meaning, the conventional, common, or standard sense of an expression, construction, or sentence in a given language, or of a non-linguistic signal or symbol. Literal meaning is the non-figurative, strict meaning an expression or sentence has in a language by virtue of the dictionary meaning of its words and the import of its syntactic constructions. Synonymy is sameness of literal meaning: ‘prestidigitator’ means ‘expert at sleight of hand’. It is said that meaning is what a good translation preserves, and this may or may not be literal: in French ‘Où sont les neiges d’antan?’ literally means ‘Where are the snows of yesteryear?’ and figuratively means ‘nothing lasts’. Signal-types and symbols have non-linguistic conventional meaning: the white flag means truce; the lion means St. Mark. In another sense, meaning is what a person intends to communicate by a particular utterance – utterer’s meaning, as Grice called it, or speaker’s meaning, in Stephen Schiffer’s term. A speaker’s meaning may or may not coincide with the literal meaning of what is uttered, and it may be non-linguistic. Non-literal: in saying “we will soon be in our tropical paradise,” Jane meant that they would soon be in Antarctica. Literal: in saying “that’s deciduous,” she meant that the tree loses its leaves every year. Non-linguistic: by shrugging, she meant that she agreed. The literal meaning of a sentence typically does not determine exactly what a speaker says in making a literal utterance: the meaning of ‘she is praising me’ leaves open what John says in uttering it, e.g. that Jane praises John at 12:00 p.m., Dec. 21, 1991. A not uncommon – but theoretically loaded – way of accommodating this is to count the context-specific things that speakers say as propositions, entities that can be expressed in different languages and that are (on certain theories) the content of what is said, believed, desired, and so on. On that assumption, a sentence’s literal meaning is a context-independent rule, or function, that determines a certain proposition (the content of what the speaker says) given the context of utterance. David Kaplan has called such a rule or function a sentence’s “character.” A sentence’s literal meaning also includes its potential for performing certain illocutionary acts, in J. L. Austin’s term. The meaning of an imperative sentence determines what orders, requests, and the like can literally be expressed: ‘sit down there’ can be uttered literally by Jane to request (or order or urge) John to sit down at 11:59 a.m. on a certain bench in Santa Monica. Thus a sentence’s literal meaning involves both its character and a constraint on illocutionary acts: it maps contexts onto illocutionary acts that have (something like) determinate propositional contents. A context includes the identity of speaker, hearer, time of utterance, and also aspects of the speaker’s intentions. In ethics the distinction has flourished between the expressive or emotive meaning of a word or sentence and its cognitive meaning. The emotive meaning of an utterance or a term is the attitude it expresses, the pejorative meaning of ‘chiseler’, say. An emotivist in ethics, e.g. C. L. Stevenson, cited by Grice in “Meaning” for the Oxford Philosophical Society, holds that the literal meaning of ‘it is good’ is identical with its emotive meaning, the positive attitude it expresses. On Hare’s theory, the literal meaning of ‘ought’ is its prescriptive meaning, the imperative force it gives to certain sentences that contain it. Such “noncognitivist” theories can allow that a term like ‘good’ also has non-literal descriptive meaning, implying nonevaluative properties of an object. By contrast, cognitivists take the literal meaning of an ethical term to be its cognitive meaning: ‘good’ stands for an objective property, and in asserting “it is good” one literally expresses, not an attitude, but a true or false judgment. ’Cognitive meaning’ serves as well as any other term to capture what has been central in the theory of meaning beyond ethics, the “factual” element in meaning that remains when we abstract from its illocutionary and emotive aspects. It is what is shared by ‘there will be an eclipse tomorrow’ and ‘will there be an eclipse tomorrow?’. This common element is often identified with a proposition (or a “character”), but, once again, that is theoretically loaded. Although cognitive meaning has been the preoccupation of the theory of meaning in the twentieth century, it is difficult to define precisely in non-theoretical terms. Suppose we say that the cognitive meaning of a sentence is ‘that aspect of its meaning which is capable of being true or false’: there are non-truth-conditional theories of meaning (see below) on which this would not capture the essentials. Suppose we say it is ‘what is capable of being asserted’: an emotivist might allow that one can assert that a thing is good. Still many philosophers have taken for granted that they know cognitive meaning (under that name or not) well enough to theorize about what it consists in, and it is the focus of what follows. The oldest theories of meaning in modern philosophy are the seventeenth-to-nineteenth-century idea theory (also called the ideational theory) and image theory of meaning, according to which the meaning of words in public language derives from the ideas or mental images that words are used to express. As for what constitutes the representational properties of ideas, Descartes held it to be a basic property of the mind, inexplicable, and Locke a matter of resemblance (in some sense) between ideas and things. Contemporary analytic philosophy speaks more of propositional attitudes – thoughts, beliefs, intentions – than of ideas and images; and it speaks of the contents of such attitudes: if Jane believes that there are lions in Africa, that belief has as its content that there are lions in Africa. Virtually all philosophers agree that propositional attitudes have some crucial connection with meaning. A fundamental element of a theory of meaning is where it locates the basis of meaning, in thought, in individual speech, or in social practices. (i) Meaning may be held to derive entirely from the content of thoughts or propositional attitudes, that mental content itself being constituted independently of public linguistic meaning. (‘Constituted independently of’ does not imply ‘unshaped by’.) (ii) It may be held that the contents of beliefs and communicative intentions themselves derive in part from the meaning of overt speech, or even from social practices. Then meaning would be jointly constituted by both individual psychological and social linguistic facts. Theories of the first sort include those in the style of Grice, according to which sentences’ meanings are determined by practices or implicit conventions that govern what speakers mean when they use the relevant words and constructions. The emissor’s meaning is explained in terms of certain propositional attitudes, namely the emissor’s intentions to produce certain effects in his emissee. To mean that it is raining and that the emissee is to close the door is to utter or to do something (not necessarily linguistic) with the intention (very roughly) of getting one’s emissee to believe that it is raining and go and close the door. Theories of the emissor’s meaning have been elaborated at Oxford by H. P. Grice (originally in a lecture to the Oxford Philosophical Society, inspired in part by Ogden and Richards’s The Meaning of Meaning – ‘meaning’ was not considered a curricular topic in the Lit. Hum. programme he belonge in) and by Schiffer. David Lewis has proposed that linguistic meaning is constituted by implicit conventions that systematically associate sentences with speakers’ beliefs rather than with communicative intentions. The contents of thought might be held to be constitutive of linguistic meaning independently of communication. Russell, and Wittgenstein in his early writings, wrote about meaning as if the key thing is the propositional content of the belief or thought that a sentence (somehow) expresses; they apparently regarded this as holding on an individual basis and not essentially as deriving from communication intentions or social practices. And Chomsky speaks of the point of language as being “the free expression of thought.” Such views suggest that ‘linguistic meaning’ may stand for two properties, one involving communication intentions and practices, the other more intimately related to thinking and conceiving. By contrast, the content of propositional attitudes and the meaning of overt speech might be regarded as coordinate facts neither of which can obtain independently: to interpret other people one must assign both content to their beliefs/intentions and meaning to their utterances. This is explicit in Davidson’s truth-conditional theory (see below); perhaps it is present also in the post-Wittgensteinian notion of meaning as assertability conditions – e.g., in the writings of Dummett. On still other accounts, linguistic meaning is essentially social. Wittgenstein is interpreted by Kripke as holding in his later writings that social rules are essential to meaning, on the grounds that they alone explain the normative aspect of meaning, explain the fact that an expression’s meaning determines that some uses are correct or others incorrect. Another way in which meaning meaning 546 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 546 meaning may be essentially social is Putnam’s “division of linguistic labor”: the meanings of some terms, say in botany or cabinetmaking, are set for the rest of us by specialists. The point might extend to quite non-technical words, like ‘red’: a person’s use of it may be socially deferential, in that the rule which determines what ‘red’ means in his mouth is determined, not by his individual usage, but by the usage of some social group to which he semantically defers. This has been argued by Tyler Burge to imply that the contents of thoughts themselves are in part a matter of social facts. Let us suppose there is a language L that contains no indexical terms, such as ‘now’, ‘I’, or demonstrative pronouns, but contains only proper names, common nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, logical words. (No natural language is like this; but the supposition simplifies what follows.) Theories of meaning differ considerably in how they would specify the meaning of a sentence S of L. Here are the main contenders. (i) Specify S’s truth conditions: S is true if and only if some swans are black. (ii) Specify the proposition that S expresses: S means (the proposition) that some swans are black. (iii) Specify S’s assertability conditions: S is assertable if and only if blackswan-sightings occur or black-swan-reports come in, etc. (iv) Translate S into that sentence of our language which has the same use as S or the same conceptual role. Certain theories, especially those that specify meanings in ways (i) and (ii), take the compositionality of meaning as basic. Here is an elementary fact: a sentence’s meaning is a function of the meanings of its component words and constructions, and as a result we can utter and understand new sentences – old words and constructions, new sentences. Frege’s theory of Bedeutung or reference, especially his use of the notions of function and object, is about compositionality. