle’s views on demonstration requires
understanding his general scheme for classifying inferences. Not all inferences
are deductive. In an inductive inference, one infers from an observed
combination of characteristics to some similar unobserved combination. ‘Reasoning’
like ‘painting’, and ‘frosting’, and many other words, has a process–product
ambiguity. Reasoning can be a process that occurs in time or it can be a result
or product. A letter to the editor can both contain reasoning and be the result
of reasoning. It is often unclear whether a word such as ‘statistical’ that
modifies the words ‘inference’ or ‘reasoning’ applies primarily to stages in
the process or to the content of the product. One view, attractive for its
simplicity, is that the stages of the process of reasoning correspond closely
to the parts of the product. Examples that confirm this view are scarce.
Testing alternatives, discarding and reviving, revising and transposing, and so
on, are as common to the process of reasoning as to other creative activities.
A product seldom reflects the exact history of its production. In An
Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy, J. S. Mill says that
reasoning is a source from which we derive new truths (Chapter 14). This is a
useful saying so long as we remember that not all reasoning is inference. See
also DEDUCTION, IMPLICATION, INDUCTION. D.H.S. inference rule. See LOGISTIC
SYSTEM. inference to the best explanation, an inference by which one concludes
that something is the case on the grounds that this best explains something
else one believes to be the case. Paradigm examples of this kind of inference
are found in the natural sciences, where a hypothesis is accepted on the
grounds that it best explains relevant observations. For example, the hypothesis
that material substances have atomic structures best explains a range of
observations concerning how such substances interact. Inferences to the best
explanation occur in everyday life as well. Upon walking into your house you
observe that a lamp is lying broken on the floor, and on the basis of this you
infer that the cat has knocked it over. This is plausibly analyzed as an
inference to the best explanation; you believe that the cat has knocked over
the lamp because this is the best explanation for the lamp’s lying broken on
the floor. The nature of inference to the best explanation and the extent of
its use are both controversial. Positions that have been taken include: (a)
that it is a distinctive kind of inductive reasoning; (b) inference rule inference
to the best explanation 427 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 427 that all
good inductive inferences involve inference to the best explanation; and (c)
that it is not a distinctive kind of inference at all, but is rather a special
case of enumerative induction. Another controversy concerns the criteria for
what makes an explanation best. Simplicity, cognitive fit, and explanatory
power have all been suggested as relevant merits, but none of these notions is
well understood. Finally, a skeptical problem arises: inference to the best
explanation is plausibly involved in both scientific and commonsense knowledge,
but it is not clear why the best explanation that occurs to a person is likely
to be true.
See also ABDUCTION,
EXPLANATION, INDUCTION, INFERENCE, PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. J.G. inferential
justification. See FOUNDATIONALISM. inferential knowledge, a kind of “indirect”
knowledge, namely, knowledge based on or resulting from inference. Assuming
that knowledge is at least true, justified belief, inferential knowledge is
constituted by a belief that is justified because it is inferred from certain
other beliefs. The knowledge that 7 equals 7 seems non-inferential. We do not
infer from anything that 7 equals 7 – it is obvious and self-evident. The knowledge
that 7 is the cube root of 343, in contrast, seems inferential. We cannot know
this without inferring it from something else, such as the result obtained when
multiplying 7 times 7 times 7. Two sorts of inferential relations may be
distinguished. ‘I inferred that someone died because the flag is at half-mast’
may be true because yesterday I acquired the belief about the flag, which
caused me to acquire the further belief that someone died. ‘I inferentially
believe that someone died because the flag is at halfmast’ may be true now
because I retain the belief that someone died and it remains based on my belief
about the flag. My belief that someone died is thus either episodically or
structurally inferential. The episodic process is an occurrent, causal relation
among belief acquisitions. The structural basing relation may involve the
retention of beliefs, and need not be occurrent. (Some reserve ‘inference’ for
the episodic relation.) An inferential belief acquired on one basis may later
be held on a different basis, as when I forget I saw a flag at half-mast but
continue to believe someone died because of news reports. That “How do you
know?” and “Prove it!” always seem pertinent suggests that all knowledge is
inferential, a version of the coherence theory. The well-known regress argument
seems to show, however, that not all knowledge can be inferential, which is a
version of foundationalism. For if S knows something inferentially, S must
infer it correctly from premises S knows to be true. The question whether those
premises are also known inferentially begins either an infinite regress of
inferences (which is humanly impossible) or a circle of justification (which
could not constitute good reasoning). Which sources of knowledge are
non-inferential remains an issue even assuming foundationalism. When we see
that an apple is red, e.g., our knowledge is based in some manner on the way
the apple looks. “How do you know it is red?” can be answered: “By the way it
looks.” This answer seems correct, moreover, only if an inference from the way
the apple looks to its being red would be warranted. Nevertheless, perceptual
beliefs are formed so automatically that talk of inference seems inappropriate.
In addition, inference as a process whereby beliefs are acquired as a result of
holding other beliefs may be distinguished from inference as a state in which
one belief is sustained on the basis of others. Knowledge that is inferential
in one way need not be inferential in the other.
See also FOUNDATIONALISM,
INFERENCE, PRACTICAL REASONING. W.A.D. infima species (Latin, ‘lowest
species’), a species that is not a genus of any other species. According to the
theory of classification, division, and definition that is part of traditional
or Aristotelian logic, every individual is a specimen of some infima species.
An infima species is a member of a genus that may in turn be a species of a
more inclusive genus, and so on, until one reaches a summum genus, a genus that
is not a species of a more inclusive genus. Socrates and Plato are specimens of
the infima specis human being (mortal rational animal), which is a species of
the genus rational animal, which is a species of the genus animal, and so on,
up to the summum genus substance. Whereas two specimens of animal – e.g., an
individual human and an individual horse – can differ partly in their essential
characteristics, no two specimens of the infima species human being can differ
in essence.
See also ARISTOTLE,
ESSENTIALISM, GENUS GENERALISSIMUM, TREE OF PORPHYRY. W.E.M. infinitary logic,
the logic of expressions of infinite length. Quine has advanced the claim that
firstorder logic (FOL) is the language of science, a position accepted by many
of his followers. Howinferential justification infinitary logic 428 4065h-l.qxd
08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 428 ever, many important notions of mathematics and
science are not expressible in FOL. The notion of finiteness, e.g., is central
in mathematics but cannot be expressed within FOL. There is no way to express
such a simple, precise claim as ‘There are only finitely many stars’ in FOL.
This and related expressive limitations in FOL seriously hamper its
applicability to the study of mathematics and have led to the study of stronger
logics. There have been various approaches to getting around the limitations by
the study of so-called strong logics, including second-order logic (where one
quantifies over sets or properties, not just individuals), generalized
quantifiers (where one adds quantifiers in addition to the usual ‘for all’ and
‘there exists’), and branching quantifiers (where notions of independence of
variables is introduced). One of the most fruitful methods has been the
introduction of idealized “infinitely long” statements. For example, the above
statement about the stars would be formalized as an infinite disjunction: there
is at most one star, or there are at most two stars, or there are at most three
stars, etc. Each of these disjuncts is expressible in FOL. The expressive
limitations in FOL are closely linked with Gödel’s famous completeness and
incompleteness theorems. These results show, among other things, that any
attempt to systematize the laws of logic is going to be inadequate, one way or
another. Either it will be confined to a language with expressive limitations,
so that these notions cannot even be expressed, or else, if they can be
expressed, then an attempt at giving an effective listing of axioms and rules
of inference for the language will fall short. In infinitary logic, the rules
of inference can have infinitely many premises, and so are not effectively
presentable. Early work in infinitary logic used cardinality as a guide:
whether or not a disjunction, conjunction, or quantifier string was permitted
had to do only with the cardinality of the set in question. It turned out that
the most fruitful of these logics was the language with countable conjunctions
and finite strings of first-order quantifiers. This language had further
refinements to socalled admissible languages, where more refined set-theoretic
considerations play a role in determining what counts as a formula. Infinitary
languages are also connected with strong axioms of infinity, statements that do
not follow from the usual axioms of set theory but for which one has other
evidence that they might well be true, or at least consistent. In particular,
compact cardinals are infinite cardinal numbers where the analogue of the
compactness theorem of FOL generalizes to the associated infinitary language.
These cardinals have proven to be very important in modern set theory. During
the 1990s, some infinitary logics played a surprising role in computer science.
By allowing arbitrarily long conjunctions and disjunctions, but only finitely
many variables (free or bound) in any formula, languages with attractive
closure properties were found that allowed the kinds of inductive procedures of
computer science, procedures not expressible in FOL.
See also COMPACTNESS
THEOREM, COMPLETENESS, GÖDEL’S INCOMPLETENESS THEOREMS, INFINITY, SECOND-ORDER
LOGIC. J.Ba. infinite, actual. See ARISTOTLE. infinite analysis, doctrine of.
See LEIBNIZ. infinite regress argument, a distinctively philosophical kind of
argument purporting to show that a thesis is defective because it generates an
infinite series when either (form A) no such series exists or (form B) were it
to exist, the thesis would lack the role (e.g., of justification) that it is
supposed to play. The mere generation of an infinite series is not
objectionable. It is misleading therefore to use ‘infinite regress’ (or
‘regress’) and ‘infinite series’ equivalently. For instance, both of the
following claims generate an infinite series: (1) every natural number has a
successor that itself is a natural number, and (2) every event has a causal predecessor
that itself is an event. Yet (1) is true (arguably, necessarily true), and (2)
may be true for all that logic can say about the matter. Likewise, there is
nothing contrary to logic about any of the infinite series generated by the
suppositions that (3) every free act is the consequence of a free act of
choice; (4) every intelligent operation is the result of an intelligent mental
operation; (5) whenever individuals x and y share a property F there exists a
third individual z which paradigmatically has F and to which x and y are
somehow related (as copies, by participation, or whatnot); or (6) every
generalization from experience is inductively inferable from experience by
appeal to some other generalization from experience. What Locke (in the Essay concerning
Human Understanding) objects to about the theory of free will embodied in (3)
and Ryle (in The Concept of Mind) objects to about the “intellectualist
leginfinite, actual infinite regress argument 429 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39
AM Page 429 end” embodied in (4) can therefore be only that it is just plain
false as a matter of fact that we perform an infinite number of acts of choice
or operations of the requisite kinds. In effect their infinite regress
arguments are of form A: they argue that the theories concerned must be
rejected because they falsely imply that such infinite series exist. Arguably
the infinite regress arguments employed by Plato (in the Parmenides) regarding
his own theory of Forms and by Popper (in the Logic of Scientific Discovery)
regarding the principle of induction proposed by Mill, are best construed as
having form B, their objections being less to (5) or (6) than to their
epistemic versions: (5*) that we can understand how x and y can share a
property F only if we understand that there exists a third individual (the
“Form” z) which paradigmatically has F and to which x and y are related; and
(6*) that since the principle of induction must itself be a generalization from
experience, we are justified in accepting it only if it can be inferred from
experience by appeal to a higherorder, and justified, inductive principle. They
are arguing that because the series generated by (5) and (6) are infinite, the
epistemic enlightenment promised by (5*) and (6*) will forever elude us. When
successful, infinite regress arguments can show us that certain sorts of
explanation, understanding, or justification are will-o’-thewisps. As Passmore
has observed (in Philosophical Reasoning) there is an important sense of
‘explain’ in which it is impossible to explain predication. We cannot explain
x’s and y’s possession of the common property F by saying that they are called
by the same name (nominalism) or fall under the same concept (conceptualism)
any more than we can by saying that they are related to the same form (Platonic
realism), since each of these is itself a property that x and y are supposed to
have in common. Likewise, it makes no sense to try to explain why anything at
all exists by invoking the existence of something else (such as the theist’s
God). The general truths that things exist, and that things may have properties
in common, are “brute facts” about the way the world is. Some infinite regress
objections fail because they are directed at “straw men.” Bradley’s regress
argument against the pluralist’s “arrangement of given facts into relations and
qualities,” from which he concludes that monism is true, is a case in point. He
correctly argues that if one posits the existence of two or more things, then
there must be relations of some sort between them, and then (given his covert
assumption that these relations are things) concludes that there must be
further relations between these relations ad infinitum. Bradley’s regress
misfires because a pluralist would reject his assumption. Again, some regress
arguments fail because they presume that any infinite series is vicious.
Aquinas’s regress objection to an infinite series of movers, from which he
concludes that there must be a prime mover, involves this sort of confusion.
See also EPISTEMIC
REGRESS ARGUMENT, INFINITY, VICIOUS REGRESS. R.D.B. infinity, in set theory,
the property of a set whereby it has a proper subset whose members can be
placed in one-to-one correspondence with all the members of the set, as the
even integers can be so arranged in respect to the natural numbers by the
function f(x) = x/2, namely: Devised by Richard Dedekind in defiance of the
age-old intuition that no part of a thing can be as large as the thing, this
set-theoretical definition of ‘infinity’, having been much acclaimed by
philosophers like Russell as a model of conceptual analysis that philosophers
were urged to emulate, can elucidate the putative infinity of space, time, and
even God, his power, wisdom, etc. If a set’s being denumerable – i.e., capable
of having its members placed in one-to-one correspondence with the natural
numbers – can well appear to define much more simply what the infinity of an
infinite set is, Cantor exhibited the real numbers (as expressed by unending
decimal expansions) as a counterexample, showing them to be indenumerable by
means of his famous diagonal argument. Suppose all the real numbers between 0
and 1 are placed in one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers, thus:
Going down the principal diagonal, we can construct a new real number, e.g.,
.954 . . . , not found in the infinite “square array.” The most important
result in set theory, Cantor’s theorem, is denied its full force by the
maverick followers infinity infinity 430 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page
430 of Skolem, who appeal to the fact that, though the real numbers
constructible in any standard axiomatic system will be indenumerable relative
to the resources of the system, they can be seen to be denumerable when viewed
from outside it. Refusing to accept the absolute indenumerability of any set,
the Skolemites, in relativizing the notion to some system, provide one further
instance of the allure of relativism. More radical still are the nominalists
who, rejecting all abstract entities and sets in particular, might be supposed
to have no use for Cantor’s theorem. Not so. Assume with Democritus that there
are infinitely many of his atoms, made of adamant. Corresponding to each
infinite subset of these atoms will be their mereological sum or “fusion,”
namely a certain quantity of adamant. Concrete entities acceptable to the
nominalist, these quantities can be readily shown to be indenumerable. Whether
Cantor’s still higher infinities beyond F1 admit of any such nominalistic
realization remains a largely unexplored area. Aleph-zero or F0 being taken to
be the transfinite number of the natural numbers, there are then F1 real
numbers (assuming the continuum hypothesis), while the power set of the reals
has F2 members, and the power set of that F3 members, etc. In general, K2 will
be said to have a greater number (finite or transfinite) of members than K1
provided the members of K1 can be put in one-to-one correspondence with some
proper subset of K2 but not vice versa. Skepticism regarding the higher
infinities can trickle down even to F0, and if both Aristotle and Kant, the
former in his critique of Zeno’s paradoxes, the latter in his treatment of
cosmological antinomies, reject any actual, i.e. completed, infinite, in our
time Dummett’s return to verificationism, as associated with the mathematical
intuitionism of Brouwer, poses the keenest challenge. Recognition-transcendent
sentences like ‘The total number of stars is infinite’ are charged with
violating the intersubjective conditions required for a speaker of a language
to manifest a grasp of their meaning. See also CONTINUUM PROBLEM, SET THEORY.
J.A.B. infinity, axiom of.
See SET THEORY. informal
fallacy, an error of reasoning or tactic of argument that can be used to
persuade someone with whom you are reasoning that your argument is correct when
really it is not. The standard treatment of the informal fallacies in logic
textbooks draws heavily on Aristotle’s list, but there are many variants, and
new fallacies have often been added, some of which have gained strong footholds
in the textbooks. The word ‘informal’ indicates that these fallacies are not
simply localized faults or failures in the given propositions (premises and
conclusion) of an argument to conform to a standard of semantic correctness
(like that of deductive logic), but are misuses of the argument in relation to
a context of reasoning or type of dialogue that an arguer is supposed to be
engaged in. Informal logic is the subfield of logical inquiry that deals with
these fallacies. Typically, informal fallacies have a pragmatic (practical)
aspect relating to how an argument is being used, and also a dialectical
aspect, pertaining to a context of dialogue – normally an exchange between two
participants in a discussion. Both aspects are major concerns of informal
logic. Logic textbooks classify informal fallacies in various ways, but no
clear and widely accepted system of classification has yet become established.
Some textbooks are very inventive and prolific, citing many different
fallacies, including novel and exotic ones. Others are more conservative,
sticking with the twenty or so mainly featured in or derived from Aristotle’s
original treatment, with a few widely accepted additions. The paragraphs below
cover most of these “major” or widely featured fallacies, the ones most likely
to be encountered by name in the language of everyday educated conversation.
The genetic fallacy is the error of drawing an inappropriate conclusion about
the goodness or badness of some property of a thing from the goodness or
badness of some property of the origin of that thing. For example, ‘This
medication was derived from a plant that is poisonous; therefore, even though
my physician advises me to take it, I conclude that it would be very bad for me
if I took it.’ The error is inappropriately arguing from the origin of the
medication to the conclusion that it must be poisonous in any form or
situation. The genetic fallacy is often construed very broadly making it
coextensive with the personal attack type of argument (see the description of
argumentum ad hominem below) that condemns a prior argument by condemning its
source or proponent. Argumentum ad populum (argument to the people) is a kind
of argument that uses appeal to popular sentiments to support a conclusion.
Sometimes called “appeal to the gallery” or “appeal to popular pieties” or even
“mob appeal,” this kind of argument has traditionally been portrayed as
fallacious. However, there infinity, axiom of informal fallacy 431 4065h-l.qxd
08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 431 need be nothing wrong with appealing to popular
sentiments in argument, so long as their evidential value is not exaggerated.
Even so, such a tactic can be fallacious when the attempt to arouse mass
enthusiasms is used as a substitute to cover for a failure to bring forward the
kind of evidence that is properly required to support one’s conclusion.
Argumentum ad misericordiam (argument to pity) is a kind of argument that uses
an appeal to pity, sympathy, or compassion to support its conclusion. Such
arguments can have a legitimate place in some discussions – e.g., in appeals
for charitable donations. But they can also put emotional pressure on a
respondent in argument to try to cover up a weak case. For example, a student
who does not have a legitimate reason for a late assignment might argue that if
he doesn’t get a high grade, his disappointed mother might have a heart attack.
The fallacy of composition is the error of arguing from a property of parts of
a whole to a property of the whole – e.g., ‘The important parts of this machine
are light; therefore this machine is light.’ But a property of the parts cannot
always be transferred to the whole. In some cases, examples of the fallacy of
composition are arguments from all the parts to a whole, e.g. ‘Everybody in the
country pays her debts. Therefore the country pays its debts.’ The fallacy of
division is the converse of that of composition: the error of arguing from a
property of the whole to a property of its parts – e.g., ‘This machine is
heavy; therefore all the parts of this machine are heavy.’ The problem is that
the property possessed by the whole need not transfer to the parts. The fallacy
of false cause, sometimes called post hoc, ergo propter hoc (after this,
therefore because of this), is the error of arguing that because two events are
correlated with one another, especially when they vary together, the one is the
cause of the other. For example, there might be a genuine correlation between
the stork population in certain areas of Europe and the human birth rate. But
it would be an error to conclude, on that basis alone, that the presence of
storks causes babies to be born. In general, however, correlation is good, if
sometimes weak, evidence for causation. The problem comes in when the
evidential strength of the correlation is exaggerated as causal evidence. The
apparent connection could just be coincidence, or due to other factors that
have not been taken into account, e.g., some third factor that causes both the
events that are correlated with each other. The fallacy of secundum quid
(neglecting qualifications) occurs where someone is arguing from a general rule
to a particular case, or vice versa. One version of it is arguing from a
general rule while overlooking or suppressing legitimate exceptions. This kind
of error has also often been called the fallacy of accident. An example would
be the argument ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of speech; therefore it is
my right to shout “Fire” in this crowded theater if I want to.’ The other
version of secundum quid, sometimes also called the fallacy of converse
accident, or the fallacy of hasty generalization, is the error of trying to
argue from a particular case to a general rule that does not properly fit that
case. An example would be the argument ‘Tweetie [an ostrich] is a bird that
does not fly; therefore birds do not fly’. The fault is the failure to
recognize or acknowledge that Tweetie is not a typical bird with respect to
flying. Argumentum consensus gentium (argument from the consensus of the nations)
is a kind that appeals to the common consent of mankind to support a
conclusion. Numerous philosophers and theologians in the past have appealed to
this kind of argument to support conclusions like the existence of God and the
binding character of moral principles. For example, ‘Belief in God is
practically universal among human beings past and present; therefore there is a
practical weight of presumption in favor of the truth of the proposition that
God exists’. A version of the consensus gentium argument represented by this
example has sometimes been put forward in logic textbooks as an instance of the
argumentum ad populum (described above) called the argument from popularity:
‘Everybody believes (accepts) P as true; therefore P is true’. If interpreted
as applicable in all cases, the argument from popularity is not generally
sound, and may be regarded as a fallacy. However, if regarded as a presumptive
inference that only applies in some cases, and as subject to withdrawal where
evidence to the contrary exists, it can sometimes be regarded as a weak but
plausible argument, useful to serve as a provisional guide to prudent action or
reasoned commitment. Argumentum ad hominem (literally, argument against the
man) is a kind of argument that uses a personal attack against an arguer to
refute her argument. In the abusive or personal variant, the character of the
arguer (especially character for veracity) is attacked; e.g., ‘You can’t
believe what Smith says – he is a liar’. In evaluating testimony (e.g., in legal
cross-examination), attacking an arguer’s character can be legitimate in some
cases. Also in political debate, character can be a legitimate issue. However,
ad hominem arguinformal fallacy informal fallacy 432 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999
7:39 AM Page 432 ments are commonly used fallaciously in attacking an opponent
unfairly – e.g., where the attack is not merited, or where it is used to
distract an audience from more relevant lines of argument. In the
circumstantial variant, an arguer’s personal circumstances are claimed to be in
conflict with his argument, implying that the arguer is either confused or
insincere; e.g., ‘You don’t practice what you preach’. For example, a
politician who has once advocated not raising taxes may be accused of
“flip-flopping” if he himself subsequently favors legislation to raise taxes.
This type of argument is not inherently fallacious, but it can go badly wrong,
or be used in a fallacious way, for example if circumstances changed, or if the
alleged conflict was less serious than the attacker claimed. Another variant is
the “poisoning the well” type of ad hominem argument, where an arguer is said
to have shown no regard for the truth, the implication being that nothing he
says henceforth can ever be trusted as reliable. Yet another variant of the ad
hominem argument often cited in logic textbooks is the tu quoque (you-too
reply), where the arguer attacked by an ad hominem argument turns around and
says, “What about you? Haven’t you ever lied before? You’re just as bad.” Still
another variant is the bias type of ad hominem argument, where one party in an
argument charges the other with not being honest or impartial or with having
hidden motivations or personal interests at stake. Argumentum ad baculum
(argument to the club) is a kind of argument that appeals to a threat or to
fear in order to support a conclusion, or to intimidate a respondent into
accepting it. Ad baculum arguments often take an indirect form; e.g., ‘If you
don’t do this, harmful consequences to you might follow’. In such cases the
utterance can often be taken as a threat. Ad baculum arguments are not
inherently fallacious, because appeals to threatening or fearsome sanctions –
e.g., harsh penalties for drunken driving – are not necessarily failures of
critical argumentation. But because ad baculum arguments are powerful in
eliciting emotions, they are often used persuasively as sophistical tactics in
argumentation to avoid fulfilling the proper requirements of a burden of proof.
Argument from authority is a kind of argument that uses expert opinion (de
facto authority) or the pronouncement of someone invested with an institutional
office or title (de jure authority) to support a conclusion. As a practical but
fallible method of steering discussion toward a presumptive conclusion, the
argument from authority can be a reasonable way of shifting a burden of proof.
However, if pressed too hard in a discussion or portrayed as a better
justification for a conclusion than the evidence warrants, it can become a
fallacious argumentum ad verecundiam (see below). It should be noted, however,
that arguments based on expert opinions are widely accepted both in artificial
intelligence and everyday argumentation as legitimate and sound under the right
conditions. Although arguments from authority have been strongly condemned
during some historical periods as inherently fallacious, the current climate of
opinion is to think of them as acceptable in some cases, even if they are
fallible arguments that can easily go wrong or be misused by sophistical
persuaders. Argumentum ad judicium represents a kind of knowledge-based
argumentation that is empirical, as opposed to being based on an arguer’s
personal opinion or viewpoint. In modern terminology, it apparently refers to
an argument based on objective evidence, as opposed to somebody’s subjective
opinion. The term appears to have been invented by Locke to contrast three
commonly used kinds of arguments and a fourth special type of argument. The
first three types of argument are based on premises that the respondent of the
argument is taken to have already accepted. Thus these can all be called
“personal” in nature. The fourth kind of argument – argumentum ad judicium –
does not have to be based on what some person accepts, and so could perhaps be
called “impersonal.” Locke writes that the first three kinds of arguments can
dispose a person for the reception of truth, but cannot help that person to the
truth. Only the argumentum ad judicium can do that. The first three types of
arguments come from “my shamefacedness, ignorance or error,” whereas the
argumentum ad judicium “comes from proofs and arguments and light arising from
the nature of things themselves.” The first three types of arguments have only
a preparatory function in finding the truth of a matter, whereas the argumentum
ad judicium is more directly instrumental in helping us to find the truth.
Argumentum ad verecundiam (argument to reverence or respect) is the fallacious
use of expert opinion in argumentation to try to persuade someone to accept a
conclusion. In the Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690) Locke describes
such arguments as tactics of trying to prevail on the assent of someone by
portraying him as irreverent or immodest if he does not readily yield to the
authority of some learned informal fallacy informal fallacy 433 4065h-l.qxd
08/02/1999 7:39 AM Page 433 opinion cited. Locke does not claim, however, that
all appeals to expert authority in argument are fallacious. They can be
reasonable if used judiciously. Argumentum ad ignorantiam (argument to
ignorance) takes the following form: a proposition a is not known or proved to
be true (false); therefore A is false (true). It is a negative type of
knowledge-based or presumptive reasoning, generally not conclusive, but it is
nevertheless often non-fallacious in balance-of-consideration cases where the
evidence is inconclusive to resolve a disputed question. In such cases it is a
kind of presumption-based argumentation used to advocate adopting a conclusion
provisionally, in the absence of hard knowledge that would determine whether
the conclusion is true or false. An example would be: Smith has not been heard
from for over seven years, and there is no evidence that he is alive; therefore
it may be presumed (for the purpose of settling Smith’s estate) that he is
dead. Arguments from ignorance ought not to be pressed too hard or used with
too strong a degree of confidence. An example comes from the U.S. Senate
hearings in 1950, in which Senator Joseph McCarthy used case histories to argue
that certain persons in the State Department should be considered Communists.
Of one case he said, “I do not have much information on this except the general
statement of the agency that there is nothing in the files to disprove his
Communist connections.” The strength of any argument from ignorance depends on
the thoroughness of the search made. The argument from ignorance can be used to
shift a burden of proof merely on the basis of rumor, innuendo, or false
accusations, instead of real evidence. Ignoratio elenchi (ignorance of
refutation) is the traditional name, following Aristotle, for the fault of
failing to keep to the point in an argument. The fallacy is also called
irrelevant conclusion or missing the point. Such a failure of relevance is
essentially a failure to keep closely enough to the issue under discussion.
Suppose that during a criminal trial, the prosecutor displays the victim’s
bloody shirt and argues at length that murder is a horrible crime. The
digression may be ruled irrelevant to the question at issue of whether the
defendant is guilty of murder. Alleged failures of this type in argumentation
are sometimes quite difficult to judge fairly, and a ruling should depend on
the type of discussion the participants are supposed to be engaged in. In some
cases, conventions or institutional rules of procedure – e.g. in a criminal
trial – are aids to determining whether a line of argumentation should be
judged relevant or not. Petitio principii (asking to be granted the “principle”
or issue of the discussion to be proved), also called begging the question, is
the fallacy of improperly arguing in a circle. Circular reasoning should not be
presumed to be inherently fallacious, but can be fallacious where the circular
argument has been used to disguise or cover up a failure to fulfill a burden of
proof. The problem arises where the conclusion that was supposed to be proved
is presumed within the premises to be granted by the respondent of the
argument. Suppose I ask you to prove that this bicycle (the ownership of which
is subject to dispute) belongs to Hector, and you reply, “All the bicycles
around here belong to Hector.” The problem is that without independent evidence
that shows otherwise, the premise that all the bicycles belong to Hector takes
for granted that this bicycle belongs to Hector, instead of proving it by
properly fulfilling the burden of proof. The fallacy of many questions (also
called the fallacy of complex question) is the tactic of packing unwarranted
presuppositions into a question so that any direct answer given by the
respondent will trap her into conceding these presuppositions. The classical
case is the question, “Have you stopped beating your spouse?” No matter how the
respondent answers, yes or no, she concedes the presuppositions that (a) she
has a spouse, and (b) she has beaten that spouse at some time. Where one or
both of these presumptions are unwarranted in the given case, the use of this
question is an instance of the fallacy of many questions. The fallacy of equivocation
occurs where an ambiguous word has been used more than once in an argument in
such a way that it is plausible to interpret it in one way in one instance of
its use and in another way in another instance. Such an argument may seem
persuasive if the shift in the context of use of the word makes these differing
interpretations plausible. Equivocation, however, is generally seriously
deceptive only in longer sequences of argument where the meaning of a word or
phrase shifts subtly but significantly. A simplistic example will illustrate
the gist of the fallacy: ‘The news media should present all the facts on
anything that is in the public interest; the public interest in lives of movie
stars is intense; therefore the news media should present all the facts on the
private lives of movie stars’. This argument goes from plausible premises to an
implausible conclusion by trading on the ambiguity of ‘public interest’. In one
sense informal fallacy informal fallacy 434 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page
434 it means ‘public benefit’ while in another sense it refers to something
more akin to curiosity. Amphiboly (double arrangement) is a type of traditional
fallacy (derived from Aristotle’s list of fallacies) that refers to the use of
syntactically ambiguous sentences like ‘Save soap and waste paper’. Although
the logic textbooks often cite examples of such sentences as fallacies, they
have never made clear how they could be used to deceive in a serious
discussion. Indeed, the example cited is not even an argument, but simply an
ambiguous sentence. In cases of some advertisements like ‘Two pizzas for one
special price’, however, one can see how the amphiboly seriously misleads
readers into thinking they are being offered two pizzas for the regular price
of one. Accent is the use of shifting stress or emphasis in speech as a means
of deception. For example, if a speaker puts stress on the word ‘created’ in
‘All men were created equal’ it suggests (by implicature) the opposite
proposition to ‘All men are equal’, namely ‘Not all men are (now) equal’. The
oral stress allows the speaker to covertly suggest an inference the hearer is
likely to draw, and to escape commitment to the conclusion suggested by later
denying he said it. The slippery slope argument, in one form, counsels against
some contemplated action (or inaction) on the ground that, once taken, it will
be a first step in a sequence of events that will be difficult to resist and
will (or may or must) lead to some dangerous (or undesirable or disastrous) outcome
in the end. It is often argued, e.g., that once you allow euthanasia in any
form, such as the withdrawal of heroic treatments of dying patients in
hospitals, then (through erosion of respect for human life), you will
eventually wind up with a totalitarian state where old, feeble, or politically
troublesome individuals are routinely eliminated. Some slippery slope arguments
can be reasonable, but they should not be put forward in an exaggerated way,
supported with insufficient evidence, or used as a scare tactic.
informal logic, also
called practical logic, the use of logic to identify, analyze, and evaluate
arguments as they occur in contexts of discourse in everyday conversations. In
informal logic, arguments are assessed on a case-by-case basis, relative to how
the argument was used in a given context to persuade someone to accept the
conclusion, or at least to give some reason relevant to accepting the
conclusion.
information theory, also
called communication theory, a primarily mathematical theory of communication.
Prime movers in its development include Claude Shannon, H. Nyquist, R. V. L.
Hartley, Norbert Wiener, Boltzmann, and Szilard. Original interests in the
theory were largely theoretical or applied to telegraphy and telephony, and
early development clustered around engineering problems in such domains.
Philosophers (Bar-Hillel, Dretske, and Sayre, among others) are mainly
interested in information theory as a source for developing a semantic theory
of information and meaning. The mathematical theory has been less concerned
with the details of how a message acquires meaning and more concerned with what
Shannon called the “fundamental problem of communication” – reproducing at one
point either exactly or approximately a message (that already has a meaning)
selected at another point. Therefore, the two interests in information – the
mathematical and the philosophical – have remained largely orthogonal.
Information is an objective (mind-independent) entity. It can be generated or
carried by messages (words, sentences) or other products of cognizers
(interpreters). Indeed, communication theory focuses primarily on conditions
involved in the generation and transmission of coded (linguistic) messages.
However, almost any event can (and usually does) generate information capable
of being encoded or transmitted. For example, Colleen’s acquiring red spots can
contain information about Colleen’s having the measles and graying hair can
carry information about her grandfather’s aging. This information can be encoded
into messages about measles or aging (respectively) and transmitted, but the
information would exist independently of its encoding or transmission. That is,
this information would be generated (under the right conditions) by occurrence
of the measles-induced spots and the age-induced graying themselves –
regardless of anyone’s actually noticing. This objective feature of information
explains its potential for epistemic and semantic development by philosophers
and cognitive scientists. For example, in its epistemic dimension, a single
(event, message, or Colleen’s spots) that contains informal logic information
theory 435 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 435 (carries) the information
that Colleen has the measles is something from which one (mom, doctor) can come
to know that Colleen has the measles. Generally, an event (signal) that
contains the information that p is something from which one can come to know
that p is the case – provided that one’s knowledge is indeed based on the
information that p. Since information is objective, it can generate what we
want from knowledge – a fix on the way the world objectively is configured. In
its semantic dimension, information can have intentionality or aboutness. What
is happening at one place (thermometer reading rising in Colleen’s mouth) can
carry information about what is happening at another place (Colleen’s body
temperature rising). The fact that messages (or mental states, for that matter)
can contain information about what is happening elsewhere, suggests an exciting
prospect of tracing the meaning of a message (or of a thought) to its
informational origins in the environment. To do this in detail is what a
semantic theory of information is about. The mathematical theory of information
is purely concerned with information in its quantitative dimension. It deals
with how to measure and transmit amounts of information and leaves to others
the work of saying what (how) meaning or content comes to be associated with a
signal or message. In regard to amounts of information, we need a way to
measure how much information is generated by an event (or message) and how to
represent that amount. Information theory provides the answer. Since
information is an objective entity, the amount of information associated with
an event is related to the objective probability (likelihood) of the event.
Events that are less likely to occur generate more information than those more
likely to occur. Thus, to discover that the toss of a fair coin came up heads
contains more information than to discover this about the toss of a coin biased
(.8) toward heads. Or, to discover that a lie was knowingly broadcast by a
censored, state-run radio station, contains less information than that a lie
was knowingly broadcast by a non-censored, free radio station (say, the BBC). A
(perhaps surprising) consequence of associating amounts of information with
objective likelihoods of events is that some events generate no information at
all. That is, that 55 % 3125 or that water freezes at 0oC. (on a specific
occasion) generates no information at all – since these things cannot be
otherwise (their probability of being otherwise is zero). Thus, their
occurrence generates zero information. Shannon was seeking to measure the
amount of information generated by a message and the amount transmitted by its
reception (or about average amounts transmissible over a channel). Since his
work, it has become standard to think of the measure of information in terms of
reductions of uncertainty. Information is identified with the reduction of
uncertainty or elimination of possibilities represented by the occurrence of an
event or state of affairs. The amount of information is identified with how
many possibilities are eliminated. Although other measures are possible, the
most convenient and intuitive way that this quantity is standardly represented
is as a logarithm (to the base 2) and measured in bits (short for how many
binary digits) needed to represent binary decisions involved in the reduction
or elimination of possibilities. If person A chooses a message to send to
person B, from among 16 equally likely alternative messages (say, which number
came up in a fair drawing from 16 numbers), the choice of one message would
represent 4 bits of information (16 % 24 or log2 16 % 4). Thus, to calculate
the amount of information generated by a selection from equally likely messages
(signals, events), the amount of information I of the message s is calculated
I(s) % logn. If there is a range of messages (s1 . . . sN) not all of which are
equally likely (letting (p (si) % the probability of any si’s occurrence), the
amount of information generated by the selection of any message si is
calculated I(si) % log 1/p(si) % –log p(si) [log 1/x % –log x] While each of
these formulas says how much information is generated by the selection of a
specific message, communication theory is seldom primarily interested in these
measures. Philosophers are interested, however. For if knowledge that p
requires receiving the information that p occurred, and if p’s occurrence
represents 4 bits of information, then S would know that p occurred only if S
received information equal to (at least) 4 bits. This may not be sufficient for
S to know p – for S must receive the right amount of information in a non-deviant
causal way and S must be able to extract the content of the information – but
this seems clearly necessary. Other measures of information of interest in
communication theory include the average information, or entropy, of a source,
information theory information theory 436 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page
436 I(s) % 9p(si) $ I(si), a measure for noise (the amount of information that
person B receives that was not sent by person A), and for equivocation (the
amount of information A wanted or tried to send to B that B did not receive).
These concepts from information theory and the formulas for measuring these
quantities of information (and others) provide a rich source of tools for
communication applications as well as philosophical applications.
See also COMPUTER THEORY,
EPISTEMOLOGY, PERCEPTION. F.A. informed consent, voluntary agreement in the
light of relevant information, especially by a patient to a medical procedure.
An example would be consent to a specific medical procedure by a competent
adult patient who has an adequate understanding of all the relevant treatment
options and their risks. It is widely held that both morality and law require
that no medical procedures be performed on competent adults without their
informed consent. This doctrine of informed consent has been featured in case
laws since the 1950s, and has been a focus of much discussion in medical
ethics. Underwritten by a concern to protect patients’ rights to
self-determination and also by a concern with patients’ well-being, the
doctrine was introduced in an attempt to delineate physicians’ duties to inform
patients of the risks and benefits of medical alternatives and to obtain their
consent to a particular course of treatment or diagnosis. Interpretation of the
legitimate scope of the doctrine has focused on a variety of issues concerning
what range of patients is competent to give consent and hence from which ones
informed consent must be required; concerning how much, how detailed, and what
sort of information must be given to patients to yield informed consent; and
concerning what sorts of conditions are required to ensure both that there is
proper understanding of the information and that consent is truly voluntary
rather than unduly influenced by the institutional authority of the physician.
See also ETHICS. J.R.M. Ingarden, Roman Witold (1893–1970), the leading Polish
phenomenologist, who taught in Lvov and Cracow and became prominent in the
English-speaking world above all through his work in aesthetics and philosophy
of literature. His Literary Work of Art (German 1931, English 1973) presents an
ontological account of the literary work as a stratified structure, including
word sounds and meanings, represented objects and aspects, and associated
metaphysical and aesthetic qualities. The work forms part of a larger
ontological project of combating the transcendental idealism of his teacher
Husserl, and seeks to establish the essential difference in structure between
minddependent ‘intentional’ objects and objects in reality. Ingarden’s
ontological investigations are set out in his The Controversy over the
Existence of the World (Polish 1947/48, German 1964–74, partial English
translation as Time and Modes of Being, 1964). The work rests on a tripartite
division of formal, material, and existential ontology and contains extensive
analyses of the ontological structures of individual things, events, processes,
states of affairs, properties and relations. It culminates in an attempted
refutation of idealism on the basis of an exhaustive account of the possible
relations between consciousness and reality. See also PHENOMENOLOGY. B.Sm.
inherent value. See VALUE. innate idea. See IDEA. innatism. See CAMBRIDGE
PLATONISTS. inner converse. See CONVERSE, OUTER AND INNER. in rebus realism.
See METAPHYSICAL REALISM. inscrutability of reference. See INDETERMINACY OF
TRANSLATION. insolubilia, sentences embodying a semantic antinomy such as the
liar paradox. Insolubilia were used by late medieval logicians to analyze
self-nullifying sentences, the possibility that all sentences imply that they
are true, and the relation between spoken, written, and mental language. At
first, theorists focused on nullification to explicate a sentence like ‘I am
lying’, which, when spoken, entails that the speaker “says nothing.”
Bradwardine suggested that such sentences signify that they are at once true
and false, prompting Burley to argue that all sentences imply that they are
true. Roger Swineshead used insolubilia to distinguish between truth and
correspondence to reality; while ‘This sentence is false’ is itself false, it
corresponds to reality, while its contradiction, ‘This sentence is not false,’
does not, although the latter is also false. Later, Wyclif used insolubilia to
describe the senses in which a sentence can be true, which led to his belief in
informed consent insolubilia 437 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 437 the
reality of logical beings or entities of reason, a central tenet of his
realism. Pierre d’Ailly used insolubilia to explain how mental language differs
from spoken and written language, holding that there are no mental language
insolubles, but that spoken and written language lend themselves to the
phenomenon by admitting a single sentence corresponding to two distinct mental
sentences.
See also BURLEY, D’AILLY,
OXFORD CALCULATORS, SEMANTIC PARADOXES, WYCLIF. S.E.L. instantiation. See
PROPERTY. instantiation, universal. See UNIVERSAL INSTANTIATION. institution.
(1) An organization such as a corporation or college. (2) A social practice
such as marriage or making promises. (3) A system of rules defining a possible
form of social organization, such as capitalist versus Communist principles of
economic exchange. In light of the power of institutions to shape societies and
individual lives, writers in professional ethics have explored four main
issues. First, what political and legal institutions are feasible, just, and
otherwise desirable (Plato, Republic; Rawls, A Theory of Justice)? Second, how
are values embedded in institutions through the constitutive rules that define
them (for example, “To promise is to undertake an obligation”), as well as
through regulatory rules imposed on them from outside, such that to participate
in institutions is a value-laden activity (Searle, Speech Acts, 1969)? Third,
do institutions have collective responsibilities or are the only
responsibilities those of individuals, and in general how are the
responsibilities of individuals, institutions, and communities related? Fourth,
at a more practical level, how can we prevent institutions from becoming
corrupted by undue regard for money and power (MacIntyre, After Virtue, 1981)
and by patriarchal prejudices (Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the
Family, 1989)? See also PHILOSOPHY OF LAW, PROFESSIONAL ETHICS, RESPONSIBILITY.
M.W.M. institutional theory of art, the view that something becomes an artwork
by virtue of occupying a certain position within the context of a set of
institutions. George Dickie originated this theory of art (Art and the
Aesthetic, 1974), which was derived loosely from Arthur Danto’s “The Artworld”
(Journal of Philosophy, 1964). In its original form it was the view that a work
of art is an artifact that has the status of candidate for appreciation
conferred upon it by some person acting on behalf of the art world. That is,
there are institutions – such as museums, galleries, and journals and
newspapers that publish reviews and criticism – and there are individuals who
work within those institutions – curators, directors, dealers, performers,
critics – who decide, by accepting objects or events for discussion and
display, what is art and what is not. The concept of artifactuality may be
extended to include found art, conceptual art, and other works that do not
involve altering some preexisting material, by holding that a use, or context
for display, is sufficient to make something into an artifact. This definition
of art raises certain questions. What determines – independently of such
notions as a concern with art – whether an institution is a member of the art
world? That is, is the definition ultimately circular? What is it to accept
something as a candidate for appreciation? Might not this concept also threaten
circularity, since there could be not only artistic but also other kinds of
appreciation?
See also AESTHETICS,
EXPRESSION THEORY OF ART. S.L.F. instrumental conditioning. See CONDITIONING.
instrumentalism, in its most common meaning, a kind of anti-realistic view of
scientific theories wherein theories are construed as calculating devices or
instruments for conveniently moving from a given set of observations to a
predicted set of observations. As such the theoretical statements are not
candidates for truth or reference, and the theories have no ontological import.
This view of theories is grounded in a positive distinction between observation
statements and theoretical statements, and the according of privileged
epistemic status to the former. The view was fashionable during the era of
positivism but then faded; it was recently revived, in large measure owing to
the genuinely perplexing character of quantum theories in physics.
’Instrumentalism’ has a different and much more general meaning associated with
the pragmatic epistemology of Dewey. Deweyan instrumentalism is a general functional
account of all concepts (scientific ones included) wherein the epistemic status
of concepts and the rationality status of actions are seen as a function of
their role in integrating, predicting, and controlling our concrete
interactions with our experienced world. There is no positivistic distinction
instantiation instrumentalism 438 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 438
between observation and theory, and truth and reference give way to “warranted
assertability.” See also DEWEY, METAPHYSICAL REALISM, PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE,
THEORETICAL TERM. C.F.D. instrumental rationality. See RATIONALITY.
instrumental sign. See SEMIOSIS. instrumental value. See VALUE. insufficient
reason. See PRINCIPLE OF INSUFFICIENT REASON. intelligible world. See KANT. intension,
the meaning or connotation of an expression, as opposed to its extension or
denotation, which consists of those things signified by the expression. The
intension of a declarative sentence is often taken to be a proposition and the
intension of a predicate expression (common noun, adjective) is often taken to
be a concept. For Frege, a predicate expression refers to a concept and the
intension or Sinn (“sense”) of a predicate expression is a mode of presentation
distinct from the concept. Objects like propositions or concepts that can be
the intension of terms are called intensional objects. (Note that ‘intensional’
is not the same word as ‘intentional’, although the two are related.) The
extension of a declarative sentence is often taken to be a state of affairs and
that of a predicate expression to be the set of objects that fall under the
concept which is the intension of the term. Extension is not the same as
reference. For example, the term ‘red’ may be said to refer to the property
redness but to have as its extension the set of all red things. Alternatively
properties and relations are sometimes taken to be intensional objects, but the
property redness is never taken to be part of the extension of the adjective
‘red’. See also EXTENSIONALISM, INTENSIONALITY, INTENSIONAL LOGIC, MEANING.
D.N. intension, compositional. See LEWIS, DAVID. intensionality, failure of
extensionality. A linguistic context is extensional if and only if the
extension of the expression obtained by placing any subexpression in that
context is the same as the extension of the expression obtained by placing in
that context any subexpression with the same extension as the first
subexpression. Modal, intentional, and direct quotational contexts are main
instances of intensional contexts. Take, e.g., sentential contexts. The
extension of a sentence is its truth or falsity (truth-value). The extension of
a definite description is what it is true of: ‘the husband of Xanthippe’ and
‘the teacher of Plato’ have the same extension, for they are true of the same
man, Socrates. Given this, it is easy to see that ‘Necessarily, . . . was
married to Xanthippe’ is intensional, for ‘Necessarily, the husband of
Xanthippe was married to Xanthippe’ is true, but ‘Necessarily, the teacher of
Plato was married to Xanthippe’ is not. Other modal terms that generate
intensional contexts include ‘possibly’, ‘impossibly’, ‘essentially’,
‘contingently’, etc. Assume that Smith has heard of Xanthippe but not Plato.
‘Smith believes that . . . was married to Xanthippe’ is intensional, for ‘Smith
believes that the husband of Xanthippe was married to Xanthippe’ is true, but
‘Smith believes that the teacher of Plato was married to Xanthippe’ is not.
Other intentional verbs that generate intensional contexts include ‘know’,
‘doubt’, ‘wonder’, ‘fear’, ‘intend’, ‘state’, and ‘want’. ‘The fourth word in
“. . . “ has nine letters’ is intensional, for ‘The fourth word in “the husband
of Xanthippe” has nine letters’ is true but ‘the fourth word in “the teacher of
Plato” has nine letters’ is not. See also EXTENSIONALISM, MEANING, QUANTIFYING
IN, REFERENTIALLY TRANSPARENT. T.Y. intensional logic, that part of deductive
logic which treats arguments whose validity or invalidity depends on strict
difference, or identity, of meaning. The denotation of a singular term (i.e., a
proper name or definite description), the class of things of which a predicate
is true, and the truth or falsity (the truth-value) of a sentence may be called
the extensions of these respective linguistic expressions. Their intensions are
their meanings strictly so called: the (individual) concept conveyed by the
singular term, the property expressed by the predicate, and the proposition
asserted by the sentence. The most extensively studied part of formal logic deals
largely with inferences turning only on extensions. One principle of
extensional logic is that if two singular terms have identical denotations, the
truth-values of corresponding sentences containing the terms are identical.
Thus the inference from ‘Bern is the capital of Switzerland’ to ‘You are in
Bern if and only if you are in the capital of Switzerland’ is valid. But this
is invalid: ‘Bern is the capital of Switzerland. Therefore, you believe that
you are in Bern if and only if you believe that you are in the capital of
Switzerland.’ For one may lack the belief instrumental rationality intensional
logic 439 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 439 that Bern is the capital of
Switzerland. It seems that we should distinguish between the intensional meanings
of ‘Bern’ and of ‘the capital of Switzerland’. One supposes that only a strict
identity of intension would license interchange in such a context, in which
they are in the scope of a propositional attitude. It has been questioned
whether the idea of an intension really applies to proper names, but parallel
examples are easily constructed that make similar use of the differences in the
meanings of predicates or of whole sentences. Quite generally, then, the
principle that expressions with the same extension may be interchanged with
preservation of extension of the containing expression, seems to fail for such
“intensional contexts.” The range of expressions producing such sensitive
contexts includes psychological verbs like ‘know’, ‘believe’, ‘suppose’, ‘assert’,
‘desire’, ‘allege’, ‘wonders whether’; expressions conveying modal ideas such
as necessity, possibility, and impossibility; some adverbs, e.g.
‘intentionally’; and a large number of other expressions – ’prove’, ‘imply’,
‘make probable’, etc. Although reasoning involving some of these is well
understood, there is not yet general agreement on the best methods for dealing
with arguments involving many of these notions. See also MODAL LOGIC. C.A.A.
intensive magnitude. See MAGNITUDE. intention, (1) a characteristic of action,
as when one acts intentionally or with a certain intention; (2) a feature of
one’s mind, as when one intends (has an intention) to act in a certain way now
or in the future. Betty, e.g., intentionally walks across the room, does so
with the intention of getting a drink, and now intends to leave the party later
that night. An important question is: how are (1) and (2) related? (See
Anscombe, Intention, 1963, for a groundbreaking treatment of these and other
basic problems concerning intention.) Some philosophers see acting with an
intention as basic and as subject to a three-part analysis. For Betty to walk
across the room with the intention of getting a drink is for Betty’s walking
across the room to be explainable (in the appropriate way) by her desire or (as
is sometimes said) pro-attitude in favor of getting a drink and her belief that
walking across the room is a way of getting one. On this desire-belief model
(or wantbelief model) the main elements of acting with an intention are (a) the
action, (b) appropriate desires (pro-attitudes) and beliefs, and (c) an
appropriate explanatory relation between (a) and (b). (See Davidson, “Actions,
Reasons, and Causes” in Essays on Actions and Events, 1980.) In explaining (a)
in terms of (b) we give an explanation of the action in terms of the agent’s
purposes or reasons for so acting. This raises the fundamental question of what
kind of explanation this is, and how it is related to explanation of Betty’s
movements by appeal to their physical causes. What about intentions to act in
the future? Consider Betty’s intention to leave the party later. Though the
intended action is later, this intention may nevertheless help explain some of
Betty’s planning and acting between now and then. Some philosophers try to fit
such futuredirected intentions directly into the desire-belief model. John
Austin, e.g., would identify Betty’s intention with her belief that she will
leave later because of her desire to leave (Lectures on Jurisprudence, vol. I,
1873). Others see futuredirected intentions as distinctive attitudes, not to be
reduced to desires and/or beliefs. How is belief related to intention? One
question here is whether an intention to A requires a belief that one will A. A
second question is whether a belief that one will A in executing some intention
ensures that one intends to A. Suppose that Betty believes that by walking
across the room she will interrupt Bob’s conversation. Though she has no desire
to interrupt, she still proceeds across the room. Does she intend to interrupt
the conversation? Or is there a coherent distinction between what one intends
and what one merely expects to bring about as a result of doing what one
intends? One way of talking about such cases, due to Bentham (An Introduction
to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789), is to say that Betty’s
walking across the room is “directly intentional,” whereas her interrupting the
conversation is only “obliquely intentional” (or indirectly intentional).
See also ACTION THEORY, PRINCIPLE
OF DOUBLE EFFECT. M.E.B. intention, direct. See INTENTION. intention, first.
See IMPOSITION. intention, indirect. See INTENTION. intention, oblique. See
INTENTION. intention, second. See IMPOSITION. intentional fallacy, the
(purported) fallacy of holding that the meaning of a work of art is fixed by
the artist’s intentions. (Wimsatt and Beardsintensive magnitude intentional
fallacy 440 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 440 ley, who introduced the
term, also used it to name the [purported] fallacy that the artist’s aims are
relevant to determining the success of a work of art; however, this distinct
usage has not gained general currency.) Wimsatt and Beardsley were formalists;
they held that interpretation should focus purely on the work of art itself and
should exclude appeal to biographical information about the artist, other than
information concerning the private meanings the artist attached to his words.
Whether the intentional fallacy is in fact a fallacy is a much discussed issue
within aesthetics. Intentionalists deny that it is: they hold that the meaning
of a work of art is fixed by some set of the artist’s intentions. For instance,
Richard Wollheim (Painting as an Art) holds that the meaning of a painting is
fixed by the artist’s fulfilled intentions in making it. Other intentionalists
appeal not to the actual artist’s intentions, but to the intentions of the
implied or postulated artist, a construct of criticism, rather than a real
person. See also AESTHETIC FORMALISM, AESTHETICS, INTENTION. B.Ga.
intentionality, aboutness. Things that are about other things exhibit
intentionality. Beliefs and other mental states exhibit intentionality, but so,
in a derived way, do sentences and books, maps and pictures, and other
representations. The adjective ‘intentional’ in this philosophical sense is a
technical term not to be confused with the more familiar sense, characterizing
something done on purpose. Hopes and fears, for instance, are not things we do,
not intentional acts in the latter, familiar sense, but they are intentional
phenomena in the technical sense: hopes and fears are about various things. The
term was coined by the Scholastics in the Middle Ages, and derives from the
Latin verb intendo, ‘to point (at)’ or ‘aim (at)’ or ‘extend (toward)’.
Phenomena with intentionality thus point outside of themselves to something
else: whatever they are of or about. The term was revived by the
nineteenth-century philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano, who claimed
that intentionality defines the distinction between the mental and the
physical; all and only mental phenomena exhibit intentionality. Since
intentionality is an irreducible feature of mental phenomena, and since no
physical phenomena could exhibit it, mental phenomena could not be a species of
physical phenomena. This claim, often called the Brentano thesis or Brentano’s
irreducibility thesis, has often been cited to support the view that the mind
cannot be the brain, but this is by no means generally accepted today. There
was a second revival of the term in the 1960s and 1970s by analytic
philosophers, in particular Chisholm, Sellars, and Quine. Chisholm attempted to
clarify the concept by shifting to a logical definition of intentional idioms,
the terms used to speak of mental states and events, rather than attempting to
define the intentionality of the states and events themselves. Intentional
idioms include the familiar “mentalistic” terms of folk psychology, but also
their technical counterparts in theories and discussions in cognitive science,
‘X believes that p,’ and ‘X desires that q’ are paradigmatic intentional
idioms, but according to Chisholm’s logical definition, in terms of referential
opacity (the failure of substitutivity of coextensive terms salva veritate), so
are such less familiar idioms as ‘X stores the information that p’ and ‘X gives
high priority to achieving the state of affairs that q’. Although there
continue to be deep divisions among philosophers about the proper definition or
treatment of the concept of intentionality, there is fairly widespread
agreement that it marks a feature – aboutness or content – that is central to
mental phenomena, and hence a central, and difficult, problem that any theory
of mind must solve. See also BRENTANO, FOLK PSYCHOLOGY, QUANTIFYING IN,
REFERENTIALLY TRANSPARENT. D.C.D. intentional object. See BRENTANO. intentional
species.
See AQUINAS, ARISTOTLE.
interchangeability salva veritate. See SUBSTITUTIVITY SALVA VERITATE.
internalism, epistemological. See EPISTEMOLOGY. internalism, motivational. See
MOTIVATIONAL INTERNALISM. internalism, reasons. See EXTERNALISM. internal
necessity. See NECESSITY. internal negation. See NEGATION. internal realism.
See PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. internal reason. See EXTERNALISM. internal relation.
See RELATION. intentionality internal relation 441 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40
AM Page 441 interoception. See PERCEPTION. interpersonal utility. See
UTILITARIANISM. interpretant. See PEIRCE. interpretation. See MODAL LOGIC.
interpretation, non-standard. See FORMAL SEMANTICS. interpretation, standard.
See FORMAL SEMANTICS. interpretive system. See OPERATIONALISM. intersection.
See SET THEORY. intersubjectivity. See MERLEAU-PONTY. intersubstitutivity salva
veritate. See SUBSTITUTIVITY SALVA VERITATE. interval scale. See MAGNITUDE.
intervening variable, in psychology, a state of an organism or person
postulated to explain behavior and defined in terms of its causes and effects
rather than its intrinsic properties. A food drive, conceived as an intervening
variable, may be defined in terms of the number of hours without food (causes)
and the strength or robustness of efforts to secure it (effects) rather than in
terms of hungry feeling (intrinsic property). There are at least three reasons
for postulating intervening variables. First, time lapse between stimulus and
behavior may be large, as when an animal eats food found hours earlier. Why
didn’t the animal eat when it first discovered food? Perhaps at the time of
discovery, it had already eaten, so food drive was reduced. Second, the same
animal or person may act differently in the same sort of situation, as when we
eat at noon one day but delay until 3 p.m. the next. Again, this may be because
of variation in food drive. Third, behavior may occur in the absence of
external stimulation, as when an animal forages for food. This, too, may be
explained by the strength of the food drive. Intervening variables have been
viewed, depending on the background theory, as convenient fictions or as
psychologically real states. See also THEORETICAL TERM. G.A.G. intrapersonal
utility. See UTILITARIANISM. intrinsic desire. See EXTRINSIC DESIRE. intrinsic
property. See RELATION. intrinsic relation. See RELATION. intrinsic value. See
VALUE. introjection. See FREUD. introspection. See AWARENESS. intuition, a
non-inferential knowledge or grasp, as of a proposition, concept, or entity,
that is not based on perception, memory, or introspection; also, the capacity
in virtue of which such cognition is possible. A person might know that 1 ! 1 %
2 intuitively, i.e., not on the basis of inferring it from other propositions.
And one might know intuitively what yellow is, i.e., might understand the
concept, even though ‘yellow’ is not definable. Or one might have intuitive
awareness of God or some other entity. Certain mystics hold that there can be
intuitive, or immediate, apprehension of God. Ethical intuitionists hold both
that we can have intuitive knowledge of certain moral concepts that are
indefinable, and that certain propositions, such as that pleasure is
intrinsically good, are knowable through intuition. Self-evident propositions
are those that can be seen (non-inferentially) to be true once one fully
understands them. It is often held that all and only self-evident propositions
are knowable through intuition, which is here identified with a certain kind of
intellectual or rational insight. Intuitive knowledge of moral or other
philosophical propositions or concepts has been compared to the intuitive
knowledge of grammaticality possessed by competent users of a language. Such
language users can know immediately whether certain sentences are grammatical
or not without recourse to any conscious reasoning. See also A PRIORI,
EPISTEMOLOGY. B.R. intuition, eidetic. See HUSSERL. intuition, sensible. See KANT.
intuitionism, ethical. See ETHICS. intuitionism, mathematical. See MATHEMATICAL
INTUITIONISM. intuitionism, Oxford school of. See PRICHARD. intuitionist logic.
See FORMAL LOGIC, PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC. interoception intuitionist logic 442
4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 442 intuitions. See PREANALYTIC. intuitive
induction. See ROSS. inversion, spectrum. See QUALIA. inverted qualia. See
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, QUALIA. invisible hand. See SMITH, SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY.
involuntary euthanasia. See EUTHANASIA. inwardness. See TAYLOR, CHARLES. Ionian
philosophy, the characteristically naturalist and rationalist thought of Greek
philosophers of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. who were active in Ionia,
the region of ancient Greek colonies on the coast of Asia Minor and adjacent
islands. First of the Ionian philosophers were the three Milesians. See also
MILESIANS, PRESOCRATICS. A.P.D.M. iota operator. See Appendix of Special
Symbols. I-proposition. See SYLLOGISM. Irigaray, Luce (b.1930), French feminist
philosopher and psychoanalyst. Her earliest work was in psychoanalysis and
linguistics, focusing on the role of negation in the language of schizophrenics
(Languages, 1966). A trained analyst with a private practice, she attended
Lacan’s seminars at the École Normale Supérieure and for several years taught a
course in the psychoanalysis department at Vincennes. With the publication of
Speculum, De l’autre femme(Speculum of the Other Woman) in 1974 she was
dismissed from Vincennes. She argues that psychoanalysis, specifically its
attitude toward women, is historically and culturally determined and that its
phallocentric bias is treated as universal truth. With the publication of
Speculum and Ce Sexe qui n’en est pas un (This Sex Which Is Not One) in 1977,
her work extends beyond psychoanalysis and begins a critical examination of
philosophy. Influenced primarily by Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, her work
is a critique of the fundamental categories of philosophical thought: one/many,
identity/difference, being/non-being, rational/irrational, mind/body,
form/matter, transcendental/sensible. She sets out to show the concealed aspect
of metaphysical constructions and what they depend on, namely, the
unacknowledged mother. In Speculum, the mirror figures as interpretation and criticism
of the enclosure of the Western subject within the mirror’s frame, constituted
solely through the masculine imaginary. Her project is one of constituting the
world – and not only the specular world – of the other as woman. This
engagement with the history of philosophy emphasizes the historical and sexual
determinants of philosophical discourse, and insists on bringing the
transcendental back to the elements of the earth and embodiment. Her major
contribution to philosophy is the notion of sexual difference. An Ethics of
Sexual Difference (1984) claims that the central contemporary philosophical
task is to think through sexual difference. Although her notion of sexual
difference is sometimes taken to be an essentialist view of the feminine, in fact
it is an articulation of the difference between the sexes that calls into
question an understanding of either the feminine or masculine as possessing a
rigid gender identity. Instead, sexual difference is the erotic desire for
otherness. Insofar as it is an origin that is continuously differentiating
itself from itself, it challenges Aristotle’s understanding of the arche as
solid ground or hypokeimenon. As aition or first cause, sexual difference is
responsible for something coming into being and is that to which things are
indebted for their being. This indebtedness allows Irigaray to formulate an
ethics of sexual difference. Her latest work continues to rethink the
foundations of ethics. Both Towards a Culture of Difference (1990) and I Love
To You (1995) claim that there is no civil identity proper to women and
therefore no possibility of equivalent social and political status for men and
women. She argues for a legal basis to ground the reciprocity between the
sexes; that there is no living universal, that is, a universal that reflects
sexual difference; and that this lack of a living universal leads to an absence
of rights and responsibilities which reflects both men and women. She claims,
therefore, that it is necessary to “sexuate” rights. These latest works
continue to make explicit the erotic and ethical project that informs all her
work: to think through the dimension of sexual difference that opens up access
to the alliances between living beings who are engendered and not fabricated,
and who refuse to sacrifice desire for death, power, or money.
See also FREUD, HEGEL,
HEIDEGGER, NIETZSCHE, POSTMODERN. P.Bi. irrationality, unreasonableness.
Whatever it entails, irrationality can characterize belief, desire, intention,
and action. intuitions irrationality 443 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page
443 Irrationality is often explained in instrumental, or goal-oriented, terms.
You are irrational if you (knowingly) fail to do your best, or at least to do
what you appropriately think adequate, to achieve your goals. If ultimate goals
are rationally assessable, as Aristotelian and Kantian traditions hold, then
rationality and irrationality are not purely instrumental. The latter
traditions regard certain specific (kinds of) goals, such as human well-being, as
essential to rationality. This substantialist approach lost popularity with the
rise of modern decision theory, which implies that, in satisfying certain
consistency and completeness requirements, one’s preferences toward the
possible outcomes of available actions determine what actions are rational and
irrational for one by determining the personal utility of their outcomes.
Various theorists have faulted modern decision theory on two grounds: human
beings typically lack the consistent preferences and reasoning power required
by standard decision theory but are not thereby irrational, and rationality
requires goods exceeding maximally efficient goal satisfaction. When relevant
goals concern the acquisition of truth and the avoidance of falsehood, epistemic
rationality and irrationality are at issue. Otherwise, some species of
non-epistemic rationality or irrationality is under consideration. Species of
non-epistemic rationality and irrationality correspond to the kind of relevant
goal: moral, prudential, political, economic, aesthetic, or some other. A
comprehensive account of irrationality will elucidate epistemic and
non-epistemic irrationality as well as such sources of irrationality as
weakness of will and ungrounded belief.
See also DECISION THEORY,
JUSTIFICATION, RATIONALITY. P.K.M. irredundant. See INDEPENDENCE RESULTS.
irreflexive. See RELATION. irrelevant conclusion, fallacy of. See INFORMAL
FALLACY. is, third person singular form of the verb ‘be’, with at least three
fundamental senses that philosophers distinguish according to the resources
required for a proper logical representation. The ‘is’ of existence (There is a
unicorn in the garden: Dx (Ux8Gx)) uses the existential quantifier. The ‘is’ of
identity (Hesperus is Phosphorus: j % k) employs the predicate of identity. The
‘is’ of predication (Samson is strong: Sj) merely juxtaposes predicate symbol
and proper name. Some controversy attends the first sense. Some (notably
Meinong) maintain that ‘is’ applies more broadly than ‘exists,’ the former producing
truths when combined with ‘deer’ and ‘unicorn’ and the latter producing truths
when combined with ‘deer’ but not ‘unicorn’. Others (like Aquinas) take ‘being’
(esse) to denote some special activity that every existing object necessarily
performs, which would seem to imply that with ‘is’ they attribute more to an
object than we do with ‘exists’. Other issues arise in connection with the
second sense. Does Hesperus is Phosphorus, for example, attribute anything more
to the heavenly body than its identity with itself? Consideration of such a
question led Frege to conclude that names (and other meaningful expressions) of
ordinary language have a “sense” or “mode of presenting” the object to which
they refer that representations within our standard, extensional logical
systems fail to expose. The distinction between the ‘is’ of identity and the
‘is’ of predication parallels Frege’s distinction between object and concept:
words signifying objects stand to the right of the ‘is’ of identity and those
signifying concepts stand to the right of the ‘is’ of predication. Although it
seems remarkable that so many deep and difficult philosophical concepts should
link to a single short and commonplace word, we should perhaps not read too
much into that observation. Some languages divide the various roles played by
English’s compact copula among several constructions, and others use the
corresponding word for other purposes.
See also EXISTENTIAL
IMPORT, IDENTITY, QUALITIES. S.T.K. Isaac Israeli. See JEWISH PHILOSOPHY.
Isagoge. See PORPHYRY. Islamic Neoplatonism, a Neoplatonism constituting one of
several philosophical tendencies adopted by Muslim philosophers. Aristotle was
well known and thoroughly studied among those thinkers in the Islamic world
specifically influenced by ancient Greek philosophy; Plato less so. In part
both were understood in Neoplatonic terms. But, because the Enneads came to be
labeled mistakenly the Theology of Aristotle, the name of ‘Plotinus’ had no
significance. A similar situation befell the other ancient Neoplatonists. The
Theology and other important sources of Neoirredundant Islamic Neoplatonism 444
4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 444 platonic thinking were, therefore,
often seen as merely the “theological” speculations of the two major Greek
philosophical authorities – mainly Aristotle: all of this material being
roughly equivalent to something Islamic Neoplatonists called the “divine
Plato.” For a few Islamic philosophers, moreover, such as the critically
important al-Farabi, Neoplatonism had little impact. They followed a tradition
of philosophical studies based solely on an accurate knowledge of Aristotle
plus the political teachings of Plato without this “theology.” In the works of
less avowedly “philosophical” thinkers, however, a collection of falsely
labeled remnants of ancient Neoplatonism – bits of the Enneads, pieces of
Proclus’s Elements of Theology (notably the Arabic version of the famous Liber
de causis), and various pseudo-epigraphic doxographies full of Neoplatonic
ideas – gave rise to a true Islamic Neoplatonism. This development followed two
distinct paths. The first and more direct route encompassed a number of
tenth-century authors who were attracted to Neoplatonic theories about God’s or
the One’s complete and ineffable transcendence, about intellect’s unity and
universality, and about soul as a hypostatic substance having continual
existence in a universal as well as a particular being, the latter being the
individual human soul. These doctrines held appeal as much for their religious
as for their philosophical utility. A second form of Neoplatonism arose in the
intellectual elements of Islamic mysticism, i.e., Sufism. There, the influence
of Plotinus’s concept of the ecstatic confrontation and ultimate union with the
One found a clear, although unacknowledged, echo. In later periods, too, the
“divine Plato” enjoyed a revival of importance via a number of influential
philosophers, such as Suhrawardi of Aleppo (twelfth century) and Mulla Fadra
(seventeenth century), who were interested in escaping the narrow restrictions
of Peripatetic thought.
See also ARABIC
PHILOSOPHY, NEOPLATONISM, SUFISM. P.E.W. Islamic philosophy. See ARABIC
PHILOSOPHY. Isocrates (436–338 B.C.), Greek rhetorician and teacher who was
seen as the chief contemporary rival of Plato. A pupil of Socrates and also of
Gorgias, he founded a school in about 392 that attracted many foreign students
to Athens and earned him a sizable income. Many of his works touch on his
theories of education; Against the Sophists and On the Antidosis are most
important in this respect. The latter stands to Isocrates as the Apology of
Plato stands to Socrates, a defense of his life’s work against an attack not on
his life, but on his property. The aim of his teaching was good judgment in
practical affairs, and he believed his contribution to Greece through education
more valuable than legislation could possibly be. He repudiated instruction in
theoretical philosophy, and insisted on distinguishing his teaching of rhetoric
from the sophistry that gives clever speakers an unfair advantage. In politics
he was a Panhellenic patriot, and urged the warring Greek city-states to unite
under strong leadership and take arms against the Persian Empire. His most
famous work, and the one in which he took the greatest pride, was the
Panegyricus, a speech in praise of Athens. In general, he supported democracy
in Athens, but toward the end of his life complained bitterly of abuses of the
system.
Jacobi, Friedrich
Heinrich (1743–1819), German man of letters, popular novelist, and author of
several influential philosophical works. His Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza (1785)
precipitated a dispute with Mendelssohn on Lessing’s alleged pantheism. The
ensuing Pantheismusstreit (pantheism controversy) focused attention on the
apparent conflict between human freedom and any systematic, philosophical
interpretation of reality. In the appendix to his David Hume über den Glauben,
oder Idealismus und Realismus (“David Hume on Belief, or Idealism and Realism,”
1787), Jacobi scrutinized the new transcendental philosophy of Kant, and
subjected Kant’s remarks concerning “things-in-themselves” to devastating
criticism, observing that, though one could not enter the critical philosophy
without presupposing the existence of things-in-themselves, such a belief is
incompatible with the tenets of that philosophy. This criticism deeply
influenced the efforts of post-Kantians (e.g., Fichte) to improve
transcendental idealism. In 1799, in an “open letter” to Fichte, Jacobi criticized
philosophy in general and transcendental idealism in particular as “nihilism.”
Jacobi espoused a fideistic variety of direct realism and characterized his own
standpoint as one of “nonknowing.” Employing the arguments of “Humean
skepticism,” he defended the necessity of a “leap of faith,” not merely in
morality and religion, but in every area of human life. Jacobi’s criticisms of
reason and of science profoundly influenced German Romanticism. Near the end of
his career he entered bitter public controversies with Hegel and Schelling
concerning the relationship between faith and knowledge. See also KANT. D.Br.
Jainism, an Indian religious and philosophical tradition established by
Mahavira, a contemporary of the historical Buddha, in the latter half of the
sixth and the beginning of the fifth century B.C. The tradition holds that each
person (jiva) is everlasting and indestructible, a self-conscious identity
surviving as a person even in a state of final enlightenment. It accepts
personal immortality without embracing any variety of monotheism. On the basis
of sensory experience it holds that there exist mind-independent physical
objects, and it regards introspective experience as establishing the existence
of enduring selves. It accepts the doctrines of rebirth and karma and conceives
the ultimate good as escape from the wheel of rebirth. It rejects all violence
as incompatible with achieving enlightenment.
See also BUDDHISM. K.E.Y.
James, William (1842–1910), American philosopher, psychologist, and one of the
founders of pragmatism. He was born in New York City, the oldest of five
children and elder brother of the novelist Henry James and diarist Alice James.
Their father, Henry James, Sr., was an unorthodox religious philosopher, deeply
influenced by the thought of Swedenborg, some of which seeped into William’s
later fascination with psychical research. The James family relocated to
Cambridge, Massachusetts, but the father insisted on his children obtaining a
European education, and prolonged trips to England and the Continent were
routine, a procedure that made William multilingual and extraordinarily
cosmopolitan. In fact, a pervasive theme in James’s personal and creative life
was his deep split between things American and European: he felt like a bigamist
“coquetting with too many countries.” As a person, James was extraordinarily
sensitive to psychological and bodily experiences. He could be described as
“neurasthenic” – afflicted with constant psychosomatic symptoms such as
dyspepsia, vision problems, and clinical depression. In 1868 he recorded a
profound personal experience, a “horrible fear of my own existence.” In two
1870 diary entries, James first contemplates suicide and then pronounces his
belief in free will and his resolve to act on that belief in “doing, suffering
and creating.” Under the influence of the then burgeoning work in experimental
psychology, James attempted to sustain, on empirical grounds, his belief in the
self as Promethean, as self-making rather than as a playing out of inheritance
or the influence of social context. This bold and extreme doctrine of
individuality is bolstered by his attack on both the neo-Hegelian and
associationist doctrines. He held that both approaches miss the empirical
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tively experienced and the reality of consciousness as a “stream,” rather than
an aspect of an Absolute or simply a box holding a chain of concepts
corresponding to single sense impressions. In 1890, James published his
masterpiece, The Principles of Psychology, which established him as the premier
psychologist of the Euro-American world. It was a massive compendium and
critique of virtually all of the psychology literature then extant, but it also
claimed that the discipline was in its infancy. James believed that the
problems he had unearthed could only be understood by a philosophical approach.
James held only one academic degree, an M.D. from Harvard, and his early
teaching at Harvard was in anatomy and physiology. He subsequently became a
professor of psychology, but during the writing of the Principles, he began to
teach philosophy as a colleague of Royce and Santayana. From 1890 forward James
saw the fundamental issues as at bottom philosophical and he undertook an
intense inquiry into matters epistemological and metaphysical; in particular,
“the religious question” absorbed him. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in
Popular Philosophy was published in 1897. The lead essay, “The Will to
Believe,” had been widely misunderstood, partly because it rested on
unpublished metaphysical assumptions and partly because it ran aggressively
counter to the reigning dogmas of social Darwinism and neo-Hegelian absolutism,
both of which denigrated the personal power of the individual. For James, one
cannot draw a conclusion, fix a belief, or hold to a moral or religious maxim
unless all suggestions of an alternative position are explored. Further, some
alternatives will be revealed only if one steps beyond one’s frame of reference,
seeks novelty, and “wills to believe” in possibilities beyond present sight.
The risk taking in such an approach to human living is further detailed in
James’s essays “The Dilemma of Determinism” and “The Moral Philosopher and the
Moral Life,” both of which stress the irreducibility of ambiguity, the presence
of chance, and the desirability of tentativeness in our judgments. After
presenting the Gifford Lectures in 1901– 02, James published his classic work,
The Varieties of Religious Experience, which coalesced his interest in psychic
states both healthy and sick and afforded him the opportunity to present again
his firm belief that human life is characterized by a vast array of personal,
cultural, and religious approaches that cannot and should not be reduced one to
the other. For James, the “actual peculiarities of the world” must be central
to any philosophical discussion of truth. In his Hibbert Lectures of 1909,
published as A Pluralistic Universe, James was to represent this sense of
plurality, openness, and the variety of human experience on a wider canvas, the
vast reach of consciousness, cosmologically understood. Unknown to all but a
few philosophical correspondents, James had been assiduously filling notebooks
with reflections on the mind–body problem and the relationship between meaning
and truth and with a philosophical exploration and extension of his doctrine of
relations as found earlier in the Principles. In 1904–05 James published a
series of essays, gathered posthumously in 1912, on the meaning of experience
and the problem of knowledge. In a letter to François Pillon in 1904, he
writes: “My philosophy is what I call a radical empiricism, a pluralism, a
‘tychism,’ which represents order as being gradually won and always in the
making.” Following his 1889 essay “On Some Omissions of Introspective
Psychology” and his chapter on “The Stream of Thought” in the Principles, James
takes as given that relations between things are equivalently experienced as
the things themselves. Consequently, “the only meaning of essence is
teleological, and that classification and conception are purely teleological
weapons of the mind.” The description of consciousness as a stream having a
fringe as well as a focus, and being selective all the while, enables him to
take the next step, the formulation of his pragmatic epistemology, one that was
influenced by, but is different from, that of Peirce. Published in 1907,
Pragmatism generated a transatlantic furor, for in it James unabashedly states
that “Truth happens to be an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events.” He
also introduces the philosophically notorious claim that “theories” must be
found that will “work.” Actually, he means that a proposition cannot be judged
as true independently of its consequences as judged by experience. James’s
prose, especially in Pragmatism, alternates between scintillating and limpid.
This quality led to both obfuscation of his intention and a lulling of his
reader into a false sense of simplicity. He does not deny the standard
definition of truth as a propositional claim about an existent, for he writes
“woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities
follow in his experience; they will lead him nowhere or else make false
connexions.” Yet he regards this structure as but a prologue to the creative
activJames, William James, William 447 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 447
ity of the human mind. Also in Pragmatism, speaking of the world as “really
malleable,” he argues that man engenders truths upon reality. This tension
between James as a radical empiricist with the affirmation of the blunt,
obdurate relational manifold given to us in our experience and James as a
pragmatic idealist holding to the constructing, engendering power of the
Promethean self to create its own personal world, courses throughout all of his
work. James was chagrined and irritated by the quantity, quality, and ferocity
of the criticism leveled at Pragmatism. He attempted to answer those critics in
a book of disparate essays, The Meaning of Truth (1909). The book did little to
persuade his critics; since most of them were unaware of his radically
empirical metaphysics and certainly of his unpublished papers, James’s
pragmatism remained misunderstood until the publication of Perry’s magisterial
two-volume study, The Thought and Character of William James (1935). By 1910,
James’s heart disease had worsened; he traveled to Europe in search of some
remedy, knowing full well that it was a farewell journey. Shortly after
returning to his summer home in Chocorua, New Hampshire, he died. One month
earlier he had said of a manuscript (posthumously published in 1911 as Some
Problems in Philosophy), “say that by it I hoped to round out my system, which
is now too much like an arch only on one side.” Even if he had lived much
longer, it is arguable that the other side of the arch would not have appeared,
for his philosophy was ineluctably geared to seeking out the novel, the
surprise, the tychistic, and the plural, and to denying the finality of all
conclusions. He warned us that “experience itself, taken at large, can grow by
its edges” and no matter how laudable or seductive our personal goal, “life is
in the transitions.” The Works of William James, including his unpublished
manuscripts, have been collected in a massive nineteen-volume critical edition
by Harvard University Press (1975–88). His work can be seen as an imaginative
vestibule into the twentieth century. His ideas resonate in the work of Royce,
Unamuno, Niels Bohr, Husserl, M. Montessori, Dewey, and Wittgenstein.
See also DEWEY, PEIRCE,
PRAGMATISM. J.J.M. James-Lange theory, the theory, put forward by William James
and independently by C. Lange, a Danish anatomist, that an emotion is the felt
awareness of bodily reactions to something perceived or thought (James) or just
the bodily reactions themselves (Lange). According to the more influential
version (James, “What Is an Emotion?” Mind, 1884), “our natural way of
thinking” mistakenly supposes that the perception or thought causes the
emotion, e.g., fear or anger, which in turn causes the bodily reactions, e.g.,
rapid heartbeat, weeping, trembling, grimacing, and actions such as running and
striking. In reality, however, the fear or anger consists in the bodily
sensations caused by these reactions. In support of this theory, James proposed
a thought experiment: Imagine feeling some “strong” emotion, one with a
pronounced “wave of bodily disturbance,” and then subtract in imagination the
felt awareness of this disturbance. All that remains, James found, is “a cold
and neutral state of intellectual perception,” a cognition lacking in emotional
coloration. Consequently, it is our bodily feelings that emotionalize
consciousness, imbuing our perceptions and thoughts with emotional qualities
and endowing each type of emotion, such as fear, anger, and joy, with its
special feeling quality. But this does not warrant James’s radical conclusion
that emotions or emotional states are effects rather than causes of bodily
reactions. That conclusion requires the further assumption, which James shared
with many of his contemporaries, that the various emotions are nothing but
particular feeling qualities. Historically, the James-Lange theory led to
further inquiries into the physiological and cognitive causes of emotional
feelings and helped transform the psychology of emotions from a descriptive
study relying on introspection to a broader naturalistic inquiry.
See also EMOTION. R.M.G.
Jansenism, a set of doctrines advanced by European Roman Catholic reformers,
clergy, and scholars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, characterized
by a predestinarianism that emphasized Adam’s fall, irresistible efficacious
grace, limited atonement, election, and reprobation. Addressing the issue of
free will and grace left open by the Council of Trent (1545–63), a Flemish
bishop, Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638), crystallized the seventeenth-century
Augustinian revival, producing a compilation of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian
teachings (Augustinus). Propagated by Saint Cyran and Antoine Arnauld (On
Frequent Communion, 1643), adopted by the nuns of Port-Royal, and defended
against Jesuit attacks by Pascal (Provincial Letters, 1656–57), Jansenism
pervaded Roman Catholicism from Utrecht to Rome for over 150 years. Condemned James-Lange
theory Jansenism 448 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 448 by Pope Innocent X
(Cum Occasione, 1653) and crushed by Louis XIV and the French clergy (the 1661
formulary), it survived outside France and rearmed for a counteroffensive.
Pasquier Quesnel’s (1634–1719) “second Jansenism,” condemned by Pope Clement XI
(Unigenitus, 1713), was less Augustinian, more rigorist, and advocated
Presbyterianism and Gallicanism. J.-L.S. Japanese philosophy, philosophy in
Japan, beginning with Buddhist thought and proceeding to academic “philosophy”
(tetsugaku), which emerged in Japan only during the Meiji Restoration period
beginning in 1868. Among representatives of traditional Japanese Buddhist
philosophical thought should be mentioned Saicho (767–822) of Tendai; Kukai
(774–835) of Shingon; Shinran (1173–1262) of Jodo Shinshu; Dogen (1200–53) of
Soto Zen; and Nichiren (1222–82) of Nichiren Buddhism. During the medieval
period a duty-based warrior ethic of loyalty and self-sacrifice emerged from
within the Bushido tradition of the Samurai, developed out of influences from
Confucianism and Zen. Also, the Zen-influenced path of Geido or way of the
artist produced an important religio-aesthetic tradition with ideas of beauty
like aware (sad beauty), yugen (profundity), ma (interval), wabi (poverty),
sabi (solitariness), and shibui (understatement). While each sect developed its
own characteristics, a general feature of traditional Japanese Buddhist
philosophy is its emphasis on “impermanence” (mujo), the transitoriness of all
non-substantial phenomena as expressed through the aesthetic of perishability
in Geido and the constant remembrance of death in the warrior ethic of Bushido.
Much of twentieth-century Japanese philosophy centers around the development
of, and critical reaction against, the thought of Nishida Kitaro (1870–1945)
and the “Kyoto School” running through Tanabe Hajime, Nishitani Keiji,
Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, Takeuchi Yoshinori, Ueda Shizuteru, Abe Masao, and, more
peripherally, Watsuji Tetsuro, Kuki Shuzo, and D. T. Suzuki. The thought of
Nishida is characterized by the effort to articulate an East-West philosophy
and interfaith dialogue within a Buddhist framework of “emptiness” (ku) or
“nothingness” (mu). In his maiden work, A Study of Good (1911), Nishida
elaborates a theory of “pure experience” (junsui keiken) influenced especially
by William James. Like James, Nishida articulates “pure experience” as an
immediate awareness in the stream of consciousness emerging prior to subject–
object dualism. Yet it is widely agreed that Nishida reformulates “pure
experience” in light of his own study of Zen Buddhism. Throughout his career
Nishida continuously reworked the idea of “pure experience” in terms of such
notions as “self-awareness,” “absolute will,” “acting intuition,” “absolute
nothingness,” and the “social-historical world.” From the Acting to the Seeing
(1927) signifies a turning point in Nishida’s thought in that it introduces his
new concept of basho, the “place” of “absolute Nothingness” wherein the “true
self” arises as a “selfidentity of absolute contradictions.” Nishida’s
penultimate essay, “The Logic of Place and a Religious Worldview” (1945),
articulates a theory of religious experience based upon the “self-negation” of
both self and God in the place of Nothingness. In this context he formulates an
interfaith dialogue between the Christian kenosis (self-emptying) and Buddhist
sunyata (emptiness) traditions. In Religion and Nothingness (1982), Nishitani
Keiji develops Nishida’s philosophy in terms of a Zen logic wherein all things
at the eternalistic standpoint of Being are emptied in the nihilistic
standpoint of Relative Nothingness, which in turn is emptied into the middle
way standpoint of Emptiness or Absolute Nothingness represented by both Buddhist
sunyata and Christian kenosis. For Nishitani, this shift from Relative to
Absolute Nothingness is the strategy for overcoming nihilism as described by
Nietzsche. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi interprets Japanese aesthetics in terms of
Nishida’s Self of Absolute Nothingness in Zen and the Fine Arts (1971). The
encounter of Western philosophy with Zen Nothingness is further developed by
Abe Masao in Zen and Western Thought (1985). Whereas thinkers like Nishida,
Nishitani, Hisamatsu, Ueda, and Abe develop a Zen approach based upon the
immediate experience of Absolute Nothingness through the “self-power” (jiriki)
of intuition, Philosophy as Metanoetics (1986) by Tanabe Hajime instead takes
up the stance of Shinran’s Pure Land Buddhism, according to which Nothingness
is the transforming grace of absolute “Other-power” (tariki) operating through
faith. Watsuji Tetsuro’s Ethics (1937), the premier work in modern Japanese
moral theory, develops a communitarian ethics in terms of the “betweenness”
(aidagara) of persons based on the Japanese notion of self as ningen, whose two
characters reveal the double structure of personhood as both individual and
social. Kuki Shuzo’s The Structure of Iki (1930), often regarded as the most
creative work in modern Japanese aesthetJapanese philosophy Japanese philosophy
449 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 449 ics, analyzes the Edo ideal of iki
or “chic” as having a threefold structure representing the fusion of the
“amorousness” (bitai) of the Geisha, the “valor” (ikuji) of the Samurai, and
the “resignation” (akirame) of the Buddhist priest. Marxist thinkers like
Tosaka Jun (1900–45) have developed strong ideological critiques of the
philosophy articulated by Nishida and the Kyoto School. In summary, the
outstanding contribution of modern Japanese philosophy has been the effort to
forge a synthesis of Eastern and Western values within the overall framework of
an Asian worldview.
See also BUDDHISM,
CONFUCIANISM. S.O. Jaspers, Karl Theodor (1883–1969), German psychologist and
philosopher, one of the main representatives of the existentialist movement
(although he rejected ‘existentialism’ as a distortion of the philosophy of
existence). From 1901 until 1908 Jaspers studied law and medicine at the
universities of Heidelberg, Munich, Berlin, and Göttingen. He concluded his
studies with an M.D. (Homesickness and Crime) from the University of Heidelberg
(where he stayed until 1948). From 1908 until 1915 he worked as a voluntary
assistant in the psychiatric clinic, and published his first major work
(Allgemeine Psychopathologie, 1913; General Psychopathology, 1965). After his
habilitation in psychology (1913) Jaspers lectured as Privatdocent. In 1919 he
published Psychologie der Weltanschauung (“Psychology of Worldviews”). Two
years later he became professor in philosophy. Because of his personal
convictions and marriage with Gertrud Mayer (who was Jewish) the Nazi
government took away his professorship in 1937 and suppressed all publications.
He and his wife were saved from deportation because the American army liberated
Heidelberg a few days before the fixed date of April 14, 1945. In 1948 he
accepted a professorship from the University of Basel. As a student, Jaspers
felt a strong aversion to academic philosophy. However, as he gained insights in
the fields of psychiatry and psychology, he realized that both the study of
human beings and the meaning of scientific research pointed to questions and
problems that demanded their own thoughts and reflections. Jaspers gave a
systematic account of them in his three-volume Philosophie (1931; with
postscript, 1956; Philosophy, 1969–71), and in the 1,100 pages of Von der
Wahrheit (On Truth, 1947). In the first volume (“Philosophical
World-orientation”) he discusses the place and meaning of philosophy with regard
to the human situation in general and scientific disciplines in particular. In
the second (“Clarification of Existence”), he contrasts the compelling modes of
objective (scientific) knowledge with the possible (and in essence
non-objective) awareness of being in self-relation, communication, and
historicity, both as being oneself presents itself in freedom, necessity, and
transcendence, and as existence encounters its unconditionality in limit
situations (of death, suffering, struggle, guilt) and the polar intertwining of
subjectivity and objectivity. In the third volume (“Metaphysics”) he
concentrates on the meaning of transcendence as it becomes translucent in
appealing ciphers (of nature, history, consciousness, art, etc.) to possible
existence under and against the impact of stranding. His Von der Wahrheit is
the first volume of a projected work on philosophical logic (cf. Nachlaß zur
philosophischen Logik, ed. H. Saner and M. Hänggi, 1991) in which he develops
the more formal aspects of his philosophy as “periechontology” (ontology of the
encompassing, des Umgreifenden, with its modes of being there, consciousness,
mind, existence, world, transcendence, reason) and clarification of origins. In
both works Jaspers focuses on “existential philosophy” as “that kind of
thinking through which man tries to become himself both as thinking makes use
of all real knowledge and as it transcends this knowledge. This thinking does
not recognize objects, but clarifies and enacts at once the being of the one
who thinks in this way” (Philosophische Autobiographie, 1953). In his search
for authentic existence in connection with the elaboration of “philosophical
faith” in reason and truth, Jaspers had to achieve a thorough understanding of
philosophical, political, and religious history as well as an adequate
assessment of the present situation. His aim became a world philosophy as a
possible contribution to universal peace out of the spirit of free and
limitless communication, unrestricted open-mindedness, and unrelenting
truthfulness. Besides a comprehensive history of philosophy (Die groben
Philosophen I, 1957; II and III, 1981; The Great Philosophers, 2 vols., 1962,
1966) and numerous monographs (on Cusanus, Descartes, Leonardo da Vinci,
Schelling, Nietzsche, Strindberg, van Gogh, Weber) he wrote on subjects such as
the university (Die Idee der Universität, 1946; The Idea of the University,
1959), the spiritual situation of the age (Die geistige Situation der Zeit,
1931; Man in the Modern Age, 1933), the meaning of history (Vom Ursprung und
Ziel der Geschichte, 1949; The Origin and Goal of History, Jaspers, Karl
Theodor Jaspers, Karl Theodor 450 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 450 1953,
in which he developed the idea of an “axial period”), the guilt question (Die Schuldfrage,
1946; The Question of German Guilt, 1947), the atomic bomb (Die Atombombe und
die Zukunft des Menschen, 1958; The Future of Mankind, 1961), German politics
(Wohin treibt die Bundesrepublik? 1966; The Future of Germany, 1967). He also
wrote on theology and religious issues (Die Frage der Entymythologisierung.
Eine Diskussion mit Rudolf Bultmann, 1954; Myth and Christianity, 1958; Der
philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, 1962; Philosophical Faith and
Revelation, 1967).
See also EXISTENTIALISM,
METAPHYSICS. W.D. Jean Poinsot. See JOHN OF SAINT THOMAS. jen, Chinese
philosophical term, important in Confucianism, variously translated as
‘kindness’, ‘humanity’, or ‘benevolence’. Scholars disagree as to whether it
has the basic meaning of an attribute distinctive of certain aristocratic
clans, or the basic meaning of kindness, especially kindness of a ruler to his
subjects. In Confucian thought, it is used to refer both to an all-encompassing
ethical ideal for human beings (when so used, it is often translated as
‘humanity’, ‘humaneness’, or ‘goodness’), and more specifically to the
desirable attribute of an emotional concern for all living things, the degree
and nature of such concern varying according to one’s relation to such things
(when so used, it is often translated as ‘benevolence’). Later Confucians
explain jen in terms of one’s being of one body with all things, and hence
one’s being sensitive and responsive to their well-being. In the political
realm, Confucians regard jen as ideally the basis of government. A ruler with
jen will care about and provide for the people, and people will be attracted to
the ruler and be inspired to reform themselves. Such a ruler will succeed in
bringing order and be without rivals, and will become a true king (wang).
See also CONFUCIANISM.
K.-l.S. jen hsin. See TAO-HSIN, JEN-HSIN. jen-yü. See T’IEN LI, JEN-YÜ. Jevons,
William Stanley (1835–82), British economist, logician, and philosopher of
science. In economics, he clarified the idea of value, arguing that it is a
function of utility. Later theorists imitated his use of the calculus and other
mathematical tools to reach theoretical results. His approach anticipated the
idea of marginal utility, a notion basic in modern economics. Jevons regarded
J. S. Mill’s logic as inadequate, preferring the new symbolic logic of Boole.
One permanent contribution was his introduction of the concept of inclusive
‘or’, with ‘or’ meaning ‘either or, or both’. To aid in teaching the new logic
of classes and propositions, Jevons invented his “logical piano.” In opposition
to the confidence in induction of Mill and Whewell, both of whom thought, for
different reasons, that induction can arrive at exact and necessary truths,
Jevons argued that science yields only approximations, and that any perfect fit
between theory and observation must be grounds for suspicion that we are wrong,
not for confidence that we are right. Jevons introduced probability theory to
show how rival hypotheses are evaluated. He was a subjectivist, holding that
probability is a measure of what a perfectly rational person would believe
given the available evidence.
See also INDUCTION,
PROBABILITY, UTILITARIANISM. R.E.B. Jewish philosophy. The subject begins with
Philo Judaeus (c.20 B.C.–A.D. 40) of Alexandria. Applying Stoic techniques of
allegory, he developed a philosophical hermeneutic that transformed biblical persons
and places into universal symbols and virtues; retaining the Hebrew Bible’s
view of a transcendent God, Philo identified Plato’s world of ideas with the
mind or word of God, construing it as the creative intermediary to the world.
This logos doctrine influenced Christian theology strongly, but had little
effect upon Jewish thought. Rabbinic Judaism was indifferent and probably
hostile to all expressions of Greek philosophy, Philo’s writings included. The
tradition of philosophical theology that can be traced to Philo took hold in
Judaism only in the ninth century, and only after it became accepted in the
Islamic world, which Jews then inhabited. Saadiah Gaon (882–942) modeled his
philosophical work The Book of Critically Chosen Beliefs and Convictions on
theological treatises written by Muslim free will theologians. Unlike them,
however, and in opposition to Jewish Karaites, Saadiah rejected atomistic
occasionalism and accepted the philosophers’ view of a natural order, though
one created by God. Saadiah’s knowledge of Greek philosophy was imperfect and
eclectic, yet he argued impressively against the notion of infinite duration,
in order to affirm the necessity of believing in a created universe and hence
in a Creator. Saadiah accepted the historicity of revelation at Sinai and the
validity of Jewish law on more dogmatic grounds, though Jean Poinsot Jewish
philosophy 451 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 451 he developed a
classification of the commandments that distinguished between them on grounds of
greater and lesser rationality. Isaac Israeli (850–950), while a contemporary
of Saadiah’s, was as different from him as East (Baghdad for Saadiah) is from
West (for Israeli, Qayrawan, North Africa). Israeli showed no interest in
theology, and was attracted to Neoplatonism and the ideas advanced by the first
Muslim philosopher, al-Kindi. The strictly philosophical and essentially
Neoplatonic approach in Jewish philosophy reached a high point with the Fons
Vitae of Solomon Ibn Gabirol (1020–57). He followed Israeli in emphasizing form
and matter’s priority over that of the universal mind or noûs. This heralds the
growing dominance of Aristotelian concepts in medieval Jewish philosophy, in
all but political thought, a dominance first fully expressed, in Spain, in The
Exalted Faith of Abraham Ibn Daud (c.1110–80). Many of the themes and
perspectives of Neoplatonism are here retained, particularly that of emanation
and the return of the soul to its source via intellectual conjunction, as well
as the notion of the unknowable and strict unity of God; but the specific
structures of Neoplatonic thought give way to those of Aristotle and his
commentators. This mix of approaches was perfected by the Muslim falasifa
al-Farabi (872–950) and Avicenna (980– 1037), who became the main authorities
for most Jewish philosophers through the twelfth century, competing afterward
with Averroes (1126–98) for the minds of Jewish philosophers. Judah Ha-Levi
(1075–1141), in The Kuzari, also written in Spain, fought this attraction to philosophy
with an informed critique of its Aristotelian premises. But Moses Maimonides
(1138–1204), in his Guide to the Perplexed, written in Egypt and destined to
become the major work of medieval Jewish philosophy, found little reason to
fault the philosophers other than for accepting an eternal universe. His
reservations on this subject, and his reticence in discussing some other tenets
of Jewish faith, led many to suspect his orthodoxy and to seek esoteric
meanings in all his philosophical views, a practice that continues today.
Whatever his philosophical allegiance, Maimonides viewed Judaism as the
paradigmatic philosophical religion, and saw the ideal philosopher as one who
contributes to the welfare of his community, however much personal happiness is
to be found ultimately only in contemplation of God. Gersonides (1288–1344),
living in Provence, responded fully to both Maimonides’ and Averroes’
teachings, and in his Wars of the Lord denied the personal providence of
popular faith. These sorts of assertions led Hasdai Crescas (1340–1410) to
attack the philosophers on their own premises, and to offer a model of divine
love instead of intelligence as the controlling concept for understanding
oneself and God. Modern Jewish philosophy begins in Germany with Moses
Mendelssohn (1729–86), who attempted philosophically to remove from Judaism its
theocratic and politically compelling dimensions. Hermann Cohen (1842–1918)
further emphasized, under the influence of Kant and Hegel, what he perceived as
the essentially ethical and universal rational teachings of Judaism. Martin
Buber (1878–1965) dramatically introduced an existential personalism into this
ethicist reading of Judaism, while Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) attempted to
balance existential imperatives and ahistorical interpretations of Judaism with
an appreciation for the phenomenological efficacy of its traditional beliefs
and practices. The optimistic and universal orientation of these philosophies
was severely tested in World War II, and Jewish thinkers emerged after that
conflict with more assertive national philosophies.
See also BUBER, CRESCAS,
GERSONIDES, MAIMONIDES, PHILO JUDAEUS, SAADIAH. A.L.I. jhana, a term used by
Theravada Buddhists meaning ‘pondering’ or ‘contemplation’ and often translated
into English as ‘meditation’. This is one of many terms used to describe both
techniques of meditation and the states of consciousness that result from the
use of such techniques. Jhana has a specific technical use: it denotes a
hierarchically ordered series of four (or sometimes five) states of
consciousness, states produced by a gradual reduction in the range of affective
experience. The first of these states is said to include five mental factors,
which are various kinds of affect and cognitive function, while the last
consists only of equanimity, a condition altogether free from affect.
See also SAMATHA,
VIPASSANA. P.J.G. Joachim of Floris (c.1132/35–1202), Italian mystic who
traveled to the Holy Land and, upon his return, became a Cistercian monk and
abbot. He later retired to Calabria, in southern Italy, where he founded the
order of San Giovanni in Fiore. He devoted the rest of his life to meditation
and the recording of his prophetic visions. In his major works Liber concordiae
Novi ac Veteri Testamenti (“Book of the Concordances between the New and the
Old Testament,” 1519), Expositio jhana Joachim of Floris 452 4065h-l.qxd
08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 452 in Apocalypsim (1527), and Psalterium decem
chordarum (1527), Joachim illustrates the deep meaning of history as he
perceived it in his visions. History develops in coexisting patterns of twos
and threes. The two testaments represent history as divided in two phases
ending in the First and Second Advent, respectively. History progresses also
through stages corresponding to the Holy Trinity. The age of the Father is that
of the law; the age of the Son is that of grace, ending approximately in 1260;
the age of the Spirit will produce a spiritualized church. Some monastic orders
like the Franciscans and Dominicans saw themselves as already belonging to this
final era of spirituality and interpreted Joachim’s prophecies as suggesting
the overthrow of the contemporary ecclesiastical institutions. Some of his
views were condemned by the Lateran Council in 1215. P.Gar. Johannes Philoponus
(c.490–575), Greek philosopher and theologian, who worked in Alexandria
(philoponus, ‘workaholic’, just a nickname). A Christian from birth, he was a
pupil of the Platonist Ammonius, and is the first Christian Aristotelian. As
such, he challenged Aristotle on many points where he conflicted with Christian
doctrine, e.g. the eternity of the world, the need for an infinite force, the
definition of place, the impossibility of a vacuum, and the necessity for a
fifth element to be the substance of the heavens. Johannes composed
commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories, Prior and Posterior Analytics,
Meteorologics, and On the Soul; and a treatise Against Proclus: On the Eternity
of the World. There is dispute as to whether the commentaries exhibit a change
of mind (away from orthodox Aristotelianism) on these questions. J.M.D. John
Damascene.
John of Damascus, Saint,
also called John Damascene and Chrysorrhoas (Golden Speaker) (c.675–c.750),
Greek theologian and Eastern church doctor. Born of a well-to-do family in
Damascus, he was educated in Greek, Arabic, and Islamic thought. He attained a
high position in government but resigned under the antiChristian Caliph Abdul
Malek and became a monk about 700, living outside Jerusalem. He left extensive
writings, most little more than compilations of older texts. The Iconoclastic
Synod of 754 condemned his arguments in support of the veneration of images in
the three Discourses against the Iconoclasts (726–30), but his orthodoxy was
confirmed in 787 at the Second Council of Nicaea. His Sources of Knowledge
consists of a Dialectic, a history of heresies, and an exposition of orthodoxy.
Considered a saint from the end of the eighth century, he was much respected in
the East and was regarded as an important witness to Eastern Orthodox thought
by the West in the Middle Ages. J.Lo. John of Saint Thomas, also known as John
Poinsot (1589–1644), Portuguese theologian and philosopher. Born in Lisbon, he
studied at Coimbra and Louvain, entered the Dominican order (1610), and taught
at Alcalá de Henares, Piacenza, and Madrid. His most important works are the
Cursus philosophicus (“Course of Philosophy,” 1632–36), a work on logic and
natural philosophy; and the Cursus theologicus (“Course of Theology,” 1637–44),
a commentary on Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. John considered himself a Thomist,
but he modified Aquinas’s views in important ways. The “Ars Logica,” the first
part of the Cursus philosophicus, is the source of much subsequent Catholic
teaching in logic. It is divided into two parts: the first deals with formal
logic and presents a comprehensive theory of terms, propositions, and
reasoning; the second discusses topics in material logic, such as predicables,
categories, and demonstration. An important contribution in the first is a
comprehensive theory of signs that has attracted considerable attention in the
twentieth century among such philosophers as Maritain, Yves Simon, John Wild,
and others. An important contribution in the second part is the division of knowledge
according to physical, mathematical, and metaphysical degrees, which was later
adopted by Maritain. John dealt with metaphysical problems in the second part
of the Cursus philosophicus and in the Cursus theologicus. His views are
modifications of Aquinas’s. For example, Aquinas held that the principle of
individuation is matter designated by quantity; John interpreted this as matter
radically determined by dimensions, where the dimensions are indeterminate. In
contrast to other major figures of the Spanish Scholasticism of the times, John
did not write much in political and legal theory. He considered ethics and
political philosophy to be speculative rather than practical sciences, and
adopted a form of probabilism. Moreover, when in doubt about a course of
action, one may simply adopt any pertinent view proposed by a prudent moralist.
John of Salisbury
(c.1120–80), English prelate and humanist scholar. Between 1135 and 1141 he
studied dialectic with Peter Abelard and theology with Gilbert of Poitiers in
Paris. It is possible that during this time he also studied grammar, rhetoric,
and part of the quadrivium with William of Conches at the Cathedral School of
Chartres. After 1147 he was for a time a member of the Roman Curia, secretary
to Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, and friend of Thomas Becket. For his
role in Becket’s canonization, Louis VII of France rewarded him with the
bishopric of Chartres in 1176. Although John was a dedicated student of
philosophy, it would be misleading to call him a philosopher. In his letters,
biographies of Anselm and Becket, and Memoirs of the Papal Court (1148– 52), he
provides, in perhaps the best medieval imitation of classical Latin style, an
account of some of the most important ideas, events, and personalities of his
time. Neither these works nor his Polycraticus and Metalogicon, for which he is
most celebrated, are systematic philosophical treatises. The Polycraticus is,
however, considered one of the first medieval treatises to take up political
theory in any extended way. In it John maintains that if a ruler does not
legislate in accordance with natural moral law, legitimate resistance to him
can include his assassination. In the Metalogicon, on the other hand, John
discusses, in a humanist spirit, the benefits for a civilized world of
philosophical training based on Aristotle’s logic. He also presents current
views on the nature of universals, and, not surprisingly, endorses an
Aristotelian view of them as neither extramental entities nor mere words, but
mental concepts that nevertheless have a basis in reality insofar as they are
the result of the mind’s abstracting from extramental entities what those
entities have in common. G.S.
Johnson, W(illiam)
E(rnest) (1858–1931), very English philosopher who lectured on psychology and
logic at Cambridge University. His Logic was published in three parts: Part I
(1921); Part II, Demonstrative Inference: Deductive and Inductive (1922); and
Part III, The Logical Foundations of Science (1924). He did not complete Part
IV on probability, but in 1932 Mind published three of its intended chapters.
Johnson’s other philosophical publications, all in Mind, were not abundant. The
discussion note “On Feeling as Indifference” (1888) deals with problems of
classification. “The Logical Calculus” (three parts, 1892) anticipates the
“Cambridge” style of logic while continuing the tradition of Jevons and Venn;
the same is true of treatments of formal logic in Logic. “Analysis of Thinking”
(two parts, 1918) advances an adverbial theory of experience. Johnson’s
philosophic influence at Cambridge exceeded the influence of these
publications, as one can see from the references to him by John Neville Keynes
in Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic and by his son John Maynard Keynes in
A Treatise on Probability. Logic contains original and distinctive treatments
of induction, metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and philosophical logic.
Johnson’s theory of inference proposes a treatment of implication that is an
alternative to the view of Russell and Whitehead in Principia Mathematica. He
coined the term ‘ostensive definition’ and introduced the distinction between
determinates and determinables.
Juan Chi (210–63),
Chinese Neo-Taoist philosopher. Among his extant writings the most important
are Ta-Chuang lun (“Discourse on the Chuang Tzu”) and Ta-jen hsien-sheng chuan
(“Biography of Master Great Man”). The concept of naturalness (tzu-jan)
underpins Juan’s philosophy. The “great man” is devoid of self-interest,
completely at ease with his own nature and the natural order at large. In
contrast, orthodox tradition (mingchiao) suppresses openness and sincerity to
secure benefit. Politically tzu-jan envisages a selfgoverning pristine state, a
Taoist version of anarchism. However, the “great man” furnishes a powerful
symbol not because he plots to overthrow the monarchy or withdraws from the
world to realize his own ambition, but because he is able to initiate a process
of healing that would revitalize the rule of the tao.
Jung, Carl Gustav
(1875–1961), Swiss psychologist and founder of analytical psychology, a form of
psychoanalysis that differs from Freud’s chiefly by an emphasis on the
collective character of the unconscious and on archetypes as its privileged
contents. Jung, like Freud, was deeply influJohn of Salisbury Jung, Carl Gustav
454 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 454 enced by philosophy in his early
years. Before his immersion in psychiatry, he wrote several essays of
explicitly philosophical purport. Kant was doubtless the philosopher who
mattered most to Jung, for whom archetypes were conceived as a priori
structures of the human psyche. Plato and Neoplatonists, Schopenhauer and
especially Nietzsche (to whose Zarathustra he devoted a seminar of several
years’ duration) were also of critical importance. Jung was a close reader of
James, and his Psychological Types (1921) – in addition to an extended
discussion of nominalism versus realism – contains a detailed treatment of
Jamesian typologies of the self. Jung considered the self to be an amalgamation
of an “ectopsyche” – consisting of four functions (intuition, sensation,
feeling, and thinking) that surround an ego construed not as a singular entity
but as a “complex” of ideas and emotions – and an “endosphere” (i.e.,
consciousness turned inward in memory, affect, etc.). The personal unconscious,
which preoccupied Freud, underlies the endosphere and its “invasions,” but it
is in turn grounded in the collective unconscious shared by all humankind. The
collective unconscious was induced by Jung from his analysis of dream symbols
and psychopathological symptoms. It is an inherited archive of archaic-mythic
forms and figures that appear repeatedly in the most diverse cultures and
historical epochs. Such forms and figures – also called archetypes – are
considered “primordial images” preceding the “ideas” that articulate rational
thought. As a consequence, the self, rather than being autonomous, is embedded
in a prepersonal and prehistoric background from which there is no effective
escape. However, through prolonged psychotherapeutically guided
“individuation,” a slow assimilation of the collective unconscious into daily
living can occur, leading to an enriched and expanded sense of experience and
selfhood.
jung, ju, Chinese terms
that express the Confucian distinction between honor and shame or disgrace. The
locus classicus of the discussion is found in Hsün Tzu’s works. While the
distinction between jung (honor) and ju (disgrace, shame) pertains to the
normal, human conditions of security and danger, harm and benefit, it is
crucial to distinguish honor as derived from mere external recognition and
honor justly deserved, and to distinguish shame or disgrace due to
circumstance, as in poverty, from that due to one’s own ethical misconduct. The
chün-tzu (paradigmatic individual) should be content with the shame due to
circumstance but not with shame justly deserved because of misconduct. The key
issue is shame or honor justly deserved from the point of view of jen
(benevolence) and yi (rightness), and not shame or honor resting on
contingencies beyond one’s control. See also HSÜN TZU. A.S.C. jurisprudence,
the science or knowledge of law; thus, in its widest sense, the study of the
legal doctrines, rules, and principles of any legal system. More commonly,
however, the term designates the study not of the actual laws of particular
legal systems, but of the general concepts and principles that underlie a legal
system or that are common to all such systems (general jurisprudence).
Jurisprudence in this sense, sometimes also called the philosophy of law, may
be further subdivided according to the major focus of a particular study.