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein explains compositionality in his picture theory of meaning and theory of truth-functions. According to Wittgenstein, a sentence or proposition is a picture of a (possible) state of affairs; terms correspond to non-linguistic elements, and those terms’ arrangements in sentences have the same form as arrangements of elements in the states of affairs the sentences stand for. The leading truth-conditional theory of meaning is the one advocated by Davidson, drawing on the work of Tarski. Tarski showed that, for certain formalized languages, we can construct a finite set of rules that entails, for each sentence S of the infinitely many sentences of such a language, something of the form ‘S is true if and only if . . .’. Those finitely statable rules, which taken together are sometimes called a truth theory of the language, might entail ‘ “(x) (Rx P Bx)” is true if and only if every raven is black’. They would do this by having separately assigned interpretations to ‘R’, ‘B’, ‘P’, and ‘(x)’. Truth conditions are compositionally determined in analogous ways for sentences, however complex. Davidson proposes that Tarski’s device is applicable to natural languages and that it explains, moreover, what meaning is, given the following setting. Interpretation involves a principle of charity: interpreting a person N means making the best possible sense of N, and this means assigning meanings so as to maximize the overall truth of N’s utterances. A systematic interpretation of N’s language can be taken to be a Tarski-style truth theory that (roughly) maximizes the truth of N’s utterances. If such a truth theory implies that a sentence S is true in N’s language if and only if some swans are black, then that tells us the meaning of S in N’s language. A propositional theory of meaning would accommodate compositionality thus: a finite set of rules, which govern the terms and constructions of L, assigns (derivatively) a proposition (putting aside ambiguity) to each sentence S of L by virtue of S’s terms and constructions. If L contains indexicals, then such rules assign to each sentence not a fully specific proposition but a ‘character’ in the above sense. Propositions may be conceived in two ways: (a) as sets of possible circumstances or “worlds” – then ‘Hesperus is hot’ in English is assigned the set of possible worlds in which Hesperus is hot; and (b) as structured combinations of elements – then ‘Hesperus is hot’ is assigned a certain ordered pair of elements ‹M1,M2(. There are two theories about M1 and M2. They may be the senses of ‘Hesperus’ and ‘(is) hot’, and then the ordered pair is a “Fregean” proposition. They may be the references of ‘Hesperus’ and ‘(is) hot’, and then the ordered pair is a “Russellian” proposition. This difference reflects a fundamental dispute in twentieth-century philosophy of language. The connotation or sense of a term is its “mode of presentation,” the way it presents its denotation or reference. Terms with the same reference or denotation may present their references differently and so differ in sense or connotation. This is unproblematic for complex terms like ‘the capital of Italy’ and ‘the city on the Tiber’, which refer to Rome via different connotations. Controversy arises over simple terms, such as proper names and common nouns. Frege distinguished sense and reference for all expressions; the proper names ‘Phosphorus’ and ‘Hesperus’ express descriptive senses according to how we understand them – [that bright starlike object visible before dawn in the eastern sky . . .], [that bright starlike object visible after sunset in the western sky . . .]; and they refer to Venus by virtue of those senses. Russell held that ordinary proper names, such as ‘Romulus’, abbreviate definite descriptions, and in this respect his view resembles Frege’s. But Russell also held that, for those simple terms (not ‘Romulus’) into which statements are analyzable, sense and reference are not distinct, and meanings are “Russellian” propositions. (But Russell’s view of their constituents differs from present-day views.) Kripke rejected the “Frege-Russell” view of ordinary proper names, arguing that the reference of a proper name is determined, not by a descriptive condition, but typically by a causal chain that links name and reference – in the case of ‘Hesperus’ a partially perceptual relation perhaps, in the case of ‘Aristotle’ a causal-historical relation. A proper name is rather a rigid designator: any sentence of the form ‘Aristotle is . . . ‘ expresses a proposition that is true in a given possible world (or set of circumstances) if and only if our (actual) Aristotle satisfies, in that world, the condition ‘ . . . ‘. The “Frege-Russell” view by contrast incorporates in the proposition, not the actual referent, but a descriptive condition connotated by ‘Aristotle’ (the author of the Metaphysics, or the like), so that the name’s reference differs in different worlds even when the descriptive connotation is constant. (Someone else could have written the Metaphysics.) Some recent philosophers have taken the rigid designator view to motivate the stark thesis that meanings are Russellian propositions (or characters that map contexts onto such propositions): in the above proposition/meaning ‹M1,M2(, M1 is simply the referent – the planet Venus – itself. This would be a referential theory of meaning, one that equates meaning with reference. But we must emphasize that the rigid designator view does not directly entail a referential theory of meaning. What about the meanings of predicates? What sort of entity is M2 above? Putnam and Kripke also argue an anti-descriptive point about natural kind terms, predicates like ‘(is) gold’, ‘(is a) tiger’, ‘(is) hot’. These are not equivalent to descriptions – ’gold’ does not mean ‘metal that is yellow, malleable, etc.’ – but are rigid designators of underlying natural kinds whose identities are discovered by science. On a referential theory of meanings as Russellian propositions, the meaning of ‘gold’ is then a natural kind. (A complication arises: the property or kind that ‘widow’ stands for seems a good candidate for being the sense or connotation of ‘widow’, for what one understands by it. The distinction between Russellian and Fregean propositions is not then firm at every point.) On the standard sense-theory of meanings as Fregean propositions, M1 and M2 are pure descriptive senses. But a certain “neo-Fregean” view, suggested but not held by Gareth Evans, would count M1 and M2 as object-dependent senses. For example, ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ would rigidly designate the same object but have distinct senses that cannot be specified without mention of that object. Note that, if proper names or natural kind terms have meanings of either sort, their meanings vary from speaker to speaker. A propositional account of meaning (or the corresponding account of “character”) may be part of a broader theory of meaning; for example: a Grice-type theory involving implicit conventions; (b) a theory that meaning derives from an intimate connection of language and thought; (c) a theory that invokes a principle of charity or the like in interpreting an individual’s speech; (d) a social theory on which meaning cannot derive entirely from the independently constituted contents of individuals’ thoughts or uses. A central tradition in twentieth-century theory of meaning identifies meaning with factors other than propositions (in the foregoing senses) and truth-conditions. The meaning of a sentence is what one understands by it; and understanding a sentence is knowing how to use it – knowing how to verify it and when to assert it, or being able to think with it and to use it in inferences and practical reasoning. There are competing theories here. In the 1930s, proponents of logical positivism held a verification theory of meaning, whereby a sentence’s or statement’s meaning consists in the conditions under which it can be verified, certified as acceptable. This was motivated by the positivists’ empiricism together with their view of truth as a metaphysical or non-empirical notion. A descendant of verificationism is the thesis, influenced by the later Wittgenstein, that the meaning of a sentence consists in its assertability conditions, the circumstances under which one is justified in asserting the sentence. If justification and truth can diverge, as they appear to, then a meaning meaning sentence’s assertability conditions can be distinct from (what non-verificationists see as) its truth conditions. Dummett has argued that assertability conditions are the basis of meaning and that truth-conditional semantics rests on a mistake (and hence also propositional semantics in sense [a] above). A problem with assertability theories is that, as is generally acknowledged, compositional theories of the assertability conditions of sentences are not easily constructed. A conceptual role theory of meaning (also called conceptual role semantics) typically presupposes that we think in a language of thought (an idea championed by Fodor), a system of internal states structured like a language that may or may not be closely related to one’s natural language. The conceptual role of a term is a matter of how thoughts that contain the term are dispositionally related to other thoughts, to sensory states, and to behavior. Hartry Field has pointed out that our Fregean intuitions about ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ are explained by those terms’ having distinct conceptual roles, without appeal to Fregean descriptive senses or the like, and that this is compatible with those terms’ rigidly designating the same object. This combination can be articulated in two ways. Gilbert Harman proposes that meaning is “wide” conceptual role, so that conceptual role incorporates not just inferential factors, etc., but also Kripke-Putnam external reference relations. But there are also two-factor theories of meaning, as proposed by Field among others, which recognize two strata of meaning, one corresponding to how a person understands a term – its narrow conceptual role, the other involving