Examples include historical jurisprudence (a study of the development of legal
principles over time, often emphasizing the origin of law in custom or
tradition rather than in enacted rules), sociological jurisprudence (an
examination of the relationship between legal rules and the behavior of
individuals, groups, or institutions), functional jurisprudence (an inquiry
into the relationship between legal norms and underlying social interests or
needs), and analytical jurisprudence (an investigation into the meaning of, and
conceptual connections among, legal concepts). Within analytical jurisprudence
the most substantial body of thought focuses on the meaning of the concept of
law itself (legal theory) and the relationship between that concept and the
concept of morality. Legal positivism, the view that there is no necessary
connection between law and morality, opposes the natural law view that no sharp
distinction between these concepts can be drawn. The former view is sometimes
thought to be a consequence of positivism’s insistence that legal validity is
determined ultimately by reference to certain basic social facts: “the command
of the sovereign” (John Austin), the Grundnorm (Hans Kelsen), or “the rule of
recognition” (H. L. A. Hart). These different positivist characterizations of
the basic, law-determining fact yield different claims about the normative
character of law, with classical positivists (e.g., John Austin) insisting that
legal systems are essentially coercive, whereas modern positivists (e.g., Hans
Kelsen) maintain that they are normative. Disputes within legal theory often
generate or arise out of disputes about theories of adjudicajung, ju
jurisprudence 455 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 455 tion, or how judges
do or should decide cases. Mechanical jurisprudence, or formalism, the theory
that all cases can be decided solely by analyzing legal concepts, is thought by
many to have characterized judicial decisions and legal reasoning in the
nineteenth century; that theory became an easy target in the twentieth century
for various forms of legal realism, the view that law is better determined by
observing what courts and citizens actually do than by analyzing stated legal
rules and concepts. Recent developments in the natural law tradition also focus
on the process of adjudication and the normative claims that accompany the
judicial declaration of legal rights and obligations. These normative claims,
natural law theorists argue, show that legal rights are a species of political
or moral rights. In consequence, one must either revise prevailing theories of
adjudication and abandon the social-fact theory of law (Ronald Dworkin), or
explore the connection between legal theory and the classical question of
political theory: Under what conditions do legal obligations, even if
determined by social facts, create genuine political obligations (e.g., the
obligation to obey the law)? Other jurisprudential notions that overlap topics
in political theory include rule of law, legal moralism, and civil
disobedience. The disputes within legal theory about the connection between law
and morality should not be confused with discussions of “natural law” within
moral theory. In moral theory, the term denotes a particular view about the
objective status of moral norms that has produced a considerable literature,
extending from ancient Greek and Roman thought, through medieval theological
writings, to contemporary ethical thought. Though the claim that one cannot
sharply separate law and morality is often made as part of a general natural
law moral theory, the referents of the term ‘natural law’ in legal and moral
theory do not share any obvious logical relationship. A moral theorist could
conclude that there is no necessary connection between law and morality, thus
endorsing a positivist view of law, while consistently advocating a natural law
view of morality itself; conversely, a natural law legal theorist, in accepting
the view that there is a connection between law and morality, might nonetheless
endorse a substantive moral theory different from that implied by a natural law
moral theory.
jury nullification, a
jury’s ability, or the exercise of that ability, to acquit a criminal defendant
despite finding facts that leave no reasonable doubt about violation of a
criminal statute. This ability is not a right, but an artifact of criminal
procedure. In the common law, the jury has sole authority to determine the
facts, and the judge to determine the law. The jury’s findings of fact cannot
be reviewed. The term ‘nullification’ suggests that jury nullification is
opposed to the rule of law. This thought would be sound only if an extreme
legal positivism were true – that the law is nothing but the written law and
the written law covers every possible fact situation. Jury nullification is
better conceived as a form of equity, a rectification of the inherent limits of
written law. In nullifying, juries make law. To make jury nullification a
right, then, raises problems of democratic legitimacy, such as whether a small,
randomly chosen group of citizens has authority to make law.
justice, each getting
what he or she is due. Formal justice is the impartial and consistent
application of principles, whether or not the principles themselves are just.
Substantive justice is closely associated with rights, i.e., with what
individuals can legitimately demand of one another or what they can
legitimately demand of their government (e.g., with respect to the protection
of liberty or the promotion of equality). Retributive justice concerns when and
why punishment is justified. Debate continues over whether punishment is
justified as retribution for past wrongdoing or because it deters future
wrongdoing. Those who stress retribution as the justification for punishment
usually believe human beings have libertarian free will, while those who stress
deterrence usually accept determinism. At least since Aristotle, justice has
commonly been identified both with obeying law and with treating everyone with
fairness. But if law is, and justice is not, entirely a matter of convention,
then justice cannot be identified with obeying law. The literature on legal
positivism and natural law theory contains much debate about jury nullification
justice 456 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 456 whether there are moral
limits on what conventions could count as law. Corrective justice concerns the
fairness of demands for civil damages. Commutative justice concerns the
fairness of wages, prices, and exchanges. Distributive justice concerns the
fairness of the distribution of resources. Commutative justice and distributive
justice are related, since people’s wages influence how much resources they
have. But the distinction is important because it may be just to pay A more
than B (because A is more productive than B) but just that B is left with more
after-tax resources (because B has more children to feed than A does). In
modern philosophy, however, the debate about just wages and prices has been
overshadowed by the larger question of what constitutes a just distribution of
resources. Some (e.g., Marx) have advocated distributing resources in
accordance with needs. Others have advocated their distribution in whatever way
maximizes utility in the long run. Others have argued that the fair
distribution is one that, in some sense, is to everyone’s advantage. Still
others have maintained that a just distribution is whatever results from the
free market. Some theorists combine these and other approaches.
justification, a concept
of broad scope that spans epistemology and ethics and has as special cases the
concepts of apt belief and right action. The concept has, however, highly
varied application. Many things, of many different sorts, can be justified.
Prominent among them are beliefs and actions. To say that X is justified is to
say something positive about X. Other things being equal, it is better that X
be justified than otherwise. However, not all good entities are justified. The
storm’s abating may be good since it spares some lives, but it is not thereby
justified. What we can view as justified or unjustified is what we can relate
appropriately to someone’s faculties or choice. (Believers might hence view the
storm’s abating as justified after all, if they were inclined to judge divine
providence.) Just as in epistemology we need to distinguish justification from
truth, since either of these might apply to a belief in the absence of the
other, so in ethics we must distinguish justification from utility: an action
might be optimific but not justified, and justified but not optimific. What is
distinctive of justification is then the implied evaluation of an agent (thus
the connection, however remote, with faculties of choice). To say that a belief
is (epistemically) justified (apt) or to say that an action is (ethically)
justified (“right” – in one sense) is to make or imply a judgment on the
subject and how he or she has arrived at that action or belief. Often a much
narrower concept of justification is used, one according to which X is
justified only if X has been or at least can be justified through adducing
reasons. Such adducing of reasons can be viewed as the giving of an argument of
any of several sorts: e.g., conclusive, prima facie, inductive, or deductive. A
conclusive justification or argument adduces conclusive reasons for the
possible (object of) action or belief that figures in the conclusion. In turn,
such reasons are conclusive if and only if they raise the status of the
conclusion action or belief so high that the subject concerned would be well
advised to conclude deliberation or inquiry. A prima facie justification or
argument adduces a prima facie reason R (or more than one) in favor of the
possible (object of) action or belief O that figures in the conclusion. In
turn, R is a prima facie reason for O if and only if R specifies an advantage
or positive consideration in favor of O, one that puts O in a better light than
otherwise. Even if R is a prima facie reason for O, however, R can be
outweighed, overridden, or defeated by contrary considerations RH. Thus my
returning a knife that I promised to return to its rightful owner has in its
favor the prima facie reason that it is my legal obligation and the fulfillment
of a promise, but if the owner has gone raving mad, then there may be reasons
against returning the knife that override, outweigh, or defeat. (And there may
also be reasons that defeat a positive prima facie reason without amounting to
reasons for the opposite course. Thus it may emerge that the promise to return
the knife was extracted under duress.) A (valid) deductive argument for a
certain conclusion C is a sequence of thoughts or statements whose last member
is C (not necessarily last temporally, but last in the sequence) and each
member of which is either an assumption or premise of the argument or is based
on earlier members of the sequence in accordance with a sound principle of
necessary inference, such as simplification: from (P & Q) to P; or
addition: from P to (P or Q); or modus ponens: from P and (P only if Q) to Q.
Whereas the premises of a deductive argument necessarily entail the conclusion,
which cannot possibly fail to be true when the justice as fairness justification
457 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 457 premises are all true, the premises
of an inductive argument do not thus entail its conclusion but offer
considerations that only make the conclusion in some sense more probable than
it would be otherwise. From the premises that it rains and that if it rains the
streets are wet, one may deductively derive the conclusion that the streets are
wet. However, the premise that I have tried to start my car on many, many
winter mornings during the two years since I bought it and that it has always
started, right up to and including yesterday, does not deductively imply that
it will start when I try today. Here the conclusion does not follow
deductively. Though here the reason provided by the premise is only an inductive
reason for believing the conclusion, and indeed a prima facie and defeasible
reason, nevertheless it might well be in our sense a conclusive reason. For it
might enable us rightfully to conclude inquiry and/or deliberation and proceed
to (action or, in this case) belief, while turning our attention to other
matters (such as driving to our destination).
justification by faith,
the characteristic doctrine of the Protestant Reformation that sinful human
beings can be justified before God through faith in Jesus Christ. ‘Being
justified’ is understood in forensic terms: before the court of divine justice
humans are not considered guilty because of their sins, but rather are declared
by God to be holy and righteous in virtue of the righteousness of Christ, which
God counts on their behalf. Justification is received by faith, which is not
merely belief in Christian doctrine but includes a sincere and heartfelt trust
and commitment to God in Christ for one’s salvation. Such faith, if genuine,
leads to the reception of the transforming influences of God’s grace and to a
life of love, obedience, and service to God. These consequences of faith,
however, are considered under the heading of sanctification rather than
justification. The rival Roman Catholic doctrine of justification – often
mislabeled by Protestants as “justification by works” – understands key terms
differently. ‘Being just’ is understood not primarily in forensic terms but
rather as a comprehensive state of being rightly related to God, including the
forgiveness of sins, the reception of divine grace, and inner transformation.
Justification is a work of God initially accomplished at baptism; among the
human “predispositions” for justification are faith (understood as believing
the truths God has revealed), awareness of one’s sinfulness, hope in God’s
mercy, and a resolve to do what God requires. Salvation is a gift of God that
is not deserved by human beings, but the measure of grace bestowed depends to
some extent on the sincere efforts of the sinner who is seeking salvation. The
Protestant and Catholic doctrines are not fully consistent with each other, but
neither are they the polar opposites they are often made to appear by the
caricatures each side offers of the other.
just war theory, a set of
conditions justifying the resort to war (jus ad bellum) and prescribing how war
may permissibly be conducted (jus in bello). The theory is a Western approach
to the moral assessment of war that grew out of the Christian tradition
beginning with Augustine, later taking both religious and secular (including
legalist) forms. Proposed conditions for a just war vary in both number and
interpretation. Accounts of jus ad bellum typically require: (1) just cause: an
actual or imminent wrong against the state, usually a violation of rights, but
sometimes provided by the need to protect innocents, defend human rights, or
safeguard the way of life of one’s own or other peoples; (2) competent
authority: limiting the undertaking of war to a state’s legitimate rulers; (3)
right intention: aiming only at peace and the ends of the just cause (and not
war’s attendant suffering, death, and destruction); (4) proportionality:
ensuring that anticipated good not be outweighed by bad; (5) last resort:
exhausting peaceful alternatives before going to war; and (6) probability of
success: a reasonable prospect that war will succeed. Jus in bello
justification, conclusive just war theory 458 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM
Page 458 requires: (7) proportionality: ensuring that the means used in war
befit the ends of the just cause and that their resultant good and bad, when
individuated, be proportionate in the sense of (4); and (8) discrimination:
prohibiting the killing of noncombatants and/or innocents. Sometimes conditions
(4), (5), and (6) are included in (1). The conditions are usually considered
individually necessary and jointly sufficient for a fully just war. But
sometimes strength of just cause is taken to offset some lack of proportion in
means, and sometimes absence of right intention is taken to render a war evil
though not necessarily unjust. Most just war theorists take jus ad bellum to
warrant only defensive wars. But some follow earlier literature and allow for
just offensive wars. Early theorists deal primarily with jus ad bellum, later
writers with both jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Recent writers stress jus in
bello, with particular attention to deterrence: the attempt, by instilling fear
of retaliation, to induce an adversary to refrain from attack. Some believe
that even though large-scale use of nuclear weapons would violate requirements
of proportionality and discrimination, the threatened use of such weapons can
maintain peace, and hence justify a system of nuclear deterrence.
Kabala
Kala, in Indian thought,
time. The universe frequently is seen as forever oscillating between order and
chaos. Thus the goal of human existence, religiously conceived, tends to
involve escape from time. Jainism views time as immaterial, beginningless, and
continuous (without parts), distinguishing between time as perceived (in
divisions of units of our temporal measurement) and time as it inherently is
(unitless). For Sankhya-Yoga, there is no time distinct from atoms, and the
minimum temporal unit is the duration of an atom’s transverse of its own
spatial unit. For Nyaya-Vaishesika, time is a particular substance that exists
independently and appears to have parts only because we perceive it through
noticing distinct changes. Advaita Vedanta takes time to be only phenomenal and
apparent. Visistadvaita Vedanta takes time to be an inert substance dependent
on Brahman, coordinate with prakrti (material stuff), and beginningless. K.E.Y.
kalam, an Arabic term denoting a form of religious and theological discourse.
The word itself literally means ‘argue’ or ‘discuss’; although often translated
as ‘theology’ or ‘dialectical theology’, the Muslim usage does not correspond
exactly. In origin kalam was an argumentative reaction to certain perceived
doctrinal deviations on key issues – e.g., the status of the sinner, the
justice of God, attributes of God. Thus themes and content in kalam were
normally historically specific and not generally speculative. Later, in a
formal confrontation with philosophy, the predominantly dialectical mode of
reasoning employed until the twelfth century was replaced by full use of
syllogistic methods. Ultimately, the range of speculation grew until, in the
sophisticated compendiums of the major authorities, kalam became intellectually
speculative as well as doctrinally defensive. In a major development, one
school of kalam – the Ash‘arites – adopted an atomistic theory that rejected
the necessity of immediate or proximate causation, arguing instead that
patterns perceived in nature are merely the habitual actions of God as he
constantly re-creates and refashions the universe.
K’ang Yu-wei (1858–1927),
Chinese scholar who pushed for radical reforms under Emperor Kuan-hsü and was
forced into exile. He belonged to the modern-script school with respect to
studies of the Spring and Autumn Annals, and believed that Confucius was only
borrowing the names and authority of the ancient sage-emperors to push for
reform in his own days. K’ang gave expression to utopian ideals in his book
Ta-tung (Great Unity). Among his disciples were T’an Ssut’ung (1865–98) and
Liang Ch’i-ch’ao (1873– 1929). He became a reactionary in his old age and
refused to accept the fact that China had become a republic.
Kant, Immanuel
(1724–1804), preeminent German philosopher whose distinctive concern was to vindicate
the authority of reason. He believed that by a critical examination of its own
powers, reason can distinguish unjustifiable traditional metaphysical claims
from the principles that are required by our theoretical need to determine
ourselves within spatiotemporal experience and by our practical need to
legislate consistently with all other rational wills. Because these principles
are necessary and discoverable, they defeat empiricism and skepticism, and
because they are disclosed as simply the conditions of orienting ourselves
coherently within experience, they contrast with traditional rationalism and
dogmatism. Kant was born and raised in the eastern Prussian university town of
Königsberg (today Kaliningrad), where, except for a short period during which
he worked as a tutor in the nearby countryside, he spent his life as student
and teacher. He was trained by Pietists and followers of Leibniz and Wolff, but
he was also heavily influenced by Newton and Rousseau. In the 1750s his
theoretical philosophy began attempting to show how metaphysics must
accommodate as certain the fundamental principles underlying modern science; in
the 1760s his 460 K 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 460 practical
philosophy began attempting to show (in unpublished form) how our moral life
must be based on a rational and universally accessible self-legislation
analogous to Rousseau’s political principles. The breakthrough to his own
distinctive philosophy came in the 1770s, when he insisted on treating
epistemology as first philosophy. After arguing in his Inaugural Dissertation
(On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World, 1770) both
that our spatiotemporal knowledge applies only to appearances and that we can
still make legitimate metaphysical claims about “intelligible” or
non-spatiotemporal features of reality (e.g., that there is one world of
substances interconnected by the action of God), there followed a “silent
decade” of preparation for his major work, the epoch-making Critique of Pure
Reason (first or “A” edition, 1781; second or “B” edition, with many revisions,
1787; Kant’s initial reaction to objections to the first edition dominate his
short review, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, 1783; the full title of
which means ‘preliminary investigations for any future metaphysics that will be
able to present itself as a science’, i.e., as a body of certain truths). This
work resulted in his mature doctrine of transcendental idealism, namely, that
all our theoretical knowledge is restricted to the systematization of what are
mere spatiotemporal appearances. This position is also called formal or
Critical idealism, because it criticizes theories and claims beyond the realm
of experience, while it also insists that although the form of experience is
ideal, or relative to us, this is not to deny the reality of something
independent of this form. Kant’s earlier works are usually called pre-Critical
not just because they precede his Critique but also because they do not include
a full commitment to this idealism. Kant supplemented his “first Critique”
(often cited just as “the” Critique) with several equally influential works in
practical philosophy – Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Critique
of Practical Reason (the “second Critique,” 1788), and Metaphysics of Morals
(consisting of “Doctrine of Justice” and “Doctrine of Virtue,” 1797). Kant’s
philosophy culminated in arguments advancing a purely moral foundation for
traditional theological claims (the existence of God, immortality, and a
transcendent reward or penalty proportionate to our goodness), and thus was
characterized as “denying knowledge in order to make room for faith.” To be
more precise, Kant’s Critical project was to restrict theoretical knowledge in
such a way as to make it possible for practical knowledge to reveal how pure
rational faith has an absolute claim on us. This position was reiterated in the
Critique of Judgment (the “third Critique,” 1790), which also extended Kant’s
philosophy to aesthetics and scientific methodology by arguing for a priori but
limited principles in each of these domains. Kant was followed by radical
idealists (Fichte, Schelling), but he regarded himself as a philosopher of the
Enlightenment, and in numerous shorter works he elaborated his belief that
everything must submit to the “test of criticism,” that human reason must face
the responsibility of determining the sources, extent, and bounds of its own
principles. The Critique concerns pure reason because Kant believes all these
determinations can be made a priori, i.e., such that their justification does
not depend on any particular course of experience (‘pure’ and ‘a priori’ are
thus usually interchangeable). For Kant ‘pure reason’ often signifies just pure
theoretical reason, which determines the realm of nature and of what is, but
Kant also believes there is pure practical reason (or Wille), which determines
a priori and independently of sensibility the realm of freedom and of what
ought to be. Practical reason in general is defined as that which determines
rules for the faculty of desire and will, as opposed to the faculties of
cognition and of feeling. On Kant’s mature view, however, the practical realm
is necessarily understood in relation to moral considerations, and these in
turn in terms of laws taken to have an unconditional imperative force whose
validity requires presuming that they are addressed to a being with absolute
freedom, the faculty to choose (Willkür) to will or not to will to act for
their sake. Kant also argues that no evidence of human freedom is forthcoming
from empirical knowledge of the self as part of spatiotemporal nature, and that
the belief in our freedom, and thus the moral laws that presuppose it, would
have to be given up if we thought that our reality is determined by the laws of
spatiotemporal appearances alone. Hence, to maintain the crucial practical
component of his philosophy it was necessary for Kant first to employ his
theoretical philosophy to show that it is at least possible that the
spatiotemporal realm does not exhaust reality, so that there can be a
non-empirical and free side to the self. Therefore Kant’s first Critique is a
theoretical foundation for his entire system, which is devoted to establishing
not just (i) what the most general necessary principles for the spaKant,
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domain are – a project that has been called his “metaphysics of experience” –
but also (ii) that this domain cannot without contradiction define ultimate
reality (hence his transcendental idealism). The first of these claims involves
Kant’s primary use of the term ‘transcendental’, namely in the context of what
he calls a transcendental deduction, which is an argument or “exposition” that
establishes a necessary role for an a priori principle in our experience. As
Kant explains, while mathematical principles are a priori and are necessary for
experience, the mathematical proof of these principles is not itself
transcendental; what is transcendental is rather the philosophical argument
that these principles necessarily apply in experience. While in this way some
transcendental arguments may presume propositions from an established science
(e.g., geometry), others can begin with more modest assumptions – typically the
proposition that there is experience or empirical knowledge at all – and then
move on from there to uncover a priori principles that appear required for
specific features of that knowledge. Kant begins by connecting metaphysics with
the problem of synthetic a priori judgment. As necessary, metaphysical claims
must have an a priori status, for we cannot determine that they are necessary
by mere a posteriori means. As objective rather than merely formal,
metaphysical judgments (unlike those of logic) are also said to be synthetic.
This synthetic a priori character is claimed by Kant to be mysterious and yet
shared by a large number of propositions that were undisputed in his time. The
mystery is how a proposition can be known as necessary and yet be objective or
“ampliative” or not merely “analytic.” For Kant an analytic proposition is one
whose predicate is “contained in the subject.” He does not mean this
“containment” relation to be understood psychologically, for he stresses that
we can be psychologically and even epistemically bound to affirm non-analytic
propositions. The containment is rather determined simply by what is contained
in the concepts of the subject term and the predicate term. However, Kant also
denies that we have ready real definitions for empirical or a priori concepts,
so it is unclear how one determines what is really contained in a subject or
predicate term. He seems to rely on intuitive procedures for saying when it is
that one necessarily connects a subject and predicate without relying on a
hidden conceptual relation. Thus he proposes that mathematical constructions,
and not mere conceptual elucidations, are what warrant necessary judgments
about triangles. In calling such judgments ampliative, Kant does not mean that
they merely add to what we may have explicitly seen or implicitly known about
the subject, for he also grants that complex analytic judgments may be quite
informative, and thus “new” in a psychological or epistemic sense. While Kant
stresses that non-analytic or synthetic judgments rest on “intuition”
(Anschauung), this is not part of their definition. If a proposition could be
known through its concepts alone, it must be analytic, but if it is not
knowable in this way it follows only that we need something other than
concepts. Kant presumed that this something must be intuition, but others have
suggested other possibilities, such as postulation. Intuition is a technical
notion of Kant, meant for those representations that have an immediate relation
to their object. Human intuitions are also all sensible (or sensuous) or
passive, and have a singular rather than general object, but these are less
basic features of intuition, since Kant stresses the possibility of (nonhuman)
non-sensible or “intellectual” intuition, and he implies that singularity of
reference can be achieved by non-intuitive means (e.g., in the definition of
God). The immediacy of intuition is crucial because it is what sets them off
from concepts, which are essentially representations of representations, i.e.,
rules expressing what is common to a set of representations. Kant claims that
mathematics, and metaphysical expositions of our notions of space and time, can
reveal several evident synthetic a priori propositions, e.g., that there is one
infinite space. In asking what could underlie the belief that propositions like
this are certain, Kant came to his Copernican revolution. This consists in
considering not how our representations may necessarily conform to objects as
such, but rather how objects may necessarily conform to our representations. On
a “pre-Copernican” view, objects are considered just by themselves, i.e., as
“things-in-themselves” (Dinge an sich) totally apart from any intrinsic
cognitive relation to our representations, and thus it is mysterious how we
could ever determine them a priori. If we begin, however, with our own
faculties of representation we might find something in them that determines how
objects must be – at least when considered just as phenomena (singular:
phenomenon), i.e., as objects of experience rather than as noumena (singular:
noumenon), i.e., things-inthemselves specified negatively as unknown and beyond
our experience, or positively as knowable in some absolute non-sensible way –
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Kant insists is theoretically impossible for sensible beings like us. For
example, Kant claims that when we consider our faculty for receiving
impressions, or sensibility, we can find not only contingent contents but also
two necessary forms or “pure forms of intuition”: space, which structures all
outer representations given us, and time, which structures all inner
representations. These forms can explain how the synthetic a priori
propositions of mathematics will apply with certainty to all the objects of our
experience. That is, if we suppose that in intuiting these propositions we are
gaining a priori insight into the forms of our representation that must govern
all that can come to our sensible awareness, it becomes understandable that all
objects in our experience will have to conform with these propositions. Kant
presented his transcendental idealism as preferable to all the alternative
explanations that he knew for the possibility of mathematical knowledge and the
metaphysical status of space and time. Unlike empiricism, it allowed necessary
claims in this domain; unlike rationalism, it freed the development of this
knowledge from the procedures of mere conceptual analysis; and unlike the
Newtonians it did all this without giving space and time a mysterious status as
an absolute thing or predicate of God. With proper qualifications, Kant’s
doctrine of the transcendental ideality of space and time can be understood as
a radicalization of the modern idea of primary and secondary qualities. Just as
others had contended that sensible color and sound qualities, e.g., can be
intersubjectively valid and even objectively based while existing only as
relative to our sensibility and not as ascribable to objects in themselves, so
Kant proposed that the same should be said of spatiotemporal predicates. Kant’s
doctrine, however, is distinctive in that it is not an empirical hypothesis
that leaves accessible to us other theoretical and non-ideal predicates for
explaining particular experiences. It is rather a metaphysical thesis that
enriches empirical explanations with an a priori framework, but begs off any
explanation for that framework itself other than the statement that it lies in
the “constitution” of human sensibility as such. This “Copernican” hypothesis
is not a clear proof that spatiotemporal features could not apply to objects
apart from our forms of intuition, but more support for this stronger claim is
given in Kant’s discussion of the “antinomies” of rational cosmology. An
antinomy is a conflict between two a priori arguments arising from reason when,
in its distinctive work as a higher logical faculty connecting strings of
judgments, it posits a real unconditioned item at the origin of various
hypothetical syllogisms. There are antinomies of quantity, quality, relation,
and modality, and they each proceed by pairs of dogmatic arguments which
suppose that since one kind of unconditioned item cannot be found, e.g., an
absolutely first event, another kind must be posited, e.g., a complete infinite
series of past events. For most of the other antinomies, Kant indicates that
contradiction can be avoided by allowing endless series in experience (e.g., of
chains of causality, of series of dependent beings), series that are compatible
with – but apparently do not require – unconditioned items (uncaused causes,
necessary beings) outside experience. For the antinomy of quantity, however, he
argues that the only solution is to drop the common dogmatic assumption that
the set of spatiotemporal objects constitutes a determinate whole, either
absolutely finite or infinite. He takes this to show that spatiotemporality
must be transcendentally ideal, only an indeterminate feature of our experience
and not a characteristic of things-in-themselves. Even when structured by the
pure forms of space and time, sensible representations do not yield knowledge
until they are grasped in concepts and these concepts are combined in a
judgment. Otherwise, we are left with mere impressions, scattered in an
unintelligible “multiplicity” or manifold; in Kant’s words, “thoughts without
content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.” Judgment requires
both concepts and intuitions; it is not just any relation of concepts, but a
bringing together of them in a particular way, an “objective” unity, so that
one concept is predicated of another – e.g., “all bodies are divisible” – and
the latter “applies to certain appearances that present themselves to us,”
i.e., are intuited. Because any judgment involves a unity of thought that can
be prefixed by the phrase ‘I think’, Kant speaks of all representations, to the
extent that they can be judged by us, as subject to a necessary unity of
apperception. This term originally signified self-consciousness in contrast to
direct consciousness or perception, but Kant uses it primarily to contrast with
‘inner sense’, the precognitive manifold of temporal representations as they
are merely given in the mind. Kant also contrasts the empirical ego, i.e., the
self as it is known contingently in experience, with the transcendental ego,
i.e., the self thought of as the subject of structures of intuiting and
thinking that are necessary throughout experience. The fundamental need for
concepts and judgments suggests that our “constitution” may require not just
intuitive but also conceptual forms, i.e., “pure concepts of the
understanding,” or “categories.” The proof that our experience does require
such forms comes in the “deduction of the objective validity of the pure concepts
of the understanding,” also called the transcendental deduction of the
categories, or just the deduction. This most notorious of all Kantian arguments
appears to be in one way harder and in one way easier than the transcendental
argument for pure intuitions. Those intuitions were held to be necessary for
our experience because as structures of our sensibility nothing could even be
imagined to be given to us without them. Yet, as Kant notes, it might seem that
once representations are given in this way we can still imagine that they need
not then be combined in terms of such pure concepts as causality. On the other
hand, Kant proposed that a list of putative categories could be derived from a
list of the necessary forms of the logical table of judgments, and since these
forms would be required for any finite understanding, whatever its mode of
sensibility is like, it can seem that the validity of pure concepts is even
more inescapable than that of pure intuitions. That there is nonetheless a
special difficulty in the transcendental argument for the categories becomes
evident as soon as one considers the specifics of Kant’s list. The logical
table of judgments is an a priori collection of all possible judgment forms
organized under four headings, with three subforms each: quantity (universal,
particular, singular), quality (affirmative, negative, infinite), relation
(categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive), and modality (problematic,
assertoric, apodictic). This list does not map exactly onto any one of the
logic textbooks of Kant’s day, but it has many similarities with them; thus
problematic judgments are simply those that express logical possibility, and
apodictic ones are those that express logical necessity. The table serves Kant
as a clue to the “metaphysical deduction” of the categories, which claims to
show that there is an origin for these concepts that is genuinely a priori,
and, on the premise that the table is proper, that the derived concepts can be
claimed to be fundamental and complete. But by itself the list does not show
exactly what categories follow from, i.e., are necessarily used with, the
various forms of judgment, let alone what their specific meaning is for our
mode of experience. Above all, even when it is argued that each experience and
every judgment requires at least one of the four general forms, and that the
use of any form of judgment does involve a matching pure concept (listed in the
table of categories: reality, negation, limitation; unity, plurality, totality;
inherence and subsistence, causality and dependence, community; possibility –
impossibility, existence –non-existence, and necessity–contingency) applying to
the objects judged about, this does not show that the complex relational forms
and their corresponding categories of causality and community are necessary
unless it is shown that these specific forms of judgment are each necessary for
our experience. Precisely because this is initially not evident, it can appear,
as Kant himself noted, that the validity of controversial categories such as
causality cannot be established as easily as that of the forms of intuition.
Moreover, Kant does not even try to prove the objectivity of the traditional
modal categories but treats the principles that use them as mere definitions relative
to experience. Thus a problematic judgment, i.e., one in which “affirmation or
negation is taken as merely possible,” is used when something is said to be
possible in the sense that it “agrees with the formal conditions of experience,
i.e., with the conditions of intuition and of concepts.” A clue for rescuing
the relational categories is given near the end of the Transcendental Deduction
(B version), where Kant notes that the a priori all-inclusiveness and unity of
space and time that is claimed in the treatment of sensibility must, like all
cognitive unity, ultimately have a foundation in judgment. Kant expands on this
point by devoting a key section called the analogies of experience to arguing
that the possibility of our judging objects to be determined in an objective
position in the unity of time (and, indirectly, space) requires three a priori
principles (each called an “Analogy”) that employ precisely the relational
categories that seemed especially questionable. Since these categories are established
as needed just for the determination of time and space, which themselves have
already been argued to be transcendentally ideal, Kant can conclude that for us
even a priori claims using pure concepts of the understanding provide what are
only transcendentally ideal claims. Thus we cannot make determinate theoretical
claims about categories such as substance, cause, and community in an absolute
sense that goes beyond our experience, but we can establish principles for
their spatiotemporal specifications, called schemata, namely, the three
Analogies: “in all change of appearance substance is permanent,” “all
alterations take place in conformity with the law of the connection of cause
and Kant, Immanuel Kant, Immanuel 464 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 464
effect,” and “all substances, insofar as they can be perceived to coexist in
space, are in thoroughgoing reciprocity.” Kant initially calls these regulative
principles of experience, since they are required for organizing all objects of
our empirical knowledge within a unity, and, unlike the constitutive principles
for the categories of quantity and quality (namely: “all intuitions [for us]
are extensive magnitudes,” and “in all appearances the real that is an object
of sensation has intensive magnitude, that is, a degree”), they do not
characterize any individual item by itself but rather only by its real relation
to other objects of experience. Nonetheless, in comparison to mere heuristic or
methodological principles (e.g., seek simple or teleological explanations),
these Analogies are held by Kant to be objectively necessary for experience,
and for this reason can also be called constitutive in a broader sense. The
remainder of the Critique exposes the “original” or “transcendental” ideas of
pure reason that pretend to be constitutive or theoretically warranted but
involve unconditional components that wholly transcend the realm of experience.
These include not just the antinomic cosmological ideas noted above (of these
Kant stresses the idea of transcendental freedom, i.e., of uncaused causing),
but also the rational psychological ideas of the soul as an immortal substance
and the rational theological idea of God as a necessary and perfect being. Just
as the pure concepts of the understanding have an origin in the necessary forms
of judgments, these ideas are said to originate in the various syllogistic
forms of reason: the idea of a soul-substance is the correlate of an
unconditioned first term of a categorical syllogism (i.e., a subject that can never
be the predicate of something else), and the idea of God is the correlate of
the complete sum of possible predicates that underlies the unconditioned first
term of the disjunctive syllogism used to give a complete determination of a
thing’s properties. Despite the a priori origin of these notions, Kant claims
we cannot theoretically establish their validity, even though they do have
regulative value in organizing our notion of a human or divine spiritual
substance. Thus, even if, as Kant argues, traditional proofs of immortality,
and the teleological, cosmological, and ontological arguments for God’s
existence, are invalid, the notions they involve can be affirmed as long as
there is, as he believes, a sufficient non-theoretical, i.e., moral argument for
them. When interpreted on the basis of such an argument, they are transformed
into ideas of practical reason, ideas that, like perfect virtue, may not be
verified or realized in sensible experience, but have a rational warrant in
pure practical considerations. Although Kant’s pure practical philosophy
culminates in religious hope, it is primarily a doctrine of obligation. Moral
value is determined ultimately by the nature of the intention of the agent,
which in turn is determined by the nature of what Kant calls the general maxim
or subjective principle underlying a person’s action. One follows a
hypothetical imperative when one’s maxim does not presume an unconditional end,
a goal (like the fulfillment of duty) that one should have irrespective of all sensible
desires, but rather a “material end” dependent on contingent inclinations
(e.g., the directive “get this food,” in order to feel happy). In contrast, a
categorical imperative is a directive saying what ought to be done from the
perspective of pure reason alone; it is categorical because what this
perspective commands is not contingent on sensible circumstances and it always
carries overriding value. The general formula of the categorical imperative is
to act only according to those maxims that can be consistently willed as a
universal law – something said to be impossible for maxims aimed merely at
material ends. In accepting this imperative, we are doubly self-determined, for
we are not only determining our action freely, as Kant believes humans do in
all exercises of the faculty of choice; we are also accepting a principle whose
content is determined by that which is absolutely essential to us as agents,
namely our pure practical reason. We thus are following our own law and so have
autonomy when we accept the categorical imperative; otherwise we fall into
heteronomy, or the (free) acceptance of principles whose content is determined
independently of the essential nature of our own ultimate being, which is
rational. Given the metaphysics of his transcendental idealism, Kant can say
that the categorical imperative reveals a supersensible power of freedom in us
such that we must regard ourselves as part of an intelligible world, i.e., a
domain determined ultimately not by natural laws but rather by laws of reason.
As such a rational being, an agent is an end in itself, i.e., something whose
value is not dependent on external material ends, which are contingent and
valued only as means to the end of happiness – which is itself only a
conditional value (since the satisfaction of an evil will would be improper).
Kant regards accepting the categorical imperative as tantamount to respecting
rational nature as an end in itself, and to willing as if we were legislating a
kingdom of ends. This is to will that the world become a “systematic Kant,
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different rational beings through common laws,” i.e., laws that respect and
fulfill the freedom of all rational beings. Although there is only one
fundamental principle of morality, there are still different types of specific
duties. One basic distinction is between strict duty and imperfect duty. Duties
of justice, of respecting in action the rights of others, or the duty not to
violate the dignity of persons as rational agents, are strict because they
allow no exception for one’s inclination. A perfect duty is one that requires a
specific action (e.g. keeping a promise), whereas an imperfect duty, such as
the duty to perfect oneself or to help others, cannot be completely discharged
or demanded by right by someone else, and so one has considerable latitude in
deciding when and how it is to be respected. A meritorious duty involves going
beyond what is strictly demanded and thereby generating an obligation in
others, as when one is extraordinarily helpful to others and “merits” their
gratitude.
Kao Tzu (fifth–fourth
century B.C.), Chinese thinker and philosophical adversary of Mencius (4th
century B.C.). He is referred to in the Meng Tzu (Book of Mencius). A figure of
the same name appeared in the Mo Tzu as a (probably younger) contemporary of Mo
Tzu (fifth century B.C.), but it is unclear if the two were the same
individual. As presented in the Meng Tzu, Kao Tzu held that human nature
(hsing) is morally neutral, and that living morally requires learning rightness
(yi) from sources (such as philosophical doctrines) outside the heart/mind
(hsin), and shaping one’s way of life accordingly. These ideas are opposed to
Mencius’s belief that the heart/mind has incipient moral inclinations from
which rightness can be derived, and that living morally involves one’s fully
developing such inclinations. Ever since the view that Mencius was the true
transmitter of Confucius’s teachings became established, largely through the
efforts of Chu Hsi (1130–1200), Confucians have distanced themselves from Kao
Tzu’s position and even criticized philosophical opponents for holding
positions similar to Kao Tzu’s.
karma, in Indian thought,
the force whereby right and wrong actions bring benefits and punishments in
this or a future existence. This occurs not arbitrarily, but by law. The
conditions of birth (one’s sex, caste, circumstances of life) are profoundly
affected by one’s karmic “bank account.” A typical Buddhist perspective is that
the state of the non-conscious world at any given time is largely determined by
the total karmic situation that then holds. For all of the Indian perspectives
that accept the karma-and-transmigration perspective, religious enlightenment,
the highest good, includes escape from karma. Were it absolutely impossible to
act without karmic consequences, obviously such escape would be impossible.
(Suicide is viewed as merely ending the life of one’s current body, and
typically is viewed as wrong, so that the cosmic effect of one’s suicide will
be more punishment.) Thus non-theistic views hold that one who has achieved a
pre-enlightenment status – typically reached by meditation, alms-giving,
ascetic discipline, or the achieving of esoteric knowledge – can act so as to
maintain life without collecting karmic consequences so long as one’s actions
are not morally wrong and are done disinterestedly. In theistic perspectives,
where moral wrongdoing is sin and acting rightly is obedience to God, karma is
the justice of Brahman in action and Brahman may pardon a repentant sinner from
the results of wrong actions and place the forgiven sinner in a relation to
Brahman that, at death, releases him or her from the transmigratory wheel.
Kepler, Johannes
(1571–1630), German mathematical astronomer, speculative metaphysician, and
natural philosopher. He was born in Weil der Stadt, near Stuttgart. He studied
astronomy with Michael Maestlin at the University of Tübingen, and then began
the regular course of theological studies that prepared him to become a
Lutheran pastor. Shortly before completing these studies he accepted the post
of mathematician at Graz. “Mathematics” was still construed as including
astronomy and astrology. There he published the Mysterium cosmographicum
(1596), the first mjaor astronomical work to utilize the Copernican system
since Copernicus’s own De revolutionibus half a century before. The Copernican
shift of the sun to the center allowed Kepler to propose an explanation for the
spacing of the planets (the Creator inscribed the successive planetary orbits
in the five regular polyhedra) and for their motions (a sun-centered driving
force diminishing with disKao Tzu Kepler, Johannes 466 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999
7:40 AM Page 466 tance from the sun). In this way, he could claim to have
overcome the traditional prohibition against the mathematical astronomer’s
claiming reality for the motion he postulates. Ability to explain had always
been the mark of the philosopher. Kepler, a staunch Lutheran, was forced to
leave Catholic Graz as bitter religious and political disputes engulfed much of
northern Europe. He took refuge in the imperial capital, Prague, where Tycho
Brahe, the greatest observational astronomer of the day, had established an
observatory. Tycho asked Kepler to compose a defense of Tycho’s astronomy
against a critic, Nicolaus Ursus, who had charged that it was “mere
hypothesis.” The resulting Apologia (1600) remained unpublished; it contains a
perceptive analysis of the nature of astronomical hypothesis. Merely saving the
phenomena, Kepler argues, is in general not sufficient to separate two
mathematical systems like those of Ptolemy and Copernicus. Other more properly
explanatory “physical” criteria will be needed. Kepler was allowed to begin work
on the orbit of Mars, using the mass of data Tycho had accumulated. But shortly
afterward, Tycho died suddenly (1601). Kepler succeeded to Tycho’s post as
Imperial Mathematician; more important, he was entrusted with Tycho’s precious
data. Years of labor led to the publication of the Astronomia nova (1609),
which announced the discovery of the elliptical orbit of Mars. One distinctive
feature of Kepler’s long quest for the true shape of the orbit was his emphasis
on finding a possible physical evaluation for any planetary motion he
postulated before concluding that it was the true motion. Making the sun’s
force magnetic allowed him to suppose that its effect on the earth would vary
as the earth’s magnetic axis altered its orientation to the sun, thus perhaps
explaining the varying distances and speeds of the earth in its elliptical
orbit. The full title of his book makes his ambition clear: A New Astronomy
Based on Causes, or A Physics of the Sky. Trouble in Prague once more forced
Kepler to move. He eventually found a place in Linz (1612), where he continued
his exploration of cosmic harmonies, drawing on theology and philosophy as well
as on music and mathematics. The Harmonia mundi (1618) was his favorite among
his books: “It can wait a century for a reader, as God himself has waited six
thousand years for a witness.” The discovery of what later became known as his
third law, relating the periodic times of any two planets as the ratio of the 3
/2 power of their mean distances, served to confirm his long-standing
conviction that the universe is fashioned according to ideal harmonic
relationships. In the Epitome astronomiae Copernicanae (1612), he continued his
search for causes “either natural or archetypal,” not only for the planetary
motions, but for such details as the size of the sun and the densities of the
planets. He was more convinced than ever that a physics of the heavens had to
rest upon its ability to explain (and not just to predict) the peculiarities of
the planetary and lunar motions. What prevented him from moving even further
than he did toward a new physics was that he had not grasped what later came to
be called the principle of inertia. Thus he was compelled to postulate not only
an attractive force between planet and sun but also a second force to urge the
planet onward. It was Newton who showed that the second force is unnecessary,
and who finally constructed the “physics of the sky” that had been Kepler’s
ambition. But he could not have done it without Kepler’s notion of a
quantifiable force operating between planet and sun, an unorthodox notion
shaped in the first place by an imagination steeped in Neoplatonic metaphysics
and the theology of the Holy Spirit.
Keynes, John Maynard
(1883–1946), English economist and public servant who revolutionized economic
theory and the application of economic theory in government policy. His most
philosophically important works were The General Theory of Employment, Interest
and Money (1936) and A Treatise on Probability (1921). Keynes was also active in
English philosophical life, being well acquainted with such thinkers as Moore
and Ramsey. In the philosophy of probability, Keynes pioneered the treatment of
propositions as the bearers of probability assignments. Unlike classical
subjectivists, he treated probabilities as objective evidential relations among
propositions. These relations were to be directly epistemically accessible to
an intuitive faculty. An idiosyncratic feature of Keynes’s system is that
different probability assignments cannot always be compared (ordered as equal,
less than, or greater than one another). Keynesian economics is still presented
in introductory textbooks and it has permanently affected both theory and
practice. Keynes’s economic thought had a number of philosophically important
dimensions. While his theorizing was in the capitalistic tradition, he rejected
Smith’s notion of an invisible hand that would optimize the performance of an
economy without any intentional direction by individuals or by the government.
This involved rejection of the economic policy of laissez-faire, according to
which government intervention in the economy’s operation is useless, or worse.
Keynes argued that natural forces could deflect an economy from a course of
optimal growth and keep it permanently out of equilibria. In the General Theory
he proposed a number of mechanisms for adjusting its performance. He advocated
programs of government taxation and spending, not primarily as a means of
providing public goods, but as a means of increasing prosperity and avoiding
unemployment. Political philosophers are thereby provided with another means
for justifying the existence of strong governments. One of the important ways
that Keynes’s theory still directs much economic theorizing is its deep division
between microeconomics and macroeconomics. Keynes argued, in effect, that
microeconomic analysis with its emphasis on ideal individual rationality and
perfect competition was inadequate as a tool for understanding such important
macrophenomena as employment, interest, and money. He tried to show how human
psychological foibles and market frictions required a qualitatively different
kind of analysis at the macro level. Much current economic theorizing is
concerned with understanding the connections between micro- and macrophenomena
and micro- and macroeconomics in an attempt to dissolve or blur the division.
This issue is a philosophically important instance of a potential theoretical
reduction.
Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye
(1813–55), Danish writer whose “literature,” as he called it, includes
philosophy, psychology, theology and devotional literature, fiction, and
literary criticism. Born to a well-to-do middle class family, he consumed his
inheritance while writing a large corpus of books in a remarkably short time.
His life was marked by an intense relationship with a devout but melancholy
father, from whom he inherited his own bent to melancholy, with which he
constantly struggled. A decisive event was his broken engagement from Regine
Olsen, which precipitated the beginning of his authorship; his first books are
partly an attempt to explain, in a covert and symbolic way, the reasons why he
felt he could not marry. Later Kierkegaard was involved in a controversy in
which he was mercilessly attacked by a popular satirical periodical; this
experience deepened his understanding of the significance of suffering and the
necessity for an authentic individual to stand alone if necessary against “the
crowd.” This caused him to abandon his plans to take a pastorate, a post for
which his theological education had prepared him. At the end of his life, he
waged a lonely, public campaign in the popular press and in a magazine he
founded himself, against the Danish state church. He collapsed on the street
with the final issue of this magazine, The Instant, ready for the printer, and
was carried to a hospital. He died a few weeks later, affirming a strong
Christian faith, but refusing to take communion from the hands of a priest of
the official church. Though some writers have questioned whether Kierkegaard’s
writings admit of a unified interpretation, he himself saw his literature as
serving Christianity; he saw himself as a “missionary” whose task was to
“reintroduce Christianity into Christendom.” However, much of this literature
does not address Christianity directly, but rather concerns itself with an
analysis of human existence. Kierkegaard saw this as necessary, because
Christianity is first and foremost a way of existing. He saw much of the
confusion about Christian faith as rooted in confusion about the nature of
existence; hence to clear up the former, the latter must be carefully analyzed.
The great misfortune of “Christendom” and “the present age” is that people
“have forgotten what it means to exist,” and Kierkegaard sees himself as a
modern Socrates sent to “remind” others of what they know but have forgotten.
It is not surprising that the analyses of human existence he provides have been
of great interest to non-Christian writers as well. Kierkegaard frequently uses
the verb ‘to exist’ (at existere) in a special sense, to refer to human
existence. In this sense God is said not to exist, even though God has eternal
reality. Kierkegaard describes human existence as an unfinished process, in
which “the individual” (a key concept in his thought) must take responsibility
for achieving an identity as a self through free choices. Such a choice is
described as a leap, to highlight Kierkegaard’s view that intellectual
reflection alone can never motivate action. A decision to end the process of
reflection is necessary and such a decision must be generated by passion. The
passions that shape a person’s self are referred to by Kierkegaard as the
individual’s “inwardness” or “subjectivity.” The most signifiKierkegaard, Søren
Aabye Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye 468 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 468 cant
passions, such as love and faith, do not merely happen; they must be cultivated
and formed. The process by which the individual becomes a self is described by
Kierkegaard as ideally moving through three stages, termed the “stages on
life’s way.” Since human development occurs by freedom and not automatically,
however, the individual can become fixated in any of these stages. Thus the
stages also confront each other as rival views of life, or “spheres of
existence.” The three stages or spheres are the aesthetic, the ethical, and the
religious. A distinctive feature of Kierkegaard’s literature is that these
three lifeviews are represented by pseudonymous “characters” who actually
“author” some of the books; this leads to interpretive difficulties, since it
is not always clear what to attribute to Kierkegaard himself and what to the
pseudonymous character. Fortunately, he also wrote many devotional and
religious works under his own name, where this problem does not arise. The
aesthetic life is described by Kierkegaard as lived for and in “the moment.” It
is a life governed by “immediacy,” or the satisfaction of one’s immediate
desires, though it is capable of a kind of development in which one learns to
enjoy life reflectively, as in the arts. What the aesthetic person lacks is
commitment, which is the key to the ethical life, a life that attempts to
achieve a unified self through commitment to ideals with enduring validity,
rather than simply momentary appeal. The religious life emerges from the
ethical life when the individual realizes both the transcendent character of
the true ideals and also how far short of realizing those ideals the person is.
In Concluding Unscientific Postscript two forms of the religious life are
distinguished: a “natural” religiosity (religiousness “A”) in which the person
attempts to relate to the divine and resolve the problem of guilt, relying
solely on one’s natural “immanent” idea of the divine; and Christianity
(religiousness “B”), in which God becomes incarnate as a human being in order
to establish a relation with humans. Christianity can be accepted only through
the “leap of faith.” It is a religion not of “immanence” but of
“transcendence,” since it is based on a revelation. This revelation cannot be
rationally demonstrated, since the incarnation is a paradox that transcends
human reason. Reason can, however, when the passion of faith is present, come
to understand the appropriateness of recognizing its own limits and accepting
the paradoxical incarnation of God in the form of Jesus Christ. The true
Christian is not merely an admirer of Jesus, but one who believes by becoming a
follower. The irreducibility of the religious life to the ethical life is
illustrated for Kierkegaard in the biblical story of Abraham’s willingness to
sacrifice his son Isaac to obey the command of God. In Fear and Trembling
Kierkegaard (through his pseudonym Johannes de Silentio) analyzes this act of
Abraham’s as involving a “teleological suspension of the ethical.” Abraham’s
act cannot be understood merely in ethical terms as a conflict of duties in
which one rationally comprehensible duty is superseded by a higher one. Rather,
Abraham seems to be willing to “suspend” the ethical as a whole in favor of a
higher religious duty. Thus, if one admires Abraham as “the father of faith,”
one admires a quality that cannot be reduced to simply moral virtue. Some have
read this as a claim that religious faith may require immoral behavior; others argue
that what is relativized by the teleological suspension of the ethical is not
an eternally valid set of moral requirements, but rather ethical obligations as
these are embedded in human social institutions. Thus, in arguing that “the
ethical” is not the highest element in existence, Kierkegaard leaves open the
possibility that our social institutions, and the ethical ideals that they
embody, do not deserve our absolute and unqualified allegiance, an idea with
important political implications. In accord with his claim that existence
cannot be reduced to intellectual thought, Kierkegaard devotes much attention
to emotions and passions. Anxiety is particularly important, since it reflects
human freedom. Anxiety involves a “sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic
sympathy”; it is the psychological state that precedes the basic human fall
into sin, but it does not explain this “leap,” since no final explanation of a
free choice can be given. Such negative emotions as despair and guilt are also
important for Kierkegaard; they reveal the emptiness of the aesthetic and the
ultimately unsatisfactory character of the ethical, driving individuals on
toward the religious life. Irony and humor are also seen as important “boundary
zones” for the stages of existence. The person who has discovered his or her
own “eternal validity” can look ironically at the relative values that capture
most people, who live their lives aesthetically. Similarly, the “existential
humorist” who has seen the incongruities that necessarily pervade our ethical
human projects is on the border of the religious life. Kierkegaard also
analyzes the passions of faith Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, Søren
Aabye 469 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 469 and love. Faith is ultimately
understood as a “willing to be oneself” that is made possible by a transparent,
trusting relationship to the “power that created the self.” Kierkegaard
distinguishes various forms of love, stressing that Christian love must be
understood as neighbor love, a love that is combined and is not rooted in any
natural relationship to the self, such as friendship or kinship, but ultimately
is grounded in the fact that all humans share a relationship to their creator.
Kierkegaard is well known for his critique of Hegel’s absolute idealism.
Hegel’s claim to have written “the system” is ridiculed for its pretensions of
finality. From the Dane’s perspective, though reality may be a system for God,
it cannot be so for any existing thinker, since both reality and the thinker
are incomplete and system implies completeness. Hegelians are also criticized
for pretending to have found a presuppositionless or absolute starting point;
for Kierkegaard, philosophy begins not with doubt but with wonder. Reflection
is potentially infinite; the doubt that leads to skepticism cannot be ended by
thought alone but only by a resolution of the will. Kierkegaard also defends
traditional Aristotelian logic and the principle of non-contradiction against
the Hegelian introduction of “movement” into logic. Kierkegaard is particularly
disturbed by the Hegelian tendency to see God as immanent in society; he
thought it important to understand God as “wholly other,” the “absolutely
different” who can never be exhaustively embodied in human achievement or institutions.
To stand before God one must stand as an individual, in “fear and trembling,”
conscious that this may require a break with the given social order.
Kierkegaard is often characterized as the father of existentialism. There are
reasons for this; he does indeed philosophize existentially, and he undoubtedly
exercised a deep influence on many twentieth-century existentialists such as
Sartre and Camus. But the characterization is anachronistic, since
existentialism as a movement is a twentieth-century phenomenon, and the
differences between Kierkegaard and those existentialists are also profound. If
existentialism is defined as the denial that there is such a thing as a human
essence or nature, it is unlikely that Kierkegaard is an existentialist. More recently,
the Dane has also been seen as a precursor of postmodernism. His rejection of
classical foundationalist epistemologies and employment of elusive literary
techniques such as his pseudonyms again make such associations somewhat
plausible. However, despite his rejection of the system and criticism of human
claims to finality and certitude, Kierkegaard does not appear to espouse any
form of relativism or have much sympathy for “anti-realism.” He has the kind of
passion for clarity and delight in making sharp distinctions that are usually
associated with contemporary “analytic” philosophy. In the end he must be seen
as his own person, a unique Christian presence with sensibilities that are in
many ways Greek and premodern rather than postmodern. He has been joyfully
embraced and fervently criticized by thinkers of all stripes. He remains “the
individual” he wrote about, and to whom he dedicated many of his works.
Kilvington, Richard,
surname also spelled Kilmington, Chillington (1302/05–61), English philosopher,
theologian, and ecclesiastic. He was a scholar associated with the household of
Richard de Bury and an early member of the Oxford Calculators, important in the
early development of physics. Kilvington’s Sophismata (early 1320s) is the only
work of his studied extensively to date. It is an investigation of puzzles
regarding change, velocity and acceleration, motive power, beginning and
ceasing, the continuum, infinity, knowing and doubting, and the liar and
related paradoxes. His approach is peculiar insofar as all these are treated in
a purely logical or conceptual way, in contrast to the mathematical
“calculations” used by Bradwardine, Heytesbury, and other later Oxford
Calculators to handle problems in physics. Kilvington also wrote a commentary on
Peter Lombard’s Sentences and questions on Aristotle’s On Generation and
Corruption, Physics, and Nicomachean Ethics.
Kilwardby, Robert
(d.1279), English philosopher and theologian. He apparently studied and perhaps
taught at the University of Paris, later joining the Dominicans and perhaps
lecturing at Oxford. He became archbishop of Canterbury in 1272 and in 1277
condemned thirty propositions, among them Aquinas’s position that there is a
single substantial form in a human being. Kilwardby resigned his archbishopric
in 1278 and was appointed to the bishopric of Santa Rufina in Italy, where he
died. Kilwardby wrote extensively and had considerable medieval influence,
especially in philosophy of language; but it is now unusually difficult to
determine which works are authentically his. De Ortu Scientiarum advanced a
sophisticated Kilvington, Richard Kilwardby, Robert 470 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999
7:40 AM Page 470 account of how names are imposed and a detailed account of the
nature and role of logic. In metaphysics he insisted that things are individual
and that universality arises from operations of the soul. He wrote extensively
on happiness and was concerned to show that some happiness is possible in this
life. In psychology he argued that freedom of decision is a disposition arising
from the cooperation of the intellect and the will. C.G.Norm. Kim, Jaegwon
(b.1934), Korean-American philosopher, writing in the analytic tradition,
author of important works in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. Kim has defended
a “fine-grained” conception of events according to which an event is the
possessing of a property by an object at a time (see “Causation, Nomic
Subsumption, and the Concept of Event,” 1973; this and other papers referred to
here are collected in Supervenience and Mind, 1993). This view has been a
prominent rival of the “coarse-grained” account of events associated with
Davidson. Kim’s work on the concept of supervenience has been widely
influential, especially in the philosophy of mind (see “Supervenience as a
Philosophical Concept,” 1990). He regards supervenience (or, as he now prefers,
“property covariation”) as a relation holding between property families (mental
properties and physical properties, for instance). If A-properties supervene on
B-properties, then, necessarily, for any A-property, a, if an object, o, has a,
there is some B-property, b, such that o has b, and (necessarily) anything that
has b has a. Stronger or weaker versions of supervenience result from varying
the modal strength of the parenthetical ‘necessarily’, or omitting it entirely.
Although the notion of supervenience has been embraced by philosophers who
favor some form of “non-reductive physicalism” (the view that the mental
depends on, but is not reducible to, the physical), Kim himself has expressed
doubts that physicalism can avoid reduction (“The Myth of Nonreductive
Materialism,” 1989). If mental properties supervene on, but are distinct from,
physical properties, then it is hard to see how mental properties could have a part
in the production of physical effects – or mental effects, given the dependence
of the mental on the physical. More recently, Kim has developed an account of
“functional reduction” according to which supervenient properties are causally
efficacious if and only if they are functionally reducible to properties
antecedently accepted as causally efficacious (Mind in a Physical World, 1998).
Properties, including properties of conscious experiences, not so reducible are
“epiphenomenal.”
KK-thesis, the thesis
that knowing entails knowing that one knows, symbolized in propositional
epistemic logic as Kp P KKp, where ‘K’ stands for knowing. According to the
KK-thesis, the (propositional) logic of knowledge resembles the modal system
S4. The KK-thesis was introduced into epistemological discussion by Hintikka in
Knowledge and Belief (1962). He calls the KKthesis a “virtual implication,” a
conditional whose negation is “indefensible.” A tacit or an explicit acceptance
of the thesis has been part of many philosophers’ views about knowledge since
Plato and Aristotle. If the thesis is formalized as Kap P KaKap, where ‘Ka’ is
read as ‘a knows that’, it holds only if the person a knows that he is referred
to by ‘a’; this qualification is automatically satisfied for the first-person
case. The validity of the thesis seems sensitive to variations in the sense of
‘know’; it has sometimes been thought to characterize a strong concept of
knowledge, e.g., knowledge based on (factually) conclusive reasons, or active
as opposed to implicit knowledge. If knowledge is regarded as true belief based
on conclusive evidence, the KKthesis entails that a person knows that p only if
his evidence for p is also sufficient to justify the claim that he knows that
p; the epistemic claim should not require additional evidence.
Kleist, Heinrich von
(1771–1811), German philosopher and literary figure whose entire work is based
on the antinomy of reason and sentiment, one as impotent as the other, and
reflects the Aufklärung crisis at the turn of the century. In 1799 he resigned from
the Prussian army. Following a reading of Kant, he lost faith in a “life’s
plan” as inspired by Leibniz’s, Wolff’s, and Shaftesbury’s rationalism. He
looked for salvation in Rousseau but concluded that sentiment Kim, Jaegwon
Kleist, Heinrich von revealed itself just as untrustworthy as reason as soon as
man left the state of original grace and realized himself to be neither a
puppet nor a god (see Essay on the Puppet Theater, 1810). The Schroffenstein
Family, Kleist’s first play (1802), repeats the Shakespearian theme of two
young people who love each other but belong to warring families. One already
finds in it the major elements of Kleist’s universe: the incapacity of the
individual to master his fate, the theme of the tragic error, and the
importance of the juridical. In 1803, Kleist returned to philosophy and
literature and realized in Amphitryon (1806) the impossibility of the
individual knowing himself and the world and acting deliberately in it. The
divine order that is the norm of tragic art collapses, and with it, the
principle of identity. Kleistian characters, “modern” individuals, illustrate
this normative chaos. The Broken Jug (a comedy written in 1806) shows Kleist’s
interest in law. In his two parallel plays, Penthesilea and The Young Catherine
of Heilbronn, Kleist presents an alternative: either “the marvelous order of
the world” and the theodicy that carries Catherine’s fate, or the sublime and
apocryphal mission of the Christlike individual who must redeem the corrupt
order. Before his suicide in 1811, Kleist looked toward the renaissance of the
German nation for a historical way out of this metaphysical conflict.
knowledge by
acquaintance, knowledge of objects by means of direct awareness of them. The
notion of knowledge by acquaintance is primarily associated with Russell (The
Problems of Philosophy, 1912). Russell first distinguishes knowledge of truths
from knowledge of things. He then distinguishes two kinds of knowledge of
things: knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Ordinary speech
suggests that we are acquainted with the people and the physical objects in our
immediate environments. On Russell’s view, however, our contact with these
things is indirect, being mediated by our mental representations of them. He
holds that the only things we know by acquaintance are the content of our
minds, abstract universals, and, perhaps, ourselves. Russell says that
knowledge by description is indirect knowledge of objects, our knowledge being
mediated by other objects and truths. He suggests that we know external
objects, such as tables and other people, only by description (e.g., the cause
of my present experience). Russell’s discussion of this topic is quite
puzzling. The considerations that lead him to say that we lack acquaintance
with external objects also lead him to say that, strictly speaking, we lack
knowledge of such things. This seems to amount to the claim that what he has
called “knowledge by description” is not, strictly speaking, a kind of
knowledge at all. Russell also holds that every proposition that a person
understands must be composed entirely of elements with which the person is
acquainted. This leads him to propose analyses of familiar propositions in
terms of mental objects with which we are acquainted. See also PERCEPTION,
RUSSELL. R.Fe. knowledge by description.
knowledge de re,
knowledge, with respect to some object, that it has a particular property, or
knowledge, of a group of objects, that they stand in some relation. Knowledge
de re is typically contrasted with knowledge de dicto, which is knowledge of
facts or propositions. If persons A and B know that a winner has been declared
in an election, but only B knows which candidate has won, then both have de
dicto knowledge that someone has won, but only B has de re knowledge about some
candidate that she is the winner. Person B can knowingly attribute the property
of being the winner to one of the candidates. It is generally held that to have
de re knowledge about an object one must at least be in some sense familiar
with or causally connected to the object. knower, paradox of the knowledge de
re 472 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 472 A related concept is knowledge
de se. This is self-knowledge, of the sort expressed by ‘I am —— ’. Knowledge
de se is not simply de re knowledge about oneself. A person might see a group
of people in a mirror and notice that one of the people has a red spot on his
nose. He then has de dicto knowledge that someone in the group has a red spot
on his nose. On most accounts, he also has de re knowledge with respect to that
individual that he has a spot. But if he has failed to recognize that he
himself is the one with the spot, then he lacks de se knowledge. He doesn’t
know (or believe) what he would express by saying “I have a red spot.” So,
according to this view, knowledge de se is not merely knowledge de re about
oneself.
Köhler, Wolfgang
(1887–1967), German and American (after 1935) psychologist who, with Wertheimer
and Koffka, founded Gestalt psychology. Köhler made two distinctive
contributions to Gestalt doctrine, one empirical, one theoretical. The
empirical contribution was his study of animal thinking, performed on Tenerife
Island from 1913 to 1920 (The Mentality of Apes, 1925). The then dominant
theory of problem solving was E. L. Thorndike’s (1874–1949) associationist
trial-and-error learning theory, maintaining that animals attack problems by
trying out a series of behaviors, one of which is gradually “stamped in” by
success. Köhler argued that trial-and-error behavior occurred only when, as in
Thorndike’s experiments, part of the problem situation was hidden. He arranged
more open puzzles, such as getting bananas hanging from a ceiling, requiring
the ape to get a (visible) box to stand on. His apes showed insight – suddenly
arriving at the correct solution. Although he demonstrated the existence of
insight, its nature remains elusive, and trial-and-error learning remains the
focus of research. Köhler’s theoretical contribution was the concept of
isomorphism, Gestalt psychology’s theory of psychological representation. He
held an identity theory of mind and body, and isomorphism claims that a
topological mapping exists between the behavioral field in which an organism is
acting (cf. Lewin) and fields of electrical currents in the brain (not the
“mind”). Such currents have not been discovered. Important works by Köhler
include Gestalt Psychology (1929), The Place of Value in a World of Facts
(1938), Dynamics in Psychology (1940), and Selected Papers (1971, ed. M.
Henle).
.
Ko Hung (fourth century
A.D.), Chinese Taoist philosopher, also known as the Master Who Embraced
Simplicity (Pao-p’u tzu). Ko Hung is a pivotal figure in the development of
Taoism. His major work, the Pao-p’u tzu, emphasizes the importance of moral
cultivation as a necessary step to spiritual liberation. In this Ko is often
said to have synthesized Confucian concerns with Taoist aspirations. He
champions the use of special drugs that would purify the body and spirit in the
quest for Taoist transcendence. A firm believer in the existence of immortals
(hsien) and the possibility of joining the ranks of the perfected, Ko
experimented with different methods that fall under the rubric of “external
alchemy” (wai-tan), which merits attention also in the history of Chinese
science. See also HSIEN. A.K.L.C. Korean philosophy, philosophy in traditional
Korea. Situated on the eastern periphery of the Asian mainland and cut off by
water on three sides from other potential countervailing influences, Korea,
with its more than two millennia of recorded history and a long tradition of
philosophical reflection, was exposed from early on to the pervasive influence
of China. The influences and borrowings from China – among the most pervasive
of which have been the three major religiophilosophic systems of the East,
Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism – were, in time, to leave their indelible
marks on the philosophical, cultural, religious, linguistic, and social forms
of Korean life. These influences from the Asian continent, which began to
infiltrate Korean culture during the Three Kingdoms era (57 B.C. to A.D. 558),
did not, however, operate in a vacuum. Even in the face of powerful and
pervasive exogenous influences, shamanism – an animistic view of man and nature
– remained the strong substratum of Korean culture, influencing and modifying
the more sophisticated religions, philosophies, and ideologies that found entry
into Korea during the last two thousand years. Originally a philosophical
formula for personal salvation through the renunciation of worldly desire,
Buddhism, in the course of propagation from its point of origin, had absorbed
enough esoteric deities and forms of worship to constitute a new school,
Mahayana, and it was this type of Buddhism that found ready acceptance in
Korea. Its beliefs were, at the plebeian level, furknowledge de se Korean
philosophy 473 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 473 ther mixed with native
shamanism and integrated into a shamanistic polytheism. The syncretic nature of
Korean Buddhism manifests itself at the philosophical level in a tendency
toward a reconciliatory synthesis of opposing doctrines. Korean Buddhism
produced a number of monk-philosophers, whose philosophical writings were
influential beyond the boundaries of Korea. Wonhyo (617–86) of Silla and Pojo
Chinul (1158–1210) of Koryo may be singled out as the most original and
representative of those Buddhist philosophers. As Buddhism became more
entrenched, a number of doctrinal problems and disputes began to surface. The
most basic and serious was the dispute between the Madhyamika and
Vijnaptimatrata-vadin schools of thought within Mahayana Buddhism. At the
metaphysical level the former tended to negate existence, while the latter
affirmed existence. An epistemological corollary of this ontological dispute
was a dispute concerning the possibility of secular truth as opposed to
transcendental truth. The former school denied its possibility, while the
latter affirmed it. No mediation between these two schools of thought, either
in their country of origin, India, or Korea, seemed possible. It was to this
task of reconciling these two opposed schools that Wonhyo dedicated himself. In
a series of annotations and interpretations of the Buddhist scriptures,
particularly of the Taeseung Kishin-non (“The Awakening of Faith in Mahayana”),
he worked out a position that became subsequently known as Hwajaengnon – a
theory of reconciliation of dispute. It consisted in essence of seeing the two
opposed schools as two different aspects of one mind. Wonhyo’s Hwajaeng-non, as
the first full-scale attempt to reconcile the opposing doctrines in Mahayana
Buddhism, was referred to frequently in both Chinese and Japanese Buddhist
exegetical writings. The same spirit of reconciliation is also manifest later
during the Koryo dynasty (918–1392) in Chinul’s Junghae-ssangsu, in which the
founder of Korean Son Buddhism attempts a reconciliation between Kyo-hak
(Scriptural school of Buddhism) and Son-ga (Meditation school of Buddhism),
which were engaged in a serious confrontation with each other. Although many of
its teachings were derivations from Mahayana Buddhist metaphysics, the Son
school of Buddhism emphasized the realization of enlightenment without
depending upon scriptural teachings, while the Scriptural school of Buddhism
emphasized a gradual process of enlightenment through faith and the practice of
understanding scriptures. Himself a Son master, Chinul provided a philosophical
foundation for Korean Son by incorporating the doctrines of Scriptural Buddhism
as the philosophical basis for the practices of Son. Chinul’s successful
synthesis of Kyo and Son served as the basis for the development of an
indigenous form of Son Buddhism in Korea. It is primarily this form of Buddhism
that is meant when one speaks of Korean Buddhism today. Ethical
self-cultivation stands at the core of Confucianism. Confucian theories of
government and social relationships are founded upon it, and the metaphysical
speculations have their place in Confucianism insofar as they are related to
this overriding concern. The establishment in A.D. 372 of Taehak, a
state-oriented Confucian institute of higher learning in the kingdom of
Kokuryo, points to a well-established tradition of Confucian learning already
in existence on the Korean peninsula during the Three Kingdoms era. Although
Buddhism was the state religion of the Unified Silla period (668–918),
Confucianism formed its philosophical and structural backbone. From 682, when a
national academy was established in the Unified Silla kingdom as a training
ground for high-level officials, the content of formal education in Korea
consisted primarily of Confucian and other related Chinese classics; this
lasted well into the nineteenth century. The preeminence of Confucianism in
Korean history was further enhanced by its adoption by the founders of the
Choson dynasty (1392–1910) as the national ideology. The Confucianism that
flourished during the Choson period was Neo-Confucianism, a philosophical
synthesis of original Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism achieved by the
Chinese philosopher Chu Hsi in the twelfth century. During the five hundred
years of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy, a number of Korean scholars succeeded in
bringing Neo-Confucian philosophical speculation to new heights of originality
and influence both at home and abroad. Yi Hwang (better known by his pen name
T’oegye, 1501– 70) and his adversary Yi I (Yulgok, 1536–84) deserve special
mention. T’oegye interpreted the origin of the four cardinal virtues
(benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and knowledge) and the seven emotions
(pleasure, anger, sorrow, joy, love, hate, and desire) in such a way as to
accord priority to the principle of reason I over the principle of material
force Ki. T’oegye went a step further than his Sung mentor Chu Hsi by claiming
that the prinKorean philosophy Korean philosophy 474 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999
7:40 AM Page 474 ciple of reason includes within itself the generative power
for matter. This theory was criticized by Yulgok, who claimed that the source
of generative power in the universe lay in the matter of material force itself.
The philosophical debate carried on by these men and its implications for
ethics and statecraft are generally considered richer in insight and more
intricate in argumentation than that in China. T’oegye’s ideas in particular
were influential in spreading NeoConfucianism in Japan. Neo-Confucian
philosophical speculation in the hands of those lesser scholars who followed
T’oegye and Yulgok, however, became overly speculative and impractical. It
evolved, moreover, into a rigid national orthodoxy by the middle of the
seventeenth century. Dissatisfaction with this intellectual orthodoxy was
further deepened by Korea’s early encounter with Christianity and Western
science, which had been reaching Korea by way of China since the beginning of
the seventeenth century. Coupled with the pressing need for administrative and
economic reforms subsequent to the Japanese invasion (1592–97), these
tendencies gave rise to a group of illustrious Confucian scholars who, despite
the fact that their individual lives spanned a 300-year period from 1550 to
1850, were subsequently and collectively given the name Silhak. Despite their
diverse interests and orientations, these scholars were bound by their devotion
to the spirit of practicality and utility as well as to seeking facts grounded
in evidence in all scholarly endeavors, under the banner of returning to the
spirit of the original Confucianism. Chong Yag-yong (1762–1836), who may be
said to be the culmination of the Silhak movement, was able to transform these
elements and tendencies into a new Confucian synthesis.
Kotarbigski, Tadeusz
(1886–1981), Polish philosopher, cofounder, with Lukasiewicz and Lesniewski, of
the Warsaw Center of Logical Research. His broad philosophical interests and
humanistic concerns, probity, scholarship, and clarity in argument, consequent
persuasiveness, and steadfast championship of human rights made him heir to
their common mentor Kasimir Twardowski, father of modern Polish philosophy. In
philosophical, historical, and methodological works like his influential
Elements of Theory of Knowledge, Formal Logic, and Scientific Methodology
(1929; mistitled Gnosiology in English translation), he popularized the more
technical contributions of his colleagues, and carried on Twardowski’s
objectivist and “anti-irrationalist” critical tradition, insisting on accuracy
and clarity, holding that philosophy has no distinctive method beyond the
logical and analytical methods of the empirical and deductive sciences. As a
free-thinking liberal humanist socialist, resolved to be “a true compass, not a
weathervane,” he defended autonomous ethics against authoritarianism, left or
right. His lifelong concern with community and social practice led him to
develop praxiology as a theory of efficacious action. Following Lesniewsi’s
“refutation” of Twardowski’s Platonism, Kotarbigski insisted on translating
abstractions into more concrete terms. The principal tenets of his “reist,
radical realist, and imitationist” rejection of Platonism, phenomenalism, and
introspectionism are (1) pansomatism or ontological reism as modernized
monistic materialism: whatever is anything at all (even a soul) is a body –
i.e., a concrete individual object, resistant and spatiotemporally extended,
enduring at least a while; (2) consequent radical realism: no object is a
“property,” “relation,” “event,” “fact,” or “abstract entity” of any other
kind, nor “sense-datum,” “phenomenon,” or essentially “private mental act” or
“fact” accessible only to “introspection”; (3) concretism or semantic reism and
imitationism as a concomitant “nominalist” program – thus, abstract terms that,
hypostatized, might appear to name “abstract entities” are pseudo-names or
onomatoids to be eliminated by philosophical analysis and elucidatory
paraphrase. Hypostatizations that might appear to imply existence of such
Platonic universals are translatable into equivalent generalizations
characterizing only bodies. Psychological propositions are likewise reducible,
ultimately to the basic form: Individual So-and-so experiences thus;
Such-and-such is so. Only as thus reduced can such potentially misleading
expressions be rightly understood and judged true or false. See also POLISH
LOGIC. E.C.L. ko wu, chih chih, Chinese philosophical terms used in the
Ta-hsüeh (Great Learning) to refer to two related stages or aspects of the
self-cultivation process, subsequently given different interpretations by later
Confucian thinkers. ‘Ko’ can mean ‘correct’, ‘arrive at’ or ‘oppose’; ‘wu’
means ‘things’. The first ‘chih’ can mean ‘expand’ or ‘reach out’; the second
‘chih’ means ‘knowledge’. Chu Hsi (1130–1200) took ‘ko wu’ to mean
arrivKotarbigski, Tadeusz ko wu, chih chih 475 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM
Page 475 ing at li (principle, pattern) in human affairs and ‘chih chih’ to
mean the expansion of knowledge; an important part of the self-cultivation
process involves expanding one’s moral knowledge by examining daily affairs and
studying classics and historical documents.
Wang Yang-ming (1472–
1529) took ‘ko wu’ to mean correcting the activities of one’s heart/mind
(hsin), and ‘chih chih’ the reaching out of one’s innate knowledge (liang
chih); an important part of the self-cultivation process involves making fully
manifest one’s innate knowledge by constantly watching out for and eliminating
distortive desires. K.-l.S. Krause, Karl Christian Friedrich (1781–1832),
German philosopher representative of a tendency to develop Kant’s views in the
direction of pantheism and mysticism. Educated at Jena, he came under the
influence of Fichte and Schelling. Taking his philosophical starting point as
Fichte’s analysis of self-consciousness, and adopting as his project a
“spiritualized” systematic elaboration of the philosophy of Spinoza (somewhat
like the young Schelling), he arrived at a position that he called panentheism.
According to this, although nature and human consciousness are part of God or
Absolute Being, the Absolute is neither exhausted in nor identical with them. To
some extent, he anticipated Hegel in invoking an “end of history” in which the
finite realm of human affairs would reunite with the infinite essence in a
universal moral and “spiritual” order. See also FICHTE, PANTHEISM, SCHELLING.
J.P.Su.
Krebs. See NICHOLAS OF
CUSA. Kripke, Saul A(aron) (b.1940), American mathematician and philosopher,
considered one of the most deeply influential contemporary figures in logic and
philosophy. While a teenager, he formulated a semantics for modal logic (the
logic of necessity and possibility) based on Leibniz’s notion of a possible
world, and, using the apparatus, proved completeness for a variety of systems
(1959, 1963). Possible world semantics (due in part also to Carnap and others)
has proved to be one of the most fruitful developments in logic and philosophy.
Kripke’s 1970 Princeton lectures, Naming and Necessity (1980), were a
watershed. The work primarily concerns proper names of individuals (e.g.,
‘Aristotle’) and, by extension, terms for natural kinds (‘water’) and similar
expressions. Kripke uses his thesis that any such term is a rigid designator –
i.e., designates the same thing with respect to every possible world in which
that thing exists (and does not designate anything else with respect to worlds
in which it does not exist) – to argue, contrary to the received Fregean view,
that the designation of a proper name is not semantically secured by means of a
description that gives the sense of the name. On the contrary, the description
associated with a particular use of a name will frequently designate something
else entirely. Kripke derives putative examples of necessary a posteriori
truths, as well as contingent a priori truths. In addition, he defends
essentialism – the doctrine that some properties of things are properties that
those things could not fail to have (except by not existing) – and uses it,
together with his account of natural-kind terms, to argue against the
identification of mental entities with their physical manifestations (e.g.,
sensations with specific neural events). In a sequel, “A Puzzle about Belief”
(1979), Kripke addresses the problem of substitution failure in sentential
contexts attributing belief or other propositional attitudes. Kripke’s
interpretation of the later Wittgenstein as a semantic skeptic has also had a
profound impact (Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, 1980, 1982). His
semantic theory of truth (“Outline of a Theory of Truth,” 1975) has sparked
renewed interest in the liar paradox (‘This statement is false’) and related
paradoxes, and in the development of non-classical languages containing their
own truth predicates as possible models for natural language. In logic, he is
also known for his work in intuitionism and on his theory of transfinite
recursion on admissible ordinals. Kripke, McCosh Professor of Philosophy
(emeritus) at Princeton, frequently lectures on numerous further significant
results in logic and philosophy, but those results have remained unpublished.
Kripke semantics, a type
of formal semantics for languages with operators A and B for necessity and
possibility (‘possible worlds semantics’ and ‘relational semantics’ are
sometimes used for the same notion); also, a similar semantics for
intuitionistic logic. In a basic version a framefor a sentential language with
A and B is a pair (W,R) where W is a non-empty set (the “possible worlds”) and
R is a binary relation on W – the relation of “relative possibility” or
“accessibility.” A model on the frame (W,R) is a triple (W,R,V), Krause, Karl
Christian Friedrich Kripke semantics 476 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page
476 where V is a function (the “valuation function”) that assigns truth-values
to sentence letters at worlds. If w 1 W then a sentence AA is true at world w
in the model (W,R,V) if A is true at all worlds v 1 W for which wRv.
Informally, AA is true at world w if A is true at all the worlds that would be
possible if w were actual. This is a generalization of the doctrine commonly
attributed to Leibniz that necessity is truth in all possible worlds. A is
valid in the model (W,R,V) if it is true at all worlds w 1 W in that model. It
is valid in the frame (W,R) if it is valid in all models on that frame. It is
valid if it is valid in all frames. In predicate logic versions, a frame may
include another component D, that assigns a non-empty set Dw of objects (the
existents at w) to each possible world w. Terms and quantifiers may be treated
either as objectual (denoting and ranging over individuals) or conceptual
(denoting and ranging over functions from possible worlds to individuals) and
either as actualist or possibilist(denoting and ranging over either existents
or possible existents). On some of these treatments there may arise further
choices about whether and how truth-values should be assigned to sentences that
assert relations among non-existents. The development of Kripke semantics marks
a watershed in the modern study of modal systems. In the 1930s, 1940s, and
1950s a number of axiomatizations for necessity and possibility were proposed
and investigated. Carnap showed that for the simplest of these systems, C. I.
Lewis’s S5, AA can be interpreted as saying that A is true in all “state
descriptions.” Answering even the most basic questions about the other systems,
however, required effort and ingenuity. In the late fifties and early sixties
Stig Kanger, Richard Montague, Saul Kripke, and Jaakko Hintikka each formulated
interpretations for such systems that generalized Carnap’s semantics by using
something like the accessibility relation described above. Kripke’s semantics
was more natural than the others in that accessibility was taken to be a
relation among mathematically primitive “possible worlds,” and, in a series of
papers, Kripke demonstrated that versions of it provide characteristic interpretations
for a number of modal systems. For these reasons Kripke’s formulation has
become standard. Relational semantics provided simple solutions to some older
problems about the distinctness and relative strength of the various systems.
It also opened new areas of investigation, facilitating general results
(establishing decidability and other properties for infinite classes of modal
systems), incompleteness results (exhibiting systems not determined by any
class of frames), and correspondence results (showing that the frames verifying
certain modal formulas were exactly the frames meeting certain conditions on
R). It suggested parallel interpretations for notions whose patterns of
inference were known to be similar to that of necessity and possibility, including
obligation and permission, epistemic necessity and possibility, provability and
consistency, and, more recently, the notion of a computation’s inevitably or
possibly terminating in a particular state. It inspired similar semantics for
nonclassical conditionals and the more general neighborhood or functional
variety of possible worlds semantics. The philosophical utility of Kripke
semantics is more difficult to assess. Since the accessibility relation is
often explained in terms of the modal operators, it is difficult to maintain
that the semantics provides an explicit analysis of the modalities it
interprets. Furthermore, questions about which version of the semantics is
correct (particularly for quantified modal systems) are themselves tied to substantive
questions about the nature of things and worlds. The semantics does impose
important constraints on the meaning of modalities, and it provides a means for
many philosophical questions to be posed more clearly and starkly.
Kristeva, Julia (b.1941),
Bulgarian-born French linguist, practicing psychoanalyst, widely influential
social theorist, and novelist. The centerpiece of Kristeva’s semiotic theory
has two correlative moments: a focus on the speaking subject as embodying
unconscious motivations (and not simply the conscious intentionality of a
Husserlian transcendental ego) and an articulation of the signifying phenomenon
as a dynamic, productive process (not a static sign-system). Kristeva’s most
systematic philosophical work, La Révolution du langage poétique (1974), brings
her semiotics to mature expression through an effective integration of
psychoanalysis (Freud and Lacan), elements of linguistic models (from Roman
Jakobson to Chomskyan generative grammar) and semiology (from Saussure to
Peirce and Louis Hjelmslev), and a literary approach to text (influenced by
Bakhtin). Together the symbolic and the semiotic, two dialectical and
irreconcilable modalities of meaning, constitute the signifying process. The
symbolic designates the systematic rules governing denotative and propositional
speech, while the Kristeva, Julia Kristeva, Julia 477 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999
7:40 AM Page 477 semiotic isolates an archaic layer of meaning that is neither
representational nor based on relations among signs. The concept of the chora
combines the semiotic, translinguistic layer of meaning (genotext) with a
psychoanalytic, drive-based model of unconscious sound production, dream logic,
and fantasy life that defy full symbolic articulation. Drawing on Plato’s
non-unified notion of the maternal receptacle (Timaeus), the chora constitutes
the space where subjectivity is generated. Drives become “ordered” in rhythmic
patterns during the pre-Oedipal phase before the infant achieves reflexive
capacity, develops spatial intuition and time consciousness, and posits itself
as an enunciating subject. Ordered, but not according to symbolic laws,
semiotic functions arise when the infant forms associations between its vocal
gesticulations and sensorimotor development, and patterns these associations
after the mother’s corporeal modulations. The semiotic chora, while partly
repressed in identity formation, links the subject’s preverbal yet functional
affective life to signification. All literary forms – epic narrative,
metalanguage, contemplation or theoria and text-practice – combine two
different registers of meaning, phenotext and genotext. Yet they do so in
different ways and none encompasses both registers in totality. The phenotext
refers to language in its function “to communicate” and can be analyzed in
terms of syntax and semantics. Though not itself linguistic, the genotext
reveals itself in the way that “phonematic” and “melodic devices” and
“syntactic and logical” features establish “semantic” fields. The genotext
isolates the specific mode in which a text sublimates drives; it denotes the
“process” by which a literary form generates a particular type of subjectivity.
Poetic language is unique in that it largely reveals the genotext. This linkage
between semiotic processes, genotext, and poetic language fulfills the early
linguistic project (1967–73) and engenders a novel post-Hegelian social theory.
Synthesizing semiotics and the destructive death drive’s attack against stasis
artfully restores permanence to Hegelian negativity. Poetic mimesis, because it
transgresses grammatical rules while sustaining signification, reactivates the
irreducible negativity and heterogeneity of drive processes. So effectuating
anamnesis, poetry reveals the subject’s constitution within language and, by
holding open rather than normalizing its repressed desire, promotes critical
analysis of symbolic and institutionalized values. Later works like Pouvoirs de
l’horreur (1980), Etrangers à nous-mêmes (1989), Histoires d’amour (1983), and
Les Nouvelles maladies de l’âme (1993) shift away from collective political
agency to a localized, culturally therapeutic focus. Examining xenophobic
social formations, abjection and societal violence, romantic love, grief,
women’s melancholic poison in patriarchy, and a crisis of moral values in the
postmetaphysical age, they harbor forceful implications for ethics and social
theory.
Kropotkin, Petr
Alekseevich (1842–1921), Russian geographer, geologist, naturalist, and
philosopher, best remembered for his anarchism and his defense of mutual aid as
a factor of evolution. Traveling extensively in Siberia on scientific
expeditions (1862–67), he was stimulated by Darwin’s newly published theory of
evolution and sought, in the Siberian landscape, confirmation of Darwin’s Malthusian
principle of the struggle for survival. Instead Kropotkin found that
underpopulation was the rule, that climate was the main obstacle to survival,
and that mutual aid was a far more common phenomenon than Darwin recognized. He
soon generalized these findings to social theory, opposing social Darwinism,
and also began to espouse anarchist theory.
Kuan Tzu, also called
Kuan Chung (d.645 B.C.), Chinese statesman who was prime minister of Ch’i and
considered a forefather of Legalism. He was traditionally albeit spuriously
associated with the Kuan Tzu, an eclectic work containing Legalist, Confucian,
Taoist, five phases, and Huang–Lao ideas from the fourth to the second
centuries B.C. As minister, Kuan Tzu achieved peace and social order through
the hegemonic system (pa), wherein the ruling Chou king ratified a collective
power-sharing arrangement with the most powerful feudal lords.
Kuhn, Thomas S(amuel)
(1922–96), American historian and philosopher of science. Kuhn studied at
Harvard, where he received degrees in physics (1943, 1946) and a doctorate in
the history of science (1949). He then taught history of science or philosophy
of science at Harvard (1951–56), Berkeley (1956–64), Princeton (1964–79), and
M.I.T. (1979–91). Kuhn traced his shift from physics to the history and
philosophy of science to a moment in 1947 when he was Kropotkin, Petr
Alekseevich Kuhn, Thomas S(amuel) 478 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 478
asked to teach some science to humanities majors. Searching for a case study to
illuminate the development of Newtonian mechanics, Kuhn opened Aristotle’s
Physics and was astonished at how “simply wrong” it was. After a while, Kuhn
came to “think like an Aristotelian physicist” and to realize that Aristotle’s
basic concepts were totally unlike Newton’s, and that, understood on its own
terms, Aristotle’s Physics was not bad Newtonian mechanics. This new
perspective resulted in The Copernican Revolution (1957), a study of the
transformation of the Aristotelian geocentric image of the world to the modern
heliocentric one. Pondering the structure of these changes, Kuhn produced his
immensely influential second book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
(1962). He argued that scientific thought is defined by “paradigms,” variously
describing these as disciplinary matrixes or exemplars, i.e., conceptual
world-views consisting of beliefs, values, and techniques shared by members of
a given community, or an element in that constellation: concrete achievements
used as models for research. According to Kuhn, scientists accept a prevailing
paradigm in “normal science” and attempt to articulate it by refining its
theories and laws, solving various puzzles, and establishing more accurate
measurements of constants. Eventually, however, their efforts may generate
anomalies; these emerge only with difficulty, against a background of
expectations provided by the paradigm. The accumulation of anomalies triggers a
crisis that is sometimes resolved by a revolution that replaces the old
paradigm with a new one. One need only look to the displacement of Aristotelian
physics and geocentric astronomy by Newtonian mechanics and heliocentrism for
instances of such paradigm shifts. In this way, Kuhn challenged the traditional
conception of scientific progress as gradual, cumulative acquisition of
knowledge. He elaborated upon these themes and extended his historical
inquiries in his later works, The Essential Tension (1977) and Black-Body
Theory and the Quantum Discontinuity (1978).
kung, szu, a Chinese
distinction corresponding to the opposition between “public” and “private”
interests, a key feature of Confucian and Legalist ethics. The distinction is
sometimes expressed by other terms suggestive of distinction between
impartiality and partiality, as in the Mo Tzu, or the Neo-Confucian distinction
between Heavenly principle (t’ien-li) and selfish desires. For the Confucians,
private and personal concerns are acceptable only insofar as they do not
conflict with the rules of propriety (li) and righteousness (i). Partiality
toward one’s personal relationships is also acceptable provided that such
partiality admits of reasonable justification, especially when such a concern
is not incompatible with jen or the ideal of humanity. This view contrasts with
egoism, altruism, and utilitarianism.
K’ung Ch’iu. See
CONFUCIUS. Kung Fu-tzu. See CONFUCIUS. Kung-sun Lung Tzu (fl. 300 B.C.),
Chinese philosopher best known for his dialogue defending the claim “A white
horse is not a horse.” Kung-sun probably regarded his paradox only as an
entertaining exercise in disputation (pien), and not as philosophically
illuminating. Nonetheless, it may have had the serious effect of helping to
bring disputation into disrepute in China. Numerous interpretations of the
“white horse” dialogue have been proposed. One recent theory is that Kung-sun
Lung Tzu is assuming that ‘white horse’ refers to two things (an equine shape
and a color) while ‘horse’ refers only to the shape, and then simply observing
that the whole (shape and color) is not identical with one of its parts (the
shape).
Kuo Hsiang (died A.D.
312), Chinese thinker of the Hsüan Hsüeh (Mysterious Learning) School. He is
described, along with thinkers like Wang Pi, as a Neo-Taoist. Kuo helped
develop the notion of li (pattern) as the underlying structure of the cosmos,
of which each thing receives an individual fen (allotment). All things are
“one” in having such “natural” roles to play, and by being tzu jan
(spontaneous), can attain a mystical oneness with all things. For Kuo, the fen
of human beings included standard Confucian virtues. Kuo is credited with
editing the current edition of the Chuang Tzu and composing what is now the
oldest extant commentary on it.
k’un Kyoto School 479
4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 479 Labriola, Antonio (1843–1904), Italian
Marxist philosopher who studied Hegel and corresponded with Engels for several
years (Lettere a Engels, 1949). His essays on Marxism appeared first in French
in the collection Essais sur la conception matérialiste de l’histoire (“Essays
on the Materialist Conception of History,” 1897). Another influential work,
Discorrendo di socialismo e di filosofia (“Talks about Socialism and
Philosophy,” 1897), collects ten letters to Georges Sorel on Marxism. Labriola
did not intend to develop an original Marxist theory but only to give an
accurate exposition of Marx’s thought. He believed that socialism would
inevitably ensue from the inner contradictions of capitalist society and
defended Marx’s views as objective scientific truths. He criticized revisionism
and defended the need to maintain the orthodoxy of Marxist thought. His views
and works were publicized by two of his students, Sorel in France and Croce in
Italy. In the 1950s Antonio Gramsci brought new attention to Labriola as an
example of pure and independent Marxism.
Lacan, Jacques (1901–81),
French practitioner and theorist of psychoanalysis. Lacan developed and transformed
Freudian theory and practice on the basis of the structuralist linguistics
originated by Saussure. According to Lacan, the unconscious is not a congeries
of biological instincts and drives, but rather a system of linguistic
signifiers. He construes, e.g., the fundamental Freudian processes of
condensation and displacement as instances of metaphor and metonymy. Lacan
proposed a Freudianism in which any traces of the substantial Cartesian self
are replaced by a system of symbolic functions. Contrary to standard views, the
ego is an imaginary projection, not our access to the real (which, for Lacan,
is the unattainable and inexpressible limit of language). In accord with his
theoretical position, Lacan developed a new form of psychoanalytic practice that
tried to avoid rather than achieve the “transference” whereby the analysand
identifies with the mature ego of the analyst. Lacan’s writings (e.g., Écrits
and the numerous volumes of his Séminaires) are of legendary difficulty,
offering idiosyncratic networks of allusion, word play, and paradox, which some
find rich and stimulating and others irresponsibly obscure. Beyond
psychoanalysis, Lacan has been particularly influential on literary theorists
and on poststructuralist philosophers such as Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze.
Laffitte, Pierre
(1823–1903), French positivist philosopher, a disciple of Comte and founder
(1878) of the Revue Occidentale. Laffitte spread positivism by adopting Comte’s
format of “popular” courses. He faithfully acknowledged Comte’s objective
method and religion of humanity. Laffitte wrote Great Types of Humanity
(1875–76). In Positive Ethics (1881), he distinguishes between theoretical and
practical ethics. His Lectures on First Philosophy (1889–95) sets forth a
metaphysics, or a body of general and abstract laws, that attempts to complete
positivism, to resolve the conflict between the subjective and the objective,
and to avert materialism.
La Forge, Louis de
(1632–66), French philosopher and member of the Cartesian school. La Forge
seems to have become passionately interested in Descartes’s philosophy in about
1650, and grew to become one of its most visible and energetic advocates. La
Forge (together with Gérard van Gutschoven) illustrated the 1664 edition of
Descartes’s L’homme and provided an extensive commentary; both illustrations
and commentary were often reprinted with the text. His main work, though, is
the Traité de l’esprit de l’homme (1665): though not a commentary on Descartes,
it is “in accordance with the principles of René Descartes,” according to its
subtitle. It attempts to continue Descartes’s program in L’homme, left
incomplete at his death, by discussing the mind and its union with the body. In
many ways La Forge’s work is quite orthodox; he carefully follows Descartes’s
opinions on the nature of body, the nature of soul, etc., as they appear in the
extant writings to which he had access. But with others in the Cartesian
school, La Forge’s work contributed to the establishment of the doctrine of
occasionalism as 480 L 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 480 Cartesian
orthodoxy, a doctrine not explicitly found in Descartes’s writings.
lambda-calculus, also
l-calculus, a theory of mathematical functions that is (a) “logic-free,” i.e.
contains no logical constants (formula-connectives or quantifier-expressions),
and (b) equational, i.e. ‘%’ is its sole predicate (though its metatheory
refers to relations of reducibility between terms). There are two species,
untyped and typed, each with various subspecies. Termhood is always inductively
defined (as is being a type-expression, if the calculus is typed). A definition
of being a term will contain at least these clauses: take infinitely many
variables (of each type if the calculus is typed) to be terms; for any terms t and
s (of appropriate type if the calculus is typed), (ts) is a term (of type
determined by that of t and s if the calculus is typed); for any term t and a
variable u (perhaps meeting certain conditions), (lut) is a term (“of” type
determined by that of t and u if the calculus is typed). (ts) is an
application-term; (lut) is a l-term, the labstraction of t, and its l-prefix
binds all free occurrences of u in t. Relative to any assignment a of values
(of appropriate type if the calculus is typed) to its free variables, each term
denotes a unique entity. Given a term (ts), t denotes a function and (ts)
denotes the output of that function when it is applied to the denotatum of s,
all relative to a. (lut) denotes relative to a that function which when applied
to any entity x (of appropriate type if the calculus is typed) outputs the
denotatum of t relative to the variant of a obtained by assigning u to the
given x. Alonzo Church introduced the untyped l-calculus around 1932 as the
basis for a foundation for mathematics that took all mathematical objects to be
functions. It characterizes a universe of functions, each with that universe as
its domain and each yielding values in that universe. It turned out to be
almost a notational variant of combinatory logic, first presented by Moses
Schonfinkel (1920, written up and published by Behmann in 1924). Church
presented the simplest typed l calculus in 1940. Such a calculus characterizes
a domain of objects and functions, each “of” a unique type, so that the type of
any given function determines two further types, one being the type of all and
only those entities in the domain of that function, the other being the type of
all those entities output by that function. In 1972 Jean-Yves Girard presented
the first second-order (or polymorphic) typed l-calculus. It uses additional
type-expressions themselves constructed by second-order l-abstraction, and also
more complicated terms constructed by labstracting with respect to certain
type-variables, and by applying such terms to type-expressions. The study of
l-calculi has deepened our understanding of constructivity in mathematics. They
are of interest in proof theory, in category theory, and in computer science.
Lambert, Johann Heinrich
(1728–77), German natural philosopher, logician, mathematician, and astronomer.
Born in Mulhouse (Alsace), he was an autodidact who became a prominent member
of the Munich Academy (1759) and the Berlin Academy (1764). He made significant
discoveries in physics and mathematics. His most important philosophical works
were Neues Organon (“New Organon, or Thoughts on the Investigation and
Induction of Truth and the Distinction Between Error and Appearances,” 1764)
and Anlage zur Architectonic (“Plan of an Architectonic, or Theory of the
Simple and Primary Elements in Philosophical and Mathematical Knowledge,”
1771). Lambert attempted to revise metaphysics. Arguing against both German
rationalism and British empiricism, he opted for a form of phenomenalism
similar to that of Kant and Tetens. Like his two contemporaries, he believed
that the mind contains a number of basic concepts and principles that make
knowledge possible. The philosopher’s task is twofold: first, these fundamental
concepts and principles have to be analyzed; second, the truths of science have
to be derived from them. In his own attempt at accomplishing this, Lambert
tended more toward Leibniz than Locke. M.K. La Mettrie, Julien Offroy de
(1707–51), French philosopher who was his generation’s most notorious
materialist, atheist, and hedonist. Raised in Brittany, he was trained at
Leiden by Hermann Boerhaave, an iatromechanist, whose works he translated into
French. As a Lockean sensationalist who read Gassendi and followed
Lambda-abstraction La Mettrie, Julien Offroy de 481 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40
AM Page 481 the Swiss physiologist Haller, La Mettrie took nature to be life’s
dynamic and ultimate principle. In 1745 he published Natural History of the
Soul, which attacked Cartesian dualism and dispensed with God. Drawing from
Descartes’s animal-machine, his masterpiece, Man the Machine(1747), argued that
the organization of matter alone explains man’s physical and intellectual
faculties. Assimilating psychology to mechanistic physiology, La Mettrie
integrated man into nature and proposed a materialistic monism. An Epicurean
and a libertine, he denied any religious or rational morality in Anti-Seneca
(1748) and instead accommodated human behavior to natural laws. Anticipating
Sade’s nihilism, his Art of Enjoying Pleasures and Metaphysical Venus (1751)
eulogized physical passions. Helvétius, d’Holbach, Marx, Plekhanov, and Lenin
all acknowledged a debt to his belief that “to write as a philosopher is to
teach materialism.” J.-L.S. Lange, Friedrich Albert (1828–75), German
philosopher and social scientist. Born at Wald near Solingen, he became a
university instructor at Bonn in 1851, professor of inductive logic at Zürich
in 1870, and professor at Marburg in 1873, establishing neo-Kantian studies
there. He published three books in 1865: Die Arbeiterfrage (The Problem of the
Worker), Die Grundlegung der mathematischen Psychologie (The Foundation of
Mathematical Psychology), and J. S. Mills Ansichten über die sociale Frage und
die angebliche Umwälzung der Socialwissenschaftlichen durch Carey (J. S. Mill’s
Views of the Social Question and Carey’s Supposed Social-Scientific
Revolution). Lange’s most important work, however, Geschichte des Materialismus
(History of Materialism), was published in 1866. An expanded second edition in
two volumes appeared in 1873–75 and in three later editions. The History of
Materialism is a rich, detailed study not only of the development of
materialism but of then-recent work in physical theory, biological theory, and
political economy; it includes a commentary on Kant’s analysis of knowledge.
Lange adopts a restricted positivistic approach to scientific interpretations
of man and the natural world and a conventionalism in regard to scientific
theory, and also encourages the projection of aesthetic interpretations of “the
All” from “the standpoint of the ideal.” Rejecting reductive materialism, Lange
argues that a strict analysis of materialism leads to ineliminable idealist
theoretical issues, and he adopts a form of materio-idealism. In his Geschichte
are anticipations of instrumental fictionalism, pragmatism, conventionalism,
and psychological egoism. Following the skepticism of the scientists he
discusses, Lange adopts an agnosticism about the ultimate constituents of
actuality and a radical phenomenalism. His major work was much admired by
Russell and significantly influenced the thought of Nietzsche. History of
Materialism predicted coming sociopolitical “earthquakes” because of the rise
of science, the decline of religion, and the increasing tensions of “the social
problem.” Die Arbeiterfrage explores the impact of industrialization and
technology on the “social problem” and predicts a coming social “struggle for
survival” in terms already recognizable as Social Darwinism. Both theoretically
and practically, Lange was a champion of workers and favored a form of
democratic socialism. His study of J. S. Mill and the economist Henry Carey was
a valuable contribution to social science and political economic theory.
Lao Tzu (sixth century
B.C.), Chinese philosopher traditionally thought to be a contemporary of
Confucius and the author of the Tao Te Ching (“Classic of tao and te“). Most
contemporary scholars hold that “Lao Tzu” is a composite of legendary early
sages, and that the Tao Te Ching is an anthology, a version of which existed no
earlier than the third century B.C. The Tao Te Ching combines paradoxical
mysticism with hardheaded political advice (Han Fei Tzu wrote a commentary on
it) and a call to return to a primitive utopia, without the corrupting
accoutrements of civilization, such as ritual (li), luxury items, and even
writing. In its exaltation of spontaneous action and denigration of Confucian
virtues such as jen, the text is reminiscent of Chuang Tzu, but it is
distinctive both for its style (which is lapidary to the point of obscurity)
and its political orienLange, Friedrich Albert Lao Tzu 482 4065h-l.qxd
08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 482 tation. Translations of the Tao Te Ching are based
on either the Wang Pi text or the recently discovered Ma-wang-tui text.
La Peyrère, Isaac
(1596–1676), French religious writer, a Calvinist of probable Marrano
extraction and a Catholic convert whose messianic and anthropological work (Men
Before Adam, 1656) scandalized Jews, Catholics, and Protestants alike.
Anticipating both ecumenism and Zionism, The Recall of the Jews (1643) claims
that, together, converted Jews and Christians will usher in universal
redemption. A threefold “salvation history” undergirds La Peyrère’s “Marrano
theology”: (1) election of the Jews; (2) their rejection and the election of
the Christians; (3) the recall of the Jews. J.-L.S. Laplace, Pierre Simon de
(1749–1827), French mathematician and astronomer who produced the definitive
formulation of the classical theory of probability. He taught at various schools
in Paris, including the École Militaire; one of his students was Napoleon, to
whom he dedicated his work on probability. According to Laplace, probabilities
arise from our ignorance. The world is deterministic, so the probability of a
possible event depends on our limited information about it rather than on the
causal forces that determine whether it shall occur. Our chief means of
calculating probabilities is the principle of insufficient reason, or the
principle of indifference. It says that if there is no reason to believe that
one of n mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive possible cases will obtain
rather than some other, so that the cases are equally possible, then the
probability of each case is 1/n. In addition, the probability of a possible event
equivalent to a disjunction of cases is the number of cases favorable to the
event divided by the total number of cases. For instance, the probability that
the top card of a well-shuffled deck is a diamond is 13/52.Laplace’s chief work
on probability is Théorie analytique des probabilités(Analytic Theory of
Probabilities, 1812).
Bonaria: H. P. Grice was
going to visit the River Plate with Noel Coward, but he got sick -- – or South
American philosophy – “Bonaria” was settled by Italians after the matron saint
of sailors, “Bonaria,” – itself settled by Ligurians, the first Italians to
settle in Buenos Aires and the Argentine area of the River Plate -- the
philosophy of South America, which is European in origin and constitutes a
chapter in the history of Western philosophy (rather than say, Japanese – there was a strong emigration
of Japanese to Buenos Aires, but they remained mainly in the dry laundry
business). Pre-Columbian (“Indian”) indigenous cultures had developed ideas
about the world that have been interpreted by some scholars as philosophical,
but there is no evidence that any of those ideas were incorporated into the
philosophy later practiced in Latin America. It is difficult to characterize
Latin American philosophy in a way applicable to all of its 500-year history.
The most one can say is that, in contrast with European and Anglo-American
philosophy, it has maintained a strong human and social interest, has been
consistently affected by Scholastic and Catholic thought, and has significantly
affected the social and political institutions in the region. South American
philosophers (especially if NOT from Buenos Aires) tend to be active in the
educational, political, and social lives of their countries and deeply
concerned with their own cultural identity (except if they are from Buenos
Aires, who have their identity well settled in Europe, as European exiles or
expatriates that that they are) The history of philosophy in Latin America can
be divided into four periods: colonial, independentist, positivist, and
contemporary. Colonial period (c.1550–c.1750). This period was dominated by the
type of Scholasticism officially practiced in the Iberian peninsula. The texts
studied were those of medieval Scholastics, primarily Aquinas and Duns Scotus,
and of their Iberian commentators, Vitoria, Soto, Fonseca, and, above all,
Suárez. The university curriculum was modeled on that of major Iberian
universities (Salamanca, Alcalá, Coimbra), and instructors produced both
systematic treatises and commentaries on classical, medieval, and contemporary
texts. The philosophical concerns in the colonies were those prevalent in Spain
and Portugal and centered on logical and metaphysical issues inherited from the
Middle Ages and on political and legal questions raised by the discovery and
colonization of America. Among the former were issues involving the logic of
terms and propositions and the problems of universals and individuation; among
the latter were questions concerning the rights of Indians and the relations of
the natives with the conquerors. The main philosophical center during the early
colonial period was Mexico; Peru became important in the seventeenth century.
Between 1700 and 1750 other centers developed, but by that time Scholasticism
had begun to decline. The founding of the Royal and Pontifical University of
Mexico in 1553 inaugurated Scholastic instruction in the New World. The first
teacher of philosophy at the university was Alonso de la Vera Cruz (c.1504–84),
an Augustinian and disciple of Soto. He composed several didactic treatises on
La Peyrère, Isaac Latin American philosophy 483 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM
Page 483 logic, metaphysics, and science, including Recognitio summularum
(“Introductory Logic,” 1554), Dialectica resolutio (“Advanced Logic,” 1554),
and Physica speculatio (“Physics,” 1557). He also wrote a theologico-legal
work, the Speculum conjugiorum (“On Marriage,” 1572), concerned with the status
of precolonial Indian marriages. Alonso’s works are eclectic and didactic and
show the influence of Aristotle, Peter of Spain, and Vitoria in particular.
Another important Scholastic figure in Mexico was the Dominican Tomás de
Mercado (c.1530–75). He produced commentaries on the logical works of Peter of
Spain and Aristotle and a treatise on international commerce, Summa de tratos y
contratos (“On Contracts,” 1569). His other sources are Porphyry and Aquinas.
Perhaps the most important figure of the period was Antonio Rubio (1548–1615),
author of the most celebrated Scholastic book written in the New World, Logica
mexicana (“Mexican Logic,” 1605). It underwent seven editions in Europe and
became a logic textbook in Alcalá. Rubio’s sources are Aristotle, Porphyry, and
Aquinas, but he presents original treatments of several logical topics. Rubio also
commented on several of Aristotle’s other works. In Peru, two authors merit
mention. Juan Pérez Menacho (1565–1626) was a prolific writer, but only a moral
treatise, Theologia et moralis tractatus (“Treatise on Theology and Morals”),
and a commentary on Aquinas’s Summa theologiae remain. The Chilean-born
Franciscan, Alfonso Briceño (c.1587–1669), worked in Nicaragua and Venezuela,
but the center of his activities was Lima. In contrast with the
Aristotelian-Thomistic flavor of the philosophy of most of his contemporaries,
Briceño was a Scotistic Augustinian. This is evident in Celebriores
controversias in primum sententiarum Scoti (“On Scotus’s First Book of the
Sentences,” 1638) and Apologia de vita et doctrina Joannis Scotti (“Apology for
John Scotus,” 1642). Although Scholasticism dominated the intellectual life of
colonial Latin America, some authors were also influenced by humanism. Among
the most important in Mexico were Juan de Zumárraga (c.1468–1548); the
celebrated defender of the Indians, Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474–1566); Carlos
Sigüenza y Góngora (1645–1700); and Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz (1651–95). The
last one is a famous poet, now considered a precursor of the feminist movement.
In Peru, Nicolás de Olea (1635–1705) stands out. Most of these authors were
trained in Scholasticism but incorporated the concerns and ideas of humanists
into their work. Independentist period (c.1750–c.1850). Just before and
immediately after independence, leading Latin American intellectuals lost
interest in Scholastic issues and became interested in social and political
questions, although they did not completely abandon Scholastic sources. Indeed,
the theories of natural law they inherited from Vitoria and Suárez played a
significant role in forming their ideas. But they also absorbed non-Scholastic
European authors. The rationalism of Descartes and other Continental
philosophers, together with the empiricism of Locke, the social ideas of
Rousseau, the ethical views of Bentham, the skepticism of Voltaire and other Encyclopedists,
the political views of Condorcet and Montesquieu, the eclecticism of Cousin,
and the ideology of Destutt de Tracy, all contributed to the development of
liberal ideas that were a background to the independentist movement. Most of
the intellectual leaders of this movement were men of action who used ideas for
practical ends, and their views have limited theoretical value. They made
reason a measure of legitimacy in social and governmental matters, and found
the justification for revolutionary ideas in natural law. Moreover, they
criticized authority; some, regarding religion as superstitious, opposed
ecclesiastical power. These ideas paved the way for the later development of
positivism. The period begins with the weakening hold of Scholasticism on Latin
American intellectuals and the growing influence of early modern philosophy,
particularly Descartes. Among the first authors to turn to modern philosophy
was Juan Benito Díaz de Gamarra y Dávalos (1745–83) in Mexico who wrote Errores
del entendimiento humano (“Errors of Human Understanding,” 1781) and Academias
filosóficas (“Philosophical Academies,” 1774). Also in Mexico was Francisco
Javier Clavijero (1731–87), author of a book on physics and a general history
of Mexico. In Brazil the turn away from Scholasticism took longer. One of the
first authors to show the influence of modern philosophy was Francisco de
Mont’Alverne (1784– 1858) in Compêndio de filosofia (1883). These first
departures from Scholasticism were followed by the more consistent efforts of
those directly involved in the independentist movement. Among these were Simón
Bolívar (1783–1830), leader of the rebellion against Spain in the Andean
countries of South America, and the Mexicans Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla (1753–
1811), José María Morelos y Paván (1765– 1815), and José Joaquín Fernández de
Lizardi Latin American philosophy Latin American philosophy 484 4065h-l.qxd
08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 484 (1776–1827). In Argentina, Mariano Moreno
(1778–1811), Juan Crisóstomo Lafimur (d. 1823), and Diego Alcorta (d. 1808),
among others, spread the liberal ideas that served as a background for
independence. Positivist period (c.1850–c.1910). During this time, positivism
became not only the most popular philosophy in Latin America but also the official
philosophy of some countries. After 1910, however, positivism declined
drastically. Latin American positivism was eclectic, influenced by a variety of
thinkers, including Comte, Spencer, and Haeckel. Positivists emphasized the
explicative value of empirical science while rejecting metaphysics. According
to them, all knowledge is based on experience rather than theoretical
speculation, and its value lies in its practical applications. Their motto,
preserved on the Brazilian flag, was “Order and Progress.” This positivism left
little room for freedom and values; the universe moved inexorably according to
mechanistic laws. Positivism was a natural extension of the ideas of the
independentists. It was, in part, a response to the needs of the newly liberated
countries of Latin America. After independence, the concerns of Latin American
intellectuals shifted from political liberation to order, justice, and
progress. The beginning of positivism can be traced to the time when Latin
America, responding to these concerns, turned to the views of French socialists
such as Saint-Simon and Fourier. The Argentinians Esteban Echevarría (1805–51)
and Juan Bautista Alberdi (1812–84) were influenced by them. Echevarría’s Dogma
socialista (“Socialist Dogma,” 1846) combines socialist ideas with
eighteenth-century rationalism and literary Romanticism, and Alberdi follows
suit, although he eventually turned toward Comte. Alberdi is, moreover, the
first Latin American philosopher to worry about developing a philosophy
adequate to the needs of Latin America. In Ideas (1842), he stated that
philosophy in Latin America should be compatible with the economic, political,
and social requirements of the region. Another transitional thinker, influenced
by both Scottish philosophy and British empiricism, was the Venezuelan Andrés
Bello (1781–1865). A prolific writer, he is the most important Latin American
philosopher of the nineteenth century. His Filosofía del entendimiento
(“Philosophy of Understanding,” 1881) reduces metaphysics to psychology. Bello
also developed original ideas about language and history. After 1829, he worked
in Chile, where his influence was strongly felt. The generation of Latin
American philosophers after Alberdi and Bello was mostly positivistic.