references, Russellian propositions, or truth-conditions. As the language-of-thought view indicates, some concerns about meaning have been taken over by theories of the content of thoughts or propositional attitudes. A distinction is often made between the narrow content of a thought and its wide content. If psychological explanation invokes only “what is in the head,” and if thought contents are essential to psychological explanation, there must be narrow content. Theories have appealed to the “syntax” or conceptual roles or “characters” of internal sentences, as well as to images and stereotypes. A thought’s wide content may then be regarded (as motivated by the Kripke-Putnam arguments) as a Russellian proposition. The naturalistic reference-relations that determine the elements of such propositions are the focus of causal, “informational” and “teleological” theories by Fodor, Dretske, and Ruth Millikan. Assertability theories and conceptual role theories have been called use theories of meaning in a broad sense that marks a contrast with truthconditional theories. On a use theory in this broad sense, understanding meaning consists in knowing how to use a term or sentence, or being disposed to use a term or sentence in response to certain external or conceptual factors. But ‘use theory’ also refers to the doctrine of the later writings of Wittgenstein, by whom theories of meaning that abstract from the very large variety of interpersonal uses of language are declared a philosopher’s mistake. The meanings of terms and sentences are a matter of the language games in which they play roles; these are too various to have a common structure that can be captured in a philosopher’s theory of meaning. Conceptual role theories tend toward meaning holism, the thesis that a term’s meaning cannot be abstracted from the entirety of its conceptual connections. On a holistic view any belief or inferential connection involving a term is as much a candidate for determining its meaning as any other. This could be avoided by affirming the analytic–synthetic distinction, according to which some of a term’s conceptual connections are constitutive of its meaning and others only incidental. (‘Bachelors are unmarried’ versus ‘Bachelors have a tax advantage’.) But many philosophers follow Quine in his skepticism about that distinction. The implications of holism are drastic, for it strictly implies that different people’s words cannot mean the same. In the philosophy of science, meaning holism has been held to imply the incommensurability of theories, according to which a scientific theory that replaces an earlier theory cannot be held to contradict it and hence not to correct or to improve on it – for the two theories’ apparently common terms would be equivocal. Remedies might include, again, maintaining some sort of analytic–synthetic distinction for scientific terms, or holding that conceptual role theories and hence holism itself, as Field proposes, hold only intrapersonally, while taking interpersonal and intertheoretic meaning comparisons to be referential and truth-conditional. Even this, however, leads to difficult questions about the interpretation of scientific theories. A radical position, associated with Quine, identifies the meaning of a theory as a whole with its empirical meaning, that is, the set of actual and possible sensory or perceptual situations that would count as verifying the theory as a whole. This can be seen as a successor to the verificationist theory, with theory replacing statement or sentence. Articulations of meaning internal to a theory would then be spurious, as would virtually all ordinary intuitions about meaning. This fits well Quine’s skepticism about meaning, his thesis of the indeterminacy of translation, according to which no objective facts distinguish a favored translation of another language into ours from every apparently incorrect translation. Many constructive theories of meaning may be seen as replies to this and other skepticisms about the objective status of semantic facts.
meaning postulate, a sentence that specifies part or all of the meaning of a predicate. Meaning postulates would thus include explicit, contextual, and recursive definitions, reduction sentences for dispositional predicates, and, more generally, any sentences stating how the extensions of predicates are interrelated by virtue of the meanings of those predicates. For example, any reduction sentence of the form (x) (x has f / (x is malleable S x has y)) could be a meaning postulate for the predicate ‘is malleable’. The notion of a meaning postulate was introduced by Carnap, whose original interest stemmed from a desire to explicate sentences that are analytic (“true by virtue of meaning”) but not logically true. Where G is a set of such postulates, one could say that A is analytic with respect to G if and only if A is a logical consequence of G. On this account, e.g., the sentence ‘Jake is not a married bachelor’ is analytic with respect to {’All bachelors are unmarried’}.
mechanistic explanation, a kind of explanation countenanced by views that range from the extreme position that all natural phenomena can be explained entirely in terms of masses in motion of the sort postulated in Newtonian mechanics, to little more than a commitment to naturalistic explanations. Mechanism in its extreme form is clearly false because numerous physical phenomena of the most ordinary sort cannot be explained entirely in terms of masses in motion. Mechanics is only one small part of physics. Historically, explanations were designated as mechanistic to indicate that they included no reference to final causes or vital forces. In this weak sense, all present-day scientific explanations are mechanistic. The adequacy of mechanistic explanation is usually raised in connection with living creatures, especially those capable of deliberate action. For example, chromosomes lining up opposite their partners in preparation for meiosis looks like anything but a purely mechanical process, and yet the more we discover about the process, the more mechanistic it turns out to be. The mechanisms responsible for meiosis arose through variation and selection and cannot be totally understood without reference to the evolutionary process, but meiosis as it takes place at any one time appears to be a purely mechanistic physicochemical meaning, conceptual role theory of mechanistic explanation process. Intentional behavior is the phenomenon that is most resistant to explanation entirely in physicochemical terms. The problem is not that we do not know enough about the functioning of the central nervous system but that no matter how it turns out to work, we will be disinclined to explain human action entirely in terms of physicochemical processes. The justification for this disinclination tends to turn on what we mean when we describe people as behaving intentionally. Even so, we may simply be mistaken to ascribe more to human action than can be explained in terms of purely physicochemical processes.
Medina, Bartolomeo (1527–80), Dominican theologian who taught theology at Alcalá and then at Salamanca. His major works are commentaries on Aquinas’s Summa theologica. Medina is often called the father of probabilism but scholars disagree on the legitimacy of this attribution. Support for it is contained in Medina’s commentary on Aquinas’s Prima secundae (1577). Medina denies that it is sufficient for an opinion to be probable that there are apparent reasons in its favor and that it is supported by many people. For then all errors would be probable. Rather, an opinion is probable if it can be followed without censure and reproof, as when wise persons state and support it with excellent reasons. Medina suggests the use of these criteria in decisions concerning moral dilemmas (Suma de casos morales [“Summa of Moral Questions”], 1580). P.Gar. Megarians, also called Megarics, a loose-knit group of Greek philosophers active in the fourth and early third centuries B.C., whose work in logic profoundly influenced the course of ancient philosophy. The name derives from that of Megara, the hometown of Euclid (died c.365 B.C.; unrelated to the later mathematician), who was an avid companion of Socrates and author of (lost) Socratic dialogues. Little is recorded about his views, and his legacy rests with his philosophical heirs. Most prominent of these was Eubulides, a contemporary and critic of Aristotle; he devised a host of logical paradoxes, including the liar and the sorites or heap paradoxes. To many this ingenuity seemed sheer eristic, a label some applied to him. One of his associates, Alexinus, was a leading critic of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, whose arguments he twitted in incisive parodies. Stilpo (c.380–c.300 B.C.), a native of Megara, was also famous for disputation but best known for his apatheia (impassivity). Rivaling the Cynics as a preacher of self-reliance, he once insisted, after his city and home were plundered, that he lost nothing of his own since he retained his knowledge and virtue. Zeno the Stoic was one of many followers he attracted. Most brilliant of the Megarians was Diodorus, nicknamed Cronus or “Old Fogey” (fl. 300 B.C.), who had an enormous impact on Stoicism and the skeptical Academy. Among the first explorers of propositional logic, he and his associates were called “the dialecticians,” a label that referred not to an organized school or set of doctrines but simply to their highly original forms of reasoning. Diodorus defined the possible narrowly as what either is or will be true, and the necessary broadly as what is true and will not be false. Against his associate Philo, the first proponent of material implication, he maintained that a conditional is true if and only if it is neverthe case that its antecedent is true and its consequent false. He argued that matter is atomic and that time and motion are likewise discrete. With an exhibitionist’s flair, he demonstrated that meaning is conventional by naming his servants “But” and “However.” Most celebrated is his Master (or Ruling) Argument, which turns on three propositions: (1) Every truth about the past is necessary; (2) nothing impossible follows from something possible; and (3) some things are possible that neither are nor will be true. His aim was apparently to establish his definition of possibility by showing that its negation in (3) is inconsistent with (1) and (2), which he regarded as obvious. Various Stoics, objecting to the implication of determinism here, sought to uphold a wider form of possibility by overturning (1) or (2). Diodorus’s fame made him a target of satire by eminent poets, and it is said that he expired from shame after failing to solve on the spot a puzzle Stilpo posed at a party.