Positivism’s heyday was the second half of the nineteenth century, but two of
its most distinguished advocates, the Argentinian José Ingenieros (1877–1925)
and the Cuban Enrique José Varona (1849–1933), worked well into the twentieth
century. Both modified positivism in important ways. Ingenieros left room for
metaphysics, which, according to him, deals in the realm of the
“yet-to-be-experienced.” Among his most important books are Hacia una moral sin
dogmas (“Toward a Morality without Dogmas,” 1917), where the influence of Emerson
is evident, Principios de psicologia (“Principles of Psychology,” 1911), where
he adopts a reductionist approach to psychology, and El hombre mediocre (“The
Mediocre Man,” 1913), an inspirational book popular among Latin American
youths. In Conferencias filosóficas (“Philosophical Lectures,” 1880–88), Varona
went beyond the mechanistic explanations of behavior common among positivists.
In Mexico the first and leading positivist was Gabino Barreda (1818–81), who
reorganized Mexican education under President Juárez. An ardent follower of
Comte, Barreda made positivism the basis of his educational reforms. He was
followed by Justo Sierra (1848–1912), who turned toward Spencer and Darwin and
away from Comte, criticizing Barreda’s dogmatism. Positivism was introduced in
Brazil by Tobias Barreto (1839–89) and Silvio Romero (1851– 1914) in
Pernambuco, around 1869. In 1875 Benjamin Constant (1836–91) founded the
Positivist Society in Rio de Janeiro. The two most influential exponents of
positivism in the country were Miguel Lemos (1854–1916) and Raimundo Teixeira
Mendes (1855–1927), both orthodox followers of Comte. Positivism was more than
a technical philosophy in Brazil. Its ideas spread widely, as is evident from
the inclusion of positivist ideas in the first republican constitution. The
most prominent Chilean positivists were José Victorino Lastarria (1817–88) and
Valentín Letelier (1852–1919). More dogmatic adherents to the movement were the
Lagarrigue brothers, Jorge (d. 1894), Juan Enrique (d. 1927), and Luis (d.
1953), who promoted positivism in Chile well after it had died everywhere else
in Latin America. Contemporary period (c.1910–present). Contemporary Latin
American philosophy began Latin American philosophy Latin American philosophy
485 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 485 with the demise of positivism. The
first part of the period was dominated by thinkers who rebelled against
positivism. The principal figures, called the Founders by Francisco Romero,
were Alejandro Korn (1860–1936) in Argentina, Alejandro Octavio Deústua
(1849–1945) in Peru, José Vasconcelos (1882–1959) and Antonio Caso (1883–1946)
in Mexico, Enrique Molina (1871– 1964) in Chile, Carlos Vaz Ferreira
(1872–1958) in Uruguay, and Raimundo de Farias Brito (1862–1917) in Brazil. In
spite of little evidence of interaction among these philosophers, their aims
and concerns were similar. Trained as positivists, they became dissatisfied
with positivism’s dogmatic intransigence, mechanistic determinism, and emphasis
on pragmatic values. Deústua mounted a detailed criticism of positivistic
determinism in Las ideas de orden y de libertad en la historia del pensamiento
humano (“The Ideas of Order and Freedom in the History of Human Thought,”
1917–19). About the same time, Caso presented his view of man as a spiritual
reality that surpasses nature in La existencia como economía, como desinterés y
como caridad (“Existence as Economy, Disinterestedness, and Charity,” 1916).
Following in Caso’s footsteps and inspired by Pythagoras and the Neoplatonists,
Vasconcelos developed a metaphysical system with aesthetic roots in El monismo
estético (“Aesthetic Monism,” 1918). An even earlier criticism of positivism is
found in Vaz Ferreira’s Lógica viva (“Living Logic,” 1910), which contrasts the
abstract, scientific logic favored by positivists with a logic of life based on
experience, which captures reality’s dynamic character. The earliest attempt at
developing an alternative to positivism, however, is found in Farias Brito.
Between 1895 and 1905 he published a trilogy, Finalidade do mundo (“The World’s
Goal”), in which he conceived the world as an intellectual activity which he
identified with God’s thought, and thus as essentially spiritual. The intellect
unites and reflects reality but the will divides it. Positivism was superseded
by the Founders with the help of ideas imported first from France and later
from Germany. The process began with the influence of Étienne Boutroux
(1845–1921) and Bergson and of French vitalism and intuitionism, but it was cemented
when Ortega y Gasset introduced into Latin America the thought of Scheler,
Nicolai Hartmann, and other German philosophers during his visit to Argentina
in 1916. The influence of Bergson was present in most of the founders,
particularly Molina, who in 1916 wrote La filosofía de Bergson (“The Philosophy
of Bergson”). Korn was exceptional in turning to Kant in his search for an
alternative to positivism. In La libertad creadora (“Creative Freedom,”
1920–22), he defends a creative concept of freedom. In Axiología (“Axiology,”
1930), his most important work, he defends a subjectivist position. The impact
of German philosophy, including Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and the
neo-Kantians, and of Ortega’s philosophical perspectivism and historicism, were
strongly felt in the generation after the founders. The Mexican Samuel Ramos
(1897–1959), the Argentinians Francisco Romero (1891–1962) and Carlos Astrada
(1894–1970), the Brazilian Alceu Amoroso Lima (1893–1982), the Peruvian José
Carlos Mariátegui (1895–1930), and others followed the Founders’ course,
attacking positivism and favoring, in many instances, a philosophical style
that contrasted with its scientistic emphasis. The most important of these
figures was Romero, whose Theory of Man (1952) developed a systematic
philosophical anthropology in the context of a metaphysics of transcendence.
Reality is arranged according to degrees of transcendence, the lowest of which
is the physical and the highest the spiritual. The bases of Ramos’s thought are
found in Ortega as well as in Scheler and N. Hartmann. Ramos appropriated
Ortega’s perspectivism and set out to characterize the Mexican situation in
Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico (1962). Some precedent existed for the
interest in the culturally idiosyncratic in Vasconcelos’s Raza cósmica (“Cosmic
Race,” 1925), but Ramos opened the doors to a philosophical awareness of Latin
American culture that has been popular ever since. Ramos’s most traditional
work, Hacia un nuevo humanismo (“Toward a New Humanism,” 1940), presents a
philosophical anthropology of Orteguean inspiration. Astrada studied in Germany
and adopted existential and phenomenological ideas in El juego existential
(“The Existential Game,” 1933), while criticizing Scheler’s axiology. Later, he
turned toward Hegel and Marx in Existencialismo y crisis de la filosofía
(“Existentialism and the Crisis of Philosophy,” 1963). Amoroso Lima worked in
the Catholic tradition and his writings show the influence of Maritain. His O
espírito e o mundo (“Spirit and World,” 1936) and Idade, sexo e tempo (“Age,
Sex, and Time,” 1938) present a spiritual view of human beings, which he
contrasted with Marxist and existentialist views. Mariátegui is the most
distinguished representative of MarxLatin American phiism in Latin America. His
Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana (“Seven Essays on the
Interpretation of Peruvian Reality,” 1928) contains an important statement of
social philosophy, in which he uses Marxist ideas freely to analyze the Peruvian
sociopolitical situation. In the late 1930s and 1940s, as a consequence of the
political upheaval created by the Spanish Civil War, a substantial group of
peninsular philosophers settled in Latin America. Among the most influential
were Joaquín Xirau (1895– 1946), Eduardo Nicol (b.1907), Luis Recaséns Siches
(b.1903), Juan D. García Bacca (b.1901), and, perhaps most of all, José Gaos
(1900–69). Gaos, like Caso, was a consummate teacher, inspiring many students.
Apart from the European ideas they brought, these immigrants introduced
methodologically more sophisticated ways of doing philosophy, including the
practice of studying philosophical sources in the original languages. Moreover,
they helped to promote Pan-American communication. The conception of hispanidad
they had inherited from Unamuno and Ortega helped the process. Their influence
was felt particularly by the generation born around 1910. With this generation,
Latin American philosophy established itself as a professional and reputable
discipline, and philosophical organizations, research centers, and journals
sprang up. The core of this generation worked in the German tradition. Risieri
Frondizi (Argentina, 1910–83), Eduardo García Máynez (Mexico, b.1908), Juan
Llambías de Azevedo (Uruguay, 1907–72), and Miguel Reale (Brazil, b.1910) were
all influenced by Scheler and N. Hartmann and concerned themselves with
axiology and philosophical anthropology. Frondizi, who was also influenced by
empiricist philosophy, defended a functional view of the self in Substancia y
función en el problema del yo (“The Nature of the Self,” 1952) and of value as
a Gestalt quality in Qué son los valores? (“What is Value?” 1958). Apart from
these thinkers, there were representatives of other traditions in this
generation. Following Ramos, Leopoldo Zea (Mexico, b.1912) stimulated the study
of the history of ideas in Mexico and initiated a controversy that still rages
concerning the identity and possibility of a truly Latin American philosophy.
Representing existentialism was Vicente Ferreira da Silva (Brazil, b.1916), who
did not write much but presented a vigorous criticism of what he regarded as
Hegelian and Marxist subjectivism in Ensaios filosóficos (“Philosophical
Essays,” 1948). Before he became interested in existentialism, he had been
interested in logic, publishing the first textbook of mathematical logic
written in South America – Elementos de lógica matemática (“Elements of
Mathematical Logic,” 1940). A philosopher whose interest in mathematical logic
moved him away from phenomenology is Francisco Miró Quesada (Peru, b.1918). He
explored rationality and eventually the perspective of analytic philosophy.
Owing to the influence of Maritain, several members of this generation adopted
a NeoThomistic or Scholastic approach. The main figures to do so were Oswaldo
Robles (b.1904) in Mexico, Octavio Nicolás Derisi (b.1907) in Argentina,
Alberto Wagner de Reyna (b.1915) in Peru, and Clarence Finlayson (1913–54) in
Chile and Colombia. Even those authors who worked in this tradition addressed
issues of axiology and philosophical anthropology. There was, therefore, considerable
thematic unity in South American philosophy. The overall orientation was not
drastically different from the preceding period. The Founders vitalism against
positivism, and the following generation, with Ortega’s help, took over the
process, incorporating spiritualism and the new ideas introduced by
phenomenology and existentialism to continue in a similar direction. As a
result, the phenomenology amd existentialism dominated philosophy in South
America. To this must be added the renewed impetus of neoScholasticism. Few
philosophers worked outside these philosophical currents, and those who did had
no institutional power. Among these were sympathizers of philosophical
analysis, and those who contributed to the continuing development of Marxism.
This situation has begun to change substantially as a result of a renewed
interest in Marxism, the progressive influence of Oxford analytic philosophy
(with a number of philosophers from Buenos Aires studying usually under
British-Council scholarships, under P. F. Strawson, D. F. Pears, H. L. A. Hart,
and others – these later founded the Buenos-Aires-based Argentine Society for
Philosophical Analysis --. In Buenos Aires, English philosophy and culture in
general is rated higher than others, due to the influence of the British
emigration to the River-Plate area – The pragmatics of H. P. Grice is
particularly influential in that it brings a breath of fresh area to the more
ritualistic approach as favoured by his nemesis, J. L. Austin --. American
philosophers are uually read provided they, too, had the proper Oxonian
education or background -- and the development of a new philosophical current
called the philosophy of liberation. Moreover, the question raised by Zea concerning
the identity and possibility of a South American philosophy remains a focus of
attention and controversy. And, more recently, there has been interest in postmodernism,
the theory of communicative action, deconstructionism, neopragmatism, and
feminism. Socialist thought is not new to South America. In this century,
Emilio Frugoni (1880–1969) in Uruguay and Mariátegui in Peru, among others,
adopted a Marxist perspective, although a heterodox one. But only in the last
three decades has Marxism been taken seriously in Latin American academic
circles. Indeed, until recently Marxism was a marginal philosophical movement
in Latin America. The popularity of the Marxist perspective has made possible
its increasing institutionalization. Among its most important thinkers are
Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez (Spain, b.1915), Vicente Lombardo Toledano (b.1894) and
Eli de Gortari (b.1918) in Mexico, and Caio Prado Júnior (1909–86) in Brazil.
In contrast to Marxism, philosophical analysis arrived late in Latin America
and, owing to its technical and academic character, has not yet influenced more
than a relatively small number of philosophers – and also because in the milieu
of Buenos Aires, the influence of French culture is considered to have much
more prestige in mainstream culture than the more parochial empiricist brand
coming from the British Isles – unless it’s among the Friends of the Argentine
Centre for English Culture. German philosophy is considered rough in contrast
to the pleasing to the ear sounds of French philosophy, and Buenos Aires locals
find the very sound of the long German philosophical terms a source of
amusement and mirth. Since Buenos Aires habitants are Italians, it is logical
that they do not have much affinity for Italian philosophy, which they think
it’s too local and less extravagant than the French. There was a strong
immigration of German philosophers to Buenos Aires after the end of the Second
World War, too. Colonials from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, or the former
colonies in North America are never as welcomed in Buenos Aires as those from
the very Old World. The reason is obvious: as being New-Worlders, if they are
going to be educated, it is by Older-Worlders – Nobody in Buenos Aires would
follow a New-World philosopher or a colonial philosopher – but at most a school
which originated in the Continent of Europe. The British are regarded as by
nature unphilosophical and to follow a British philosopher in Buenos Aires is
considered an English joke! Nonetheless, and thanks in part to its high
theoretical caliber, analysis has become one of the most forceful philosophical
currents in the region. The publication of journals with an analytic bent such
as Crítica in Mexico, Análisis Filosófico in Argentina, and Manuscrito in
Brazil, the foundation of The Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Filosófico (SADAF)
in Argentina and the Sociedad Filosófica Iberoamericana (SOFIA) in Mexico, and
the growth of analytic publications in high-profile journals of neutral
philosophical orientation, such as Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofía, indicate
that philosophical analysis is well established in at least the most European
bit of the continent: the river Plate area of Buenos Aires. The main centers of
analytic activity are Buenos Aires, on the River Plate, and far afterwards, the
much less British-influenced centers like Mexico City, or the provincial
varsity of Campinas and São Paulo in Brazil. The interests of South American philosophical
analysts center on questions of pragmatics, rather than semantics, -- and are
generally sympathetic to Griceian developments -- ethical and legal philosophy,
the philosophy of science, and more recently cognitive science. Among its most
important proponents are Genaro R. Carrio (b.1922), Gregorio Klimovsky
(b.1922), and Tomas Moro Simpson (b.1929), E. A. Rabossi (b. Buenos Aires), O.
N. Guariglia (b. Buenos Aires), in Argentina – Strawson was a frequent lecturer
at the Argentine Society for Philosopohical Analysis, and many other Oxonian
philosophers on sabbatical leave. The Argentine Society for Philosophical
Analysis, usually in conjunction with the Belgravia-based Anglo-Argentine
Society organize seminars and symposia – when an Argentine philosopher
emigrates he ceases to be considered an Argentine philosopher – students who
earn their maximal degrees overseas are not counted either as Argentine
philosophers by Argentine (or specifically Buenos Aires) philosophers (They
called them braindrained, brainwashed!) Luis Villoro (Spain, b. 1922) in
Mexico; Francisco Miró Quesada in Peru; Roberto Torretti (Chile, b.1930) in
Puerto Rico; Mario Bunge (Argentina, b.1919), who emigrated to Canada; and
Héctor-Neri Castañeda (Guatemala, 1924–91). The philosophy of liberation is an
autochthonous Latin American movement that mixes an emphasis on Latin American
intellectual independence with Catholic and Marxist ideas. The historicist
perspective of Leopoldo Zea, the movement known as the theology of liberation, and
some elements from the national-popular Peronist ideology prepared the ground
for it. The movement started in the early 1970s with a group of Argentinian
philosophers, who, owing to the military repression of 1976–83 in Argentina,
went into exile in various countries of Latin America. This early diaspora
created permanent splits in the movement and spread its ideas throughout the
region. Although proponents of this viewpoint do not always agree on their
goals, they share the notion of liberation as a fundamental concept: the
liberation from the slavery imposed on Latin America by imported ideologies and
the development of a genuinely autochthonous thought resulting from reflection
on the South American reality. As such, their views are an extension of the
thought of Ramos and others who earlier in the century initiated the discussion
of the cultural identity of South America.
lattice theory. See
BOOLEAN ALGEBRA. law, bridge. See REDUCTION. law, natural.
See NATURAL LAW. law,
philosophy of. See PHILOSOPHY OF LAW. lawlike generalization, also called
nomological (or nomic), a generalization that, unlike an accidental
generalization, possesses nomic necessity or counterfactual force. Compare (1)
‘All specimens of gold have a melting point of 1,063o C’ with (2) ‘All the
rocks in my garden are sedimentary’. (2) may be true, but its generality is
restricted to rocks in my garden. Its truth is accidental; it does not state
what must be the case. (1) is true without restriction. If we write (1) as the
conditional ‘For any x and for any time t, if x is a specimen of gold subjected
to a temperature of 1,063o C, then x will melt’, we see that the generalization
states what must be the case. (1) supports the hypothetical counterfactual
assertion ‘For any specimen of gold x and for any time t, if x were subjected
to a temperature of 1,063o C, then x would melt’, which means that we accept
(1) as nomically necessary: it remains true even if no further specimens of
gold are subjected to the required temperature. This is not true of (2), for we
know that at some future time an igneous rock might appear in my garden.
Statements like (2) are not lawlike; they do not possess the unrestricted
necessity we require of lawlike statements. Ernest Nagel has claimed that a nomological
statement must satisfy two other conditions: it must deductively entail or be
deductively entailed by other laws, and its scope of prediction must exceed the
known evidence for it.
See also CAUSAL LAW. R.E.B. lawlike statement.
See LAWLIKE GENERALIZATION. lattice theory lawlike statement 488 4065h-l.qxd
08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 488 law of double negation. See DOUBLE NEGATION. law of
eternal return. See COMPUTER THEORY. law of identity. See IDENTITY. law of
large numbers. See BERNOULLI’s THEOREM. law of nature. See NATURAL LAW,
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. law of succession. See CAUSAL LAW. law of trichotomy.
See CHOICE SEQUENCE, RELATION. laws of thought, laws by which or in accordance
with which valid thought proceeds, or that justify valid inference, or to which
all valid deduction is reducible. Laws of thought are rules that apply without
exception to any subject matter of thought, etc.; sometimes they are said to be
the object of logic. The term, rarely used in exactly the same sense by
different authors, has long been associated with three equally ambiguous
expressions: the law of identity (ID), the law of contradiction (or
non-contradiction; NC), and the law of excluded middle (EM). Sometimes these
three expressions are taken as propositions of formal ontology having the
widest possible subject matter, propositions that apply to entities per se:
(ID) every thing is (i.e., is identical to) itself; (NC) no thing having a
given quality also has the negative of that quality (e.g., no even number is
non-even); (EM) every thing either has a given quality or has the negative of
that quality (e.g., every number is either even or non-even). Equally common in
older works is use of these expressions for principles of metalogic about
propositions: (ID) every proposition implies itself; (NC) no proposition is
both true and false; (EM) every proposition is either true or false. Beginning
in the middle to late 1800s these expressions have been used to denote
propositions of Boolean Algebra about classes: (ID) every class includes
itself; (NC) every class is such that its intersection (“product”) with its own
complement is the null class; (EM) every class is such that its union (“sum”)
with its own complement is the universal class. More recently the last two of
the three expressions have been used in connection with the classical
propositional logic and with the socalled protothetic or quantified
propositional logic; in both cases the law of non-contradiction involves the
negation of the conjunction (‘and’) of something with its own negation and the
law of excluded middle involves the disjunction (‘or’) of something with its
own negation. In the case of propositional logic the “something” is a schematic
letter serving as a place-holder, whereas in the case of protothetic logic the
“something” is a genuine variable. The expressions ‘law of non-contradiction’
and ‘law of excluded middle’ are also used for semantic principles of model
theory concerning sentences and interpretations: (NC) under no interpretation
is a given sentence both true and false; (EM) under any interpretation, a given
sentence is either true or false. The expressions mentioned above all have been
used in many other ways. Many other propositions have also been mentioned as
laws of thought, including the dictum de omni et nullo attributed to Aristotle,
the substitutivity of identicals (or equals) attributed to Euclid, the socalled
identity of indiscernibles attributed to Leibniz, and other “logical truths.”
The expression “laws of thought” gained added prominence through its use by
Boole (1815–64) to denote theorems of his “algebra of logic”; in fact, he named
his second logic book An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854). Modern
logicians, in almost unanimous disagreement with Boole, take this expression to
be a misnomer; none of the above propositions classed under ‘laws of thought’
are explicitly about thought per se, a mental phenomenon studied by psychology,
nor do they involve explicit reference to a thinker or knower as would be the
case in pragmatics or in epistemology. The distinction between psychology (as a
study of mental phenomena) and logic (as a study of valid inference) is widely
accepted.
See also CONVENTIONALISM,
DICTUM DE OMNI ET NULLO, PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC, SET THEORY. J.Cor. leap of faith.
See KIERKEGAARD. least squares method. See REGRESSION ANALYSIS.
Lebensphilosophie, German term, translated as ‘philosophy of life’, that became
current in a variety of popular and philosophical inflections during the second
half of the nineteenth century. Such philosophers as Dilthey and Eucken (1846–
1926) frequently applied it to a general philosophical approach or attitude
that distinguished itself, on the one hand, from the construction of
comprehensive systems by Hegel and his followers and, on the other, from the
tendency of empiricism and early positivism to reduce law of double negation
Lebensphilosophie 489 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 489 human experience
to epistemological questions about sensations or impressions. Rather, a Lebensphilosophie
should begin from a recognition of the variety and complexity of concrete and
already meaningful human experience as it is “lived”; it should acknowledge
that all human beings, including the philosopher, are always immersed in
historical processes and forms of organization; and it should seek to
understand, describe, and sometimes even alter these and their various patterns
of interrelation without abstraction or reduction. Such “philosophies of life”
as those of Dilthey and Eucken provided much of the philosophical background
for the conception of the social sciences as interpretive rather than
explanatory disciplines. They also anticipated some central ideas of
phenomenology, in particular the notion of the Life-World in Husserl, and
certain closely related themes in Heidegger’s version of existentialism. See
also DILTHEY, HUSSERL, VERSTEHEN. J.P.Su. Lebenswelt.
legal moralism, the view
(defended in this century by, e.g., Lord Patrick Devlin) that law may properly
be used to enforce morality, including notably “sexual morality.” Contemporary
critics of the view (e.g., Hart) expand on the argument of Mill that law should
only be used to prevent harm to others. See also MILL, J. S.; PHILOSOPHY OF
LAW; POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. P.S. legal no-right. See HOHFELD. legal positivism,
a theory about the nature of law, commonly thought to be characterized by two
major tenets: (1) that there is no necessary connection between law and
morality; and (2) that legal validity is determined ultimately by reference to
certain basic social facts, e.g., the command of the sovereign (John Austin),
the Grundnorm (Hans Kelsen), or the rule of recognition (Hart). These different
descriptions of the basic law-determining facts lead to different claims about
the normative character of law, with classical positivists (e.g., John Austin)
insisting that law is essentially coercive, and modern positivists (e.g., Hans
Kelsen) maintaining that it is normative. The traditional opponent of the legal
positivist is the natural law theorist, who holds that no sharp distinction can
be drawn between law and morality, thus challenging positivism’s first tenet. Whether
that tenet follows from positivism’s second tenet is a question of current
interest and leads inevitably to the classical question of political theory:
Under what conditions might legal obligations, even if determined by social
facts, create genuine political obligations (e.g., the obligation to obey the
law)? See also JURISPRUDENCE, PHILOSOPHY OF LAW. P.S. legal power. See HOHFELD.
legal principle. See DWORKIN. legal privilege. See HOHFELD.
legal realism, a theory
in philosophy of law or jurisprudence broadly characterized by the claim that
the nature of law is better understood by observing what courts and citizens
actually do than by analyzing stated legal rules and legal concepts. The theory
is also associated with the thoughts that legal rules are disguised predictions
of what courts will do, and that only the actual decisions of courts constitute
law. There are two important traditions of legal realism, in Scandinavia and in
the United States. Both began in the early part of the century, and both focus
on the reality (hence the name ‘legal realism’) of the actual legal system,
rather than on law’s official image of itself. The Scandinavian tradition is
more theoretical and presents its views as philosophical accounts of the
normativity of law based on skeptical methodology – the normative force of law
consists in nothing but the feelings of citizens or officials or both about or
their beliefs in that normative force. The older, U.S. tradition is more
empirical or sociological or instrumentalist, focusing on how legislation is
actually enacted, how rules are actually applied, how courts’ decisions are
actually taken, and so forth. U.S. legal realism in its contemporary form is
known as critical legal studies. Its argumentation is both empirical (law as
experienced to be and Lebenswelt legal realism 490 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40
AM Page 490 as being oppressive by gender, race, and class) and theoretical
(law as essentially indeterminate, or interpretative – properties that prime
law for its role in political manipulation).
Leibniz, Gottfried
Wilhelm (1646–1716), German rationalist philosopher who made seminal
contributions in geology, linguistics, historiography, mathematics, and
physics, as well as philosophy. He was born in Leipzig and died in Hanover.
Trained in the law, he earned a living as a councilor, diplomat, librarian, and
historian, primarily in the court of Hanover. His contributions in mathematics,
physics, and philosophy were known and appreciated among his educated
contemporaries in virtue of his publication in Europe’s leading scholarly
journals and his vast correspondence with intellectuals in a variety of fields.
He was best known in his lifetime for his contributions to mathematics,
especially to the development of the calculus, where a debate raged over
whether Newton or Leibniz should be credited with priority for its discovery.
Current scholarly opinion seems to have settled on this: each discovered the
basic foundations of the calculus independently; Newton’s discovery preceded that
of Leibniz; Leibniz’s publication of the basic theory of the calculus preceded
that of Newton. Leibniz’s contributions to philosophy were known to his
contemporaries through articles published in learned journals, correspondence,
and one book published in his lifetime, the Theodicy (1710). He wrote a
book-length study of Locke’s philosophy, New Essays on Human Understanding, but
decided not to publish it when he learned of Locke’s death. Examination of
Leibniz’s papers after his own death revealed that what he published during his
lifetime was but the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps the most complete formulation
of Leibniz’s mature metaphysics occurs in his correspondence (1698–1706) with
Burcher De Volder, a professor of philosophy at the University of Leyden.
Leibniz therein formulated his basic ontological thesis: Considering matters
accurately, it must be said that there is nothing in things except simple
substances, and, in them, nothing but perception and appetite. Moreover, matter
and motion are not so much substances or things as they are the phenomena of
percipient beings, the reality of which is located in the harmony of each
percipient with itself (with respect to different times) and with other
percipients. In this passage Leibniz asserts that the basic individuals of an
acceptable ontology are all monads, i.e., immaterial entities lacking spatial
parts, whose basic properties are a function of their perceptions and
appetites. He held that each monad perceives all the other monads with varying
degrees of clarity, except for God, who perceives all monads with utter
clarity. Leibniz’s main theses concerning causality among the created monads
are these: God creates, conserves, and concurs in the actions of each created
monad. Each state of a created monad is a causal consequence of its preceding
state, except for its state at creation and any of its states due to miraculous
divine causality. Intrasubstantial causality is the rule with respect to
created monads, which are precluded from intersubstantial causality, a mode of
operation of which God alone is capable. Leibniz was aware that elements of
this monadology may seem counterintuitive, that, e.g., there appear to be
extended entities composed of parts, existing in space and time, causally
interacting with each other. In the second sentence of the quoted passage
Leibniz set out some of the ingredients of his theory of the preestablished
harmony, one point of which is to save those appearances that are sufficiently
well-founded to deserve saving. In the case of material objects, Leibniz
formulated a version of phenomenalism, based on harmony among the perceptions
of the monads. In the case of apparent intersubstantial causal relations among
created monads, Leibniz proposed an analysis according to which the underlying
reality is an increase in the clarity of relevant perceptions of the apparent
causal agent, combined with a corresponding decrease in the clarity of the
relevant perceptions of the apparent patient. Leibniz treated material objects
and intersubstantial causal relations among created entities as well-founded
phenomena. By contrast, he treated space and time as ideal entities. Leibniz’s
mature metaphysics includes a threefold classifilegal right Leibniz, Gottfried
Wilhelm 491 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 491 cation of entities that
must be accorded some degree of reality: ideal entities, well-founded
phenomena, and actual existents, i.e., the monads with their perceptions and
appetites. In the passage quoted above Leibniz set out to distinguish the
actual entities, the monads, from material entities, which he regarded as
well-founded phenomena. In the following passage from another letter to De
Volder he formulated the distinction between actual and ideal entities: In
actual entities there is nothing but discrete quantity, namely, the multitude
of monads, i.e., simple substances. . . . But continuous quantity is something
ideal, which pertains to possibles, and to actuals, insofar as they are
possible. Indeed, a continuum involves indeterminate parts, whereas, by
contrast, there is nothing indefinite in actual entities, in which every
division that can be made, is made. Actual things are composed in the manner
that a number is composed of unities, ideal things are composed in the manner
that a number is composed of fractions. The parts are actual in the real whole,
but not in the ideal. By confusing ideal things with real substances when we
seek actual parts in the order of possibles and indeterminate parts in the
aggregate of actual things, we entangle ourselves in the labyrinth of the
continuum and in inexplicable contradictions. The labyrinth of the continuum
was one of two labyrinths that, according to Leibniz, vex the philosophical
mind. His views about the proper course to take in unraveling the labyrinth of
the continuum are one source of his monadology. Ultimately, he concluded that
whatever may be infinitely divided without reaching indivisible entities is not
something that belongs in the basic ontological category. His investigations of
the nature of individuation and identity over time provided premises from which
he concluded that only indivisible entities are ultimately real, and that an
individual persists over time only if its subsequent states are causal
consequences of its preceding states. In refining the metaphysical insights
that yielded the monadology, Leibniz formulated and defended various important
metaphysical theses, e.g.: the identity of indiscernibles – that individual
substances differ with respect to their intrinsic, non-relational properties;
and the doctrine of minute perceptions – that each created substance has some
perceptions of which it lacks awareness. In the process of providing what he
took to be an acceptable account of well-founded phenomena, Leibniz formulated
various theses counter to the then prevailing Cartesian orthodoxy, concerning
the nature of material objects. In particular, Leibniz argued that a correct
application of Galileo’s discoveries concerning acceleration of freely falling
bodies of the phenomena of impact indicates that force is not to be identified
with quantity of motion, i.e., mass times velocity, as Descartes held, but is
to be measured by mass times the square of the velocity. Moreover, Leibniz
argued that it is force, measured as mass times the square of the velocity,
that is conserved in nature, not quantity of motion. From these results Leibniz
drew some important metaphysical conclusions. He argued that force, unlike
quantity of motion, cannot be reduced to a conjunction of modifications of
extension. But force is a central property of material objects. Hence, he
concluded that Descartes was mistaken in attempting to reduce matter to
extension and its modifications. Leibniz concluded that each material substance
must have a substantial form that accounts for its active force. These
conclusions have to do with entities that Leibniz viewed as phenomenal. He drew
analogous conclusions concerning the entities he regarded as ultimately real,
i.e., the monads. Thus, although Leibniz held that each monad is absolutely
simple, i.e., without parts, he also held that the matter–form distinction has
an application to each created monad. In a letter to De Volder he wrote:
Therefore, I distinguish (1) the primitive entelechy or soul, (2) primary matter,
i.e., primitive passive power, (3) monads completed from these two, (4) mass,
i.e., second matter . . . in which innumerable subordinate monads come
together, (5) the animal, i.e., corporeal substance, which a dominating monad
makes into one machine. The second labyrinth vexing the philosophical mind,
according to Leibniz, is the labyrinth of freedom. It is fair to say that for
Leibniz the labyrinth of freedom is fundamentally a matter of how it is
possible that some states of affairs obtain contingently, i.e., how it is
possible that some propositions are true that might have been false. There are
two distinct sources of the problem of contingency in Leibniz’s philosophy, one
theological, and the other metaphysical. Each source may be grasped by considering
an argument that appears to have premises to which Leibniz was predisposed and
the conclusion that every state of affairs that obtains, obtains necessarily,
and hence that there are no contingent propositions. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 492 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 492 The
metaphysical argument is centered on some of Leibniz’s theses about the nature
of truth. He held that the truth-value of all propositions is settled once
truth-values have been assigned to the elementary propositions, i.e., those
expressed by sentences in subject-predicate form. And he held that a sentence
in subject-predicate form expresses a true proposition if and only if the
concept of its predicate is included in the concept of its subject. But this
makes it sound as if Leibniz were committed to the view that an elementary
proposition is true if and only if it is conceptually true, from which it seems
to follow that an elementary proposition is true if and only if it is
necessarily true. Leibniz’s views concerning the relation of the truthvalue of
non-elementary propositions to the truth-value of elementary propositions,
then, seem to entail that there are no contingent propositions. He rejected
this conclusion in virtue of rejecting the thesis that if an elementary
proposition is conceptually true then it is necessarily true. The materials for
his rejection of this thesis are located in theses connected with his program
for a universal science (scientia universalis). This program had two parts: a
universal notation (characteristica universalis), whose purpose was to provide
a method for recording scientific facts as perspicuous as algebraic notation,
and a formal system of reasoning (calculus ratiocinator) for reasoning about
the facts recorded. Supporting Leibniz’s belief in the possibility and utility
of the characteristica universalis and the calculus ratiocinator is his thesis
that all concepts arise from simple primitive concepts via concept conjunction
and concept complementation. In virtue of this thesis, he held that all
concepts may be analyzed into their simple, primitive components, with this
proviso: in some cases there is no finite analysis of a concept into its
primitive components; but there is an analysis that converges on the primitive
components without ever reaching them. This is the doctrine of infinite
analysis, which Leibniz applied to ward off the threat to contingency
apparently posed by his account of truth. He held that an elementary
proposition is necessarily true if and only if there is a finite analysis that
reveals that its predicate concept is included in its subject concept. By
contrast, an elementary proposition is contingently true if and only if there
is no such finite analysis, but there is an analysis of its predicate concept
that converges on a component of its subject concept. The theological argument
may be put this way. There would be no world were God not to choose to create a
world. As with every choice, as, indeed, with every state of affairs that obtains,
there must be a sufficient reason for that choice, for the obtaining of that
state of affairs – this is what the principle of sufficient reason amounts to,
according to Leibniz. The reason for God’s choice of a world to create must be
located in God’s power and his moral character. But God is allpowerful and
morally perfect, both of which attributes he has of necessity. Hence, of
necessity, God chose to create the best possible world. Whatever possible world
is the best possible world, is so of necessity. Hence, whatever possible world
is actual, is so of necessity. A possible world is defined with respect to the
states of affairs that obtain in it. Hence, whatever states of affairs obtain,
do so of necessity. Therefore, there are no contingent propositions. Leibniz’s
options here were limited. He was committed to the thesis that the principle of
sufficient reason, when applied to God’s choice of a world to create, given
God’s attributes, yields the conclusion that this is the best possible world –
a fundamental component of his solution to the problem of evil. He considered
two ways of avoiding the conclusion of the argument noted above. The first
consists in claiming that although God is metaphysically perfect of necessity,
i.e., has every simple, positive perfection of necessity, and although God is
morally perfect, nonetheless he is not morally perfect of necessity, but rather
by choice. The second consists in denying that whatever possible world is the
best, is so of necessity, relying on the idea that the claim that a given
possible world is the best involves a comparison with infinitely many other
possible worlds, and hence, if true, is only contingently true. Once again the
doctrine of infinite analysis served as the centerpiece of Leibniz’s efforts to
establish that, contrary to appearances, his views do not lead to
necessitarianism, i.e., to the thesis that there is no genuine contingency.
Much of Leibniz’s work in philosophical theology had as a central motivation an
effort to formulate a sound philosophical and theological basis for various
church reunion projects – especially reunion between Lutherans and Calvinists
on the Protestant side, and ultimately, reunion between Protestants and
Catholics. He thought that most of the classical arguments for the existence of
God, if formulated with care, i.e., in the way in which Leibniz formulated
them, succeeded in proving what they set out to prove. For example, Leibniz
thought that Descartes’s version of the ontological argument established the
existence of a perfect being, with one crucial proviso: that an absolutely
perfect being is possible. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Gottfried
Wilhelm 493 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 493 Leibniz believed that none
of his predecessors had established this premise, so he set out to do so. The
basic idea of his purported proof is this. A perfection is a simple, positive
property. Hence, there can be no demonstration that there is a formal
inconsistency in asserting that various collections of them are instantiated by
the same being. But if there is no such demonstration, then it is possible that
something has them all. Hence, a perfect being is possible. Leibniz did not
consider in detail many of the fundamental epistemological issues that so moved
Descartes and the British empiricists. Nonetheless, Leibniz made significant
contributions to the theory of knowledge. His account of our knowledge of
contingent truths is much like what we would expect of an empiricist’s
epistemology. He claimed that our knowledge of particular contingent truths has
its basis in sense perception. He argued that simple enumerative induction
cannot account for all our knowledge of universal contingent truths; it must be
supplemented by what he called the a priori conjectural method, a precursor of
the hypothetico-deductive method. He made contributions to developing a formal
theory of probability, which he regarded as essential for an adequate account
of our knowledge of contingent truths. Leibniz’s rationalism is evident in his
account of our a priori knowledge, which for him amounted to our knowledge of
necessary truths. Leibniz thought that Locke’s empiricism did not provide an
acceptable account of a priori knowledge, because it attempted to locate all
the materials of justification as deriving from sensory experience, thus
overlooking what Leibniz took to be the primary source of our a priori
knowledge, i.e., what is innate in the mind. He summarized his debate with
Locke on these matters thus: Our differences are on matters of some importance.
It is a matter of knowing if the soul in itself is entirely empty like a
writing tablet on which nothing has as yet been written (tabula rasa), . . .
and if everything inscribed there comes solely from the senses and experience,
or if the soul contains originally the sources of various concepts and
doctrines that external objects merely reveal on occasion. The idea that some
concepts and doctrines are innate in the mind is central not only to Leibniz’s
theory of knowledge, but also to his metaphysics, because he held that the most
basic metaphysical concepts, e.g., the concepts of the self, substance, and
causation, are innate. Leibniz utilized the ideas behind the characteristica
universalis in order to formulate a system of formal logic that is a genuine
alternative to Aristotelian syllogistic logic and to contemporary
quantification theory. Assuming that propositions are, in some fashion,
composed of concepts and that all composite concepts are, in some fashion,
composed of primitive simple concepts, Leibniz formulated a logic based on the
idea of assigning numbers to concepts according to certain rules. The entire
program turns on his concept containment account of truth previously mentioned.
In connection with the metatheory of this logic Leibniz formulated the
principle: “eadem sunt quorum unum alteri substitui potest salva veritate”
(“Those things are the same of which one may be substituted for the other
preserving truth-value”). The proper interpretation of this principle turns in
part on exactly what “things” he had in mind. It is likely that he intended to
formulate a criterion of concept identity. Hence, it is likely that this
principle is distinct from the identity of indiscernibles, previously
mentioned, and also from what has come to be called Leibniz’s law, i.e., the
thesis that if x and y are the same individual then whatever is true of x is
true of y and vice versa. The account outlined above concentrates on Leibniz’s
mature views in metaphysics, epistemology, and logic. The evolution of his
thought in these areas is worthy of close study, which cannot be brought to a
definitive state until all of his philosophical work has been published in the
edition of the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin.
See also DESCARTES,
IDENTITY OF INDISCERNIBLES, LOCKE, POSSIBLE WORLDS, RATIONALISM, SPINOZA.
R.C.Sl. Leibniz’s law. See IDENTITY, LEIBNIZ. lekton (Greek, ‘what can be
said’), a Stoic term sometimes translated as ‘the meaning of an utterance’.
Lekta differ from utterances in being what utterances signify: they are said to
be what the Greek grasps and the non-Greek speaker does not when Greek is
spoken. Moreover, lekta are incorporeal, which for the Stoics means they do
not, strictly speaking, exist, but only “subsist,” and so cannot act or be
acted upon. They constitute the content of our mental states: they are what we
assent to and endeavor toward and they “correspond” to the presentations given
to rational animals. The Stoics acknowledged lekta for predicates as well as
for sentences (including questions, oaths, and imperatives); axiomata or
Leibniz’s law lekton 494 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 494 propositions
are lekta that can be assented to and may be true or false (although being
essentially tensed, their truth-values may change). The Stoics’ theory of
reference suggests that they also acknowledged singular propositions, which
“perish” when the referent ceases to exist.
See also PHILOSOPHY OF
LANGUAGE, PROPOSITION, STOICISM. V.C. lemmata. See COMMENTARIES ON PLATO.
Lenin, Vladimir Ilich (1870–1924), Russian political leader and Marxist
theorist, a principal creator of Soviet dialectical materialism. In Materialism
and Empirio-Criticism (1909), he attacked Russian contemporaries who sought to
interpret Marx’s philosophy in the spirit of the phenomenalistic positivism of
Avenarius and Mach. Rejecting their position as idealist, Lenin argues that
matter is not a construct from sensations but an objective reality independent
of consciousness; because our sensations directly copy this reality, objective
truth is possible. The dialectical dimension of Lenin’s outlook is best
elaborated in his posthumous Philosophical Notebooks (written 1914–16), a
collection of reading notes and fragments in which he gives close attention to
the Hegelian dialectic and displays warm sympathy toward it, though he argues
that the dialectic should be interpreted materialistically rather than
idealistically. Some of Lenin’s most original theorizing, presented in
Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) and State and Revolution
(1918), is devoted to analyzing the connection between monopoly capitalism and
imperialism and to describing the coming violent replacement of bourgeois rule
by, first, the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and, later, stateless
communism. Lenin regarded all philosophy as a partisan weapon in the class
struggle, and he wielded his own philosophy polemically in the interests of
Communist revolution. As a result of the victory of the Bolsheviks in November
1917, Lenin’s ideas were enshrined as the cornerstone of Soviet intellectual
culture and were considered above criticism until the advent of glasnost in the
late 1980s. With the end of Communist rule following the dissolution of the
Soviet Union in 1991, his influence declined precipitously. See also MARXISM,
RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY. J.P.Sc. Leopold, Friedrich.
See NOVALIS. Lequier,
Jules (1814–62), French philosopher, educated in Paris, whose works were not
published in his lifetime. He influenced Renouvier, who regarded Lequier as his
“master in philosophy.” Through Renouvier, he came to the attention of James,
who called Lequier a “philosopher of genius.” Central to Lequier’s philosophy
is the idea of freedom understood as the power to “create,” or add novelty to
the world. Such freedom involves an element of arbitrariness and is
incompatible with determinism. Anticipating James, Lequier argued that
determinism, consistently affirmed, leads to skepticism about truth and values.
Though a devout Roman Catholic, his theological views were unorthodox for his
time. God cannot know future free actions until they occur and therefore cannot
be wholly immutable and eternal. Lequier’s views anticipate in striking ways
some views of James, Bergson, Alexander, and Peirce, and the process philosophies
and process theologies of Whitehead and Hartshorne. R.H.K. Leroux, Pierre
(1797–1871), French philosopher reputed to have introduced the word socialisme
in France (c.1834). He claimed to be the first to use solidarité as a
sociological concept (in his memoirs, La Grève de Samarez [The Beach at
Samarez], 1863). The son of a Parisian café owner, Leroux centered his life
work on journalism, both as a printer (patenting an advanced procedure for
typesetting) and as founder of a number of significant serial publications. The
Encyclopédie Nouvelle (New Encyclopedia, 1833–48, incomplete), which he
launched with Jean Reynaud (1806–63), was conceived and written in the spirit
of Diderot’s magnum opus. It aspired to be the platform for republican and
democratic thought during the July Monarchy (1830–48). The reformer’s influence
on contemporaries such as Hugo, Belinsky, J. Michelet, and Heine was
considerable. Leroux fervently believed in Progress, unlimited and divinely
inspired. This doctrine he took to be eighteenth-century France’s particular
contribution to the Enlightenment. Progress must make its way between twin
perils: the “follies of illuminism” or “foolish spiritualism” and the “abject
orgies of materialism.” Accordingly, Leroux blamed Condillac for having “drawn
up the code of materialism” by excluding an innate Subject from his
sensationalism (“Condillac,” Encyclopédie Nouvelle). Cousin’s eclecticism,
state doctrine under the July Monarchy and synonym for immobility (“Philosophy
requires no further development; it is complete as is,” Leroux wrote
sarcastically in 1838, echoing Cousin), was a lemmata Leroux, Pierre 495
4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 495 constant target of his polemics. Having
abandoned traditional Christian beliefs, Leroux viewed immortality as an
infinite succession of rebirths on earth, our sense of personal identity being
preserved throughout by Platonic “reminiscences” (De l’Humanité [Concerning
Humanity], 1840).
Lesniewski, Stanislaw
(1886–1939), Polish philosopher-logician, cofounder, with Lukasiewicz and
Kotarbigski, of the Warsaw Center of Logical Research. He perfected the logical
reconstruction of classical mathematics by Frege, Schröder, Whitehead, and
Russell in his synthesis of mathematical with modernized Aristotelian logic. A
pioneer in scientific semantics whose insights inspired Tarski, Les’niewski
distinguished genuine antinomies of belief, in theories intended as true
mathematical sciences, from mere formal inconsistencies in uninterpreted
calculi. Like Frege an acute critic of formalism, he sought to perfect one
comprehensive, logically true instrument of scientific investigation.
Demonstrably consistent, relative to classical elementary logic, and
distinguished by its philosophical motivation and logical economy, his system
integrates his central achievements. Other contributions include his
ideographic notation, his method of natural deduction from suppositions and his
demonstrations of inconsistency of other systems, even Frege’s revised
foundations of arithmetic. Fundamental were (1) his 1913 refutation of
Twardowski’s Platonistic theory of abstraction, which motivated his
“constructive nominalism”; and (2) his deep analyses of Russell’s paradox,
which led him to distinguish distributive from collective predication and (as
generalized to subsume Grelling and Nelson’s paradox of self-reference) logical
from semantic paradoxes, and so (years before Ramsey and Gödel) to
differentiate, not just the correlatives object language and metalanguage, but
any such correlative linguistic stages, and thus to relativize semantic
concepts to successive hierarchical strata in metalinguistic stratification.
His system of logic and foundations of mathematics comprise a hierarchy of
three axiomatic deductive theories: protothetic, ontology, and mereology. Each
can be variously based on just one axiom introducing a single undefined term.
His prototheses are basic to any further theory. Ontology, applying them,
complements protothetic to form his logic. Les’niewski’s ontology develops his
logic of predication, beginning (e.g.) with singular predication characterizing
the individual so-and-so as being one (of the one or more) such-and-such,
without needing classabstraction operators, dispensable here as in Russell’s
“no-class theory of classes.” But this, his logic of nouns, nominal or
predicational functions, etc., synthesizing formulations by Aristotle, Leibniz,
Boole, Schröder, and Whitehead, also represents a universal theory of being and
beings, beginning with related individuals and their characteristics, kinds, or
classes distributively understood to include individuals as singletons or
“one-member classes.” Les’niewski’s directives of definition and logical
grammar for his systems of protothetic and ontology provide for the unbounded
hierarchies of “open,” functional expressions. Systematic conventions of
contextual determinacy, exploiting dependence of meaning on context, permit
unequivocal use of the same forms of expression to bring out systematic
analogies between homonyms as analogues in Aristotle’s and Russell’s sense,
systematically ambiguous, differing in semantic category and hence
significance. Simple distinctions of semantic category within the object
language of the system itself, together with the metalinguistic stratification
to relativize semantic concepts, prevent logical and semantic paradoxes as
effectively as Russell’s ramified theory of types. Lesniewski’s system of
logic, though expressively rich enough to permit Platonist interpretation in
terms of universals, is yet “metaphysically neutral” in being free from ontic
commitments. It neither postulates, presupposes, nor implies existence of
either individuals or abstractions, but relies instead on equivalences without
existential import that merely introduce and explicate new terms. In his
“nominalist” construction of the endless Platonic ladder of abstraction,
logical principles can be elevated step by step, from any level to the next, by
definitions making abstractions eliminable, translatable by definition into generalizations
characterizing related individuals. In this sense it is “constructively
nominalist,” as a developing language always open to introduction of new terms
and categories, without appeal to “convenient fictions.” Les’niewski’s system,
completely designed by 1922, was logically and chronologically in advance of
Russell’s 1925 revision of Principia Mathematica to accommodate Ramsey’s
simplification of Russell’s theory of types. Yet Les’niewski’s premature death,
the ensuing disruption of war, which destroyed his manuscripts and
disLesniewski, Stanislaw Lesniewski, Stanislaw 496 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40
AM Page 496 persed survivors such as Sobocigski and Lejewski, and the relative
inaccessibility of publications delayed by Les’niewski’s own perfectionism have
retarded understanding of his work.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim
(1729–81), German philosopher, critic, and literary figure whose philosophical
and theological work aimed to replace the so-called possession of truth by a
search for truth through public debate. The son of a Protestant minister, he
studied theology but gave it up to take part in the literary debate between
Gottsched and the Swiss Bodmer and Breitinger, which dealt with French
classicism (Boileau) and English influences (Shakespeare for theater and Milton
for poetry). His literary criticism (Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend
[“Letters on the New Literature”], 1759–65), his own dramatic works, and his
theological-philosophical reflections were united in his conception of a practical
Aufklärung, which opposed all philosophical or religious dogmatism. Lessing’s
creation and direction of the National German Theater of Hamburg (1767–70)
helped to form a sense of German national identity. In 1750 Lessing published
Thoughts on the Moravian Brothers, which contrasted religion as lived by this
pietist community with the ecclesiastical institution. In 1753–54 he wrote a
series of “rehabilitations” (Rettugen) to show that the opposition between
dogmas and heresies, between “truth” and “error,” was incompatible with living
religious thought. This position had the seeds of a historical conception of
religion that Lessing developed during his last years. In 1754 he again
attempted a deductive formulation, inspired by Spinoza, of the fundamental
truths of Christianity. Lessing rejected this rationalism, as substituting a
dogma of reason for one of religion. To provoke public debate on the issue, be
published H. S. Reimarus’s Fragments of an Anonymous Author (1774–78), which
the Protestant hierarchy considered atheistic. The relativism and soft deism to
which his arguments seemed to lead were transformed in his Education of Mankind
(1780) into a historical theory of truth. In Lessing’s view, all religions have
an equal dignity, for none possesses “the” truth; they represent only ethical
and practical moments in the history of mankind. Revelation is assimilated into
an education of mankind and God is compared to a teacher who reveals to man
only what he is able to assimilate. This secularization of the history of
salvation, in which God becomes immanent in the world, is called pantheism
(“the quarrel of pantheism”). For Lessing, Judaism and Christianity are the
preliminary stages of a third gospel, the “Gospel of Reason.” The Masonic
Dialogues (1778) introduced this historical and practical conception of truth
as a progress from “thinking by oneself” to dialogue (“thinking aloud with a
friend”). In the literary domain Lessing broke with the culture of the baroque:
against the giants and martyrs of baroque tragedy, he offered the tragedy of
the bourgeois, with whom any spectator must be able to identify. After a poor
first play in 1755 – Miss Sara Sampson – which only reflected the
sentimentalism of the time, Lessing produced a model of the genre with Emilia
Galotti (1781). The Hamburg Dramaturgy (1767– 68) was supposed to be influenced
by Aristotle, but its union of fear and pity was greatly influenced by Moses
Mendelssohn’s theory of “mixed sensations.” Lessing’s entire aesthetics was
based not on permanent ontological, religious, or moral rules, but on the
spectator’s interest. In Laokoon (1766) he associated this aesthetics of
reception with one of artistic production, i.e., a reflection on the means
through which poetry and the plastic arts create this interest: the plastic
arts by natural signs and poetry through the arbitrary signs that overcome
their artificiality through the imitation not of nature but of action. Much
like Winckelmann’s aesthetics, which influenced German classicism for a considerable
time, Lessing’s aesthetics opposed the baroque, but for a theory of ideal
beauty inspired by Plato it substituted a foundation of the beautiful in the
agreement between producer and receptor.
Leucippus (fl. c.440 B.C.), Greek pre-Socratic
philosopher credited with founding atomism, expounded in a work titled The
Great World-system. Positing the existence of atoms and the void, he answered
Eleatic arguments against change by allowing change of place. The arrangements
and rearrangements of groups of atoms could account for macroscopic changes in
the world, and indeed for the world itself. Little else is known of Leucippus.
It is difficult to distinguish his contributions from those of his prolific
follower Democritus.
Levinas, Emmanuel
(1906–95), philosopher. Educated as an orthodox Jew and a Russian citizen, he
studied philosophy at Strasbourg (1924–29) and Freiburg (1928– 29), introduced
the work of Husserl and Heidegger in France, taught philosophy at a Jewish
school in Paris, spent four years in a German labor camp (1940–44), and was a
professor at the universities of Poitiers, Nanterre, and the Sorbonne. To the
impersonal totality of being reduced to “the same” by the Western tradition
(including Hegel’s and Husserl’s idealism and Heidegger’s ontology), Levinas
opposes the irreducible otherness of the human other, death, time, God, etc. In
Totalité et Infini: Essai sur l’extériorité (1961), he shows how the other’s
facing and speaking urge philosophy to transcend the horizons of comprehension,
while Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence (1974) concentrates on the self
of “me” as one-for-the-other. Appealing to Plato’s form of the Good and
Descartes’s idea of the infinite, Levinas describes the asymmetrical relation
between the other’s “highness” or “infinity” and me, whose self-enjoyment is
thus interrupted by a basic imperative: Do not kill me, but help me to live!
The fact of the other’s existence immediately reveals the basic “ought” of
ethics; it awakens me to a responsibility that I have never been able to choose
or to refuse. My radical “passivity,” thus revealed, shows the anachronic
character of human temporality. It also refers to the immemorial past of “Him”
whose “illeity” is still otherwise other than the human other: God, or the Good
itself, who is neither an object nor a you. Religion and ethics coincide
because the only way to meet with God is to practice one’s responsibility for
the human other, who is “in the trace of God.” Comprehensive thematization and
systematic objectification, though always in danger of reducing all otherness,
have their own relative and subordinate truth, especially with regard to the
economic and political conditions of universal justice toward all individuals
whom I cannot encounter personally. With and through the other I meet all
humans. In this experience lies the origin of equality and human rights.
Similarly, theoretical thematization has a positive role if it remains aware of
its ancillary or angelic role with regard to concern for the other. What is said
in philosophy betrays the saying by which it is communicated. It must therefore
be unsaid in a return to the saying. More than desire for theoretical wisdom,
philosophy is the wisdom of love.
Lewin, Kurt (1890–1947),
German and American (after 1932) psychologist, perhaps the most influential of
the Gestalt psychologists in the United States. Believing traditional
psychology was stuck in an “Aristotelian” class-logic stage of theorizing,
Lewin proposed advancing to a “Galilean” stage of field theory. His central
field concept was the “life space, containing the person and his psychological
environment.” Primarily concerned with motivation, he explained locomotion as
caused by life-space objects’ valences, psychological vectors of force acting
on people as physical vectors of force act on physical objects. Objects with
positive valence exert attractive force; objects with negative valence exert
repulsive force; ambivalent objects exert both. To attain theoretical rigor,
Lewin borrowed from mathematical topology, mapping life spaces as diagrams. For
example, this represented the motivational conflict involved in choosing
between pizza and hamburger: Life spaces frequently contain psychological
barriers (e.g., no money) blocking movement toward or away from a valenced
object. Lewin also created the important field of group dynamics in 1939,
carrying out innovative studies on children and adults, focusing on group
cohesion and effects of leadership style. His main works are A Dynamic Theory
of Personality (1935), Principles of Topological Psychology (1936), and Field
Theory in Social Science (1951).
Lewis, C(larence)
I(rving) (1883–1964), American philosopher who advocated a version of
pragmatism and empiricism, but was nonetheless strongly influenced by Kant. Lewis
was born in Massachusetts, educated at Harvard, and taught at the University of
California (1911–20) and Harvard (1920–53). He wrote in logic (A Survey of
Symbolic Logic, 1918; Symbolic Logic, 1932, coauthored with C. H. Langford), in
epistemology (Mind and the World Order, 1929; An Analysis of Knowledge and
Valuation, 1946), and in Levinas, Emmanuel Lewis, C(larence) I(rving) 498
4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 498 ethical theory (The Ground and Nature
of the Right, 1965; Our Social Inheritance, 1957). General views. Use of the
senses involves “presentations” of sense experiences that signalize external
objects. Reflection upon the relations of sense experiences to psychological
“intensions” permits our thoughts to refer to aspects of objective reality.
Consequently, we can experience those non-presented objective conditions.
Intensions, which include the mind’s categories, are meanings in one ordinary
sense, and concepts in a philosophical sense. When judging counts as knowing,
it has the future-oriented function and sole value of guiding action in pursuit
of what one evaluates as good. Intensions do not fundamentally depend upon
being formulated in those linguistic phrases that may express them and thereby
acquire meaning. Pace Kant, our categories are replaceable when pragmatically
unsuccessful, and are sometimes invented, although typically socially
instilled. Kant also failed to realize that any a priori knowledge concerns
only what is expressed by an “analytic truth,” i.e., what is knowable with certainty
via reflection upon intensions and permits reference to the necessary inclusion
(and exclusion) relations between objective properties. Such
inclusion/exclusion relationships are “entailments” expressible by a use of “if
. . . then . . .” different from material implication. The degree of
justification of an empirical judgment about objective reality (e.g., that
there is a doorknob before one) and of any beliefs in consequences that are
probable given the judgment, approximates to certainty when the judgment stands
in a relationship of “congruence” to a collection of justified judgments (e.g.,
a collection including the judgments that one remembers seeing a doorknob a
moment before, and that one has not just turned around). Lewis’s empiricism
involves one type of phenomenalism. Although he treats external conditions as
metaphysically distinct from passages of sense experience, he maintains that
the process of learning about the former does not involve more than learning
about the latter. Accordingly, he speaks of the “sense meaning” of an
intension, referring to an objective condition. It concerns what one intends to
count as a process that verifies that the particular intension applies to the
objective world. Sense meanings of a statement may be conceived as additional
“entailments” of it, and are expressible by conjunctions of an infinite number
of statements each of which is “the general form of a specific terminating
judgment” (as defined below). Lewis wants his treatment of sense meaning to
rule out Berkeley’s view that objects exist only when perceived. Verification
of an objective judgment, as Kant realized, is largely specified by a
non-social process expressed by a rule to act in imaginable ways in response to
imaginable present sense experiences (e.g. seeing a doorknob) and thereupon to
have imaginable future sense experiences (e.g. feeling a doorknob). Actual
instances of such passages of sense experience raise the probability of an
objective judgment, whose verification is always partial. Apprehensions of
sense experiences are judgments that are not reached by basing them on grounds
in a way that might conceivably produce errors. Such apprehensions are
“certain.” The latter term may be employed by Lewis in more than one sense, but
here it at least implies that the judgment is rationally credible and in the
above sense not capable of being in error. So such an apprehension is “datal,”
i.e., rationally employed in judging other matters, and “immediate,” i.e.,
formed noninferentially in response to a presentation. These presentations make
up “the (sensory) given.” Sense experience is what remains after everything
that is less than certain in one’s experience of an objective condition is set
aside. Lewis thought some version of the epistemic regress argument to be
correct, and defended the Cartesian view that without something certain as a
foundation no judgment has any degree of justification. Technical terminology.
Presentation: something involved in experience, e.g. a visual impression, in
virtue of which one possesses a non-inferential judgment that it is involved.
The given: those presentations that have the content that they do independently
of one’s intending or deciding that they have it. Terminating: decisively and
completely verifiable or falsifiable in principle. (E.g., where S affirms a
present sense experience, A affirms an experience of seeming to initiate an
action, and E affirms a future instance of sense experience, the judgment ‘S
and if A then E’ is terminating.) The general form of the terminating judgment
that S and if A then E: the conditional that if S then (in all probability) E,
if A. (An actual judgment expressed by this conditional is based on remembering
passages of sense experience of type S/A/E and is justified thanks to the
principle of induction and the principle that seeming to remember an event
makes the judgment that the event occurred justified at least to some degree.
These statements concern a connection that holds independently of whether
anyone is thinking and underlies the rationality of relying to any degree upon
what is not part of one’s self.) Congruence: the relationship among statements
in a collection when the following conditional is true: If each had some degree
of justification independently of the remaining ones, then each would be made
more justified by the conjoint truth of the remaining ones. (When the
antecedent of this conditional is true, and a statement in the collection is
such that it is highly improbable that the remaining ones all be true unless it
is true, then it is made very highly justified.) Pragmatic a priori: those
judgments that are not based on the use of the senses but on employing a set of
intensions, and yet are susceptible of being reasonably set aside because of a
shift to a different set of intensions whose employment is pragmatically more
useful (roughly, more useful for the attainment of what has intrinsic value).
Valuation: the appraising of something as having value or being morally right.
(What has some value that is not due to its consequences is what has intrinsic
value, e.g., enjoyable experiences of self-realization in living rationally.
Other evaluations of what is good are empirical judgments concerning what may
be involved in actions leading to what is intrinsically good. Rational
reflection permits awareness of various moral principles.)
Lewis, C(live) S(taples)
(1898–1963), very Irish literary critic, novelist, and Christian apologist.
Born in Belfast, Lewis took three first-class degrees at Oxford, became a tutor
at its Magdalen College in 1925, and assumed the chair of medieval and
Renaissance studies at Cambridge in 1954. While his tremendous output includes
important works on medieval literature and literary criticism, he is best known
for his fiction and Christian apologetics. Lewis combined a poetic sense and
appreciation of argument that allowed him to communicate complex philosophical
and theological material to lay audiences. His popular writings in the
philosophy of religion range over a variety of topics, including the nature and
existence of God (Mere Christianity, 1952), miracles (Miracles, 1947), hell
(The Great Divorce, 1945), and the problem of evil (The Problem of Pain, 1940).
His own conversion to Christianity as an adult is chronicled in his autobiography
(Surprised by Joy, 1955). In defending theism Lewis employed arguments from
natural theology (most notably versions of the moral and teleological
arguments) and arguments from religious experience. Also of philosophical
interest is his defense of moral absolutism in The Abolition of Man (1943).
Lewis, David K. (b.1941),
philosopher influential in many areas. Lewis received the B.A. in philosophy
from Swarthmore in 1962 and the Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard in 1967. He
has been a member of the philosophy department at U.C.L.A. (1966–70) and
Princeton (1970–). In philosophy of mind, Lewis is known principally for “An
Argument for the Identity Theory” (1966), “Psychophysical and Theoretical
Identifications” (1972), and “Mad Pain and Martian Pain” (1980). He argues for
the functionalist thesis that mental states are defined by their typical causal
roles, and the materialist thesis that the causal roles definitive of mental
states are occupied by physical states. Lewis develops the view that
theoretical definitions in general are functionally defined, applying the
formal concept of a Ramsey sentence. And he suggests that the platitudes of
commonsense or folk psychology constitute the theory implicitly defining
psychological concepts. In philosophy of language and linguistics, Lewis is
known principally for Convention (1969), “General Semantics” (1970), and
“Languages and Language” (1975). His theory of convention had its source in the
theory of games of pure coordination developed by von Neumann and Morgenstern.
Roughly, conventions are arbitrary solutions to coordination problems that
perpetuate themselves once a precedent is set because they serve a common
interest. Lewis requires it to be common knowledge that people prefer to
conform to a conventional regularity given that others do. He treats linguistic
meanings as compositional intensions. The basic intensions for lexical
constituents are functions assigning extensions to indices, which include
contextual factors and a possible world. An analytic sentence is one true at
every index. Languages are functions from sentences to meanLewis, C(live)
S(taples) Lewis, David K. 500 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 500 ings, and
the language of a population is the one in which they have a convention of
truthfulness and trust. In metaphysics and modal logic, Lewis is known
principally for “Counterpart Theory and Quantified Modal Logic” (1968) and On
the Plurality of Worlds (1986). Based on its theoretical benefits, Lewis argues
for modal realism: other possible worlds and the objects in them are just as
real as the actual world and its inhabitants. Lewis develops a non-standard
form of modal logic in which objects exist in at most one possible world, and
for which the necessity of identity fails. Properties are identified with the
set of objects that have them in any possible world, and propositions as the
set of worlds in which they are true. He also develops a finergrained concept
of structured properties and propositions. In philosophical logic and
philosophy of science, Lewis is best known for Counterfactuals (1973),
“Causation” (1973), and “Probabilities of Conditionals and Conditional
Probabilities” (1976). He developed a formal semantics for counterfactual
conditionals that matches their truth conditions and logic much more adequately
than the previously available material or strict conditional analyses. Roughly,
a counterfactual is true if its consequent is true in every possible world in
which its antecedent is true that is as similar overall to the actual world as
the truth of the antecedent will allow. Lewis then defended an analysis of
causation in terms of counterfactuals: c caused e if e would not have occurred
if c had not occurred or if there is a chain of events leading from e to c each
member of which is counterfactually dependent on the next. He presents a
reductio ad absurdum argument to show that conditional probabilities could not
be identified with the probabilities of any sort of conditional. Lewis has also
written on visual experience, events, holes, parts of classes, time travel,
survival and identity, subjective and objective probability, desire as belief,
attitudes de se, deontic logic, decision theory, the prisoner’s dilemma and the
Newcomb problem, utilitarianism, dispositional theories of value, nuclear
deterrence, punishment, and academic ethics.
lexical ordering, also
called lexicographic ordering, a method, given a finite ordered set of symbols,
such as the letters of the alphabet, of ordering all finite sequences of those
symbols. All finite sequences of letters, e.g., can be ordered as follows:
first list all single letters in alphabetical order; then list all pairs of
letters in the order aa, ab, . . . az; ba . . . bz; . . . ; za . . . zz. Here
pairs are first grouped and alphabetized according to the first letter of the
pair, and then within these groups are alphabetized according to the second
letter of the pair. All sequences of three letters, four letters, etc., are
then listed in order by an analogous process. In this way every sequence of n
letters, for any n, is listed. Lexical ordering differs from alphabetical
ordering, although it makes use of it, because all sequences with n letters
come before any sequence with n ! 1 letters; thus, zzt will come before aaab.
One use of lexical ordering is to show that the set of all finite sequences of
symbols, and thus the set of all words, is at most denumerably infinite.
li1, Chinese term meaning
‘pattern’, ‘principle’, ‘good order’, ‘inherent order’, or ‘to put in order’.
During the Han dynasty, li described not only the pattern of a given thing,
event, or process, but the underlying grand pattern of everything, the deep
structure of the cosmos. Later, Hua-yen Buddhists, working from the Mahayana
doctrine that all things are conditioned and related through past causal
relationships, claimed that each thing reflects the li of all things. This
influenced Neo-Confucians, who developed a metaphysics of li and ch’i (ether),
in which all things possess all li (and hence they are “one” in some deep
sense), but because of the differing quality of their ch’i, things manifest
different and distinct characteristics. The hsin (heart/mind) contains all li
(some insist it is li) but is obscured by “impure” ch’i; hence we understand
some things and can learn others. Through self-cultivation, one can purify
one’s ch’i and achieve complete and perfect understanding.
li2, Chinese term meaning
‘rite’, ‘ritual’, ‘etiquette’, ‘ritual propriety’. In its earliest use, li
refers to politico-religious rituals such as sacrifices to ancestors or
funerals. Soon the term came to encompass matters of etiquette, such as the
proper way to greet a guest. In some texts the li include even matters of
morality or natural law. Mencius refers to li as a virtue, but it is unclear lexical
ambiguity li2 501 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 501 how it is distinct
from his other cardinal virtues. Emphasis upon li is one of the distinctive
features of Confucianism. Critics charge that this emphasis is a conflation of
the natural with the conventional or simply naive traditionalism. Others claim
that the notion of li draws attention to the subtle interdependence of morality
and convention, and points the way to creating genuine communities by treating
“the secular as sacred.”
See
li3, Chinese term meaning
‘profit’ or ‘benefit’, and probably with the basic meaning of ‘smooth’ or
‘unimpeded’. Mo Tzu (fourth century B.C.) regarded what brings li (benefit) to
the public as the criterion of yi (rightness), and certain other classical Chinese
texts also describe yi as the basis for producing li. Confucians tend to use
‘li’ pejoratively to refer to what profits oneself or social groups (e.g.,
one’s family) to which one belongs, and contrast li with yi. According to them,
one should ideally be guided by yi rather than li, and in the political realm,
a preoccupation with li will lead to strife and disorder.
Liang Ch’i-ch’ao
(1873–1929), Chinese scholar and writer. A disciple of K’ang Yu-wei, the young
Liang was a reformist unsympathetic to Sun Yatsen’s revolutionary activities.
But after the republic was founded, he embraced the democratic ideal. He was
eager to introduce ideas from the West to reform the Chinese people. But after
a tour of Europe he had great reservations about Western civilization. His
unfavorable impressions touched off a debate between science and metaphysics in
1923. His scholarly works include studies of Buddhism and of Chinese thought in
the last three hundred years.
liang-chih, Chinese term
commonly rendered as ‘innate knowledge of the good’, although that translation
is quite inadequate to the term’s range of meanings. The term first occurs in
Mencius but becomes a key concept in Wang Yangming’s philosophy. A coherent
explication of liang-chih must attend to the following features. (1) Mencius’s
liang-chih (sense of right and wrong) is the ability to distinguish right from
wrong conduct. For Wang “this sense of right and wrong is nothing but the love
[of good] and the hate [of evil].” (2) Wang’s liang-chih is a moral consciousness
informed by a vision of jen or “forming one body” with all things in the
universe. (3) The exercise of liang-chih involves deliberation in coping with
changing circumstances. (4) The extension of liang-chih is indispensable to the
pursuit of jen.
Liang Sou-ming
(1893–1988), Chinese philosopher branded as the last Confucian. He actually
believed, however, that Buddhist philosophy was more profound than Confucian
philosophy. Against those advocating Westernization, Liang pointed out that
Western and Indian cultures went to two extremes; only the Chinese culture took
a middle course. But it was immature, and must learn first from the West, then
from India. After the Communist takeover, he refused to denounce traditional
Chinese culture. He valued human-heartedness, which he felt was neglected by
Western science and Marxism. He was admired overseas for his courage in
standing up to Mao Tse-tung.
Li Ao (fl. A.D. 798),
Chinese philosopher who learned Buddhist dialects and developed a theory of
human nature (hsing) and feelings (ch’ing) more sophisticated than that of Han
Yü, his teacher. He wrote a famous article, “Fu-hsing shu” (“Essay on returning
to Nature”), which exerted profound influence on Sung-Ming Neo-Confucian
philosophers. According to him, there are seven feelings: joy, anger, pity,
fear, love, hate, and desire. These feelings tend to obscure one’s nature. Only
when the feelings do not operate can one’s nature gain its fulfillment. The
sage does possess the feelings, but he remains immovable; hence in a sense he
also has never had such feelings.
liberalism, a political
philosophy first formulated during the Enlightenment in response to the growth
of modern nation-states, which centralize governmental functions and claim sole
authority to exercise coercive power within their boundaries. One of its
central theses has long been that a government’s claim to this authority is
justified only if the government can show those who live under it that it
secures their libli3 liberalism 502 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 502
erty. A central thesis of contemporary liberalism is that government must be
neutral in debates about the good human life. John Locke, one of the founders
of liberalism, tried to show that constitutional monarchy secures liberty by
arguing that free and equal persons in a state of nature, concerned to protect
their freedom and property, would agree with one another to live under such a
regime. Classical liberalism, which attaches great value to economic liberty,
traces its ancestry to Locke’s argument that government must safeguard
property. Locke’s use of an agreement or social contract laid the basis for the
form of liberalism championed by Rousseau and most deeply indebted to Kant.
According to Kant, the sort of liberty that should be most highly valued is
autonomy. Agents enjoy autonomy, Kant said, when they live according to laws
they would give to themselves. Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971) set the main
themes of the chapter of liberal thought now being written. Rawls asked what
principles of justice citizens would agree to in a contract situation he called
“the original position.” He argued that they would agree to principles
guaranteeing adequate basic liberties and fair equality of opportunity, and
requiring that economic inequalities benefit the least advantaged. A government
that respects these principles secures the autonomy of its citizens by
operating in accord with principles citizens would give themselves in the
original position. Because of the conditions of the original position, citizens
would not choose principles based on a controversial conception of the good
life. Neutrality among such conceptions is therefore built into the foundations
of Rawls’s theory. Some critics argue that liberalism’s emphasis on autonomy
and neutrality leaves it unable to account for the values of tradition,
community, or political participation, and unable to limit individual liberty
when limits are needed. Others argue that autonomy is not the notion of freedom
needed to explain why common forms of oppression like sexism are wrong. Still
others argue that liberalism’s focus on Western democracies leaves it unable to
address the most pressing problems of contemporary politics. Recent work in
liberal theory has therefore asked whether liberalism can accommodate the
political demands of religious and ethnic communities, ground an adequate
conception of democracy, capture feminist critiques of extant power structures,
or guide nation-building in the face of secessionist, nationalist, and
fundamentalist claims.
liberum arbitrium, Latin
expression meaning ‘free judgment’, often used to refer to medieval doctrines
of free choice or free will. It appears in the title of Augustine’s seminal
work De libero arbitrio voluntatis (usually translated ‘On the Free Choice of
the Will’) and in many other medieval writings (e.g., Aquinas, in Summa
theologiae I, asks “whether man has free choice [liberum arbitrium]”). For
medieval thinkers, a judgment (arbitrium) “of the will” was a conclusion of
practical reasoning – “I will do this” (hence, a choice or decision) – in
contrast to a judgment “of the intellect” (“This is the case”), which concludes
theoretical reasoning.
Li Chi (“Record of
Rites”), Chinese Confucian treatise, one of the three classics of li (rites,
rules of proper conduct). For Confucian ethics, the treatise is important for
its focus on the reasoned justification of li, the role of virtues in human
relationships, and the connection between personal cultivation and the
significance of the rites of mourning and sacrifices. Perhaps even more
important, the Li Chi contains two of the basic Four Books of Confucian ethics:
The Great Learning (Ta Hsüeh) and The Doctrine of the Mean (Chung Yung). It
also contains a brief essay on learning liberal theory of the state Li Chi 503
4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 503 that stresses its interaction with
ethical teaching. See also CONFUCIANISM. A.S.C. li-ch’i, technical term in
Chinese Neo-Confucianism primarily used in the context of speculative
cosmology, metaphysics, and ontology for accounting for changing phenomena and
their ethical significance. Li is often rendered as ‘principle’, ‘order’, ‘pattern’,
or ‘reason’; ch’i as ‘material force’, ‘ether’, or ‘energy’. Recent
NeoConfucian scholarship provides no clear guide to the li-ch’i distinction. In
ethical contexts, however, the distinction is used to explain the origin of
human good and evil. In its pure state, ch’i is inseparable from li, in the
sense of compliance with the Confucian ethical norm that can be reasonably
justified. In its impure state, ch’i presumably explains the existence of human
evils. This perplexing distinction remains a subject of scholarly inquiry.
Lieh Tzu, also called
Lieh Yu-K’ou (440?–360? B.C.), Chinese Taoist philosopher whose name serves as
the title of a work of disputed date. The Lieh Tzu, parts (perhaps most) of
which were written as late as the third or fourth century A.D., is primarily a
Taoist work but contains one chapter reflecting ideas associated with Yang Chu.
However, whereas the original teachings of Yang Chu emphasized one’s duty to
preserve bodily integrity, health, and longevity, a task that may require
exercise and discipline, the Yang Chu chapter advocates hedonism as the means
to nourish life. The primary Taoist teaching of the Lieh Tzu is that destiny
trumps will, fate conquers effort. R.P.P. & R.T.A. life, the characteristic
property of living substances or things; it is associated with either a
capacity for mental activities such as perception and thought (mental life) or
physical activities such as absorption, excretion, metabolism, synthesis, and
reproduction (physical life). Biological or carbon-based lifeis a natural kind
of physical life that essentially involves a highly complex, selfregulating
system of carbon-based macromolecules and water molecules. Silicon-based life
is wholly speculative natural kind of physical life that essentially involves a
highly complex, selfregulating system of silicon-based macromolecules. This
kind of life might be possible, since at high temperatures silicon forms
macromolecules with chemical properties somewhat similar to those of
carbon-based macromolecules. Living organisms have a high degree of functional
organization, with a regulating or controlling master part, e.g., a dog’s
nervous system, or the DNA or nucleus of a single-celled organism. Mental life
is usually thought to be dependent or supervenient upon physical life, but some
philosophers have argued for the possibility at least of purely spiritual
mental life, i.e., souls. The above characterization of biological life
appropriately implies that viruses are not living things, since they lack the
characteristic activities of living things, with the exception of an attenuated
form of reproduction.
li-i-fen-shu, a Chinese
phrase meaning ‘Principle is one while duties or manifestations are many’.
Chang Tsai (1020–77) wrote the essay “The Western Inscription” in which he said
that all people were his brothers and sisters. Ch’eng Yi’s (1033–1107) disciple
Yang Shih (1053–1135) suspected Chang Tsai of teaching the Mohist doctrine of
universal love. Ch’eng Yi then coined the phrase to clarify the situation: Chang
Tsai was really teaching the Confucian doctrine of graded love – while
principle (li) is one, duties are many. Chu Hsi (1130–1200) further developed
the idea into a metaphysics by maintaining that principle is one while
manifestations are many, just as the same moon shines over different rivers.
limiting case, an
individual or subclass of a given background class that is maximally remote
from “typical” or “paradigm” members of the class with respect to some ordering
that is not always explicitly mentioned. The number zero is a limiting case of
cardinal number. A triangle is a limiting case of polygon. A square is a
limiting case of rectangle when rectangles are ordered by the ratio of length
to width. Certainty is a limiting case of belief when beliefs are ordered
according to “strength of subjective conviction.” Knowledge is a limiting case
of belief when beliefs are ordered according “adequacy of objective grounds.” A
limiting case is necessarily a case (member) of the background class; in
contrast a li-ch’i limiting case 504 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 504
borderline case need not be a case and a degenerate case may clearly fail to be
a case at all.
linguistic relativity,
the thesis that at least some distinctions found in one language are found in
no other language (a version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis); more generally,
the thesis that different languages utilize different representational systems
that are at least in some degree informationally incommensurable and hence
non-equivalent. The differences arise from the arbitrary features of languages
resulting in each language encoding lexically or grammatically some
distinctions not found in other languages. The thesis of linguistic determinism
holds that the ways people perceive or think about the world, especially with
respect to their classificatory systems, are causally determined or influenced
by their linguistic systems or by the structures common to all human languages.
Specifically, implicit or explicit linguistic categorization determines or
influences aspects of nonlinguistic categorization, memory, perception, or
cognition in general. Its strongest form (probably a straw-man position) holds
that linguistically unencoded concepts are unthinkable. Weaker forms hold that
concepts that are linguistically encoded are more accessible to thought and
easier to remember than those that are not. This thesis is independent of that
of linguistic relativity. Linguistic determinism plus linguistic relativity as
defined here implies the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
literary theory, a
reasoned account of the nature of the literary artifact, its causes, effects,
and distinguishing features. So understood, literary theory is part of the
systematic study of literature covered by the term ‘criticism’, which also
includes interpretation of literary works, philology, literary history, and the
evaluation of particular works or bodies of work. Because it attempts to
provide the conceptual foundations for practical criticism, literary theory has
also been called “critical theory.” However, since the latter term has been
appropriated by neo-Marxists affiliated with the Frankfurt School to designate
their own kind of social critique, ‘literary theory’ is less open to
misunderstanding. Because of its concern with the ways in which literary
productions differ from other verbal artifacts and from other works of art,
literary theory overlaps extensively with philosophy, psychology, linguistics,
and the other human sciences. The first ex professo theory of literature in the
West, for centuries taken as normative, was Aristotle’s Poetics. On Aristotle’s
view, poetry is a verbal imitation of the forms of human life and action in
language made vivid by metaphor. It stimulates its audience to reflect on the
human condition, enriches their understanding, and thereby occasions the
pleasure that comes from the exercise of the cognitive faculty. The first real
paradigm shift in literary theory was introduced by the Romantics of the
nineteenth century. The Biographia Literaria (1817) of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
recounting the author’s conversion from Humean empiricism to a form of German
idealism, defines poetry not as a representation of objective structures, but
as the imaginative self-expression of the creative subject. Its emphasis is not
on the poem as a source of pleasure but on poetry as a heightened form of
spiritual activity. The standard work on the transition from classical
(imitation) theory to Romantic (expression) theory is M. H. Abrams’s The Mirror
and the Lamp (1953). In the present century theory has assumed a place of
prominence in literary studies. In the first half of the century the works of
I. A. Richards – from his early positivist account of linear order literary
theory 505 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 505 poetry in books like Science
and Poetry (1926) to his later idealist views in books like The Philosophy of
Rhetoric (1936) – sponsored the practice of the American New Critics. The most
influential theorist of the period is Northrop Frye, whose formalist manifesto,
Anatomy of Criticism (1957), proposed to make criticism the “science of
literature.” The introduction of Continental thought to the English-speaking
critical establishment in the 1960s and after spawned a bewildering variety of
competing theories of literature: e.g., Russian formalism, structuralism,
deconstruction, new historicism, Marxism, Freudianism, feminism, and even the
anti-theoretical movement called the “new pragmatism.” The best summary account
of these developments is Frank Lentricchia’s After the New Criticism (1980).
Given the present near-chaos in criticism, the future of literary theory is
unpredictable. But the chaos itself offers ample opportunities for
philosophical analysis and calls for the kind of conceptual discrimination such
analysis can offer. Conversely, the study of literary theory can provide
philosophers with a better understanding of the textuality of philosophy and of
the ways in which philosophical content is determined by the literary form of
philosophical texts.
Liu Shao-ch’i
(1898–1969), Chinese Communist leader. A close ally of Mao Tse-tung, he was
purged near the end of his life when he refused to follow Mao’s radical
approach during the Cultural Revolution, became an ally of the practical Teng
Hsiao-ping, and was branded the biggest Capitalist Roader in China. In 1939 he
delivered in Yenan the influential speech “How to Be a Good Communist,”
published in 1943 and widely studied by Chinese Communists. As he emphasized
self-discipline, there appeared to be a Confucian dimension in his thought. The
article was banned during the Cultural Revolution, and he was accused of
teaching reactionary Confucianism in the revolutionary camp. He was later
rehabilitated.
Liu Tsung-chou, also
called Ch’i-shan (1578– 1645), Chinese philosopher commonly regarded as the
last major figure in Sung–Ming Neo-Confucianism. He opposed all sorts of
dualist thoughts, including Chu Hsi’s philosophy. He was also not happy with
some of Wang Yangming’s followers who claimed that men in the streets were all
sages. He shifted the emphasis from rectification of the mind to sincerity of
the will, and he gave a new interpretation to “watchful over the self” in the
Doctrine of the Mean. Among his disciples was the great intellectual historian
Huang Tsung-hsi.
Locke, John (1632–1704),
English philosopher and proponent of empiricism, famous especially for his
Essay concerning Human Understanding (1689) and for his Second Treatise of
Government, also published in 1689, though anonymously. He came from a middle-class
Puritan family in Somerset, and became acquainted with Scholastic philosophy in
his studies at Oxford. Not finding a career in church or university attractive,
he trained for a while as a physician, and developed contacts with many members
of the newly formed Royal Society; the chemist Robert Boyle and the physicist
Isaac Newton were close acquaintances. In 1667 he joined the London households
of the then Lord Ashley, later first Earl of Shaftesbury; there he became
intimately involved in discussions surrounding the politics of resistance to
the Catholic king, Charles II. In 1683 he fled England for the Netherlands,
where he wrote out the final draft of his Essay. He returned to England in
1689, a year after the accession to the English throne of the Protestant
William of Orange. In his last years he was the most famous intellectual in
England, perhaps in Europe generally. Locke was not a university professor
immersed in the discussions of the philosophy of “the schools” but was instead
intensely engaged in the social and cultural issues of his day; his writings
were addressed not to professional philosophers but to the educated public in
general. The Essay. The initial impulse for the line of thought that culminated
in the Essay occurred early in 1671, in a discussion Locke had with some
friends in Lord Shaftesbury’s apartments in literature, philosophy of Locke,
John 506 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 506 London on matters of morality
and revealed religion. In his Epistle to the Reader at the beginning of the
Essay Locke says that the discussants found themselves quickly at a stand by
the difficulties that arose on every side. After we had awhile puzzled
ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which
perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course, and that
before we set ourselves upon enquiries of that nature it was necessary to
examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were or were
not fitted to deal with. Locke was well aware that for a thousand years
European humanity had consulted its textual inheritance for the resolution of
its moral and religious quandaries; elaborate strategies of interpretation,
distinction, etc., had been developed for extracting from those disparate
sources a unified, highly complex, body of truth. He was equally well aware
that by his time, more than a hundred years after the beginning of the
Reformation, the moral and religious tradition of Europe had broken up into
warring and contradictory fragments. Accordingly he warns his readers over and
over against basing their convictions merely on say-so, on unexamined
tradition. As he puts it in a short late book of his, The Conduct of the
Understanding, “We should not judge of things by men’s opinions, but of
opinions by things.” We should look to “the things themselves,” as he sometimes
puts it. But to know how to get at the things themselves it is necessary, so
Locke thought, “to examine our own abilities.” Hence the project of the Essay.
The Essay comes in four books, Book IV being the culmination. Fundamental to
understanding Locke’s thought in Book IV is the realization that knowledge, as
he thinks of it, is a fundamentally different phenomenon from belief. Locke
holds, indeed, that knowledge is typically accompanied by belief; it is not,
though, to be identified with it. Knowledge, as he thinks of it, is direct
awareness of some fact – in his own words, perception of some agreement or
disagreement among things. Belief, by contrast, consists of taking some
proposition to be true – whether or not one is directly aware of the
corresponding fact. The question then arises: Of what sorts of facts do we
human beings have direct awareness? Locke’s answer is: Only of facts that
consist of relationships among our “ideas.” Exactly what Locke had in mind when
he spoke of ideas is a vexed topic; the traditional view, for which there is a
great deal to be said, is that he regarded ideas as mental objects.
Furthermore, he clearly regarded some ideas as being representations of other
entities; his own view was that we can think about nonmental entities only by
being aware of mental entities that represent those non-mental realities. Locke
argued that knowledge, thus understood, is “short and scanty” – much too short and
scanty for the living of life. Life requires the formation of beliefs on
matters where knowledge is not available. Now what strikes anyone who surveys
human beliefs is that many of them are false. What also strikes any perceptive
observer of the scene is that often we can – or could have – done something
about this. We can, to use Locke’s language, “regulate” and “govern” our
belief-forming capacities with the goal in mind of getting things right. Locke
was persuaded that not only can we thus regulate and govern our belief-forming
capacities; we ought to do so. It is a God-given obligation that rests upon all
of us. Specifically, for each human being there are some matters of such
“concernment,” as Locke calls it, as to place the person under obligation to
try his or her best to get things right. For all of us there will be many
issues that are not of such concernment; for those cases, it will be acceptable
to form our beliefs in whatever way nature or custom has taught us to form
them. But for each of us there will be certain practical matters concerning
which we are obligated to try our best – these differing from person to person.
And certain matters of ethics and religion are of such concern to everybody
that we are all obligated to try our best, on these matters, to get in touch
with reality. What does trying our best consist of, when knowledge –
perception, awareness, insight – is not available? One can think of the
practice Locke recommends as having three steps. First one collects whatever
evidence one can find for and against the proposition in question. This
evidence must consist of things that one knows; otherwise we are just wandering
in darkness. And the totality of the evidence must be a reliable indicator of
the probability of the proposition that one is considering. Second, one
analyzes the evidence to determine the probability of the proposition in
question, on that evidence. And last, one places a level of confidence in the
proposition that is proportioned to its probability on that satisfactory
evidence. If the proposition is highly probable on that evidence, one believes
it very firmly; if it only is quite probable, one Locke, John Locke, John 507
4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 507 believes it rather weakly; etc. The
main thrust of the latter half of Book IV of the Essay is Locke’s exhortation
to his readers to adopt this practice in the forming of beliefs on matters of
high concernment – and in particular, on matters of morality and religion. It
was his view that the new science being developed by his friends Boyle and
Newton and others was using exactly this method. Though Book IV was clearly
seen by Locke as the culmination of the Essay, it by no means constitutes the
bulk of it. Book I launches a famous attack on innate ideas and innate
knowledge; he argues that all our ideas and knowledge can be accounted for by
tracing the way in which the mind uses its innate capacities to work on
material presented to it by sensation and reflection (i.e., self-awareness).
Book II then undertakes to account for all our ideas, on the assumption that
the only “input” is ideas of sensation and reflection, and that the mind, which
at birth is a tabula rasa (or blank tablet), works on these by such operations
as combination, division, generalization, and abstraction. And then in Book III
Locke discusses the various ways in which words hinder us in our attempt to get
to the things themselves. Along with many other thinkers of the time, Locke
distinguished between what he called natural theology and what he called
revealed theology. It was his view that a compelling, demonstrative argument
could be given for the existence of God, and thus that we could have knowledge
of God’s existence; the existence of God is a condition of our own existence.
In addition, he believed firmly that God had revealed things to human beings.
As he saw the situation, however, we can at most have beliefs, not knowledge,
concerning what God has revealed. For we can never just “see” that a certain
episode in human affairs is a case of divine revelation. Accordingly, we must
apply the practice outlined above, beginning by assembling satisfactory
evidence for the conclusion that a certain episode really is a case of divine
revelation. In Locke’s view, the occurrence of miracles provides the required
evidence. An implication of these theses concerning natural and revealed
religion is that it is never right for a human being to believe something about
God without having evidence for its truth, with the evidence consisting
ultimately of things that one “sees” immediately to be true. Locke held to a
divine command theory of moral obligation; to be morally obligated to do
something is for God to require of one that one do that. And since a great deal
of what Jesus taught, as Locke saw it, was a code of moral obligation, it
follows that once we have evidence for the revelatory status of what Jesus
said, we automatically have evidence that what Jesus taught as our moral
obligation really is that. Locke was firmly persuaded, however, that revelation
is not our only mode of access to moral obligation. Most if not all of our
moral obligations can also be arrived at by the use of our natural capacities,
unaided by revelation. To that part of our moral obligations which can in
principle be arrived at by the use of our natural capacities, Locke (in
traditional fashion) gave the title of natural law. Locke’s own view was that
morality could in principle be established as a deductive science, on analogy
to mathematics: one would first argue for God’s existence and for our status as
creatures of God; one would then argue that God was good, and cared for the
happiness of God’s creatures. Then one would argue that such a good God would
lay down commands to his creatures, aimed at their overall happiness. From there,
one would proceed to reflect on what does in fact conduce to human happiness.
And so forth. Locke never worked out the details of such a deductive system of
ethics; late in his life he concluded that it was beyond his capacities. But he
never gave up on the ideal. The Second Treatise and other writings. Locke’s
theory of natural law entered intimately into the theory of civil obedience
that he developed in the Second Treatise of Government. Imagine, he said, a
group of human beings living in what he called a state of nature – i.e., a
condition in which there is no governmental authority and no private property.
They would still be under divine obligation; and much (if not all) of that
obligation would be accessible to them by the use of their natural capacities.
There would be for them a natural law. In this state of nature they would have
title to their own persons and labor; natural law tells us that these are
inherently our “possessions.” But there would be no possessions beyond that.
The physical world would be like a gigantic English commons, given by God to
humanity as a whole. Locke then addresses himself to two questions: How can we
account for the emergence of political obligation from such a situation, and
how can we account for the emergence of private property? As to the former, his
answer is that we in effect make a contract with one another to institute a
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Page 508 elimination of certain deficiencies in the state of nature, and then
to obey that government, provided it does what we have contracted with one
another it should do and does not exceed that. Among the deficiencies of the
state of nature that a government can be expected to correct is the sinful
tendency of human beings to transgress on other persons’ properties, and the
equally sinful tendency to punish such transgressions more severely than the
law of nature allows. As to the emergence of private property, something from
the world at large becomes a given person’s property when that person “mixes”
his or her labor with it. For though God gave the world as a whole to all of us
together, natural law tells us that each person’s labor belongs to that person
himself or herself – unless he or she freely contracts it to someone else.
Locke’s Second Treatise is thus an articulate statement of the so-called
liberal theory of the state; it remains one of the greatest of such, and proved
enormously influential. It should be seen as supplemented by the Letters
concerning Toleration (1689, 1690, 1692) that Locke wrote on religious
toleration, in which he argued that all theists who have not pledged civil
allegiance to some foreign power should be granted equal toleration. Some
letters that Locke wrote to a friend concerning the education of the friend’s
son should also be seen as supplementing the grand vision. If we survey the way
in which beliefs are actually formed in human beings, we see that passion, the
partisanship of distinct traditions, early training, etc., play important
obstructive roles. It is impossible to weed out entirely from one’s life the
influence of such factors. When it comes to matters of high “concernment,”
however, it is our obligation to do so; it is our obligation to implement the
three-step practice outlined above, which Locke defends as doing one’s best.
But Locke did not think that the cultural reform he had in mind, represented by
the appropriate use of this new practice, could be expected to come about as
the result just of writing books and delivering exhortations. Training in the
new practice was required; in particular, training of small children, before
bad habits had been ingrained. Accordingly, Locke proposes in Some Thoughts
concerning Education (1693) an educational program aimed at training children
in when and how to collect satisfactory evidence, appraise the probabilities of
propositions on such evidence, and place levels of confidence in those
propositions proportioned to their probability on that evidence.
logical consequence, a
proposition, sentence, or other piece of information that follows logically
from one or more other propositions, sentences, or pieces of information. A
proposition C is said to follow logically from, or to be a logical consequence
of, propositions P1, P2, . . . , if it must be the case that, on the assumption
that P1, P2, . . . , Pn are all true, the proposition C is true as well. For
example, the proposition ‘Smith is corrupt’ is a logical consequence of the two
propositions ‘All politicians are corrupt’ and ‘Smith is a politician’, since
it must be the case that on the assumption that ‘All politicians are corrupt’
and ‘Smith is a politician’ are both true, ‘Smith is corrupt’ is also true.
Notice that proposition C can be a logical consequence of propositions P1, P2,
. . . , Pn, even if P1, P2, . . . , Pn are not actually all true. Indeed this
is the case in our example. ‘All politicians are corrupt’ is not, in fact,
true: there are some honest politicians. But if it were true, and if Smith were
a politician, then ‘Smith is corrupt’ would have to be true. Because of this,
it is said to be a logical consequence of those two propositions. The logical
consequence relation is often written using the symbol X, called the double
turnstile. Thus to indicate that C is a logical consequence of P1, P2, . . . ,
Pn, we would write: P1, P2, . . . , Pn X C or: P X C where P stands for the set
containing the propositions p1, P2, . . . , Pn. The term ‘logical consequence’
is sometimes reserved for cases in which C follows from P1, P2, . . . , Pn
solely in virtue of the meanings of the socalled logical expressions (e.g.,
‘some’, ‘all’, ‘or’, ‘and’, ‘not’) contained by these propositions. In this
more restricted sense, ‘Smith is not a politician’ is not a logical consequence
of the proposition ‘All politicians are corrupt’ and ‘Smith is honest’, since
to recognize the consequence relation here we must also understand the specific
meanings of the non-logical expressions ‘corrupt’ and ‘honest’.
logical constant, a
symbol, such as the connectives -, 8, /, or S or the quantifiers D or E of
elementary quantification theory, that represents logical form. The contrast
here is with expressions such as terms, predicates, and function symbols, which
are supposed to represent the “content” of a sentence or proposition. Beyond
this, there is little consensus on how to understand logical constancy. It is
sometimes said, e.g., that a symbol is a logical constant if its interpretation
is fixed across admissible valuations, though there is disagreement over
exactly how to construe this “fixity” constraint. This account seems to make
logical form a mere artifact of one’s choice of a model theory. More generally,
it has been questioned whether there are any objective grounds for classifying
some expressions as logical and others not, or whether such a distinction is
(wholly or in part) conventional. Other philosophers have suggested that
logical constancy is less a semantic notion than an epistemic one: roughly,
that a is a logical constant if the semantic behavior of certain other
expressions together with the semantic contribution of a determine a priori (or
in some other epistemically privileged fashion) the extensions of complex
expressions in which a occurs. There is also considerable debate over whether
particular symbols, such as the identity sign, modal operators, and quantifiers
other than D and E, are, or should be treated as, logical constants.
logical construction,
something built by logical operations from certain elements. Suppose that any sentence,
S, containing terms apparently referring to objects of type F can be
paraphrased without any essential loss of content into some (possibly much more
complicated) sentence, Sp, containing only terms referring to objects of type G
(distinct from F): in this case, objects of type F may be said to be logical
constructions out of objects of type G. The notion originates with Russell’s
concept of an “incomplete symbol,” which he introduced in connection with his
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Page 510 ory of descriptions. According to Russell, a definite description –
i.e., a descriptive phrase, such as ‘the present king of France’, apparently
picking out a unique object – cannot be taken at face value as a genuinely
referential term. One reason for this is that the existence of the objects
seemingly referred to by such phrases can be meaningfully denied. We can say,
“The present king of France does not exist,” and it is hard to see how this
could be if ‘the present king of France’, to be meaningful, has to refer to the
present king of France. One solution, advocated by Meinong, is to claim that
the referents required by what ordinary grammar suggests are singular terms
must have some kind of “being,” even though this need not amount to actual
existence; but this solution offended Russell’s “robust sense of reality.”
According to Russell, then, ‘The F is G’ is to be understood as equivalent to
(something like) ‘One and only one thing Fs and that thing is G’. (The phrase
‘one and only one’ can itself be paraphrased away in terms of quantifiers and
identity.) The crucial feature of this analysis is that it does not define the
problematic phrases by providing synonyms: rather, it provides a rule, which
Russell called “a definition in use,” for paraphrasing whole sentences in which
they occur into whole sentences in which they do not. This is why definite
descriptions are “incomplete symbols”: we do not specify objects that are their
meanings; we lay down a rule that explains the meaning of whole sentences in
which they occur. Thus definite descriptions disappear under analysis, and with
them the shadowy occupants of Meinong’s realm of being. Russell thought that
the kind of analysis represented by the theory of descriptions gives the clue
to the proper method for philosophy: solve metaphysical and epistemological
problems by reducing ontological commitments. The task of philosophy is to
substitute, wherever possible, logical constructions for inferred entities. Thus
in the philosophy of mathematics, Russell attempted to eliminate numbers, as a
distinct category of objects, by showing how mathematical statements can be
translated into (what he took to be) purely logical statements. But what really
gave Russell’s program its bite was his thought that we can refer only to
objects with which we are directly acquainted. This committed him to holding
that all terms apparently referring to objects that cannot be regarded as
objects of acquaintance should be given contextual definitions along the lines
of the theory of descriptions: i.e., to treating everything beyond the scope of
acquaintance as a logical construction (or a “logical fiction”). Most notably,
Russell regarded physical objects as logical constructions out of sense-data,
taking this to resolve the skeptical problem about our knowledge of the
external world. The project of showing how physical objects can be treated as
logical constructions out of sense-data was a major concern of analytical
philosophers in the interwar period, Carnap’s Der Logische Aufbau der Welt
(“The Logical Structure of the World,” 1928) standing as perhaps its major
monument. However, the project was not a success. Even Carnap’s construction
involves a system of space-time coordinates that is not analyzed in sense-datum
terms and today few, if any, philosophers believe that such ambitious projects
can be carried through..
logical form, the form
obtained from a proposition, a set of propositions, or an argument by
abstracting from the subject matter of its content terms or by regarding the
content terms as mere placeholders or blanks in a form. In a logically perfect
language the logical form of a proposition, a set of propositions, or an
argument is determined by the grammatical form of the sentence, the set of
sentences, or the argument-text expressing it. Two sentences, sets of
sentences, or argument-texts are said to have the same grammatical form, in
this sense, if a uniform one-toone substitution of content words transforms the
one exactly into the other. The sentence ‘Abe properly respects every agent who
respects himself’ may be regarded as having the same grammatical form as the
sentence ‘Ben generously assists every patient who assists himself’.
Substitutions used to determine sameness of grammatical form cannot involve
change of form words such as ‘every’, ‘no’, ‘some’, ‘is’, etc., and they must
be category-preserving, i.e., they must put a proper name for a proper name, an
adverb for an adverb, a transitive verb for a transitive verb, and so on. Two
sentences having the same grammatical form have exactly the same form words
distributed in exactly the same pattern; and although they of course need not,
and usually do not, have the same content words, they do have logical
dependence logical form exactly the same number of content words. The most
distinctive feature of form words, which are also called syncategorematic terms
or logical terms, is their topic neutrality; the form words in a sentence are
entirely independent of and are in no way indicative of its content or topic.
Modern formal languages used in formal axiomatizations of mathematical sciences
are often taken as examples of logically perfect languages. Pioneering work on
logically perfect languages was done by George Boole (1815–64), Frege, Giuseppe
Peano (1858–1952), Russell, and Church. According to the principle of logical
form, an argument is (formally) valid or invalid in virtue of logical form.
More explicitly, every two arguments in the same form are both valid or both
invalid. Thus, every argument in the same form as a valid argument is valid and
every argument in the same form as an invalid argument is invalid. The argument
form that a given argument fits (or has) is not determined solely by the
logical forms of its constituent propositions; the arrangement of those
propositions is critical because the process of interchanging a premise with
the conclusion of a valid argument can result in an invalid argument. The
principle of logical form, from which formal logic gets its name, is commonly
used in establishing invalidity of arguments and consistency of sets of
propositions. In order to show that a given argument is invalid it is
sufficient to exhibit another argument as being in the same logical form and as
having all true premises and a false conclusion. In order to show that a given
set of propositions is consistent it is sufficient to exhibit another set of
propositions as being in the same logical form and as being composed
exclusively of true propositions. The history of these methods traces back
through non-Cantorian set theory, non-Euclidean geometry, and medieval
logicians (especially Anselm) to Aristotle. These methods must be used with
extreme caution in languages such as English that fail to be logically perfect
as a result of ellipsis, amphiboly, ambiguity, etc. For example, ‘This is a
male dog’ implies ‘This is a dog’ but ‘This is a brass monkey’ does not imply
‘This is a monkey’, as would be required in a logically perfect language.
Likewise, of two propositions commonly expressed by the ambiguous sentence ‘Ann
and Ben are married’ one does and one does not imply the proposition that Ann
is married to Ben. Quine and other logicians are careful to distinguish, in
effect, the (unique) logical form of a proposition from its (many) schematic
forms. The proposition (A) ‘If Abe is Ben, then if Ben is wise Abe is wise’ has
exactly one logical form, which it shares with (B) ‘If Carl is Dan, then if Dan
is kind Carl is kind’, whereas it has all of the following schematic forms: (1)
If P then if Q then R; (2) If P then Q; (3) P. The principle of form for
propositions is that every two propositions in the same logical form are both
tautological (logically necessary) or both non-tautological. Thus, although
propositions A and B are tautological there are non-tautological propositions
that fit the three schematic forms just mentioned. Failure to distinguish
logical form from schematic form has led to fallacies. According to the
principle of logical form quoted above every argument in the same logical form
as an invalid argument is invalid, but it is not the case that every argument
sharing a schematic form with an invalid argument is invalid. Contrary to what
would be fallaciously thought, the conclusion ‘Abe is Ben’ is logically implied
by the following two propositions taken together, ‘If Abe is Ben, then Ben is
Abe’ and ‘Ben is Abe’, even though the argument shares a schematic form with
invalid arguments “committing” the fallacy of affirming the consequent.
logical indicator, also
called indicator word, an expression that provides some help in identifying the
conclusion of an argument or the premises offered in support of a conclusion.
Common premise indicators include ‘for’, ‘because’, and ‘since’. Common
conclusion indicators include ‘so’, ‘it follows that’, ‘hence’, ‘thus’, and
‘therefore’. Since Tom sat in the back of the room, he could not hear the
performance clearly. Therefore, he could not write a proper review. ’Since’
makes clear that Tom’s seat location is offered as a reason to explain his
inability to hear the performance. ‘Therefore’ indicates that the logical form,
principle of logical indicator 512 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 512
proposition that Tom could not write a proper review is the conclusion of the argument.
T.J.D. logically perfect language. See LOGICAL FORM, SCOPE. logically proper
name. See RUSSELL. logical mechanism. See COMPUTER THEORY. logical necessity.
See NECESSITY. logical notation, symbols designed to achieve unambiguous
formulation of principles and inferences in deductive logic. Such notations
involve some regimentation of words, word order, etc., of natural language.
Some schematization was attempted even in ancient times by Aristotle, the
Megarians, the Stoics, Boethius, and the medievals. But Leibniz’s vision of a
universal logical language began to be realized only in the past 150 years. The
notation is not yet standardized, but the following varieties of logical
operators in propositional and predicate calculus may be noted. Given that ‘p’,
‘q’, ‘r’, etc., are propositional variables, or propositions, we find, in the
contexts of their application, the following variety of operators (called
truth-functional connectives). Negation: ‘-p’, ‘Ýp’, ‘p - ’, ‘p’ ’.
Conjunction: ‘p • q’, ‘p & q’, ‘p 8 q’. Weak or inclusive disjunction: ‘p 7
q’. Strong or exclusive disjunction: ‘p V q’, ‘p ! q’, ‘p W q’. Material
conditional (sometimes called material implication): ‘p / q’, ‘p P q’. Material
biconditional (sometimes called material equivalence): ‘p S q’, ‘p Q q’. And,
given that ‘x’, ‘y’, ‘z’, etc., are individual variables and ‘F’, ‘G’, ‘H’,
etc., are predicate letters, we find in the predicate calculus two quantifiers,
a universal and an existential quantifier: Universal quantification: ‘(x)Fx’, ‘(Ex)Fx’,
‘8xFx’. Existential quantification: ‘(Ex)Fx’, ‘(Dx)Fx’, ‘7xFx’. The formation
principle in all the schemata involving dyadic or binary operators
(connectives) is that the logical operator is placed between the propositional
variables (or propositional constants) connected by it. But there exists a
notation, the so-called Polish notation, based on the formation rule
stipulating that all operators, and not only negation and quantifiers, be
placed in front of the schemata over which they are ranging. The following
representations are the result of application of that rule: Negation: ‘Np’.
Conjunction: ‘Kpq’. Weak or inclusive disjunction: ‘Apq’. Strong or exclusive
disjunction: ‘Jpq’. Conditional: ‘Cpq’. Biconditional: ‘Epq’. Sheffer stroke:
‘Dpq’. Universal quantification: ‘PxFx’. Existential quantifications: ‘9xFx’.
Remembering that ‘K’, ‘A’, ‘J’, ‘C’, ‘E’, and ‘D’ are dyadic functors, we
expect them to be followed by two propositional signs, each of which may itself
be simple or compound, but no parentheses are needed to prevent ambiguity.
Moreover, this notation makes it very perspicuous as to what kind of
proposition a given compound proposition is: all we need to do is to look at
the leftmost operator. To illustrate, ‘p7 (q & r) is a disjunction of ‘p’
with the conjunction ‘Kqr’, i.e., ‘ApKqr’, while ‘(p 7 q) & r’ is a
conjunction of a disjunction ‘Apq’ with ‘r’, i.e., ‘KApqr’. ‘- p P q’ is
written as ‘CNpq’, i.e., ‘if Np, then q’, while negation of the whole
conditional, ‘-(p P q)’, becomes ‘NCpq’. A logical thesis such as ‘((p & q)
P r) P ((s P p) P (s & q) P r))’ is written concisely as ‘CCKpqrCCspCKsqr’.
The general proposition ‘(Ex) (Fx P Gx)’ is written as ‘PxCFxGx’, while a
truth-function of quantified propositions ‘(Ex)Fx P (Dy)Gy’ is written as
‘CPxFx9yGy’. An equivalence such as ‘(Ex) Fx Q - (Dx) - Fx’ becomes
‘EPxFxN9xNFx’, etc. Dot notation is way of using dots to construct well-formed
formulas that is more thrifty with punctuation marks than the use of
parentheses with their progressive strengths of scope. But dot notation is less
thrifty than the parenthesis-free Polish notation, which secures well-formed
expressions entirely on the basis of the order of logical operators relative to
truth-functional compounds. Various dot notations have been devised. The
convention most commonly adopted is that punctuation dots always operate away
from the connective symbol that they flank. It is best to explain dot
punctuation by examples: (1) ‘p 7 (q - r)’ becomes ‘p 7 .q P - r’; (2) ‘(p 7 q)
P - r’ becomes ‘p 7 q. P - r’; (3) ‘(p P (q Q r)) 7 (p 7 r)’ becomes ‘p P. q Q
r: 7. p 7r’; (4) ‘(- pQq)•(rPs)’ becomes ‘-p Q q . r Q s’. logically perfect
language logical notation 513 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 513 Note that
here the dot is used as conjunction dot and is not flanked by punctuation dots,
although in some contexts additional punctuation dots may have to be added,
e.g., ‘p.((q . r) P s), which is rewritten as ‘p : q.r. P s’. The scope of a
group of n dots extends to the group of n or more dots. (5) ‘- p Q (q.(r P s))’
becomes ‘- p. Q : q.r P s’; (6)‘- pQ((q . r) Ps)’ becomes ‘~p. Q: q.r.Ps’; (7)
‘(- p Q (q . r)) P s’ becomes ‘- p Q. q.r: P s’. The notation for modal
propositions made popular by C. I. Lewis consisted of the use of ‘B’ to express
the idea of possibility, in terms of which other alethic modal notions were
defined. Thus, starting with ‘B p’ for ‘It is possiblethat p’ we get ‘- B p’
for ‘It is not possible that p’ (i.e., ‘It is impossible that p’), ‘- B - p’
for ‘It is not possible that not p’ (i.e., ‘It is necessary that p’), and ‘B -
p’ for ‘It is possible that not p’ (i.e., ‘It is contingent that p’ in the
sense of ‘It is not necessary that p’, i.e., ‘It is possible that not p’).
Given this primitive or undefined notion of possibility, Lewis proceeded to
introduce the notion of strict implication, represented by ‘ ’ and defined as
follows: ‘p q .% . - B (p. -q)’. More recent tradition finds it convenient to
use ‘A’, either as a defined or as a primitive symbol of necessity. In the parenthesis-free
Polish notation the letter ‘M’ is usually added as the sign of possibility and
sometimes the letter ‘L’ is used as the sign of necessity. No inconvenience
results from adopting these letters, as long as they do not coincide with any
of the existing truthfunctional operators ‘N’, ‘K’, ‘A’, ‘J’, ‘C’, ‘E’, ‘D’.
Thus we can express symbolically the sentences ‘If p is necessary, then p is
possible’ as ‘CNMNpMp’ or as ‘CLpMp’; ‘It is necessary that whatever is F is G’
as ‘NMNPxCFxGx’ or as ‘LPxCFxGx’; and ‘Whatever is F is necessarily G’ as
‘PxCFxNMNGx’ or as PxCFxLGx; etc.
logical positivism, also
called positivism, a philosophical movement inspired by empiricism and
verificationism; it began in the 1920s and flourished for about twenty or thirty
years. While there are still philosophers who would identify themselves with
some of the logical positivists’ theses, many of the central docrines of the
theory have come under considerable attack in the last half of this century. In
some ways logical positivism can be seen as a natural outgrowth of radical or
British empiricism and logical atomism. The driving force of positivism may
well have been adherence to the verifiability criterion for the meaningfulness
of cognitive statements. Acceptance of this principle led positivists to reject
as problematic many assertions of religion, morality, and the kind of
philosophy they described as metaphysics. The verifiability criterion of
meaning. The radical empiricists took genuine ideas to be composed of simple
ideas traceable to elements in experience. If this is true and if thoughts
about the empirical world are “made up” out of ideas, it would seem to follow
that all genuine thoughts about the world must have as constituents thoughts
that denote items of experience. While not all positivists tied meaning so
clearly to the sort of experiences the empiricists had in mind, they were
convinced that a genuine contingent assertion about the world must be
verifiable through experience or observation. Questions immediately arose
concerning the relevant sense of ‘verify’. Extreme versions of the theory
interpret verification in terms of experiences or observations that entail the
truth of the proposition in question. Thus for my assertion that there is a
table before me to be meaningful, it must be in principle possible for me to
accumulate evidence or justification that would guarantee the existence of the
table, which would make it impossible for the table not to exist. Even this
statement of the view is ambiguous, however, for the impossibility of error
could be interpreted as logical or conceptual, or something much weaker, say,
causal. Either way, extreme verificationism seems vulnerable to objections.
Universal statements, such as ‘All metal expands when heated’, are meaningful,
but it is doubtful that any observations could ever conclusively verify them.