Meinong, Alexius (1853–1920), Austrian philosopher and psychologist, founder of Gegenstandstheorie, the theory of (existent and nonexistent intended) objects. He was the target of Russell’s criticisms of the idea of non-existent objects in his landmark essay “On Denoting” (1905). mediate inference Meinong, Alexius 551 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 551 Meinong, after eight years at the Vienna Gymnasium, enrolled in the University of Vienna in 1870, studying German philology and history and completing a dissertation (1874) on Arnold von Brescia. After this period he became interested in philosophy as a result of his critical selfdirected reading of Kant. At the suggestion of his teacher Franz Brentano, he undertook a systematic investigation of Hume’s empiricism, culminating in his first publications in philosophy, the Hume-Studien I, II (1878 and 1882). In 1882, Meinong was appointed Professor Extraordinarius at the University of Graz (receiving promotion to Ordinarius in 1889), where he remained until his death. At Graz he established the first laboratory for experimental psychology in Austria, and was occupied with psychological as well as philosophical problems throughout his career. The Graz school of phenomenological psychology and philosophical semantics, which centered on Meinong and his students, made important contributions to object theory in philosophical semantics, metaphysics, ontology, value theory, epistemology, theory of evidence, possibility and probability, and the analysis of emotion, imagination, and abstraction. Meinong’s object theory is based on a version of Brentano’s immanent intentionality thesis, that every psychological state contains an intended object toward which the mental event (or, in a less common terminology, a mental act) is semantically directed. Meinong, however, rejects Brentano’s early view of the immanence of the intentional, maintaining that thought is directed toward transcendent mind-independent existent or non-existent objects. Meinong distinguishes between judgments about the being (Sein) of intended objects of thought, and judgments about their “so-being,” character, or nature (Sosein). He claims that every thought is intentionally directed toward the transcendent mind-independent object the thought purports to be “about,” which entails that in at least some cases contingently non-existent and even impossible objects, for instance Berkeley’s golden mountain and the round square, must be included as non-existent intended objects in the object theory semantic domain. Meinong further maintains that an intended object’s Sosein is independent of its Sein or ontological status, of whether or not the object happens to exist. This means, contrary to what many philosophers have supposed, that non-existent objects can truly possess the constitutive properties predicated of them in thought. Meinong’s object theory evolved over a period of years, and underwent many additions and revisions. In its mature form, the theory includes the following principles: (1) Thought can freely (even if falsely) assume the existence of any describable object (principle of unrestricted free assumption, or unbeschränkten Annahmefreiheit thesis); (2) Every thought is intentionally directed toward a transcendent, mind-independent intended object (modified intentionality thesis); (3) Every intended object has a nature, character, Sosein, “how-it-is,” “so-being,” or “being thus-and-so,” regardless of its ontological status (independence of Sosein from Sein thesis); (4) Being or non-being is not part of the Sosein of any intended object, nor of an object considered in itself (indifference thesis, or doctrine of the Aussersein of the homeless pure object); (5) There are two modes of being or Sein for intended objects: (a) spatiotemporal existence and (b) Platonic subsistence (Existenz/Bestand thesis); (6) There are some intended objects that do not have Sein at all, but neither exist nor subsist (objects of which it is true that there are no such objects). Object theory, unlike extensionalist semantics, makes it possible, as in much of ordinary and scientific thought and language, to refer to and truly predicate properties of non-existent objects. There are many misconceptions about Meinong’s theory, such as that reflected in the objection that Meinong is a super-Platonist who inflates ontology with non-existent objects that nevertheless have being in some sense, that object theory tolerates outright logical inconsistency rather than mere incompatibility of properties in the Soseine of impossible intended objects. Russell, in his reviews of Meinong’s theory in 1904–05, raises the problem of the existent round square, which seems to be existent by virtue of the independence of Sosein from Sein, and to be non-existent by virtue of being globally and simultaneously both round and square. Meinong’s response involves several complex distinctions, but it has been observed that to avoid the difficulty he need only appeal to the distinction between konstitutorisch or nuclear and ausserkonstitutorisch or extranuclear properties, adopted from a suggestion by his student Ernst Mally (1878–1944), according to which only ordinary nuclear properties like being red, round, or ten centimeters tall are part of the Sosein of any object, to the exclusion of categorical or extranuclear properties like being existent, determinate, possible, or impossible. This avoids counterexamples like the existent round square, because it limits the independence of Sosein from Sein exclusively to nuclear properties,implying that neither the existent nor the nonexistent round square can possibly have the (extranuclear) property of being existent or nonexistent in their respective Soseine, and cannot be said truly to have the properties of being existent or non-existent merely by free assumption and the independence of Sosein from Sein.
meliorism (from Latin melior, ‘better’), the view that the world is neither completely good nor completely bad, and that incremental progress or regress depend on human actions. By creative intelligence and education we can improve the environment and social conditions. The position is first attributed to George Eliot and William James. Whitehead suggested that meliorism applies to God, who can both improve the world and draw sustenance from human efforts to improve the world.
Melissus of Samos (fl. mid-fifth century B.C.), Greek philosopher, traditionally classified as a member of the Eleatic School. He was also famous as the victorious commander in a preemptive attack by the Samians on an Athenian naval force (441 B.C.). Like Parmenides – who must have influenced Melissus, even though there is no evidence the two ever met – Melissus argues that “what-is” or “the real” cannot come into being out of nothing, cannot perish into nothing, is homogeneous, and is unchanging. Indeed, he argues explicitly (whereas Parmenides only implies) that there is only one such entity, that there is no void, and that even spatial rearrangement (metakosmesis) must be ruled out. But unlike Parmenides, Melissus deduces that what-is is temporally infinite (in significant contrast to Parmenides, regardless as to whether the latter held that what-is exists strictly in the “now” or that it exists non-temporally). Moreover, Melissus argues that what-is is spatially infinite (whereas Parmenides spoke of “bounds” and compared what-is to a well-made ball). Significantly, Melissus repeatedly speaks of “the One.” It is, then, in Melissus, more than in Parmenides or in Zeno, that we find the emphasis on monism. In a corollary to his main argument, Melissus argues that “if there were many things,” each would have to be – per impossibile – exactly like “the One.” This remark has been interpreted as issuing the challenge that was taken up by the atomists. But it is more reasonable to read it as a philosophical strategist’s preemptive strike: Melissus anticipates the move made in the pluralist systems of the second half of the fifth century, viz., positing a plurality of eternal and unchanging elements that undergo only spatial rearrangement.