One might modify the criterion to include as meaningful only statements that
can be either conclusively confirmed or conclusively disconfirmed. It is
doubtful, however, that even ordinary statements about the physical world
satisfy the extreme positivist insistence that they admit of conclusive
verification or falsification. If the evidence we have for believing what we do
about the physical world consists of knowledge of fleeting and subjective
sensation, the possibility of hallucination or deception by a malevolent,
powerful being seems to preclude the possibility of any finite sequence of
sensations conclusively establishing the existence or absence of a physical object.
logical paradoxes logical positivism 514 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page
514 Faced with these difficulties, at least some positivists retreated to a
more modest form of verificationism which insisted only that if a proposition
is to be meaningful it must be possible to find evidence or justification that
bears on the likelihood of the proposition’s being true. It is, of course, much
more difficult to find counterexamples to this weaker form of verificationism,
but by the same token it is more difficult to see how the principle will do the
work the positivists hoped it would do of weeding out allegedly problematic
assertions. Necessary truth. Another central tenet of logical positivism is
that all meaningful statements fall into two categories: necessary truths that
are analytic and knowable a priori, and contingent truths that are synthetic
and knowable only a posteriori. If a meaningful statement is not a contingent,
empirical statement verifiable through experience, then it is either a formal tautology
or is analytic, i.e., reducible to a formal tautology through substitution of
synonymous expressions. According to the positivist, tautologies and analytic
truths that do not describe the world are made true (if true) or false (if
false) by some fact about the rules of language. ‘P or not-P’ is made true by
rules we have for the use of the connectives ‘or’ and ‘not’ and for the
assignments of the predicates ‘true’ and ‘false’. Again there are notorious
problems for logical positivism. It is difficult to reduce the following
apparently necessary truths to formal tautologies through the substitution of
synonymous expressions: (1) Everything that is blue (all over) is not red (all
over). (2) All equilateral triangles are equiangular triangles. (3) No proposition
is both true and false. Ironically, the positivists had a great deal of trouble
categorizing the very theses that defined their view, such as the claims about
meaningfulness and verifiability and the claims about the analytic–synthetic
distinction. Reductionism. Most of the logical positivists were committed to a
foundationalist epistemology according to which all justified belief rests
ultimately on beliefs that are non-inferentially justified. These
non-inferentially justified beliefs were sometimes described as basic, and the
truths known in such manner were often referred to as self-evident, or as
protocol statements. Partly because the positivists disagreed as to how to
understand the notion of a basic belief or a protocol statement, and even disagreed
as to what would be good examples, positivism was by no means a monolithic
movement. Still, the verifiability criterion of meaning, together with certain
beliefs about where the foundations of justification lie and beliefs about what
constitutes legitimate reasoning, drove many positivists to embrace extreme
forms of reductionism. Briefly, most of them implicitly recognized only
deduction and (reluctantly) induction as legitimate modes of reasoning. Given
such a view, difficult epistemological gaps arise between available evidence
and the commonsense conclusions we want to reach about the world around us. The
problem was particularly acute for empiricists who recognized as genuine
empirical foundations only propositions describing perceptions or subjective
sensations. Such philosophers faced an enormous difficulty explaining how what
we know about sensations could confirm for us assertions about an objective
physical world. Clearly we cannot deduce any truths about the physical world
from what we know about sensations (remember the possibility of hallucination).
Nor does it seem that we could inductively establish sensation as evidence for
the existence of the physical world when all we have to rely on ultimately is
our awareness of sensations. Faced with the possibility that all of our
commonplace assertions about the physical world might fail the verifiability
test for meaningfulness, many of the positivists took the bold step of arguing
that statements about the physical world could really be viewed as reducible to
(equivalent in meaning to) very complicated statements about sensations.
Phenomenalists, as these philosophers were called, thought that asserting that
a given table exists is equivalent in meaning to a complex assertion about what
sensations or sequences of sensations a subject would have were he to have
certain other sensations. The gap between sensation and the physical world is
just one of the epistemic gaps threatening the meaningfulness of commonplace
assertions about the world. If all we know about the mental states of others is
inferred from their physical behavior, we must still explain how such inference
is justified. Thus logical positivists who took protocol statements to include
ordinary assertions about the physical world were comfortable reducing talk
about the mental states of others to talk about their behavior; this is logical
behaviorism. Even some of those positivists who thought empirical propositions
had to be reduced ultimately to talk about sensations were prepared to translate
talk about the mental states of others into talk about their behavior, which,
ironically, would in turn get translated right back into talk about sensation.
logical positivism logical positivism 515 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page
515 Many of the positivists were primarily concerned with the hypotheses of
theoretical physics, which seemed to go far beyond anything that could be
observed. In the context of philosophy of science, some positivists seemed to
take as unproblematic ordinary statements about the macrophysical world but
were still determined either to reduce theoretical statements in science to
complex statements about the observable world, or to view theoretical entities
as a kind of convenient fiction, description of which lacks any literal
truth-value. The limits of a positivist’s willingness to embrace reductionism
are tested, however, when he comes to grips with knowledge of the past. It
seems that propositions describing memory experiences (if such “experiences”
really exist) do not entail any truths about the past, nor does it seem
possible to establish memory inductively as a reliable indicator of the past.
(How could one establish the past correlations without relying on memory?) The
truly hard-core reductionists actually toyed with the possibility of reducing
talk about the past to talk about the present and future, but it is perhaps an
understatement to suggest that at this point the plausibility of the
reductionist program was severely strained.
See also
ANALYTIC–SYNTHETIC DISTINCTION, BEHAVIORISM, EMPIRICISM, FOUNDATIONALISM,
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, VERIFICATIONISM, VIENNA CIRCLE. R.A.F. logical
predicate. See LOGICAL SUBJECT. logical priority. See DEPENDENCE. logical
probability. See PROBABILITY. logical product, a conjunction of propositions or
predicates. The term ‘product’ derives from an analogy that conjunction bears
to arithmetic multiplication, and that appears very explicitly in an algebraic
logic such as a Boolean algebra. In the same way, ‘logical sum’ usually means the
disjunction of propositions or predicates, and the term ‘sum’ derives from an
analogy that disjunction bears with arithmetic addition. In the logical
literature of the nineteenth century, e.g. in the works of Peirce, ‘logical
product’ and ‘logical sum’ often refer to the relative product and relative
sum, respectively. In the work of George Boole, ‘logical sum’ indicates an
operation that corresponds not to disjunction but rather to the exclusive ‘or’.
The use of ‘logical sum’ in its contemporary sense was introduced by John Venn
and then adopted and promulgated by Peirce. ‘Relative product’ was introduced
by Augustus De Morgan and also adopted and promulgated by Peirce. R.W.B.
logical reconstruction. See RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION. logical subject, in Aristotelian
and traditional logic, the common noun, or sometimes the intension or the
extension of the common noun, that follows the initial quantifier word
(‘every’, ‘some’, ‘no’, etc.) of a sentence, as opposed to the grammatical
subject, which is the entire noun phrase including the quantifier and the noun,
and in some usages, any modifiers that may apply. The grammatical subject of
‘Every number exceeding zero is positive’ is ‘every number’, or in some usages,
‘every number exceeding zero’, whereas the logical subject is ‘number’, or the
intension or the extension of ‘number’. Similar distinctions are made between
the logical predicate and the grammatical predicate: in the above example, ‘is
positive’ is the grammatical predicate, whereas the logical predicate is the
adjective ‘positive’, or sometimes the property of being positive or even the
extension of the word ‘positive’. In standard first-order logic the logical
subject of a sentence under a given interpretation is the entire universe of
discourse of the interpretation.
See also GRAMMAR, LOGICAL
FORM, SUBJECT, UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE. J.Cor. logical sum. See LOGICAL PRODUCT.
logical syntax, description of the forms of the expressions of a language in
virtue of which the expressions stand in logical relations to one another.
Implicit in the idea of logical syntax is the assumption that all – or at least
most – logical relations hold in virtue of form: e.g., that ‘If snow is white,
then snow has color’ and ‘Snow is white’ jointly entail ‘Snow has color’ in virtue
of their respective forms, ‘If P, then Q’, ‘P’, and ‘Q’. The form assigned to
an expression in logical syntax is its logical form. Logical form may not be
immediately apparent from the surface form of an expression. Both (1) ‘Every
individual is physical’ and (2) ‘Some individual is physical’ apparently share
the subjectpredicate form. But this surface form is not the form in virtue of
which these sentences (or the propositions they might be said to express) stand
in logical relations to other sentences (or propositions), for if it were, (1)
and (2) would have the same logical relations to all sentences (or propological
predicate logical syntax 516 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 516 sitions),
but they do not; (1) and (3) ‘Aristotle is an individual’ jointly entail (4)
‘Aristotle is physical’, whereas (2) and (3) do not jointly entail (4). So (1)
and (2) differ in logical form. The contemporary logical syntax, devised
largely by Frege, assigns very different logical forms to (1) and (2), namely: ‘For
every x, if x is an individual, then x is physical’ and ‘For some x, x is an
individual and x is physical’, respectively. Another example: (5) ‘The
satellite of the moon has water’ seems to entail ‘There is at least one thing
that orbits the moon’ and ‘There is no more than one thing that orbits the
moon’. In view of this, Russell assigned to (5) the logical form ‘For some x, x
orbits the moon, and for every y, if y orbits the moon, then y is identical
with x, and for every y, if y orbits the moon, then y has water’. See also
GRAMMAR, LOGICAL FORM, THEORY OF DESCRIPTIONS. T.Y. logical system.
See FORMAL SEMANTICS,
LOGISTIC SYSTEM. logical table of judgments. See KANT. logical truth,
linguistic theory of. See CONVENTIONALISM. logicism, the thesis that mathematics,
or at least some significant portion thereof, is part of logic. Modifying
Carnap’s suggestion (in “The Logicist Foundation for Mathematics,” first
published in Erkenntnis, 1931), this thesis is the conjunction of two theses:
expressibility logicism: mathematical propositions are (or are alternative
expressions of) purely logical propositions; and derivational logicism: the
axioms and theorems of mathematics can be derived from pure logic. Here is a
motivating example from the arithmetic of the natural numbers. Let the
cardinality-quantifiers be those expressible in the form ‘there are exactly . .
. many xs such that’, which we abbreviate ¢(. . . x),Ü with ‘. . .’ replaced by
an Arabic numeral. These quantifiers are expressible with the resources of
first-order logic with identity; e.g. ‘(2x)Px’ is equivalent to ‘DxDy(x&y
& Ez[Pz S (z%x 7 z%y)])’, the latter involving no numerals or other
specifically mathematical vocabulary. Now 2 ! 3 % 5 is surely a mathematical
truth. We might take it to express the following: if we take two things and
then another three things we have five things, which is a validity of
second-order logic involving no mathematical vocabulary: EXEY ([(2x) Xx &
(3x)Yx & ÝDx(Xx & Yx)] / (5x) (Xx 7 Yx)). Furthermore, this is provable
in any formalized fragment of second-order logic that includes all of
first-order logic with identity and secondorder ‘E’-introduction. But what
counts as logic? As a derivation? As a derivation from pure logic? Such
unclarities keep alive the issue of whether some version or modification of
logicism is true. The “classical” presentations of logicism were Frege’s
Grundgesetze der Arithmetik and Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica.
Frege took logic to be a formalized fragment of secondorder logic supplemented
by an operator forming singular terms from “incomplete” expressions, such a
term standing for an extension of the “incomplete” expression standing for a
concept of level 1 (i.e. type 1). Axiom 5 of Grundgesetze served as a
comprehension-axiom implying the existence of extensions for arbitrary Fregean
concepts of level 1. In his famous letter of 1901 Russell showed that axiom to
be inconsistent, thus derailing Frege’s original program. Russell and Whitehead
took logic to be a formalized fragment of a ramified full finite-order (i.e.
type w) logic, with higher-order variables ranging over appropriate
propositional functions. The Principia and their other writings left the latter
notion somewhat obscure. As a defense of expressibility logicism, Principia had
this peculiarity: it postulated typical ambiguity where naive mathematics
seemed unambiguous; e.g., each type had its own system of natural numbers two
types up. As a defense of derivational logicism, Principia was flawed by virtue
of its reliance on three axioms, a version of the Axiom of Choice, and the
axioms of Reducibility and Infinity, whose truth was controversial.
Reducibility could be avoided by eliminating the ramification of the logic (as
suggested by Ramsey). But even then, even the arithmetic of the natural numbers
required use of Infinity, which in effect asserted that there are infinitely
many individuals (i.e., entities of type 0). Though Infinity was “purely
logical,” i.e., contained only logical expressions, in his Introduction to
Mathematical Philosophy (p. 141) Russell admits that it “cannot be asserted by
logic to be true.” Russell then (pp. 194–95) forgets this: “If there are still
those who do not admit the identity of logic and mathematics, we may challenge
them to indicate at what point in the successive definitions and deductions of
Principia Mathematica they consider that logic ends and mathematics begins. It
will then be obvious that any answer is arbitrary.” The answer, “Section 120,
in which Infinity is first assumed!,” is not arbitrary. In Principia Russell
and Whitehead logical system logicism 517 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page
517 say of Infinity that they “prefer to keep it as a hypothesis” (Vol. 2, p.
203). Perhaps then they did not really take logicism to assert the above
identity, but rather a correspondence: to each sentence f of mathematics there
corresponds a conditional sentence of logic whose antecedent is the Axiom of
Infinity and whose consequent is a purely logical reformulation of f. In spite
of the problems with the “classical” versions of logicism, if we count
so-called higherorder (at least second-order) logic as logic, and if we
reformulate the thesis to read ‘Each area of mathematics is, or is part of, a
logic’, logicism remains alive and well.
logistic system, a formal
language together with a set of axioms and rules of inference, or what many
today would call a “logic.” The original idea behind the notion of a logistic
system was that the language, axioms, rules, and attendant concepts of proof and
theorem were to be specified in a mathematically precise fashion, thus enabling
one to make the study of deductive reasoning an exact science. One was to begin
with an effective specification of the primitive symbols of the language and of
which (finite) sequences of symbols were to count as sentences or wellformed
formulas. Next, certain sentences were to be singled out effectively as axioms.
The rules of inference were also to be given in such a manner that there would
be an effective procedure for telling which rules are rules of the system and
what inferences they license. A proof was then defined as any finite sequence
of sentences, each of which is either an axiom or follows from some earlier
line(s) by one of the rules, with a theorem being the last line of a proof.
With the subsequent development of logic, the requirement of effectiveness has
sometimes been dropped, as has the requirement that sentences and proofs be
finite in length. See also ALGORITHM, INFINITARY LOGIC, PROOF THEORY. G.F.S.
logocentric. See DECONSTRUCTION. logoi. See DECONSTRUCTION, LOGOS.
logos(plural: logoi) (Greek, ‘word’, ‘speech’, ‘reason’), term with the
following main philosophical senses. (1) Rule, principle, law. E.g., in
Stoicism the logos is the divine order and in Neoplatonism the intelligible
regulating forces displayed in the sensible world. The term came thus to refer,
in Christianity, to the Word of God, to the instantiation of his agency in
creation, and, in the New Testament, to the person of Christ. (2) Proposition,
account, explanation, thesis, argument. E.g., Aristotle presents a logos from
first principles. (3) Reason, reasoning, the rational faculty, abstract theory
(as opposed to experience), discursive reasoning (as opposed to intuition).
E.g., Plato’s Republic uses the term to refer to the intellectual part of the
soul. (4) Measure, relation, proportion, ratio. E.g., Aristotle speaks of the
logoi of the musical scales. (5) Value, worth. E.g., Heraclitus speaks of the
man whose logos is greater than that of others. R.C. Lombard, Peter. See PETER
LOMBARD. Longinus (late first century A.D.), Greek literary critic, author of a
treatise On the Sublime (Peri hypsous). The work is ascribed to “Dionysius or
Longinus” in the manuscript and is now tentatively dated to the end of the
first century A.D. The author argues for five sources of sublimity in
literature: (a) grandeur of thought and (b) deep emotion, both products of the
writer’s “nature”; (c) figures of speech, (d) nobility and originality in word
use, and (e) rhythm and euphony in diction, products of technical artistry. The
passage on emotion is missing from the text. The treatise, with Aristotelian
but enthusiastic spirit, throws light on the emotional effect of many great
passages of Greek literature; noteworthy are its comments on Homer (ch. 9). Its
nostalgic plea for an almost romantic independence and greatness of character
and imagination in the poet and orator in an age of dictatorial government and
somnolent peace is unique and memorable. See also AESTHETICS, ARISTOTLE. D.Ar.
loop, closed. See CYBERNETICS. loop, open.
See CYBERNETICS. lottery
paradox, a paradox involving two plausible assumptions about justification
which yield the conclusion that a fully rational thinker may justifiably
believe a pair of contradictory propositions. The unattractiveness of this
conclusion has led philosophers to deny one or the other of the assumptions in
question. The paradox, which is due to Henry Kyburg, is generated as follows.
Suppose I am contemplating a fair lotlogic of discovery lottery paradox 518
4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 518 tery involving n tickets (for some
suitably large n), and I justifiably believe that exactly one ticket will win.
Assume that if the probability of p, relative to one’s evidence, meets some
given high threshold less than 1, then one has justification for believing that
p (and not merely justification for believing that p is highly probable). This
is sometimes called a rule of detachment for inductive hypotheses. Then
supposing that the number n of tickets is large enough, the rule implies that I
have justification for believing (T1) that the first ticket will lose (since
the probability of T1 (% (n † 1)/n) will exceed the given high threshold if n
is large enough). By similar reasoning, I will also have justification for
believing (T2) that the second ticket will lose, and similarly for each
remaining ticket. Assume that if one has justification for believing that p and
justification for believing that q, then one has justification for believing
that p and q. This is a consequence of what is sometimes called “deductive
closure for justification,” according to which one has justification for
believing the deductive consequences of what one justifiably believes. Closure,
then, implies that I have justification for believing that T1 and T2 and . . .
Tn. But this conjunctive proposition is equivalent to the proposition that no
ticket will win, and we began with the assumption that I have justification for
believing that exactly one ticket will win. See also CLOSURE, JUSTIFICATION.
A.B. Lotze, Rudolf Hermann (1817–81), German philosopher and influential
representative of post-Hegelian German metaphysics. Lotze was born in Bautzen
and studied medicine, mathematics, physics, and philosophy at Leipzig, where he
became instructor, first in medicine and later in philosophy. His early views,
expressed in his Metaphysik (1841) and Logik (1843), were influenced by C. H.
Weisse, a former student of Hegel’s. He succeeded J. F. Herbart as professor of
philosophy at Göttingen, where he served from 1844 until shortly before his
death. Between 1856 and 1864, he published, in three volumes, his best-known
work, Mikrocosmus. Logik (1874) and Metaphysik (1879) were published as the
first two parts of his unfinished three-volume System der Philosophie. While
Lotze shared the metaphysical and systematic appetites of his German idealist
predecessors, he rejected their intellectualism, favoring an emphasis on the
primacy of feeling; believed that metaphysics must fully respect the methods,
results, and “mechanistic” assumptions of the empirical sciences; and saw
philosophy as the never completed attempt to raise and resolve questions
arising from the inevitable pluralism of methods and interests involved in
science, ethics, and the arts. A strong personalism is manifested in his
assertion that feeling discloses to us a relation to a personal deity and its
teleological workings in nature. His most enduring influences can be traced, in
America, through Royce, Santayana, B. P. Bowne, and James, and, in England,
through Bosanquet and Bradley.
See also IDEALISM,
PERSONALISM. J.P.Su. love, ethics of. See DIVINE COMMAND ETHICS.
Löwenheim-Skolem theorem, the result that for any set of sentences of standard
predicate logic, if there is any interpretation in which they are all true,
there there is also an interpretation whose domain consists of natural numbers
and in which they are all true. Leopold Löwenheim proved in 1915 that for
finite sets of sentences of standard predicate logic, if there is any
interpretation in which they are true, there is also an interpretation that
makes them true and where the domain is a subset of the domain of the first
interpretation, and the new domain can be mapped one-to-one onto a set of natural
numbers. Löwenheim’s proof contained some gaps and made essential but implicit
use of the axiom of choice, a principle of set theory whose truth was, and is,
a matter of debate. In fact, the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem is equivalent to the
axiom of choice. Thoralf Skolem, in 1920, gave a more detailed proof that made
explicit the appeal to the axiom of choice and that extended the scope of the
theorem to include infinite sets of sentences. In 1922 he gave an essentially
different proof that did not depend on the axiom of choice and in which the
domain consisted of natural numbers rather than being of the same size as a set
of natural numbers. In most contemporary texts, Skolem’s result is proved by
methods later devised by Gödel, Herbrand, or Henkin for proving other results.
If the language does not include an identity predicate, then Skolem’s result is
that the second domain consists of the entire set of natural numbers; if the
language includes an identity predicate, then the second domain may be a proper
subset of the natural numbers. (See van Heijenoort, From Frege to Gödel: A
Source Book in Mathematical Logic 1879–1931, 1967, for translations of the
original papers.) The original results were of interest because they showed
that in many cases unexpected interpretations with smaller infinite domains
Lotze, Rudolf Hermann Löwenheim-Skolem theorem 519 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40
AM Page 519 than those of the initially given interpretation could be
constructed. It was later shown – and this is the Upward Löwenheim-Skolem
theorem – that interpretations with larger domains could also be constructed
that rendered true the same set of sentences. Hence the theorem as stated
initially is sometimes referred to as the Downward Löwenheim-Skolem theorem.
The theorem was surprising because it was believed that certain sets of axioms
characterized domains, such as the continuum of real numbers, that were larger
than the set of natural numbers. This surprise is called Skolem’s paradox, but
it is to be emphasized that this is a philosophical puzzle rather than a formal
contradiction. Two main lines of response to the paradox developed early. The
realist, who believes that the continuum exists independently of our knowledge
or description of it, takes the theorem to show either that the full truth
about the structure of the continuum is ineffable or at least that means other
than standard first-order predicate logic are required. The constructivist, who
believes that the continuum is in some sense our creation, takes the theorem to
show that size comparisons among infinite sets is not an absolute matter, but
relative to the particular descriptions given. Both positions have received
various more sophisticated formulations that differ in details, but they remain
the two main lines of development.
Lucretius (99 or 94–55
B.C.), Roman poet, author of On the Nature of Things (De rerum natura), an epic
poem in six books. Lucretius’s emphasis, as an orthodox Epicurean, is on the
role of even the most technical aspects of physics and philosophy in helping to
attain emotional peace and dismiss the terrors of popular religion. Each book
studies some aspect of the school’s theories, while purporting to offer
elementary instruction to its addressee, Memmius. Each begins with an
ornamental proem and ends with a passage of heightened emotional impact; the
argumentation is adorned with illustrations from personal observation,
frequently of the contemporary Roman and Italian scene. Book 1 demonstrates
that nothing exists but an infinity of atoms moving in an infinity of void.
Opening with a proem on the love of Venus and Mars (an allegory of the Roman
peace), it ends with an image of Epicurus as conqueror, throwing the javelin of
war outside the finite universe of the geocentric astronomers. Book 2 proves
the mortality of all finite worlds; Book 3, after proving the mortality of the
human soul, ends with a hymn on the theme that there is nothing to feel or fear
in death. The discussion of sensation and thought in Book 4 leads to a diatribe
against the torments of sexual desire. The shape and contents of the visible
world are discussed in Book 5, which ends with an account of the origins of
civilization. Book 6, about the forces that govern meteorological, seismic, and
related phenomena, ends with a frightening picture of the plague of 429 B.C. at
Athens. The unexpectedly gloomy end suggests the poem is incomplete (also the
absence of two great Epicurean themes, friendship and the gods). See also
EPICUREANISM. D.Ar. Lu Hsiang-shan (1139–93), Chinese Neo-Confucian philosopher,
an opponent of Chu Hsi’s metaphysics. For Lu the mind is quite sufficient for
realizing the Confucian vision of the unity and harmony of man and nature
(t’ien-jen ho-i). While Chu Hsi focused on “following the path of study and
inquiry,” Lu stressed “honoring the moral nature (of humans).” Lu is a sort of
metaphysical idealist, as evident in his statement, “The affairs of the
universe are my own affairs,” and in his attitude toward the Confucian
classics: “If in our study we know the fundamentals, then all the Six Classics
[the Book of Odes, Book of History, Book of Rites, Book of Changes, the
Chou-li, and the Spring and Autumn Annals] are my footnotes.” The realization
of Confucian vision is ultimately a matter of self-realization, anticipating a
key feature of Wang Yang-ming’s philosophy.
Lukács, Georg
(1885–1971), Hungarian Marxist philosopher best known for his History and Class
Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (1923). In 1918 he joined the
Hungarian Communist Party and for much of the remainder of his career had a
controversial relationship with it. For several months in 1919 he was People’s
Commissar for Education in Béla Kun’s government, until he fled to Vienna and
later moved to Berlin. In 1933 he fled Hitler and moved to Moscow, remaining
there until the end of World War II, when he returned to Budapest as a
university professor. In 1956 he was Minister of Culture in Imre Nagy’s
short-lived government. This led to lower functional calculus Lukacs, Georg 520
4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 520 a brief exile in Rumania. In his later
years he returned to teaching in Budapest and was much celebrated by the
Hungarian government. His Collected Works are forthcoming in both German and
Hungarian. He is equally celebrated for his literary criticism and his
reconstruction of the young Marx’s thought. For convenience his work is often
divided into three periods: the pre-Marxist, the Stalinist, and the
post-Stalinist. What unifies these periods and remains constant in his work are
the problems of dialectics and the concept of totality. He stressed the Marxist
claim of the possibility of a dialectical unity of subject and object. This was
to be obtained through the proletariat’s realization of itself and the
concomitant destruction of economic alienation in society, with the
understanding that truth was a still-to-be-realized totality. (In the
post–World War II period this theme was taken up by the Yugoslavian praxis
theorists.) The young neo-Kantian Lukács presented an aesthetics stressing the
subjectivity of human experience and the emptiness of social experience. This
led several French philosophers to claim that he was the first major
existentialist of the twentieth century; he strongly denied it. Later he
asserted that realism is the only correct way to understand literary criticism,
arguing that since humanity is at the core of any social discussion, form
depends on content and the content of politics is central to all historical
social interpretations of literature. Historically Lukács’s greatest claim to
fame within Marxist circles came from his realization that Marx’s materialist
theory of history and the resultant domination of the economic could be fully
understood only if it allowed for both necessity and species freedom. In
History and Class Consciousness he stressed Marx’s debt to Hegelian dialectics
years before the discovery of Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of
1844. Lukács stresses his Hegelian Marxism as the correct orthodox version over
and against the established Engels-inspired Soviet version of a dialectics of
nature. His claim to be returning to Marx’s methodology emphasizes the primacy
of the concept of totality. It is through Marx’s use of the dialectic that
capitalist society can be seen as essentially reified and the proletariat
viewed as the true subject of history and the only possible salvation of
humanity. All truth is to be seen in relation to the proletariat’s historical
mission. Marx’s materialist conception of history itself must be examined in
light of proletarian knowledge. Truth is no longer given but must be understood
in terms of relative moments in the process of the unfolding of the real union
of theory and praxis: the totality of social relations. This union is not to be
realized as some statistical understanding, but rather grasped through
proletarian consciousness and directed party action in which subject and object
are one. (Karl Mannheim included a modified version of this theory of
social-historical relativism in his work on the sociology of knowledge.) In
Europe and America this led to Western Marxism. In Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union it led to condemnation. If both the known and the knower are
moments of the same thing, then there is a two-directional dialectical
relationship, and Marxism cannot be understood from Engels’s one-way movement
of the dialectic of nature. The Communist attack on Lukács was so extreme that
he felt it necessary to write an apologetic essay on Lenin’s established views.
In The Young Hegel: Studies in the Relations between Dialectics and Economics
(1938), Lukács modified his views but still stressed the dialectical
commonality of Hegel and Marx. In Lukács’s last years he unsuccessfully tried
to develop a comprehensive ethical theory. The positive result was over two
thousand pages of a preliminary study on social ontology.
.
Lukasiewicz, Jan
(1878–1956), Polish philosopher and logician, the most renowned member of the
Warsaw School. The work for which he is best known is the discovery of
many-valued logics, but he also invented bracket-free Polish notation; obtained
original consistency, completeness, independence, and axiom-shortening results
for sentential calculi; rescued Stoic logic from the misinterpretation and
incomprehension of earlier historians and restored it to its rightful place as
the first formulation of the theory of deduction; and finally incorporated
Aristotle’s syllogisms, both assertoric and modal, into a deductive system in
his work Aristotle’s Syllogistic from the Standpoint of Modern Formal Logic.
Reflection on Aristotle’s discussion of future contingency in On Interpretation
led Lukasiewicz in 1918 to posit a third truth-value, possible, in addition to
true and false, and to construct a formal three-valued logic. Where in his
notation Cpq denotes ‘if p then q’, Np ‘not p’, Apq ‘either p or q’, and Kpq
‘both p and q’, the system is defined by the following matrices (½ is the third
truthvalue): Lukasiewicz, Jan Lukasiewicz, Jan 521 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40
AM Page 521 Apq is defined as CCpqq, and Kpq as NANpNq. The system was
axiomatized by Wajsberg in 1931. Lukasiewicz’s motivation in constructing a
formal system of three-valued logic was to break the grip of the idea of
universal determinism on the imagination of philosophers and scientists. For
him, there was causal determinism (shortly to be undermined by quantum theory),
but there was also logical determinism, which in accordance with the principle
of bivalence decreed that the statement that J.L. would be in Warsaw at noon on
December 21 next year was either true or false now, and indeed had been either
true or false for all time. In three-valued logic this statement would take the
value ½, thus avoiding any apparent threat to free will posed by the law of
bivalence.
Lull, Raymond, also
spelled Raymond Lully, Ramon Llull (c.1232–1316), Catalan Christian mystic and
missionary. A polemicist against Islam, a social novelist, and a constructor of
schemes for international unification, Lull is best known in the history of
philosophy for his quasialgebraic or combinatorial treatment of metaphysical
principles. His logic of divine and creaturely attributes is set forth first in
an Ars compendiosa inveniendi veritatem (1274), next in an Ars demonstrativa
(1283–89), then in reworkings of both of these and in the Tree of Knowledge,
and finally in the Ars brevis and the Ars generalis ultima (1309–16). Each of
these contains tables and diagrams that permit the reader to calculate the
interactions of the various principles. Although his dates place him in the
period of mature Scholasticism, the vernacular language and the Islamic or
Judaic construction of Lull’s works relegate him to the margin of Scholastic
debates. His influence is to be sought rather in late medieval and Renaissance
cabalistic or hermetic traditions.
Lü-shih ch’un-ch’iu, a
Chinese anthology of late Warring States (403–221 B.C.) philosophical writings.
It was compiled by a patron, Lü Pu-wei, who became chancellor of the state of
Ch’in in about 240 B.C. As the earliest example of the encyclopedic genre, and
often associated with the later Huai Nan Tzu, it includes the full spectrum of
philosophical schools, and covers topics from competing positions on human
nature to contemporary farming procedures. An important feature of this work is
its development of correlative yin–yang and five-phases vocabulary for
organizing the natural and human processes of the world, positing relations
among the various seasons, celestial bodies, tastes, smells, materials, colors,
geographical directions, and so on.
Luther, Martin
(1483–1546), German religious reformer and leader of the Protestant
Reformation. He was an Augustinian friar and unsystematic theologian from
Saxony, schooled in nominalism (Ockham, Biel, Staupitz) and trained in biblical
languages. Luther initially taught philosophy and subsequently Scripture
(Romans, Galatians, Hebrews) at Wittenberg University. His career as a church
reformer began with his public denunciation, in the 95 theses, of the sale of
indulgences in October 1517. Luther produced three incendiary tracts: Appeal to
the Nobility, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and The Freedom of a
Christian Man (1520), which prompted his excommunication. At the 1521 Diet of
Worms he claimed: “I am bound by the Scripture I have quoted and my conscience
is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything since it
is neither safe nor right to go against my conscience. Here I stand, may God
help me.” Despite his modernist stance on the primacy of conscience over tradition,
the reformer broke with Erasmus over free will (De servo Arbitrio, 1525),
championing an Augustinian, antihumanist position. His crowning achievement,
the translation of the Bible into German (1534/45), shaped the modern German
language. On the strength of a biblical-Christocentric, anti-philosophical
theology, he proclaimed justification by faith alone and the priesthood of all
believers. He unfolded a theologia crucis, reformed the Mass, acknowledged only
two sacraments (baptism and the Eucharist), advocated consubstantiation instead
of transubstantiation, and propounded the Two Kingdoms theory in church–state
relations.
Lyceum, (1) an extensive
ancient sanctuary of Apollo just east of Athens, the site of public athletic
facilities where Aristotle taught during the last decade of his life; (2) a
center for philosophy and systematic research in science and history organized
there by Aristotle and his associates; it began as an informal group and lacked
any legal status until Theophrastus, Aristotle’s colleague and principal heir,
acquired land and buildings there c.315 B.C. By a principle of metonymy common
in philosophy (cf. ‘Academy’, ‘Oxford’, ‘Vienna’), the name ‘Lyceum’ came to
refer collectively to members of the school and their methods and ideas,
although the school remained relatively non-doctrinaire. Another ancient label
for adherents of the school and their ideas, apparently derived from
Aristotle’s habit of lecturing in a portico (peripatos) at the Lyceum, is
‘Peripatetic’. The school had its heyday in its first decades, when members
included Eudemus, author of lost histories of mathematics; Aristoxenus, a
prolific writer, principally on music (large parts of two treatises survive);
Dicaearchus, a polymath who ranged from ethics and politics to psychology and
geography; Meno, who compiled a history of medicine; and Demetrius of Phaleron,
a dashing intellect who wrote extensively and ruled Athens on behalf of foreign
dynasts from 317 to 307. Under Theophrastus and his successor Strato, the school
produced original work, especially in natural science. But by the midthird
century B.C., the Lyceum had lost its initial vigor. To judge from meager
evidence, it offered sound education but few new ideas; some members enjoyed
political influence, but for nearly two centuries, rigorous theorizing was
displaced by intellectual history and popular moralizing. In the first century
B.C., the school enjoyed a modest renaissance when Andronicus oversaw the first
methodical edition of Aristotle’s works and began the exegetical tradition that
culminated in the monumental commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. A.D.
200). .
Lyotard, Jean-François
(1924–98), French philosopher, a leading representative of the movement known
in the English-speaking world as post-structuralism. Among major
post-structuralist theorists (Gilles Deleuze [1925–97], Derrida, Foucault),
Lyotard is most closely associated with postmodernism. With roots in
phenomenology (a student of Merleau-Ponty, his first book, Phenomenology [1954],
engages phenomenology’s history and engages phenomenology with history) and
Marxism (in the 1960s Lyotard was associated with the Marxist group Socialisme
ou Barbarie, founded by Cornelius Castoriadis [1922–97] and Claude Lefort
[b.1924]), Lyotard’s work has centered on questions of art, language, and
politics. His first major work, Discours, figure (1971), expressed
dissatisfaction with structuralism and, more generally, any theoretical
approach that sought to escape history through appeal to a timeless, universal
structure of language divorced from our experiences. Libidinal Economy (1974)
reflects the passion and enthusiasm of the events of May 1968 along with a
disappointment with the Marxist response to those events. The Postmodern
Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979), an occasional text written at the
request of the Quebec government, catapulted Lyotard to the forefront of
critical debate. Here he introduced his definition of the postmodern as
“incredulity toward metanarratives”: the postmodern names not a specific epoch
but an antifoundationalist attitude that exceeds the legitimating orthodoxy of
the moment. Postmodernity, then, resides constantly at the heart of the modern,
challenging those totalizing and comprehensive master narratives (e.g., the
Enlightenment narrative of the emancipation of the rational subject) that serve
to legitimate its practices. Lyotard suggests we replace these narratives by
less ambitious, “little narratives” that refrain from totalizing claims in
favor of recognizing the specificity and singularity of events. Many, including
Lyotard, regard The Differend (1983) as his most original and important work.
Drawing on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and Kant’s Critique of
Judgment, it reflects on how to make judgments (political as well as aesthetic)
where there is no rule of judgment to which one can appeal. This is the
différend, a dispute between (at least) two parties in which the parties
operate within radically heterogeneous language games so incommensurate that no
consensus can be reached on principles or rules that could govern how their
dispute might be settled. In contrast to litigations, where disputing parties
share a language with rules of judgment to consult to resolve their dispute,
différends defy resolution (an example might be the conflicting Lyceum Lyotard,
Jean-François 523 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 523 claims to land rights
by aboriginal peoples and current residents). At best, we can express
différends by posing the dispute in a way that avoids delegitimating either
party’s claim. In other words, our political task, if we are to be just, is to
phrase the dispute in a way that respects the difference between the competing
claims. In the years following The Differend, Lyotard published several works
on aesthetics, politics, and postmodernism; the most important may well be his
reading of Kant’s third Critique in Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime
(1991).
McCosh, James (1811–94),
Scottish philosopher, a common sense realist who attempted to reconcile
Christianity with evolution. A prolific writer, McCosh was a pastor in Scotland
and a professor at Queen’s College, Belfast, before becoming president of the
College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). In The Intuitions of the Mind
(1860) he argued that while acts of intelligence begin with immediate knowledge
of the self or of external objects, they also exhibit intuitions in the
spontaneous formation of self-evident convictions about objects. In opposition
to Kant and Hamilton, McCosh treated intuitions not as forms imposed by minds
on objects, but as inductively ascertainable rules that minds follow in forming
convictions after perceiving objects. In his Examination of Mr. J. S. Mill’s
Philosophy (1866) McCosh criticized Mill for denying the existence of
intuitions while assuming their operation. In The Religious Aspects of
Evolution (1885) McCosh defended the design argument by equating Darwin’s
chance variations with supernatural design. J.W.A. McDougall, William
(1871–1938), British and American (after 1920) psychologist. He was probably
the first to define psychology as the science of behavior (Physiological
Psychology, 1905; Psychology: The Science of Behavior, 1912) and he invented
hormic (purposive) psychology. By the early twentieth century, as psychology
strove to become scientific, purpose had become a suspect concept, but
following Stout, McDougall argued that organisms possess an “intrinsic power of
self-determination,” making goal seeking the essential and defining feature of
behavior. In opposition to mechanistic and intellectualistic psychologies,
McDougall, again following Stout, proposed that innate instincts (later,
propensities) directly or indirectly motivate all behavior (Introduction to
Social Psychology, 1908). Unlike more familiar psychoanalytic instincts,
however, many of McDougall’s instincts were social in nature (e.g.
gregariousness, deference). Moreover, McDougall never regarded a person as
merely an assemblage of unconnected and quarreling motives, since people are
“integrated unities” guided by one supreme motive around which others are
organized. McDougall’s stress on behavior’s inherent purposiveness influenced
the behaviorist E. C. Tolman, but was otherwise roundly rejected by more
mechanistic behaviorists and empiricistically inclined sociologists. In his
later years, McDougall moved farther from mainstream thought by championing
Lamarckism and sponsoring research in parapsychology. Active in social causes,
McDougall was an advocate of eugenics (Is America Safe for Democracy?, 1921).
Mach, Ernst(1838–1916),
Austrian physicist and influential philosopher of science. He was born in
Turas, Moravia, now part of the Czech Republic, and studied physics at the
University of Vienna. Appointed professor of mathematics at Graz in 1864, he
moved in 1867 to the chair of physics at Prague, where he came to be recognized
as one of the leading scientists in Europe, contributing not only to a variety
of fields of physics (optics, electricity, mechanics, acoustics) but also to
the new field of psychophysics, particularly in the field of perception. He
returned to Vienna in 1895 to a chair in philosophy, designated for a new
academic discipline, the history and theory of inductive science. His writings
on the philosophy of science profoundly affected the founders of the Vienna
Circle, leading Mach to be regarded as a progenitor of logical positivism. His
best-known work, The Science of Mechanics (1883), epitomized the main themes of
his philosophy. He set out to extract the logical structure of mechanics from
an examination of its history and procedures. Mechanics fulfills the human need
to abridge the facts about motion in the most economical way. It rests on
“sensations” (akin to the “ideas” or “sense impressions” of classical empiricism);
indeed, the world may be said to consist of sensations (a thesis that later led
Lenin in a famous polemic to accuse Mach of idealism). Mechanics is inductive,
not demonstrative; it has no a priori element of any sort. The divisions
between the sciences must be recognized to be arbitrary, a matter of
convenience only. The sciences must be regarded as descriptive, not as
explanatory. Theories may appear to explain, but the underlying entities they
postulate, like atoms, for example, are no more than aids to prediction. To
suppose them to represent 525 M 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:41 AM Page 525 reality
would be metaphysical and therefore idle. Mach’s most enduring legacy to
philosophy is his enduring suspicion of anything “metaphysical.”
Machiavelli, Niccolò -- the
Italian political theorist commonly considered the most influential political
thinker of the Renaissance. Born in Florence, he was educated in the civic
humanist tradition. From 1498 to 1512, he was secretary to the second chancery
of the republic of Florence, with responsibilities for foreign affairs and the
revival of the domestic civic militia. His duties involved numerous diplomatic
missions both in and outside Italy. With the fall of the republic in 1512, he
was dismissed by the returning Medici regime. From 1513 to 1527 he lived in
enforced retirement, relieved by writing and occasional appointment to minor
posts. Machaivelli’s writings fall into two genetically connected categories:
chancery writings (reports, memoranda, diplomatic writings) and formal books,
the chief among them The Prince (1513), the Discourses (1517), the Art of War
(1520), Florentine Histories (1525), and the comic drama Mandragola (1518).
With Machiavelli a new vision emerges of politics as autonomous activity leading
to the creation of free and powerful states. This vision derives its norms from
what humans do rather than from what they ought to do. As a result, the problem
of evil arises as a central issue: the political actor reserves the right “to
enter into evil when necessitated.” The requirement of classical, medieval, and
civic humanist political philosophies that politics must be practiced within
the bounds of virtue is met by redefining the meaning of virtue itself.
Machiavellian virtù is the ability to achieve “effective truth” regardless of
moral, philosophical, and theological restraints. He recognizes two limits on
virtù: (1) fortuna, understood as either chance or as a goddess symbolizing the
alleged causal powers of the heavenly bodies; and (2) the agent’s own
temperament, bodily humors, and the quality of the times. Thus, a premodern
astrological cosmology and the anthropology and cyclical theory of history
derived from it underlie his political philosophy. History is seen as the
conjoint product of human activity and the alleged activity of the heavens,
understood as the “general cause” of all human motions in the sublunar world.
There is no room here for the sovereignty of the Good, nor the ruling Mind, nor
Providence. Kingdoms, republics, and religions follow a naturalistic pattern of
birth, growth, and decline. But, depending on the outcome of the struggle
between virtù and fortuna, there is the possibility of political renewal; and
Machiavelli saw himself as the philosopher of political renewal. Historically,
Machiavelli’s philosophy came to be identified with Machiavellianism (also
spelled Machiavellism), the doctrine that the reason of state recognizes no
moral superior and that, in its pursuit, everything is permitted. Although
Machiavelli himself does not use the phrase ‘reason of state’, his principles
have been and continue to be invoked in its defense.
MacIntyre, Alasdair
(b.1929), Scots philosopher and eminent contemporary representative of
Aristotelian ethics. He was born in Scotland, educated in England, and has
taught at universities in both England and (mainly) the United States. His
early work included perceptive critical discussions of Marx and Freud as well
as his influential A Short History of Ethics. His most discussed work, however,
has been After Virtue (1981), an analysis and critique of modern ethical views
from the standpoint of an Aristotelian virtue ethics. MacIntyre begins with the
striking unresolvability of modern ethical disagreements, which he diagnoses as
due to a lack of any shared substantive conception of the ethical good. This
lack is itself due to the modern denial of a human nature that would provide a
meaning and goal for human life. In the wake of the Enlightenment, MacIntyre
maintains, human beings are regarded as merely atomistic individuals, employing
a purely formal reason to seek fulfillment of their contingent desires. Modern
moral theory tries to derive moral values from this conception of human
reality. Utilitarians start from desires, arguing that they must be fulfilled
in such a way as to provide the greatest happiness (utility). Kantians start
from reason, arguing that our commitment to rationality requires recognizing
the rights of others to the same goods that we desire for ourselves. MacIntyre,
however, mainMachiavelli, Niccolò MacIntyre, Alasdair 526 4065m-r.qxd
08/02/1999 7:41 AM Page 526 tains that the modern notions of utility and of
rights are fictions: there is no way to argue from individual desires to an
interest in making others happy or to inviolable rights of all persons. He
concludes that Enlightenment liberalism cannot construct a coherent ethics and
that therefore our only alternatives are to accept a Nietzschean reduction of
morality to will-to-power or to return to an Aristotelian ethics grounded in a
substantive conception of human nature. MacIntyre’s positive philosophical
project is to formulate and defend an Aristotelian ethics of the virtues (based
particularly on the thought of Aquinas), where virtues are understood as the
moral qualities needed to fulfill the potential of human nature. His aim is not
the mere revival of Aristotelian thought but a reformulation and, in some
cases, revision of that thought in light of its history over the last 2,500
years. MacIntyre pays particular attention to formulating concepts of practice
(communal action directed toward a intrinsic good), virtue (a habit needed to
engage successfully in a practice), and tradition (a historically extended
community in which practices relevant to the fulfillment of human nature can be
carried out). His conception of tradition is particularly noteworthy. His an
effort to provide Aristotelianism with a historical orientation that Aristotle
himself never countenanced; and, in contrast to Burke, it makes tradition the locus
of rational reflection on and revision of past practices, rather than a merely
emotional attachment to them. MacIntyre has also devoted considerable attention
to the problem of rationally adjudicating the claims of rival traditions
(especially in Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 1988) and to making the case
for the Aristotelian tradition as opposed to that of the Enlightenment and that
of Nietzscheanism (especially in Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry, 1990).
McTaggart, John McTaggart
Ellis (1866–1925), English philosopher, the leading British personal idealist.
Aside from his childhood and two extended visits to New Zealand, McTaggart
lived in Cambridge as a student and fellow of Trinity College. His influence on
others at Trinity, including Russell and Moore, was at times great, but he had
no permanent disciples. He began formulating and defending his views by
critically examining Hegel. In Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic (1896) he
argued that Hegel’s dialectic is valid but subjective, since the Absolute Idea
Hegel used it to derive contains nothing corresponding to the dialectic. In
Studies in Hegelian Cosmology (1901) he applied the dialectic to such topics as
sin, punishment, God, and immortality. In his Commentary on Hegel’s Logic
(1910) he concluded that the task of philosophy is to rethink the nature of
reality using a method resembling Hegel’s dialectic. McTaggart attempted to do
this in his major work, The Nature of Existence (two volumes, 1921 and 1927).
In the first volume he tried to deduce the nature of reality from self-evident
truths using only two empirical premises, that something exists and that it has
parts. He argued that substances exist, that they are related to each other,
that they have an infinite number of substances as parts, and that each
substance has a sufficient description, one that applies only to it and not to
any other substance. He then claimed that these conclusions are inconsistent
unless the sufficient descriptions of substances entail the descriptions of their
parts, a situation that requires substances to stand to their parts in the
relation he called determining correspondence. In the second volume he applied
these results to the empirical world, arguing that matter is unreal, since its
parts cannot be determined by determining correspondence. In the most
celebrated part of his philosophy, he argued that time is unreal by claiming
that time presupposes a series of positions, each having the incompatible
qualities of past, present, and future. He thought that attempts to remove the
incompatibility generate a vicious infinite regress. From these and other
considerations he concluded that selves are real, since their parts can be
determined by determining correspondence, and that reality is a community of
eternal, perceiving selves. He denied that there is an inclusive self or God in
this community, but he affirmed that love between the selves unites the
community producing a satisfaction beyond human understanding.
Madhva (1238–1317),
Indian philosopher who founded Dvaita Vedanta. His major works are the
Brahma-Sutra-Bhafya (his commentary, competitive with Shankara’s and
Ramanuja’s, on the Brahma-Sutras of Badarayana); the Gita-Bhafya and
Gitatatparya (commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita); the Anu-Vyakhyana (an extension
of the Brahma-Sutra-Bhafya including a general critique of Advaita Vedanta);
the Pramapa Laksana, an account of his epistemology; and the TattvaSajkhyana, a
presentation of his ontology. He distinguishes between an independent Brahman
and a dependent world of persons and bodies and holds that each person has a
distinct individual essence.
Madhyamika (Sanskrit,
‘middle way’), a variety of Mahayana Buddhism that is a middle way in the sense
that it neither claims that nothing at all exists nor does it embrace the view
that there is a plurality of distinct things. It embraces the position in the
debate about the nature of things that holds that all things are “empty.”
Madhyamika offers an account of why the Buddha rejected the question of whether
the enlightened one survives death, saying that none of the four answers
(affirmative, negative, affirmative and negative, neither affirmative nor
negative) applies. The typically Buddhist doctrine of codependent arising
asserts that everything that exists depends for its existence on something
else; nothing (nirvana aside) at any time does or can exist on its own. From
this doctrine, together with the view that if A cannot exist independent of B,
A cannot be an individual distinct from B, Madhyamika concludes that in
offering causal descriptions (or spatial or temporal descriptions) we assume
that we can distinguish between individual items. If everything exists
dependently, and nothing that exists dependently is an individual, there are no
individuals. Thus we cannot distinguish between individual items. Hence the
assumption on which we offer causal (or spatial or temporal) descriptions is
false, and thus those descriptions are radically defective. Madhyamika then
adds the doctrine of an ineffable ultimate reality hidden behind our ordinary
experience and descriptions and accessible only in esoteric enlightenment
experience. The Buddha rejected all four answers because the question is raised
in a context that assumes individuation among items of ordinary experience, and
since that assumption is false, all of the answers are misleading; each answer
assumes a distinction between the enlightened one and other things. The
Madhyamika seems, then, to hold that to be real is to exist independently; the
apparent objects of ordinary experience are sunya (empty, void); they lack any
essence or character of their own. As such, they are only apparently knowable,
and the real is seamless. Critics (e.g., Yogacara Mahayana Buddhist
philosophers) deny that this view is coherent, or even that there is any view
here at all. In one sense, the Madhyamika philosopher Nagarjuna himself denies
that there is any position taken, maintaining that his critical arguments are
simply reductions to absurdity of views that his opponents hold and that he has
no view of his own. Still, it seems clear in Nagarjuna’s writings, and plain in
the tradition that follows him, that there is supposed to be something the
realization of which is essential to becoming enlightened, and the Madhyamika
philosopher must walk the (perhaps non-existent) line between saying two
things: first, that final truth concerns an ineffable reality and that this
itself is not a view, and second, that this represents what the Buddha taught
and hence is something different both from other Buddhist perspectives that
offer a mistaken account of the Buddha’s message and from nonBuddhist
alternatives.
magnitude, extent or size
of a thing with respect to some attribute; technically, a quantity or
dimension. A quantity is an attribute that admits of several or an infinite
number of degrees, in contrast to a quality (e.g., triangularity), which an
object either has or does not have. Measurement is assignment of numbers to
objects in such a way that these numbers correspond to the degree or amount of
some quantity possessed by their objects. The theory of measurement
investigates the conditions for, and uniqueness of, such numerical assignments.
Let D be a domain of objects (e.g., a set of physical bodies) and L be a
relation on this domain; i.e., Lab may mean that if a and b are put on opposite
pans of a balance, the pan with a does not rest lower than the other pan. Let ;
be the operation of weighing two objects together in the same pan of a balance.
We then have an empirical relational system E % ‹ D, L, ; (. One can prove
that, if E satisfies specified conditions, then there exists a measurement
function mapping D to a set Num of real numbers, in such a way that the L and ;
relations between objects in D correspond to the m and ! relations between
their numerical values. Such an existence theorem for a measurement function
from an empirical relational system E to a numerical relational system, N % ‹
Num, m ! (, is called a representation theorem. Measurement functions are not
unique, but a uniqueness theorem characterizes all such functions for a
specified kind of empirical relational system and specified type of numerical
image. For example, suppose that for any measurement functions f, g for E there
exists real number a ( 0 such that for any x in D, f(x) % ag(x). Then it is
said that the measurement is on a ratio scale, and the function s(x) % ax, for
x in the real numbers, is the scale transformation. For some empirical systems,
one can prove that any two measurement functions are related by f % ag ! b,
where a ( 0 and b are real numbers. Then the measurement is on an interval
scale, with the scale transformation s(x) % ax ! b; e.g., measurement of
temperature without an absolute zero is on an interval scale. In addition to
ratio and interval scales, other scale types are defined in terms of various
scale transformations; many relational systems have been mathematically
analyzed for possible applications in the behavioral sciences. Measurement with
weak scale types may provide only an ordering of the objects, so quantitative
measurement and comparative orderings can be treated by the same general
methods. The older literature on measurement often distinguishes extensive from
intensive magnitudes. In the former case, there is supposed to be an empirical
operation (like ; above) that in some sense directly corresponds to addition on
numbers. An intensive magnitude supposedly has no such empirical operation. It
is sometimes claimed that genuine quantities must be extensive, whereas an
intensive magnitude is a quality. This extensive versus intensive distinction
(and its use in distinguishing quantities from qualities) is imprecise and has
been supplanted by the theory of scale types sketched above.
Mahavira, title (‘Great
Hero’) of Vardhamana Jnatrputra (sixth century B.C.), Indian religious leader
who founded Jainism. He is viewed within Jainism as the twenty-fourth and most
recent of a series of Tirthankaras or religious “ford-makers” and conquerors
(over ignorance) and as the establisher of the Jain community. His
enlightenment is described in the Jaina Sutras as involving release of his
inherently immortal soul from reincarnation and karma and as including his
omniscience. According to Jaina tradition, Vardhamana Jnatrputra was born into
a warrior class and at age thirty became a wandering ascetic seeking
enlightenment, which he achieved at age forty-two. See also JAINISM. K.E.Y.
Mahayana Buddhism. See BUDDHISM. maieutic. See SOCRATES. Maimon, Salomon
(1753–1800), Lithuanianborn German Jewish philosopher who became the friend and
protégé of Moses Mendelssohn and was an acute early critic and follower of
Kant. His most important works were the Versuch über die
Transzendentalphilosophie. Mit einem Anhang über die symbolische Erkenntnis
(“Essay on Transcendental Philosophy. With an Appendix on Symbolic Cognition,”
1790), the Philosophisches Wörterbuch (“Philosophical Dictionary,” 1791) and
the Versuch einer neuen Logik oder Theorie des Denkens (“Attempt at a New Logic
or Theory of Thought,” 1794). Maimon argued against the “thing-in-itself” as it
was conceived by Karl Leonhard Reinhold and Gottlieb Ernst Schulze. For Maimon,
the thing-in-itself was merely a limiting concept, not a real object “behind”
the phenomena. While he thought that Kant’s system was sufficient as a
refutation of rationalism or “dogmatism,” he did not think that it had – or
could – successfully dispose of skepticism. Indeed, he advanced what can be
called a skeptical interpretation of Kant. On the other hand, he also argued
against Kant’s sharp distinction between sensibility and understanding and for
the necessity of assuming the idea of an “infinite mind.” In this way, he
prepared the way for Fichte and Hegel. However, in many ways his own theory is
more similar to that of the neoKantian Hermann Cohen.
Maimonides, Latinized
name of Moses ben Maimon (1135–1204), Spanish-born Jewish philosopher,
physician, and jurist. Born in Córdova, Maimonides and his family fled the
forced conversions of the Almohad invasion in 1148, living anonymously in Fez
before finding refuge in 1165 in Cairo. There Maimonides served as physician to
the vizier of Saladin, who overthrew the Fatimid dynasty in 1171. He wrote ten
medical treatises, but three works secured his position among the greatest rabbinic
jurists: his Book of the Commandments, cataloguing the 613 biblical laws; his
Commentary on the Mishnah, expounding the rational purposes of the ancient
rabbinic code; and the fourteen-volume Mishneh Torah, a codification of
Talmudic law that retains almost canonical authority. His Arabic philosophic
masterpiece The Guide to the Perplexed mediates between the Scriptural and
philosophic idioms, deriving a sophisticated negative theology by subtly
decoding biblical anthropomorphisms. It defends divine creation against
al-Farabi’s and Avicenna’s eternalism, while rejecting efforts to demonstrate
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apodictically. The radical occasionalism of Arabic dialectical theology (kalam)
that results from such attempts, Maimonides argues, renders nature
unintelligible and divine governance irrational: if God creates each particular
event, natural causes are otiose, and much of creation is in vain. But
Aristotle, who taught us the very principles of demonstration, well understood,
as his resort to persuasive language reveals, that his arguments for eternity
were not demonstrative. They project, metaphysically, an analysis of time,
matter, and potentiality as they are now and ignore the possibility that at its
origin a thing had a very different nature. We could allegorize biblical
creation if it were demonstrated to be false. But since it is not, we argue
that creation is more plausible conceptually and preferable theologically to
its alternative: more plausible, because a free creative act allows
differentiation of the world’s multiplicity from divine simplicity, as the
seemingly mechanical necessitation of emanation, strictly construed, cannot do;
preferable, because Avicennan claims that God is author of the world and
determiner of its contingency are undercut by the assertion that at no time was
nature other than it is now. Maimonides read the biblical commandments
thematically, as serving to inform human character and understanding. He
followed al-Farabi’s Platonizing reading of Scripture as a symbolic elaboration
of themes best known to the philosopher. Thus he argued that prophets learn
nothing new from revelation; the ignorant remain ignorant, but the gift of
imagination in the wise, if they are disciplined by the moral virtues,
especially courage and contentment, gives wing to ideas, rendering them
accessible to the masses and setting them into practice. In principle, any
philosopher of character and imagination might be a prophet; but in practice
the legislative, ethical, and mythopoeic imagination that serves philosophy
finds fullest articulation in one tradition. Its highest phase, where
imagination yields to pure intellectual communion, was unique to Moses,
elaborated in Judaism and its daughter religions. Maimonides’ philosophy was
pivotal for later Jewish thinkers, highly valued by Aquinas and other
Scholastics, studied by Spinoza in Hebrew translation, and annotated by Leibniz
in Buxtorf’s 1629 rendering, Doctor Perplexorum.
Malcolm, Norman
(1911–90), American philosopher who was a prominent figure in post– World War
II analytic philosophy and perhaps the foremost American interpreter and
advocate of Wittgenstein. His association with Wittgenstein (vividly described
in his Ludwig Wittgenstein, A Memoir, 1958) began when he was a student at
Cambridge (1938–40). Other influences were Bouwsma, Malcolm’s undergraduate
teacher at the University of Nebraska, and Moore, whom he knew at Cambridge.
Malcolm taught for over thirty years at Cornell, and after his retirement in
1978 was associated with King’s College, London. Malcolm’s earliest papers
(e.g., “The Verification Argument,” 1950, and “Knowledge and Belief,” 1952)
dealt with issues of knowledge and skepticism, and two dealt with Moore. “Moore
and Ordinary Language” (1942) interpreted Moore’s defense of common sense as a
defense of ordinary language, but “Defending Common Sense” (1949) argued that
Moore’s “two hands” proof of the external world involved a misuse of ‘know’.
Moore’s proof was the topic of extended discussions between Malcolm and
Wittgenstein during the latter’s 1949 visit in Ithaca, New York, and these
provided the stimulus for Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. Malcolm’s
“Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations” (1954) was a highly influential
discussion of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, and especially of his “private
language argument.” Two other works of that period were Malcolm’s Dreaming
(1958), which argued that dreams do not have genuine duration or temporal
location, and do not entail having genuine experiences, and “Anselm’s
Ontological Arguments” (1960), which defended a version of the ontological
argument. Malcolm wrote extensively on memory, first in his “Three Lectures on
Memory,” published in his Knowledge and Certainty (1963), and then in his
Memory and Mind (1976). In the latter he criticized both philosophical and
psychological theories of memory, and argued that the notion of a memory trace
“is not a scientific discovery . . . [but] a product of philosophical thinking,
of a sort that is natural and enormously tempting, yet thoroughly muddled.” A
recurrent theme in Malcolm’s thought was that philosophical understanding
requires getting to the root of the temptations to advance some philosophical
doctrine, and that once we do so we will see the philosophical doctrines as
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Page 530 confused or nonsensical. Although he was convinced that dualism and
other Cartesian views about the mind were thoroughly confused, he thought no
better of contemporary materialist and functionalist views, and of current
theorizing in psychology and linguistics (one paper is entitled “The Myth of
Cognitive Processes and Structures”). He shared with Wittgenstein both an antipathy
to scientism and a respect for religion. He shared with Moore an antipathy to
obscurantism and a respect for common sense. Malcolm’s last published book,
Nothing Is Hidden (1986), examines the relations between Wittgenstein’s earlier
and later philosophies. His other books include Problems of Mind (1971),
Thought and Knowledge (1977), and Consciousness and Causality (1984), the
latter coauthored with Armstrong. His writings are marked by an exceptionally
lucid, direct, and vivid style.
Malebranche, Nicolas
(1638–1715), French philosopher and theologian, an important but unorthodox
proponent of Cartesian philosophy. Malebranche was a priest of the Oratory, a
religious order founded in 1611 by Cardinal Bérulle, who was favorably inclined
toward Descartes. Malebranche himself became a Cartesian after reading
Descartes’s physiological Treatise on Man in 1664, although he ultimately
introduced crucial modifications into Cartesian ontology, epistemology, and
physics. Malebranche’s most important philosophical work is The Search After
Truth (1674), in which he presents his two most famous doctrines: the vision in
God and occasionalism. He agrees with Descartes and other philosophers that
ideas, or immaterial representations present to the mind, play an essential
role in knowledge and perception. But whereas Descartes’s ideas are mental
entities, or modifications of the soul, Malebranche argues that the ideas that
function in human cognition are in God – they just are the essences and ideal
archetypes that exist in the divine understanding. As such, they are eternal
and independent of finite minds, and make possible the clear and distinct
apprehension of objective, neccessary truth. Malebranche presents the vision in
God as the proper Augustinian view, albeit modified in the light of Descartes’s
epistemological distinction between understanding and sensation. The theory
explains both our apprehension of universals and mathematical and moral
principles, as well as the conceptual element that, he argues, necessarily
informs our perceptual acquaintance with the world. Like Descartes’s theory of
ideas, Malebranche’s doctrine is at least partly motivated by an
antiskepticism, since God’s ideas cannot fail to reveal either eternal truths
or the essences of things in the world created by God. The vision in God,
however, quickly became the object of criticism by Locke, Arnauld, Foucher, and
others, who thought it led to a visionary and skeptical idealism, with the mind
forever enclosed by a veil of divine ideas. Malebranche is also the best-known
proponent of occasionalism, the doctrine that finite created beings have no
causal efficacy and that God alone is a true causal agent. Starting from
Cartesian premises about matter, motion, and causation – according to which the
essence of body consists in extension alone, motion is a mode of body, and a
causal relation is a logically necessary relation between cause and effect –
Malebranche argues that bodies and minds cannot be genuine causes of either
physical events or mental states. Extended bodies, he claims, are essentially
inert and passive, and thus cannot possess any motive force or power to cause
and sustain motion. Moreover, there is no necessary connection between any
mental state (e.g. a volition) or physical event and the bodily motions that
usually follow it. Such necessity is found only between the will of an
omnipotent being and its effects. Thus, all phenomena are directly and
immediately brought about by God, although he always acts in a lawlike way and
on the proper occasion. Malebranche’s theory of ideas and his occasionalism, as
presented in the Search and the later Dialogues on Metaphysics (1688), were
influential in the development of Berkeley’s thought; and his arguments for the
causal theory foreshadow many of the considerations regarding causation and
induction later presented by Hume. In addition to these innovations in
Cartesian metaphysics and epistemology, Malebranche also modified elements of
Descartes’s physics, most notably in his account of the hardness of bodies and
of the laws of motion. In his other major work, the Treatise on Nature and
Grace (1680), Malebranche presents a theodicy, an explanation of how God’s
wisdom, goodness, and power are to be reconciled with the apparent
imperfections and evils in the world. In his account, elements of which Leibniz
borrows, Malebranche claims that God could have created a more perfect world,
one without the defects that plague this world, but that this would have
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Page 531 involved greater complexity in the divine ways. God always acts in the
simplest way possible, and only by means of lawlike general volitions; God
never acts by “particular” or ad hoc volitions. But this means that while on
any particular occasion God could intervene and forestall an apparent evil that
is about to occur by the ordinary courses of the laws of nature (e.g. a
drought), God would not do so, for this would compromise the simplicity of
God’s means. The perfection or goodness of the world per se is thus relativized
to the simplicity of the laws of that world (or, which is the same thing, to
the generality of the divine volitions that, on the occasionalist view, govern
it). Taken together, the laws and the phenomena of the world form a whole that
is most worthy of God’s nature – in fact, the best combination possible.
Malebranche then extends this analysis to explain the apparent injustice in the
distribution of grace among humankind. It is just this extension that initiated
Arnauld’s attack and drew Malebranche into a long philosophical and theological
debate that would last until the end of the century.
Manichaeanism, also
Manichaeism, a syncretistic religion founded by the Babylonian prophet Mani
(A.D. 216–77), who claimed a revelation from God and saw himself as a member of
a line that included the Buddha, Zoroaster, and Jesus. In dramatic myths,
Manichaeanism posited the good kingdom of God, associated with light, and the
evil kingdom of Satan, associated with darkness. Awareness of light caused
greed, hate, and envy in the darkness; this provoked an attack of darkness on
light. In response the Father sent Primal Man, who lost the fight so that light
and darkness were mixed. The Primal Man appealed for help, and the Living
Spirit came to win a battle, making heaven and earth out of the corpses of
darkness and freeing some capured light. A Third Messenger was sent; in
response the power of darkness created Adam and Eve, who contained the light
that still remained under his sway. Then Jesus was sent to a still innocent
Adam who nonetheless sinned, setting in motion the reproductive series that
yields humanity. This is the mythological background to the Manichaean account
of the basic religious problem: the human soul is a bit of captured light, and
the problem is to free the soul from darkness through asceticism and esoteric
knowledge. Manichaeanism denies that Jesus was crucified, and Augustine,
himself a sometime Manichaean, viewed the religion as a Docetic heresy that
denies the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity in a real human
body. The religion exhibits the pattern of escape from embodiment as a
condition of salvation, also seen in Hinduism and Buddhism.
Mannheim, Karl
(1893–1947), Hungarian-born German social scientist best known for his
sociology of knowledge. Born in Budapest, where he took a university degree in
philosophy, he settled in Heidelberg in 1919 as a private scholar until his
call to Frankfurt as professor of sociology in 1928. Suspended as a Jew and as
foreign-born by the Nazis in 1933, he accepted an invitation from the London
School of Economics, where he was a lecturer for a decade. In 1943, Mannheim
became the first professor of sociology of education at the University of London,
a position he held until his death. Trained in the Hegelian tradition, Mannheim
defies easy categorization: his mature politics became those of a liberal
committed to social planning; with his many studies in the sociology of
culture, of political ideologies, of social organization, of education, and of
knowledge, among others, he founded several subdisciplines in sociology and
political science. While his Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (1940)
expressed his own commitment to social planning, his most famous work, Ideology
and Utopia (original German edition, 1929; revised English edition, 1936),
established sociology of knowledge as a scientific enterprise and
simultaneously cast doubt on the possibility of the very scientific knowledge
on which social planning was to proceed. As developed by Mannheim, sociology of
knowledge attempts to find the social causes of beliefs as contrasted with the
reasons people have for them. Mannheim seemed to believe that this
investigation both presupposes and demonstrates the impossibility of
“objective” knowledge of society, a theme that relates sociology of knowledge
to its roots in German philosophy and social theory (especially Marxism) and
earlier in the thought of the idéologues of the immediate post–French
Revolution decades. L.A.
Mansel, Henry Longueville
(1820–71), British philosopher and clergyman, a prominent defender of Scottish
common sense philosophy. Mansel was a professor of philosophy and
ecclesiastical history at Oxford, and the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Much of
his philosophy was derived from Kant as interpreted by Hamilton. In Prolegomena
Logica (1851) he defined logic as the science of the laws of thought, while in
Metaphysics(1860) he argued that human faculties are not suited to know the ultimate
nature of things. He drew the religious implications of these views in his most
influential work, The Limits of Religious Thought (1858), by arguing that God
is rationally inconceivable and that the only available conception of God is an
analogical one derived from revelation. From this he concluded that religious
dogma is immune from rational criticism. In the ensuing controversy Mansel was
criticized by Spenser, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95), and J. S. Mill.
many-valued logic, a
logic that rejects the principle of bivalence: every proposition is true or
false. However, there are two forms of rejection: the truth-functional mode
(many-valued logic proper), where propositions may take many values beyond
simple truth and falsity, values functionally determined by the values of their
components; and the truth-value gap mode, in which the only values are truth
and falsity, but propositions may have neither. What value they do or do not
have is not determined by the values or lack of values of their constituents.
Many-valued logic has its origins in the work of Lukasiewicz and
(independently) Post around 1920, in the first development of truth tables and
semantic methods. Lukasiewicz’s philosophical motivation for his three-valued
calculus was to deal with propositions whose truth-value was open or “possible”
– e.g., propositions about the future. He proposed they might take a third
value. Let 1 represent truth, 0 falsity, and the third value be, say, ½. We
take Ý (not) and P (implication) as primitive, letting v(ÝA) % 1 † v(A) and v(A
P B) % min(1,1 † v(A)!v(B)). These valuations may be displayed: Lukasiewicz
generalized the idea in 1922, to allow first any finite number of values, and
finally infinitely, even continuum-many values (between 0 and 1). One can then
no longer represent the functionality by a matrix; however, the formulas given
above can still be applied. Wajsberg axiomatized Lukasiewicz’s calculus in
1931. In 1953 Lukasiewicz published a four-valued extensional modal logic. In
1921, Post presented an m-valued calculus, with values 0 (truth), . . . , m † 1
(falsity), and matrices defined on Ý and v (or): v(ÝA) % 1 ! v(A) (modulo m)
and v(AvB) % min (v(A),v(B)). Translating this for comparison into the same
framework as above, we obtain the matrices (with 1 for truth and 0 for
falsity): The strange cyclic character of Ý makes Post’s system difficult to
interpret – though he did give one in terms of sequences of classical
propositions. A different motivation led to a system with three values developed
by Bochvar in 1939, namely, to find a solution to the logical paradoxes.
(Lukasiewicz had noted that his three-valued system was free of antinomies.)
The third value is indeterminate (so arguably Bochvar’s system is actually one
of gaps), and any combination of values one of which is indeterminate is
indeterminate; otherwise, on the determinate values, the matrices are
classical. Thus we obtain for Ý and P, using 1, ½, and 0 as above: In order to
develop a logic of many values, one needs to characterize the notion of a
thesis, or logical truth. The standard way to do this in manyvalued logic is to
separate the values into designated and undesignated. Effectively, this is to
reintroduce bivalence, now in the form: Every proposition is either designated or
undesignated. Thus in Lukasiewicz’s scheme, 1 (truth) is the only designated
value; in Post’s, any initial segment 0, . . . , n † 1, where n‹m (0 as truth).
In general, one can think of the various designated values as types of truth,
or ways a proposition may be true, and the undesignated ones as ways it can be
false. Then a proposition is a thesis if and only if it takes only designated
values. For example, p P p is, but p 7 Ýp is not, a Lukasiewicz thesis.
However, certain matrices may generate no logical truths by this method, e.g.,
the Bochvar matrices give ½ for every formula any of whose variables is
indeterminate. If both 1 and ½ were designated, all theses of classical logic
would be theses; if only 1, no theses result. So the distinction from classical
logic is lost. Bochvar’s solution was to add an external assertion and
negation. But this in turn runs the risk of undercutting the whole
philosophical motivation, if the external negation is used in a Russell-type
paradox. One alternative is to concentrate on consequence: A is a consequence
of a set of formulas X if for every assignment of values either no member of X
is designated or A is. Bochvar’s consequence relation (with only 1 designated)
results from restricting classical consequence so that every variable in A
occurs in some member of X. There is little technical difficulty in extending
many-valued logic to the logic of predicates and quantifiers. For example, in
Lukasiewicz’s logic, v(E xA) % min {v(A(a/x)): a 1. D}, where D is, say, some set
of constants whose assignments exhaust the domain. This interprets the
universal quantifier as an “infinite” conjunction. In 1965, Zadeh introduced
the idea of fuzzy sets, whose membership relation allows indeterminacies: it is
a function into the unit interval [0,1], where 1 means definitely in, 0
definitely out. One philosophical application is to the sorites paradox, that
of the heap. Instead of insisting that there be a sharp cutoff in number of
grains between a heap and a non-heap, or between red and, say, yellow, one can
introduce a spectrum of indeterminacy, as definite applications of a concept
shade off into less clear ones. Nonetheless, many have found the idea of
assigning further definite values, beyond truth and falsity, unintuitive, and
have instead looked to develop a scheme that encompasses truthvalue gaps. One
application of this idea is found in Kleene’s strong and weak matrices of 1938.
Kleene’s motivation was to develop a logic of partial functions. For certain
arguments, these give no definite value; but the function may later be extended
so that in such cases a definite value is given. Kleene’s constraint,
therefore, was that the matrices be regular: no combination is given a definite
value that might later be changed; moreover, on the definite values the
matrices must be classical. The weak matrices are as for Bochvar. The strong
matrices yield (1 for truth, 0 for falsity, and u for indeterminacy): An
alternative approach to truth-value gaps was presented by Bas van Fraassen in
the 1960s. Suppose v(A) is undefined if v(B) is undefined for any subformula B
of A. Let a classical extension of a truth-value assignment v be any assignment
that matches v on 0 and 1 and assigns either 0 or 1 whenever v assigns no
value. Then we can define a supervaluation w over v: w(A) % 1 if the value of A
on all classical extensions of v is 1, 0 if it is 0 and undefined otherwise. A
is valid if w(A) % 1 for all supervaluations w (over arbitrary valuations). By
this method, excluded middle, e.g., comes out valid, since it takes 1 in all
classical extensions of any partial valuation. Van Fraassen presented several
applications of the supervaluation technique. One is to free logic, logic in
which empty terms are admitted.
Mao Tse-tung (1893–1976),
Chinese Communist leader, founder of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. He
believed that Marxist ideas must be adapted to China. Contrary to the Marxist
orthodoxy, which emphasized workers, Mao organized peasants in the countryside.
His philosophical writings include On Practice (1937) and On Contradiction
(1937), synthesizing dialectical materialism and traditional Chinese
philosophy. In his later years he departed from the gradual strategy of his On
New Democracy (1940) and adopted increasingly radical means to change China.
Finally he started the Cultural Revolution in 1967 and plunged China into
disaster.
Marcel, Gabriel
(1889–1973), French philosopher and playwright, a major representative of
French existential thought. He was a member of the Academy of Political and
Social Science of the Institute of France. Musician, drama critic, and lecturer
of international renown, he authored thirty plays and as many philosophic
essays. He considered his principal contribution to be that of a
philosopher-dramatist. Together, his dramatic and philosophic works cut a path
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the reasoned exercise of freedom to enhance the dignity of human life. The
conflicts and challenges of his own life he brought to the light of the
theater; his philosophic works followed as efforts to discern critically through
rigorous, reasoned analyses the alternative options life offers. His dramatic
masterpiece, The Broken World, compassionately portrayed the devastating sense
of emptiness, superficial activities, and fractured relationships that plague
the modern era. This play cleared a way for Marcel to transcend
nineteenth-century British and German idealism, articulate his distinction
between problem and mystery, and evolve an existential approach that
reflectively clarified mysteries that can provide depth and meaningfulness to
human life. In the essay “On the Ontological Mystery,” a philosophic sequel to
The Broken World, Marcel confronted the questions “Who am I? – Is Being empty
or full?” He explored the regions of body or incarnate being,
intersubjectivity, and transcendence. His research focused principally on
intersubjectivity clarifying the requisite attitudes and essential
characteristics of I-Thou encounters, interpersonal relations, commitment and
creative fidelity – notions he also developed in Homo Viator (1945) and
Creative Fidelity (1940). Marcel’s thought balanced despair and hope,
infidelity and fidelity, self-deception and a spirit of truth. He recognized
both the role of freedom and the role of fundamental attitudes or
prephilosophic dispositions, as these influence one’s way of being and the
interpretation of life’s meaning. Concern for the presence of loved ones who
have died appears in both Marcel’s dramatic and philosophic works, notably in
Presence and Immortality. This concern, coupled with his reflections on
intersubjectivity, led him to explore how a human subject can experience the
presence of God or the presence of loved ones from beyond death. Through
personal experience, dramatic imagination, and philosophic investigation, he
discovered that such presence can be experienced principally by way of
inwardness and depth. “Presence” is a spiritual influx that profoundly affects
one’s being, uplifting it and enriching one’s personal resources. While it does
depend on a person’s being open and permeable, presence is not something that
the person can summon forth. A conferral or presence is always a gratuitous
gift, coauthored and marked by its signal benefit, an incitement to create. So
Marcel’s reflection on interpersonal communion enabled him to conceive
philosophically how God can be present to a person as a life-giving and
personalizing force whose benefit is always an incitement to create.
Marcus, Ruth Barcan
(b.1921), American philosopher best known for her seminal work in philosophical
logic. In 1946 she published the first systematic treatment of quantified modal
logic, thereby turning aside Quine’s famous attack on the coherence of
combining quantifiers with alethic operators. She later extended the
first-order formalization to second order with identity (1947) and to modalized
set theory (1963). Marcus’s writings in logic either inaugurated or brought to
the fore many issues that have loomed large in subsequent philosophical
theorizing. Of particular significance are the Barcan formula (1946), the
theorem about the necessity of identity (1963), a flexible notion of
extensionality (1960, 1961), and the view that ordinary proper names are
contentless directly referential tags (1961). This last laid the groundwork for
the theory of direct reference later advanced by Kripke, Keith Donnellan, David
Kaplan, and others. No less a revolutionary in moral theory, Marcus undermined
the entire structure of standard deontic logic in her paper on iterated deontic
modalities (1966). She later (1980) argued against some theorists that moral
dilemmas are real, and against others that moral dilemmas need neither derive
from inconsistent rules nor imply moral anti-realism. In her series of papers
on belief (1981, 1983, 1990), Marcus repudiates theories that identify beliefs
with attitudes to linguistic or quasi-linguistic items. She argues instead that
for an agent A to believe that p is for A to be disposed to behave as if p
obtains (where p is a possible state of affairs). Her analysis mobilizes a
conception of rational agents as seeking to maintain global coherence among the
verbal and non-verbal indicators of their beliefs. During much of Marcus’s
career she served as Reuben Post Halleck Professor of Philosophy at Yale
University. She has also served as chair of the Board of Officers of the
American Philosophical Association and president of its Central Division,
president of the Association of Symbolic Logic, and president of the Institut
International de Philosophie.
Marcus Aurelius (A.D.
121–80), Roman emperor (from 161) and philosopher. Author of twelve books of
Meditations (Greek title, To Himself), Marcus Aurelius is principally
interesting in the history of Stoic philosophy (of which he was a diligent
student) for his ethical self-portrait. Except for the first book, detailing
his gratitude to his family, friends, and teachers, the aphorisms are arranged
in no order; many were written in camp during military campaigns. They reflect
both the Old Stoa and the more eclectic views of Posidonius, with whom he holds
that involvement in public affairs is a moral duty. Marcus, in accord with
Stoicism, considers immortality doubtful; happiness lies in patient acceptance
of the will of the panentheistic Stoic God, the material soul of a material
universe. Anger, like all emotions, is forbidden the Stoic emperor: he exhorts
himself to compassion for the weak and evil among his subjects. “Do not be
turned into ‘Caesar,’ or dyed by the purple: for that happens” (6.30). “It is
the privilege of a human being to love even those who stumble” (7.22). Sayings
like these, rather than technical arguments, give the book its place in
literary history.
Marcuse, Herbert
(1898–1979). German-born American political philosopher who reinterpreted the
ideas of Marx and Freud. Marcuse’s work is among the most systematic and
philosophical of the Frankfurt School theorists. After an initial attempt to
unify Hegel, Marx, and Heidegger in an ontology of historicity in his
habilitation on Hegel’s Ontology and the Theory of Historicity (1932), Marcuse
was occupied during the 1930s with the problem of truth in a critical
historical social theory, defending a contextindependent notion of truth
against relativizing tendencies of the sociology of knowledge. Marcuse thought
Hegel’s “dialectics” provided an alternative to relativism, empiricism, and
positivism and even developed a revolutionary interpretation of the Hegelian
legacy in Reason and Revolution (1941) opposed to Popper’s totalitarian one.
After World War II, Marcuse appropriated Freud in the same way that he had
appropriated Hegel before the war, using his basic concepts for a critical
theory of the repressive character of civilization in Eros and Civilization
(1955). In many respects, this book comes closer to presenting a positive
conception of reason and Enlightenment than any other work of the Frankfurt
School. Marcuse argued that civilization has been antagonistic to happiness and
freedom through its constant struggle against basic human instincts. According
to Marcuse, human existence is grounded in Eros, but these impulses depend upon
and are shaped by labor. By synthesizing Marx and Freud, Marcuse holds out the
utopian possibility of happiness and freedom in the unity of Eros and labor,
which at the very least points toward the reduction of “surplus repression” as
the goal of a rational economy and emancipatory social criticism. This was also
the goal of his aesthetic theory as developed in The Aesthetic Dimension
(1978). In One Dimensional Man (1964) and other writings, Marcuse provides an analysis
of why the potential for a free and rational society has never been realized:
in the irrationality of the current social totality, its creation and
manipulation of false needs (or “repressive desublimation”), and hostility
toward nature. Perhaps no other Frankfurt School philosopher has had as much
popular influence as Marcuse, as evidenced by his reception in the student and
ecology movements.
Mariana, Juan de
(1536–1624), Spanish Jesuit historian and political philosopher. Born in
Talavera de la Reina, he studied at Alcalá de Henares and taught at Rome,
Sicily, and Paris. His political ideas are contained in De rege et regis
institutione (“On Kingship,” 1599) and De monetae mutatione (“On Currency,”
1609). Mariana held that political power rests on the community of citizens,
and the power of the monarch derives from the people. The natural state of
humanity did not include, as Vitoria held, government and other political
institutions. The state of nature was one of justice in which all possessions
were held in common, and cooperation characterized human relations. Private
property is the result of technological advances that produced jealousy and
strife. Antedating both Hobbes and Rousseau, Mariana argued that humans made a
contract and delegated their political power to leaders in order to eliminate
injustice and strife. However, only the people have the right to change the
law. A monarch who does not follow the law and ceases to act for the citizens’
welfare may be forcibly removed. Tyrannicide is thus justifiable under some
circumstances.
Maritain, Jacques
(1882–1973), French Catholic philosopher whose innovative interpretation of
Aquinas’s philosophy made him a central figure in Neo-Thomism. Bergson’s
teaching saved him from metaphysical despair and a suicide pact with his
fiancée. After his discovery of Aquinas, he rejected Bergsonism for a realistic
account of the concept and a unified theory of knowledge, aligning the
empirical sciences with the philosophy of nature, metaphysics, theology, and
mysticism in Distinguish to Unite or The Degrees of Knowledge (1932). Maritain
opposed the skepticism and idealism that severed the mind from sensibility,
typified by the “angelism” of Descartes’s intuitionism. Maritain traced the
practical effects of angelism in art, politics, and religion. His Art and
Scholasticism (1920) employs ancient and medieval notions of art as a virtue
and beauty as a transcendental aspect of being. In politics, especially Man and
the State (1961), Maritain stressed the distinction between the person and the
individual, the ontological foundation of natural rights, the religious origins
of the democratic ideal, and the importance of the common good. He also argued
for the possibility of philosophy informed by the data of revelation without
compromising its integrity, and an Integral Humanism (1936) that affirms the
political order while upholding the eternal destiny of the human person.
Marsilius of Inghen
(c.1330–96), Dutch philosopher and theologian. Born near Nijmegen, Marsilius
studied under Buridan, taught at Paris for thirty years, then, in 1383, moved
to the newly founded University of Heidelberg, where he and Albert of Saxony
established nominalism in Germany. In logic, he produced an Ockhamist revision
of the Tractatus of Peter of Spain, often published as Textus dialectices in
early sixteenthcentury Germany, and a commentary on Aristotle’s Prior
Analytics. He developed Buridan’s theory of impetus in his own way, accepted
Bradwardine’s account of the proportions of velocities, and adopted Nicholas of
Oresme’s doctrine of intension and remission of forms, applying the new physics
in his commentaries on Aristotle’s physical works. In theology he followed
Ockham’s skeptical emphasis on faith, allowing that one might prove the
existence of God along Scotistic lines, but insisting that, since natural
philosophy could not accommodate the creation of the universe ex nihilo, God’s
omnipotence was known only through faith.
Marsilius of Padua, in
Italian, Marsilio dei Mainardini (1275/80–1342), Italian political theorist. He
served as rector of the University of Paris between 1312 and 1313; his
anti-papal views forced him to flee Paris (1326) for Nuremberg, where he was
political and ecclesiastic adviser of Louis of Bavaria. His major work,
Defensor pacis (“Defender of Peace,” 1324), attacks the doctrine of the
supremacy of the pope and argues that the authority of a secular ruler elected
to represent the people is superior to the authority of the papacy and
priesthood in both temporal and spiritual affairs. Three basic claims of
Marsilius’s theory are that reason, not instinct or God, allows us to know what
is just and conduces to the flourishing of human society; that governments need
to enforce obedience to the laws by coercive measures; and that political power
ultimately resides in the people. He was influenced by Aristotle’s ideal of the
state as necessary to foster human flourishing. His thought is regarded as a
major step in the history of political philosophy and one of the first defenses
of republicanism. P.Gar. Martineau, James (1805–1900), English philosopher of
religion and ethical intuitionist. As a minister and a professor, Martineau
defended Unitarianism and opposed pantheism. In A Study of Religion (1888)
Martineau agreed with Kant that reality as we experience it is the work of the
mind, but he saw no reason to doubt his intuitive conviction that the
phenomenal world corresponds to a real world of enduring, causally related
objects. He believed that the only intelligible notion of causation is given by
willing and concluded that reality is the expression of a divine will that is
also the source of moral authority. In Types of Ethical Theory (1885) he
claimed that the fundamental fact of ethics is the human tendency to approve
and disapprove of the motives leading to voluntary actions, actions in which
there are two motives present to consciousness. After freely choosing one of
the motives, the agent can determine which action best expresses it. Since
Martineau thought that agents intuitively know through conscience which motive
is higher, the core of his ethical theory is a ranking of the thirteen
principal motives, the highest of which is reverence.
Marx, Karl (1818–83),
German social philosopher, economic theorist, and revolutionary. He lived and
worked as a journalist in Cologne, Paris, and Brussels. After the unsuccessful
1848 revolutions in Europe, he settled in London, doing research and writing
and earning some money as correspondent for the New York Tribune. In early
writings, he articulated his critique of the religiously and politically
conservative implications of the then-reigning philosophy of Hegel, finding
there an acceptance of existing private property relationships and of the
alienation generated by them. Marx understood alienation as a state of radical
disharmony (1) among individuals, (2) between them and their own life activity,
or labor, and (3) between individuals and their system of production. Later, in
his masterwork Capital (1867, 1885, 1894), Marx employed Hegel’s method of
dialectic to generate an internal critique of the theory and practice of
capitalism, showing that, under assumptions (notably that human labor is the
source of economic value) found in such earlier theorists as Adam Smith, this system
must undergo increasingly severe crises, resulting in the eventual seizure of
control of the increasingly centralized means of production (factories, large
farms, etc.) from the relatively small class of capitalist proprietors by the
previously impoverished non-owners (the proletariat) in the interest of a
thenceforth classless society. Marx’s early writings, somewhat utopian in tone,
most never published during his lifetime, emphasize social ethics and ontology.
In them, he characterizes his position as a “humanism” and a “naturalism.” In
the Theses on Feuerbach, he charts a middle path between Hegel’s idealist
account of the nature of history as the selfunfolding of spirit and what Marx
regards as the ahistorical, mechanistic, and passive materialist philosophy of
Feuerbach; Marx proposes a conception of history as forged by human activity,
or praxis, within determinate material conditions that vary by time and place.
In later Marxism, this general position is often labeled dialectical
materialism. Marx began radically to question the nature of philosophy, coming
to view it as ideology, i.e., a thought system parading as autonomous but in
fact dependent on the material conditions of the society in which it is
produced. The tone of Capital is therefore on the whole less philosophical and
moralistic, more social scientific and tending toward historical determinism,
than that of the earlier writings, but punctuated by bursts of indignation
against the baneful effects of capitalism’s profit orientation and references
to the “society of associated producers” (socialism or communism) that would,
or could, replace capitalist society. His enthusiastic predictions of immanent
worldwide revolutionary changes, in various letters, articles, and the famous
Communist Manifesto (1848; jointly authored with his close collaborator,
Friedrich Engels), depart from the generally more hypothetical character of the
text of Capital itself. The linchpin that perhaps best connects Marx’s earlier
and later thought and guarantees his enduring relevance as a social philosopher
is his analysis of the role of human labor power as a peculiar type of
commodity within a system of commodity exchange (his theory of surplus value).
Labor’s peculiarity, according to him, lies in its capacity actively to
generate more exchange value than it itself costs employers as subsistence
wages. But to treat human beings as profit-generating commodities risks
neglecting to treat them as human beings.
Marxism, the philosophy
of Karl Marx, or any of several systems of thought or approaches to social
criticism derived from Marx. The term is also applied, incorrectly, to certain
sociopolitical structures created by dominant Communist parties during the
mid-twentieth century. Karl Marx himself, apprised of the ideas of certain
French critics who invoked his name, remarked that he knew at least that he was
not a Marxist. The fact that his collaborator, Friedrich Engels, a popularizer
with a greater interest than Marx in the natural sciences, outlived him and wrote,
among other things, a “dialectics of nature” that purported to discover certain
universal natural laws, added to the confusion. Lenin, the leading Russian
Communist revolutionary, near the end of his life discovered previously
unacknowledged connections between Marx’s Capital (1867) and Hegel’s Science of
Logic (1812–16) and concluded (in his Philosophical Notebooks) that Marxists
for a half-century had not understood Marx. Specific political agendas of,
among others, the Marxist faction within the turn-of-the-century German Social
Democratic Party, the Bolshevik faction of Russian socialists led by Lenin, and
later governments and parties claiming allegiance to “Marxist-Leninist
principles” have contributed to reinterpretations. For several decades in the
Soviet Union and countries allied with it, a broad agreement concerning
fundamental Marxist doctrines was established and politically enforced,
resulting in a doctrinaire version labeled “orthodox Marxism” and virtually
ensuring the widespread, wholesale rejection of Marxism as such when dissidents
taught to accept this version as authentic Marxism came to power. Marx never
wrote a systematic exposition of his thought, which in any case drastically
changed emphases across time and included elements of history, economics, and
sociology as well as more traditional philosophical concerns. In one letter he
specifically warns against regarding his historical account of Western
capitalism as a transcendental analysis of the supposedly necessary historical
development of any and all societies at a certain time. It is thus somewhat
paradoxical that Marxism is often identified as a “totalizing” if not
“totalitarian” system by postmodernist philosophers who reject global theories
or “grand narratives” as inherently invalid. However, the evolution of Marxism
since Marx’s time helps explain this identification. That “orthodox” Marxism
would place heavy emphasis on historical determinism – the inevitability of a
certain general sequence of events leading to the replacement of capitalism by
a socialist economic system (in which, according to a formula in Marx’s
Critique of the Gotha Program, each person would be remunerated according to
his/her work) and eventually by a communist one (remuneration in accordance
with individual needs) – was foreshadowed by Plekhanov. In The Role of the
Individual in History, he portrayed individual idiosyncrasies as accidental:
e.g., had Napoleon not existed the general course of history would not have
turned out differently. In Materialism and Empiriocriticism, Lenin offered
epistemological reinforcement for the notion that Marxism is the uniquely true
worldview by defending a “copy” or “reflection” theory of knowledge according
to which true concepts simply mirror objective reality, like photographs.
Elsewhere, however, he argued against “economism,” the inference that the
historical inevitability of communism’s victory obviated political activism.
Lenin instead maintained that, at least under the repressive political
conditions of czarist Russia, only a clandestine party of professional
revolutionaries, acting as the vanguard of the working class and in its
interests, could produce fundamental change. Later, during the long political
reign of Josef Stalin, the hegemonic Communist Party of the USSR was identified
as the supreme interpreter of these interests, thus justifying totalitarian
rule. So-called Western Marxism opposed this “orthodox” version, although the
writings of one of its foremost early representatives, Georg Lukacs, who brilliantly
perceived the close connection between Hegel’s philosophy and the early thought
of Marx before the unpublished manuscripts proving this connection had been
retrieved from archives, actually tended to reinforce both the view that the
party incarnated the ideal interests of the proletariat (see his History and
Class Consciousness) and an aesthetics favoring the art of “socialist realism”
over more experimental forms. His contemporary, Karl Korsch, in Marxism as
Philosophy, instead saw Marxism as above all a heuristic method, pointing to
salient phenomena (e.g., social class, material conditioning) generally
neglected by other philosophies. His counsel was in effect followed by the
Frankfurt School of critical theory, including Walter Benjamin in the area of
aesthetics, Theodor Adorno in social criticism, and Wilhelm Reich in
psychology. A spate of “new Marxisms” – the relative degrees of their fidelity
to Marx’s original thought cannot be weighed here – developed, especially in
the wake of the gradual rediscovery of Marx’s more ethically oriented, less
deterministic early writings. Among the names meriting special mention in this
context are Ernst Bloch, who explored Marxism’s connection with utopian
thinking; Herbert Marcuse, critic of the “one-dimensionality” of industrial
society; the Praxis school (after the name of their journal and in view of
their concern with analyzing social practices) of Yugoslav philosophers; and
the later Jean-Paul Sartre. Also worthy of note are the writings, many of them
composed in prison under Mussolini’s Italian Fascist rule, of Antonio Gramsci,
who stressed the role of cultural factors in determining what is dominant
politically and ideologically at any given time. Simultaneous with the decline
and fall of regimes in which “orthodox Marxism” was officially privileged has
been the recent development of new approaches, loosely connected by virtue of
their utilization of techniques favored by British and American philosophers,
collectively known as analytic Marxism. Problems of justice, theories of
history, and the questionable nature of Marx’s theory of surplus value have
been special concerns to these writers. This development suggests that the
current unfashionableness of Marxism in many circles, due largely to its
understandable but misleading identification with the aforementioned regimes,
is itself only a temporary phenomenon, even if future Marxisms are likely to
range even further from Marx’s own specific concerns while still sharing his
commitment to identifying, explaining, and criticizing hierarchies of dominance
and subordination, particularly those of an economic order, in human society.
material adequacy, the
property that belongs to a formal definition of a concept when that definition
characterizes or “captures” the extension (or material) of the concept.
Intuitively, a formal definition of a concept is materially adequate if and
only if it is neither too broad nor too narrow. Tarski advanced the state of
philosophical semantics by discovering the criterion of material adequacy of
truth definitions contained in his convention T. Material adequacy contrasts
with analytic adequacy, which belongs to definitions that provide a faithful
analysis. Defining an integer to be even if and only if it is the product of
two consecutive integers would be materially adequate but not analytically
adequate, whereas defining an integer to be even if and only if it is a
multiple of 2 would be both materially and analytically adequate.
mathematical analysis,
also called standard analysis, the area of mathematics pertaining to the
so-called real number system, i.e. the area that can be based on an axiom set
whose intended interpretation (standard model) has the set of real numbers as
its domain (universe of discourse). Thus analysis includes, among its many
subbranches, elementary algebra, differential and integral calculus,
differential equations, the calculus of variations, and measure theory.
Analytic geometry involves the application of analysis to geometry. Analysis
contains a large part of the mathematics used in mathematical physics. The real
numbers, which are representable by the ending and unending decimals, are
usefully construed as (or as corresponding to) distances measured, relative to
an arbitrary unit length, positively to the right and negatively to the left of
an arbitrarily fixed zero point along a geometrical straight line. In
particular, the class of real numbers includes as increasingly comprehensive
proper subclasses the natural numbers, the integers (positive, negative, and
zero), the rational numbers (or fractions), and the algebraic numbers (such as
the square root of two). Especially important is the presence in the class of
real numbers of non-algebraic (or transcendental) irrational numbers such as
pi. The set of real numbers includes arbitrarily small and arbitrarily large,
finite quantities, while excluding infinitesimal and infinite quantities.
Analysis, often conceived as the mathematics of continuous magnitude, contrasts
with arithmetic (natural number theory), which is regarded as the mathematics
of discrete magnitude. Analysis is often construed as involving not just the
real numbers but also the imaginary (complex) numbers. Traditionally analysis
is expressed in a second-order or higher-order language wherein its axiom set
has categoricity; each of its models is isomorphic to (has the same structure
as) the standard model. When analysis is carried out in a first-order language,
as has been increasingly the case since the 1950s, categoricity is impossible and
it has nonstandard mass noun mathematical analysis models in addition to its
standard model. A nonstandard model of analysis is an interpretation not
isomorphic to the standard model but nevertheless satisfying the axiom set.
Some of the nonstandard models involve objects reminiscent of the much-despised
“infinitesimals” that were essential to the Leibniz approach to calculus and
that were subject to intense criticism by Berkeley and other philosophers and
philosophically sensitive mathematicians. These non-standard models give rise
to a new area of mathematics, non-standard analysis, within which the
fallacious arguments used by Leibniz and other early analysts form the
heuristic basis of new and entirely rigorous proofs.
mathematical function, an
operation that, when applied to an entity (set of entities) called its
argument(s), yields an entity known as the value of the function for that
argument(s). This operation can be expressed by a functional equation of the
form y % f(x) such that a variable y is said to be a function of a variable x
if corresponding to each value of x there is one and only one value of y. The x
is called the independent variable (or argument of the function) and the y the
dependent variable (or value of the function). (Some definitions consider the
relation to be the function, not the dependent variable, and some definitions
permit more than one value of y to correspond to a given value of x, as in x2 !
y2 % 4.) More abstractly, a function can be considered to be simply a special kind
of relation (set of ordered pairs) that to any element in its domain relates
exactly one element in its range. Such a function is said to be a one-to-one
correspondence if and only if the set {x,y} elements of S and {z,y} elements of
S jointly imply x % z. Consider, e.g., the function {(1,1), (2,4), (3,9),
(4,16), (5,25), (6,36)}, each of whose members is of the form (x,x2) – the
squaring function. Or consider the function {(0,1), (1,0)} – which we can call
the negation function. In contrast, consider the function for exclusive
alternation (as in you may have a beer or glass of wine, but not both). It is
not a one-to-one correspondence. For, 0 is the value of (0,1) and of (1,0), and
1 is the value of (0,0) and of (1,1). If we think of a function as defined on
the natural numbers – functions from Nn to N for various n (most commonly n % 1
or 2) – a partial function is a function from Nn to N whose domain is not
necessarily the whole of Nn (e.g., not defined for all of the natural numbers).
A total function from Nn to N is a function whose domain is the whole of Nn
(e.g., all of the natural numbers).
mathematical induction, a
method of definition and a method of proof. A collection of objects can be
defined inductively. All members of such a collection can be shown to have a
property by an inductive proof. The natural numbers and the set of well-formed
formulas of a formal language are familiar examples of sets given by inductive
definition. Thus, the set of natural numbers is inductively defined as the smallest
set, N, such that: (B) 0 is in N and (I) for any x in N the successor of x is
in N. (B) is the basic clause and (I) the inductive clause of this definition.
Or consider a propositional language built on negation and conjunction. We
start with a denumerable class of atomic sentence symbols ATOM = {A1, A2, . .
.}. Then we can define the set of well-formed formulas, WFF, as the smallest
set of expressions such that: (B) every member of ATOM is in WFF and (I) if x
is in WFF then (- x) is in WFF and if x and y are in WFF then (x & y) is in
WFF. We show that all members of an inductively defined set have a property by
showing that the members specified by the basis have that property and that the
property is preserved by the induction. For example, we show that all WFFs have
an even number of parentheses by showing (i) that all ATOMs have an even number
of parentheses and (ii) that if x and y have an even number of parentheses then
so do (- x) and (x & y). This shows that the set of WFFs with an even number
of parentheses satisfies (B) and (I). The set of WFFs with an even number of
parentheses must then be identical to WFF, since – by definition – WFF is the
smallest set that satisfies (B) and (I). Ordinary proof by mathematical
induction shows that all the natural numbers, or all members of some set with
the order type of the natural numbers, share a property. Proof by transfinite
induction, a more general form of proof by mathematical induction, shows that
all members of some well-ordered set have a certain property. A set is
well-ordered if and only if every non-empty subset of it has a least element.
The natural numbers are well-ordered. It is a consequence of the axiom of
choice that every set can be well-ordered. Suppose that a set, X, is
well-ordered and that P is the subset of X whose mathematical constructivism
mathematical induction 541 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 541 members have
the property of interest. Suppose that it can be shown for any element x of X,
if all members of X less that x are in P, then so is x. Then it follows by
transfinite induction that all members of X have the property, that X % P. For
if X did not coincide with P, then the set of elements of x not in P would be
non-empty. Since X is well-ordered, this set would have a least element, x*.
But then by definition, all members of X less than x* are in P, and by
hypothesis x* must be in P after all..
mathematical
intuitionism, a twentieth-century movement that reconstructs mathematics in
accordance with an epistemological idealism and a Kantian metaphysics.
Specifically, Brouwer, its founder, held that there are no unexperienced truths
and that mathematical objects stem from the a priori form of those conscious
acts which generate empirical objects. Unlike Kant, however, Brouwer rejected
the apriority of space and based mathematics solely on a refined conception of
the intuition of time. Intuitionistic mathematics. According to Brouwer, the
simplest mathematical act is to distinguish between two diverse elements in the
flow of consciousness. By repeating and concatenating such acts we generate
each of the natural numbers, the standard arithmetical operations, and thus the
rational numbers with their operations as well. Unfortunately, these simple,
terminating processes cannot produce the convergent infinite sequences of
rational numbers that are needed to generate the continuum (the nondenumerable
set of real numbers, or of points on the line). Some “proto-intuitionists”
admitted infinite sequences whose elements are determined by finitely
describable rules. However, the set of all such algorithmic sequences is
denumerable and thus can scarcely generate the continuum. Brouwer’s first
attempt to circumvent this – by postulating a single intuition of an ever
growing continuum – mirrored Aristotle’s picture of the continuum as a dynamic
whole composed of inseparable parts. But this approach was incompatible with
the set-theoretic framework that Brouwer accepted, and by 1918 he had replaced
it with the concept of an infinite choice sequence. A choice sequence of
rational numbers is, to be sure, generated by a “rule,” but the rule may leave
room for some degree of freedom in choosing the successive elements. It might,
e.g., simply require that the n ! 1st choice be a rational number that lies
within 1/n of the nth choice. The set of real numbers generated by such
semideterminate sequences is demonstrably non-denumerable. Following his
epistemological beliefs, Brouwer admitted only those properties of a choice
sequence which are determined by its rule and by a finite number of actual
choices. He incorporated this restriction into his version of set theory and
obtained a series of results that conflict with standard (classical)
mathematics. Most famously, he proved that every function that is fully defined
over an interval of real numbers is uniformly continuous. (Pictorially, the
graph of the function has no gaps or jumps.) Interestingly, one corollary of
this theorem is that the set of real numbers cannot be divided into mutually
exclusive subsets, a property that rigorously recovers the Aristotelian picture
of the continuum. The clash with classical mathematics. Unlike his disciple
Arend Heyting, who considered intuitionistic and classical mathematics as
separate and therefore compatible subjects, Brouwer viewed them as incompatible
treatments of a single subject matter. He even occasionally accused classical
mathematics of inconsistency at the places where it differed from intuitionism.
This clash concerns the basic concept of what counts as a mathematical object.
Intuitionism allows, and classical mathematics rejects, objects that may be
indeterminate with respect to some of their properties. Logic and language.
Because he believed that mathematical constructions occur in prelinguistic consciousness,
Brouwer refused to limit mathematics by the expressive capacity of any
language. Logic, he claimed, merely codifies already completed stages of
mathematical reasoning. For instance, the principle of the excluded middle
stems from an “observational period” during which mankind catalogued finite
phenomena (with decidable properties); and he derided classical mathematics for
inappropriately applying this principle to infinitary aspects of mathematics.
Formalization. Brouwer’s views notwithstanding, in 1930 Heyting produced formal
systems for intuitionistic logic (IL) and number theory. These inspired further
formalizations (even of the theory of choice sequences) and a series of
proof-theoretic, semantic, and algebraic studies that related intuitionistic
and classical formal systems. Stephen Kleene, e.g., interpreted IL and other
intuitionistic formal systems using the classical theory of recursive
functions. Gödel, who showed that IL cannot coincide with any finite
many-valued logic, demonstrated its relation to the modal logic, S4; and Kripke
provided a formal semantics for IL similar to the possible worlds semantics for
S4. For a while the study of intuitionistic formal systems used strongly
classical methods, but since the 1970s intuitionistic methods have been
employed as well. Meaning. Heyting’s formalization reflected a theory of
meaning implicit in Brouwer’s epistemology and metaphysics, a theory that
replaces the traditional correspondence notion of truth with the notion of
constructive proof. More recently Michael Dummett has extended this to a
warranted assertability theory of meaning for areas of discourse outside of
mathematics. He has shown how assertabilism provides a strategy for combating
realism about such things as physical objects, mental objects, and the past.
mathematical
structuralism, the view that the subject of any branch of mathematics is a
structure or structures. The slogan is that mathematics is the science of
structure. Define a “natural number system” to be a countably infinite
collection of objects with one designated initial object and a successor
relation that satisfies the principle of mathematical induction. Examples of
natural number systems are the Arabic numerals and an infinite sequence of
distinct moments of time. According to structuralism, arithmetic is about the
form or structure common to natural number systems. Accordingly, a natural
number is something like an office in an organization or a place in a pattern.
Similarly, real analysis is about the real number structure, the form common to
complete ordered fields. The philosophical issues concerning structuralism
concern the nature of structures and their places. Since a structure is a
one-over-many of sorts, it is something like a universal. Structuralists have
defended analogues of some of the traditional positions on universals, such as
realism and nominalism.
maximal consistent set,
in formal logic, any set of sentences S that is consistent – i.e., no
contradiction is provable from S – and maximally so – i.e., if T is consistent
and S 0 T, then S % T. It can be shown that if S is maximally consistent and s
is a sentence in the same language, then either s or - s (the negation of s) is
in S. Thus, a maximally consistent set is complete: it settles every question
that can be raised in the language.
maximin strategy, a
strategy that maximizes an agent’s minimum gain, or equivalently, minimizes his
maximum loss. Writers who work in terms of loss thus call such a strategy a
minimax strategy. The term ‘security strategy’, which avoids potential
confusions, is now widely used. For each action, its security level is its
payoff under the worst-case scenario. A security strategy is one with maximal
security level. An agent’s security strategy maximizes his expected utility if
and only if (1) he is certain that “nature” has his worst interests at heart
and (2) he is certain that nature will be certain of his strategy when choosing
hers. The first condition is satisfied in the case of a two-person zero-sum
game where the payoff structure is commonly known. In this situation, “nature”
is the other player, and her gain is equal to the first player’s loss.
Obviously, these conditions do not hold for all decision problems.
Maxwell, James Clerk
(1831–79), Scottish physicist who made pioneering contributions to the theory
of electromagnetism, the kinetic theory of gases, and the theory of color
vision. His work on electromagnetism is summarized in his Treatise on
Electricity and Magnetism (1873). In 1871 he 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM
Page 543 maya Mead, George Herbert 544 became Cambridge University’s first
professor of experimental physics and founded the Cavendish Laboratory, which
he directed until his death. Maxwell’s most important achievements were his
field theory of electromagnetism and the discovery of the equations that bear
his name. The field theory unified the laws of electricity and magnetism,
identified light as a transverse vibration of the electromagnetic ether, and
predicted the existence of radio waves. The fact that Maxwell’s equations are
Lorentz-invariant and contain the speed of light as a constant played a major
role in the genesis of the special theory of relativity. He arrived at his
theory by searching for a “consistent representation” of the ether, i.e., a
model of its inner workings consistent with the laws of mechanics. His search
for a consistent representation was unsuccessful, but his papers used
mechanical models and analogies to guide his thinking. Like Boltzmann, Maxwell
advocated the heuristic value of model building. Maxwell was also a pioneer in
statistical physics. His derivation of the laws governing the macroscopic
behavior of gases from assumptions about the random collisions of gas molecules
led directly to Boltzmann’s transport equation and the statistical analysis of
irreversibility. To show that the second law of thermodynamics is
probabilistic, Maxwell imagined a “neat-fingered” demon who could cause the
entropy of a gas to decrease by separating the faster-moving gas molecules from
the slower-moving ones.
maya, a term with various
uses in Indian thought; it expresses the concept of Brahman’s power to act. One
type of Brahmanic action is the assuming of material forms whose appearance can
be changed at will. Demons as well as gods are said to have maya, understood as
power to do things not within a standard human repertoire. A deeper sense
refers to the idea that Brahman has and exercises the power to sustain
everlastingly the entire world of conscious and non-conscious things. Monotheistically
conceived, maya is the power of an omnipotent and omniscient deity to produce
the world of dependent things. This power typically is conceived as feminine
(Sakti) and various representations of the deity are conceived as male with
female consorts, as with Vishnu and Siva. Without Sakti, Brahman would be
masculine and passive and no created world would exist. By association, maya is
the product of created activity. The created world is conceived as dependent,
both a manifestation of divine power and a veil between Brahman and the
devotee. Monistically conceived, maya expresses the notion that there only
seems to be a world composed of distinct conscious and nonconscious things, and
rather than this seeming multiplicity there exists only ineffable Brahman.
Brahman is conceived as somehow producing the illusion of there being a
plurality of persons and objects, and enlightenment (moksha) is conceived as
seeing through the illusion. Monotheists, who ask who, on the monistic view,
has the qualities requisite to produce illusion and how an illusion can see
through itself, regard enlightenment (moksha) as a matter of devotion to the
Brahman whom the created universe partially manifests, but also veils, whose
nature is also revealed in religious experience.
Mead, George Herbert
(1863–1931), American philosopher, social theorist, and social reformer. He was
a member of the Chicago school of pragmatism, which included figures such as
James Hayden Tufts and John Dewey. Whitehead agreed with Dewey’s assessment of
Mead: “a seminal mind of the very first order.” Mead was raised in a household
with deep roots in New England puritanism, but he eventually became a confirmed
naturalist, convinced that modern science could make the processes of nature
intelligible. On his path to naturalism he studied with the idealist Josiah
Royce at Harvard. The German idealist tradition of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel
(who were portrayed by Mead as Romantic philosophers in Movements of Thought in
the Nineteenth Century) had a lasting influence on his thought, even though he
became a confirmed empiricist. Mead is considered the progenitor of the school
of symbolic interaction in sociology, and is best known for his explanation of
the genesis of the mind and the self in terms of language development and role
playing. A close friend of Jane Addams (1860–1935), he viewed his theoretical
work in this area as lending weight to his progressive political convictions.
Mead is often referred to as a social behaviorist. He employed the categories
of stimulus and response in order to explain behavior, but contra behaviorists
such as John B. Watson, Mead did not dismiss conduct that was not observed by
others. He examined the nature of self-consciousness, whose development is
depicted in Mind, Self, and Society, from the Standpoint of a Social
Behaviorist. He also addressed 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 544 behavior
in terms of the phases of an organism’s adjustment to its environment in The
Philosophy of the Act. His reputation as a theorist of the social development
of the self has tended to eclipse his original work in other areas of concern
to philosophers, e.g., ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of
science. Influenced by Darwin, Mead sought to understand nature, as well as
social relationships, in terms of the process of emergence. He emphasized that
qualitatively new forms of life arise through natural and intelligible
processes. When novel events occur the past is transformed, for the past has
now given rise to the qualitatively new, and it must be seen from a different
perspective. Between the arrival of the new order – which the novel event
instigates – and the old order, there is a phase of readjustment, a stage that
Mead describes as one of sociality. Mead’s views on these and related matters
are discussed in The Philosophy of the Present. Mead never published a
book-length work in philosophy. His unpublished manuscripts and students’ notes
were edited and published as the books cited above.
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