memory, the retention of, or the capacity to retain, past experience or previously acquired information. There are two main philosophical questions about memory: (1) In what does memory consist? and (2) What constitutes knowing a fact on the basis of memory? Not all memory is remembering facts: there is remembering one’s perceiving or feeling or acting in a certain way – which, while it entails remembering the fact that one did experience in that way, must be more than that. And not all remembering of facts is knowledge of facts: an extremely hesitant attempt to remember an address, if one gets it right, counts as remembering the address even if one is too uncertain for this to count as knowing it. (1) Answers to the first question agree on some obvious points: that memory requires (a) a present and (b) a past state of, or event in, the subject, and (c) the right sort of internal and causal relations between the two. Also, we must distinguish between memory states (remembering for many years the name of one’s first-grade teacher) and memory occurrences (recalling the name when asked). A memory state is usually taken to be a disposition to display an appropriate memory occurrence given a suitable stimulus. But philosophers disagree about further specifics. On one theory (held by many empiricists from Hume to Russell, among others, but now largely discredited), occurrent memory consists in images of past experience (which have a special quality marking them as memory images) and that memory of facts is read off such image memory. This overlooks the point that people commonly remember facts without remembering when or how they learned them. A more sophisticated theory of factual memory (popular nowadays) holds that an occurrent memory of a fact requires, besides a past learning of it, (i) some sort of present mental representation of it (perhaps a linguistic one) and (ii) continuous storage between then and now of a representation of it. But condition (i) may not be Meister Eckhart memory 553 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 553 conceptually necessary: a disposition to dial the right number when one wants to call home constitutes remembering the number (provided it is appropriately linked causally to past learning of the number) and manifesting that disposition is occurrently remembering the fact as to what the number is even if one does not in the process mentally represent that fact. Condition (ii) may also be too strong: it seems at least conceptually possible that a causal link sufficient for memory should be secured by a relation that does not involve anything continuous between the relevant past and present occurrences (in The Analysis of Mind, Russell countenanced this possibility and called it “mnemic causation”). (2) What must be added to remembering that p to get a case of knowing it because one remembers it? We saw that one must not be uncertain that p. Must one also have grounds for trusting one’s memory impression (its seeming to one that one remembers) that p? How could one have such grounds except by knowing them on the basis of memory? The facts one can know not on the basis of memory are limited at most to what one presently perceives and what one presently finds self-evident. If no memory belief qualifies as knowledge unless it is supported by memory knowledge of the reliability of one’s memory, then the process of qualifying as memory knowledge cannot succeed: there would be an endless chain, or loop, of facts – this belief is memory knowledge if and only if this other belief is, which is if and only if this other one is, and so on – which never becomes a set that entails that any belief is memory knowledge. On the basis of such reasoning a skeptic might deny the possibility of memory knowledge. We may avoid this consequence without going to the lax extreme of allowing that any correct memory impression is knowledge; we can impose the (frequently satisfied) requirement that one not have reasons specific to the particular case for believing that one’s memory impression might be unreliable. Finally, remembering that p becomes memory knowledge that p only if one believes that p because it seems to one that one remembers it. One might remember that p and confidently believe that p, but if one has no memory impression of having previously learned it, or one has such an impression but does not trust it and believes that p only for other reasons (or no reason), then one should not be counted as knowing that p on the basis of memory.
Mencius, also known as Meng-tzu, Meng K’o (fl. fourth century B.C.), Chinese Confucian philosopher, probably the single most influential philosopher in the Chinese tradition. His sayings, discussions, and debates were compiled by disciples in the book entitled Meng-tzu. Mencius is best known for his assertion that human nature is good but it is unclear what he meant by this. At one point, he says he only means that a human can become good. Elsewhere, though, he says that human nature is good just as water flows downward, implying that humans will become good if only their natural development is unimpeded. Certainly, part of what is implied by the claim that human nature is good is Mencius’s belief that all humans have what he describes as four “hearts” or “sprouts” – benevolence (jen), righteousness (yi), ritual propriety (li), and wisdom (chih). The term ‘sprout’ seems to refer to an incipient emotional or behavioral reaction of a virtuous nature. Mencius claims, e.g., that any human who saw a child about to fall into a well would have a spontaneous feeling of concern, which is the sprout of benevolence. Although all humans manifest the sprouts, “concentration” (ssu) is required in order to nurture them into mature virtues. Mencius is not specific about what concentration is, but it probably involves an ongoing awareness of, and delight in, the operation of the sprouts. The result of the concentration and consequent delight in the operation of the sprouts is the “extension” (t’ui, ta, chi) or “filling out” (k’uo, ch’ung) of the incipient reactions, so that benevolence, for instance, comes to be manifested to all suffering humans. Nonetheless, Mencius maintains the belief, typical of Confucianism, that we have greater moral responsibility for those tied to us because of particular relationships such as kinship. Mencius is also Confucian in his belief that the virtues first manifest themselves within the family. Although Mencius is a self-cultivationist, he also believes that one’s environment can positively or negatively affect one’s moral development, and encourages rulers to produce social conditions conducive to virtue. He admits, however, that there are moral prodigies who have flourished despite deleterious circumstances. Mencius’s virtue ethic is like Aristotle’s in combining antinomianism with a belief in the objectivity of specific moral judgments, but his de-emphasis of intellectual virtues and emphasis upon benevolence are reminiscent of Joseph Butler. Mencius differs from Butler, however, in that although he thinks the Confucian way is the most profitable, he condemns profit or self-love as a motivation. Mencius saw himself as defending the doctrines of Confucius against the philosophies of other thinkers, especially Mo Tzu and Yang Chu. In so doing, he often goes beyond what Confucius said.
Mendel, Gregor (1822–84), Austrian botanist and discoverer of what are now considered the basic principles of heredity. An Augustinian monk who conducted plant-breeding experiments in a monastery garden in Brünn (now Brno, Czech Republic), Mendel discovered that certain characters of a common variety of garden pea are transmitted in a strikingly regular way. The characters with which he dealt occur in two distinct states, e.g., pods that are smooth or ridged. In characters such as these, one state is dominant to its recessive partner, i.e., when varieties of each sort are crossed, all the offspring exhibit the dominant character. However, when the offspring of these crosses are themselves crossed, the result is a ratio of three dominants to one recessive. In modern terms, pairs of genes (alleles) separate at reproduction (segregation) and each offspring receives only one member of each pair. Of equal importance, the recessive character reappears unaffected by its temporary suppression. Alleles remain pure. Mendel also noted that the pairs of characters that he studied assort independently of each other, i.e., if two pairs of characters are followed through successive crosses, no statistical correlations in their transmission can be found. As genetics developed after the turn of the century, the simple “laws” that Mendel had set out were expanded and altered. Only a relatively few characters exhibit two distinct states, one dominant to the other. In many, the heterozygote exhibits an intermediate state. In addition, genes do not exist in isolation from each other but together on chromosomes. Only those genes that reside on different pairs of chromosomes assort in total independence of each other. During his research, Mendel corresponded with Karl von Nägeli (1817–91), a major authority in plant hybridization. Von Nägeli urged Mendel to cross varieties of the common hawkweed. When Mendel took his advice, he failed to discover the hereditary patterns that he had found in garden peas. In 1871 Mendel ceased his research to take charge of his monastery. In 1900 Hugo de Vries (1848–1935) stumbled upon several instances of three-to-one ratios while developing his own theory of the origin of species. No sooner did he publish his results than two young biologists announced independent discovery of what came to be known as Mendel’s laws. The founders of modern genetics abandoned attempts to work out the complexities of embryological development and concentrated just on transmission. As a result of several unfortunate misunderstandings, early Mendelian geneticists thought that their theory of genetics was incompatible with Darwin’s theory of evolution. Eventually, however, the two theories were merged to form the synthetic theory of evolution. In the process, R. A. Fisher (1890–1962) questioned the veracity of Mendel’s research, arguing that the only way that Mendel could have gotten data as good as he did was by sanitizing it. Present-day historians view all of the preceding events in a very different light. The science of heredity that developed at the turn of the century was so different from anything that Mendel had in mind that Mendel hardly warrants being considered its father. The neglect of Mendel’s work is made to seem so problematic only by reading later developments back into Mendel’s original paper. Like de Vries, Mendel was interested primarily in developing a theory of the origin of species. The results of Mendel’s research on the hawkweed brought into question the generalizability of the regularities that he had found in peas, but they supported his theory of species formation through hybridization. Similarly, the rediscovery of Mendel’s laws can be viewed as an instance of multiple, simultaneous discovery only by ignoring important differences in the views expressed by these authors. Finally, Mendel certainly did not mindlessly organize and report his data, but the methods that he used can be construed as questionable only in contrast to an overly empirical, inductive view of science. Perhaps Mendel was no Mendelian, but he was not a fraud either.
Mendelian genetics. See MENDEL. Mendelssohn, Moses (1729–86), German philosopher known as “the Jewish Socrates.” He began as a Bible and Talmud scholar. After moving to Berlin he learned Latin and German, and became a close friend of Lessing, who modeled the Jew in his play Nathan the Wise after him. Mendelssohn began writing on major philosophical topics of the day, and won a prize from the Berlin Academy in 1764. He was actively engaged in discussions about aesthetics, psychology, and religion, and offered an empirical, subjectivist view that was very popular at the time. His most famous writings are Morgenstunden (Morning Hours, or Lectures on the Existence of God, 1785), Phaedon (Phaedo, or on the Immortality of the Soul, 1767), and Jerusalem (1783). He contended that one could prove the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. He accepted the ontological argument and the argument from design. In Phaedo he argued that since the soul is a simple substance it is indestructible. Kant criticized his arguments in the first Critique. Mendelssohn was pressed by the Swiss scientist Lavater to explain why he, as a reasonable man, did not accept Christianity. At first he ignored the challenge, but finally set forth his philosophical views about religion and Judaism in Jerusalem, where he insisted that Judaism is not a set of doctrines but a set of practices. Reasonable persons can accept that there is a universal religion of reason, and there are practices that God has ordained that the Jews follow. Mendelssohn was a strong advocate of religious toleration and separation of church and state. His views played an important part in the emancipation of the Jews, and in the Jewish Enlightenment that flowered in Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
mens rea, literally, guilty mind, in law Latin. It is one of the two main prerequisites (along with actus reus) for prima facie liability to criminal punishment in Anglo-American legal systems. To be punishable in such systems, one must not only have performed a legally prohibited action, such as killing another human being; one must have done so with a culpable state of mind, or mens rea. Such culpable mental states are of three kinds: they are either motivational states of purpose, cognitive states of belief, or the non-mental state of negligence. To illustrate each of these with respect to the act of killing: a killer may kill either having another’s death as ultimate purpose, or as mediate purpose on the way to achieving some further, ultimate end. Alternatively, the killer may act believing to a practical certainty that his act will result in another’s death, even though such death is an unwanted side effect, or he may believe that there is a substantial and unjustified risk that his act will cause another’s death. The actor may also be only negligent, which is to take an unreasonable risk of another’s death even if the actor is not aware either of such risk or of the lack of justification for taking it. Mens rea usually does not have to do with any awareness by the actor that the act done is either morally wrong or legally prohibited. Neither does mens rea have to do with any emotional state of guilt or remorse, either while one is acting or afterward. Sometimes in its older usages the term is taken to include the absence of excuses as well as the mental states necessary for prima facie liability; in such a usage, the requirement is helpfully labeled “general mens rea,” and the requirement above discussed is labeled “special mens rea.”
Mentalese, the language of thought (the title of a book by Fodor, 1975) or of “brain writing” (a term of Dennett’s); specifically, a languagelike medium of representation in which the contents of mental events are supposedly expressed or recorded. (The term was probably coined by Wilfrid Sellars, with whose views it was first associated.) If what one believes are propositions, then it is tempting to propose that believing something is having the Mentalese expression of that proposition somehow written in the relevant place in one’s mind or brain. Thinking a thought, at least on those occasions when we think “wordlessly” (without formulating our thoughts in sentences or phrases composed of words of a public language), thus appears to be a matter of creating a short-lived Mentalese expression in a special arena or work space in the mind. In a further application of the concept, the process of coming to understand a sentence of natural language can be viewed as one of translating the sentence into Mentalese. It has often been argued that this view of understanding only postpones the difficult questions of meaning, for it leaves unanswered the question of how Mentalese expressions come to have the meanings Meng K’o Mentalese 556 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 556 they do. There have been frequent attempts to develop versions of the hypothesis that mental activity is conducted in Mentalese, and just as frequent criticisms of these attempts. Some critics deny there is anything properly called representation in the mind or brain at all; others claim that the system of representation used by the brain is not enough like a natural language to be called a language. Even among defenders of Mentalese, it has seldom been claimed that all brains “speak” the same Mentalese.
mentalism, any theory that posits explicitly mental events and processes, where ‘mental’ means exhibiting intentionality, not necessarily being immaterial or non-physical. A mentalistic theory is couched in terms of belief, desire, thinking, feeling, hoping, etc. A scrupulously non-mentalistic theory would be couched entirely in extensional terms: it would refer only to behavior or to neurophysiological states and events. The attack on mentalism by behaviorists was led by B. F. Skinner, whose criticisms did not all depend on the assumption that mentalists were dualists, and the subsequent rise of cognitive science has restored a sort of mentalism (a “thoroughly modern mentalism,” as Fodor has called it) that is explicitly materialistic.
Mercier, Désiré-Joseph (1851–1926), Belgian Catholic philosopher, a formative figure in NeoThomism and founder of the Institut Supérieur de Philosophie (1889) at Louvain. Created at the request of Pope Leo XIII, Mercier’s institute treated Aquinas as a subject of historical research and as a philosopher relevant to modern thought. His approach to Neo-Thomism was distinctive for its direct response to the epistemological challenges posed by idealism, rationalism, and positivism. Mercier’s epistemology was termed a criteriology; it intended to defend the certitude of the intellect against skepticism by providing an account of the motives and rules that guide judgment. Truth is affirmed by intellectual judgment by conforming itself not to the thing-in-itself but to its abstract apprehension. Since the certitude of judgment is a state of the cognitive faculty in the human soul, Mercier considered criteriology as psychology; see Critériologie générale ou Théorie générale de la certitude (1906), Origins of Contemporary Psychology (trans. 1918), and Manual of Scholastic Philosophy (trans. 1917–18).
mereology (from Greek meros, ‘part’), the mathematical theory of parts; specifically, Lesniewski’s formal theory of parts. Typically, a mereological theory employs notions such as the following: proper part, improper part, overlapping (having a part in common), disjoint (not overlapping), mereological product (the “intersection” of overlapping objects), mereological sum (a collection of parts), mereological difference, the universal sum, mereological complement, and atom (that which has no proper parts). Formal mereologies are axiomatic systems. Lesniewski’s mereology and Goodman’s formal mereology (which he calls the Calculus of Individuals) are compatible with nominalism, i.e., no reference is made to sets, properties, or other abstract entities. Lesniewski hoped that his mereology, with its many parallels to set theory, would provide an alternative to set theory as a foundation for mathematics. Fundamental and controversial implications of Lesniewski’s and Goodman’s theories include their extensionality and collectivism. Extensional theories imply that for any individuals, x and y, x % y provided x and y have the same proper parts. One reason extensionality is controversial is that it rules out an object’s acquiring or losing a part, and therefore is inconsistent with commonsense beliefs such as that a car has a new tire or that a table has lost a sliver of wood. A second reason for controversy is that extensionality is incompatible with the belief that a statue and the piece of bronze of which it is made have the same parts and yet are diverse objects. Collectivism implies that any individuals, no matter how scattered, have a mereological sum or constitute an object. Moreover, according to collectivism, assembling or disassembling parts does not affect the existence of things, i.e., nothing is created or destroyed by assembly or disassembly, respectively. Thus, collectivism is incompatible with commonsense beliefs such as that when a watch is disassembled, it is destroyed, or that when certain parts are assembled, a watch is created. Because the aforementioned formal theories shun modality, they lack the resources to express mentalism mereology 557 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 557 meritarian Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 558 the thesis that a whole has each of its parts necessarily. This thesis of mereological essentialism has recently been defended by Roderick Chisholm.
meritarian, one who asserts the relevance of individual merit, as an independent justificatory condition, in attempts to design social structures or distribute goods. ‘Meritarianism’ is a recently coined term in social and political philosophy, closely related to ‘meritocracy’, and used to identify a range of related concerns that supplement or oppose egalitarian, utilitarian, and contractarian principles and principles based on entitlement, right, interest, and need, among others. For example, one can have a pressing need for an Olympic medal but not merit it; one can have the money to buy a masterpiece but not be worthy of it; one can have the right to a certain benefit but not deserve it. Meritarians assert that considerations of desert are always relevant and sometimes decisive in such cases. What counts as merit, and how important should it be in moral, social, and political decisions? Answers to these questions serve to distinguish one meritarian from another, and sometimes to blur the distinctions between the meritarian position and others. Merit may refer to any of these: comparative rank, capacities, abilities, effort, intention, or achievement. Moreover, there is a relevance condition to be met: to say that highest honors in a race should go to the most deserving is presumably to say that the honors should go to those with the relevant sort of merit – speed, e.g., rather than grace. Further, meritarians may differ about the strength of the merit principle, and how various political or social structures should be influenced by it.
meritocracy, in ordinary usage, a system in which advancement is based on ability and achievement, or one in which leadership roles are held by talented achievers. The term may also refer to an elite group of talented achievers. In philosophical usage, the term’s meaning is similar: a meritocracy is a scheme of social organization in which essential offices, and perhaps careers and jobs of all sorts are (a) open only to those who have the relevant qualifications for successful performance in them, or (b) awarded only to the candidates who are likely to perform the best, or (c) managed so that people advance in and retain their offices and jobs solely on the basis of the quality of their performance in them, or (d) all of the above.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1908–61), French philosopher disliked by Austin, loved by Grice, and described by Paul Ricoeur as “the greatest of the French phenomenologists.” MerleauPonty occupied the chair of child psychology and pedagogy at the Sorbonne and was later professor of philosophy at the Collège de France. His sudden death preceded completion of an important manuscript; this was later edited and published by Claude Lefort under the title The Visible and the Invisible. The relation between the late, unfinished work and his early Phenomenology of Perception (1945) has received much scholarly discussion. While some commentators see a significant shift in direction in his later thought, others insist on continuity throughout his work. Thus, the exact significance of his philosophy, which in his life was called both a philosophy of ambiguity and an ambiguous philosophy, retains to this day its essential ambiguity. With his compatriot and friend, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty was responsible for introducing the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl into France. Impressed above all by the later Husserl and by Husserl’s notion of the life-world (Lebenswelt), Merleau-Ponty combined Husserl’s transcendental approach to epistemological issues with an existential orientation derived from Heidegger and Marcel. Going even further than Heidegger, who had himself sought to go beyond Husserl by “existentializing” Husserl’s Transcendental Ego (referring to it as Dasein), MerleauPonty sought to emphasize not only the existential (worldly) nature of the human subject but, above all, its bodily nature. Thus his philosophy could be characterized as a philosophy of the lived body or the body subject (le corps propre). Although Nietzsche called attention to the all-importance of the body, it was MerleauPonty who first made the body the central theme of a detailed philosophical analysis. This provided an original perspective from which to rethink such perennial philosophical issues as the nature of knowledge, freedom, time (temporality), language, and intersubjectivity. Especially in his early work, Merleau-Ponty battled against absolutist thought (“la pensée de l’absolu”), stressing the insurmountable ambiguity and contingency of all meaning and truth. An archopponent of Cartesian rationalism, he was an early and ardent spokesman for that position now called antifoundationalism. Merleau-Ponty’s major early work, the Phenomenology of Perception, is best known for its central thesis concerning “the primacy of perception.” In this lengthy study he argued that all the “higher” functions of consciousness (e.g., intellection, volition) are rooted in and depend upon the subject’s prereflective, bodily existence, i.e., perception (“All consciousness is perceptual, even the consciousness of ourselves”). MerleauPonty maintained, however, that perception had never been adequately conceptualized by traditional philosophy. Thus the book was to a large extent a dialectical confrontation with what he took to be the two main forms of objective thinking – intellectualism and empiricism – both of which, he argued, ignored the phenomenon of perception. His principal goal was to get beyond the intellectual constructs of traditional philosophy (such as sense-data) and to effect “a return to the phenomena,” to the world as we actually experience it as embodied subjects prior to all theorizing. His main argument (directed against mainline philosophy) was that the lived body is not an object in the world, distinct from the knowing subject (as in Descartes), but is the subject’s own point of view on the world; the body is itself the original knowing subject (albeit a nonor prepersonal, “anonymous” subject), from which all other forms of knowledge derive, even that of geometry. As a phenomenological (or, as he also said, “archaeological”) attempt to unearth the basic (corporeal) modalities of human existence, emphasizing the rootedness (enracinement) of the personal subject in the obscure and ambiguous life of the body and, in this way, the insurpassable contingency of all meaning, the Phenomenology was immediately and widely recognized as a major statement of French existentialism. In his subsequent work in the late 1940s and the 1950s, in many shorter essays and articles, Merleau-Ponty spelled out in greater detail the philosophical consequences of “the primacy of perception.” These writings sought to respond to widespread objections that by “grounding” all intellectual and cultural acquisitions in the prereflective and prepersonal life of the body, the Phenomenology of Perception results in a kind of reductionism and anti-intellectualism and teaches only a “bad ambiguity,” i.e., completely undermines the notions of reason and truth. By shifting his attention from the phenomenon of perception to that of (creative) expression, his aim was to work out a “good ambiguity” by showing how “communication with others and thought take up and go beyond the realm of perception which initiated us to the truth.” His announced goal after the Phenomenology was “working out in a rigorous way the philosophical foundations” of a theory of truth and a theory of intersubjectivity (including a theory of history). No such large-scale work (a sequel, as it were, to the Phenomenology) ever saw the light of day, although in pursuing this project he reflected on subjects as diverse as painting, literary language, Saussurian linguistics, structuralist anthropology, politics, history, the human sciences, psychoanalysis, contemporary science (including biology), and the philosophy of nature. Toward the end of his life, however, MerleauPonty did begin work on a projected large-scale manuscript, the remnants of which were published posthumously as The Visible and the Invisible. A remarkable feature of this work (as Claude Lefort has pointed out) is the resolute way in which Merleau-Ponty appears to be groping for a new philosophical language. His express concerns in this abortive manuscript are explicitly ontological (as opposed to the more limited phenomenological concerns of his early work), and he consistently tries to avoid the subject (consciousness)–object language of the philosophy of consciousness (inherited from Husserl’s transcendental idealism) that characterized the Phenomenology of Perception. Although much of Merleau-Ponty’s later thought was a response to the later Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty sets himself apart from Heidegger in this unfinished work by claiming that the only ontology possible is an indirect one that can have no direct access to Being itself. Indeed, had he completed it, Merleau-Ponty’s new ontology would probably have been one in which, as Lefort has remarked, “the word Being would not have to be uttered.” He was always keenly attuned to “the sensible world”; the key term in his ontological thinking is not so much ‘Being’ as it is ‘the flesh’, a term with no equivalent in the history of philosophy. What traditional philosophy referred to as “subject” and “object” were not two distinct sorts of reality, but merely “differentiations of one sole and massive adhesion to Being [Nature] which is the flesh.” By viewing the perceiving subject as “a coiling over of the visible upon the visible,” Merleau-Ponty was attempting to overcome the subject–object dichotomy of modern philosophy, which raised the intractable problems of the external world and other minds. With the notion of the flesh he believed he could finally overcome the solipsism of modern philosophy and had discovered the basis for a genuine intersubjectivity (conceived of as basically an intercorporeity). Does ‘flesh’ signify something significantly different from ‘body’ in Merleau-Ponty’s earlier thought? Did his growing concern with ontology (and the question of nature) signal abandonment of his earlier phenomenology (to which the question of nature is foreign)? This has remained a principal subject of conflicting interpretations in Merleau-Ponty scholarship. As illustrated by his last, unfinished work, Merleau-Ponty’s oeuvre as a whole is fragmentary. He always insisted that true philosophy is the enemy of the system, and he disavowed closure and completion. While Heidegger has had numerous disciples and epigones, it is difficult to imagine what a “Merleau-Ponty school of philosophy” would be. This is not to deny that Merleau-Ponty’s work has exerted considerable influence. Although he was relegated to a kind of intellectual purgatory in France almost immediately upon his death, the work of his poststructuralist successors such as Foucault and Jacques Derrida betrays a great debt to his previous struggles with philosophical modernity. And in Germany, Great Britain, and, above all, North America, Merleau-Ponty has continued to be a source of philosophical inspiration and the subject of extensive scholarship. Although his work does not presume to answer the key questions of existence, it is a salient model of philosophy conceived of as unremitting interrogation. It is this questioning (“zetetic”) attitude, combined with a non-dogmatic humanism, that continues to speak not only to philosophers but also to a wide audience among practitioners of the human sciences (phenomenological psychology being a particularly noteworthy example).
Mersenne, Marin (1588–1648), French priest who compiled massive works on philosophy, mathematics, music, and natural science, and conducted an enormous correspondence with such figures as Galileo, Descartes, and Hobbes. He translated Galileo’s Mechanics and Herbert of Cherbury’s De Veritate and arranged for publication of Hobbes’s De Cive. He is best known for gathering the objections published with Descartes’s Meditations. Mersenne served a function in the rise of modern philosophy and science that is today served by professional journals and associations. His works contain attacks on deists, atheists, libertines, and skeptics; but he also presents mitigated skepticism as a practical method for attaining scientific knowledge. He did not believe that we can attain knowledge of inner essences, but argued – by displaying it – that we have an immense amount of knowledge about the material world adequate to our needs. Like Gassendi, Mersenne advocated mechanistic explanations in science, and following Galileo, he proposed mathematical models of material phenomena. Like the Epicureans, he believed that mechanism was adequate to save the phenomena. He thus rejected Aristotelian forms and occult powers. Mersenne was another of the great philosopher-priests of the seventeenth century who believed that to increase scientific knowledge is to know and serve God.
metalanguage, in formal semantics, a language used to describe another language (the object language). The object language may be either a natural language or a formal language. The goal of a formal semantic theory is to provide an axiomatic or otherwise systematic theory of meaning for the object language. The metalanguage is used to specify the object language’s symbols and formation rules, which determine its grammatical sentences or well-formed formulas, and to assign meanings or interpretations to these sentences or formulas. For example, in an extensional semantics, the metalanguage is used to assign denotations to the singular terms, extensions to the general terms, and truth conditions to sentences. The standard format for assigning truth conditions, as in Tarski’s formulation of his “semantical conception of truth,” is a T-sentence, which takes the form ‘S is true if and only if p.’ Davidson adapted this format to the purposes of his truth-theoretic account of meaning. Examples of T-sentences, with English as the metalanguage, are ‘ “La neige est blanche” is true if and only if snow is white’, where the object langauge is French and the homophonic (Davidson) ‘“Snow is white” is true if and only if snow is white’, where the object language is English as well. Although for formal purposes the distinction between metalanguage and object language must be maintained, in practice one can use a langauge to talk about expressions in the very same language. One can, in Carnap’s terms, shift 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 560 from the material mode to the formal mode, e.g. from ‘Every veterinarian is an animal doctor’ to ‘ “Veterinarian” means “animal doctor”.’ This shift is important in discussions of synonymy and of the analytic–synthetic distinction. Carnap’s distinction corresponds to the use–mention distinction. We are speaking in the formal mode – we are mentioning a linguistic expression – when we ascribe a property to a word or other expression type, such as its spelling, pronunciation, meaning, or grammatical category, or when we speak of an expression token as misspelled, mispronounced, or misused. We are speaking in the material mode when we say “Reims is hard to find” but in the formal mode when we say “ ‘Reims’ is hard to pronounce.”
metamathematics, the study and establishment, by restricted (and, in particular, finitary) means, of the consistency or reliability of the various systems of classical mathematics. The term was apparently introduced, with pejorative overtones relating it to ‘metaphysics’, in the 1870s in connection with the discussion of non-Euclidean geometries. It was introduced in the sense given here, shorn of negative connotations, by Hilbert (see his “Neubegründung der Mathematik. Erste Mitteilung,” 1922), who also referred to it as Beweistheorie or proof theory. A few years later (specifically, in the 1930 papers “Über einige fundamentale Begriffe der Metamathematik” and “Fundamentale Begriffe der Methodologie der deduktiven Wissenschaften. I”) Tarski fitted it with a somewhat broader, less restricted sense: broader in that the scope of its concerns was increased to include not only questions of consistency, but also a host of other questions (e.g. questions of independence, completeness and axiomatizability) pertaining to what Tarski referred to as the “methodology of the deductive sciences” (which was his synonym for ‘metamathematics’); less restricted in that the standards of proof were relaxed so as to permit other than finitary – indeed, other than constructive – means. On this broader conception of Tarski’s, formalized deductive disciplines form the field of research of metamathematics roughly in the same sense in which spatial entities form the field of research in geometry or animals that of zoology. Disciplines, he said, are to be regarded as sets of sentences to be investigated from the point of view of their consistency, axiomatizability (of various types), completeness, and categoricity or degree of categoricity, etc. Eventually (see the 1935 and 1936 papers “Grundzüge des Systemenkalkül, Erster Teil” and “Grundzüge der Systemenkalkül, Zweiter Teil”) Tarski went on to include all manner of semantical questions among the concerns of metamathematics, thus diverging rather sharply from Hilbert’s original syntactical focus. Today, the terms ‘metatheory’ and ‘metalogic’ are used to signify that broad set of interests, embracing both syntactical and semantical studies of formal languages and systems, which Tarski came to include under the general heading of metamathematics. Those having to do specifically with semantics belong to that more specialized branch of modern logic known as model theory, while those dealing with purely syntactical questions belong to what has come to be known as proof theory (where this latter is now, however, permitted to employ other than finitary methods in the proofs of its theorems).
metaphilosophy, the theory of the nature of philosophy, especially its goals, methods, and fundamental assumptions. First-order philosophical inquiry includes such disciplines as epistemology, ontology, ethics, and value theory. It thus constitutes the main activity of philosophers, past and present. The philosophical study of firstorder philosophical inquiry raises philosophical inquiry to a higher order. Such higher-order inquiry is metaphilosophy. The first-order philosophical discipline of (e.g.) epistemology has the nature of knowledge as its main focus, but that discipline can itself be the focus of higher-order philosophical inquiry. The latter focus yields a species of metaphilosophy called metaepistemology. Two other prominent species are metaethics and metaontology. Each such branch of metaphilosophy studies the goals, methods, and fundamental assumptions of a first-order philosophical discipline. Typical metaphilosophical topics include (a) the conditions under which a claim is philosophical rather than non-philosophical, and (b) the conditions under which a first-order philosophical claim is either meaningful, true, or warranted. Metaepistemology, e.g., pursues not the nature of knowledge directly, but rather the conditions under which claims are genuinely epistemological and the conditions under which epistemological claims are either meaningful, or true, or warranted. The distinction between philosophy and metaphilosophy has an analogue in the familiar distinction between mathematics and metamathematics. Questions about the autonomy, objectivity, relativity, and modal status of philosophical claims arise in metaphilosophy. Questions about autonomy concern the relationship of philosophy to such disciplines as those constituting the natural and social sciences. For instance, is philosophy methodologically independent of the natural sciences? Questions about objectivity and relativity concern the kind of truth and warrant available to philosophical claims. For instance, are philosophical truths characteristically, or ever, made true by mind-independent phenomena in the way that typical claims of the natural sciences supposedly are? Or, are philosophical truths unavoidably conventional, being fully determined by (and thus altogether relative to) linguistic conventions? Are they analytic rather than synthetic truths, and is knowledge of them a priori rather than a posteriori? Questions about modal status consider whether philosophical claims are necessary rather than contingent. Are philosophical claims necessarily true or false, in contrast to the contingent claims of the natural sciences? The foregoing questions identify major areas of controversy in contemporary metaphilosophy.
metaphor, a figure of speech (or a trope) in which a word or phrase that literally denotes one thing is used to denote another, thereby implicitly comparing the two things. In the normal use of the sentence ‘The Mississippi is a river’, ‘river’ is used literally – or as some would prefer to say, used in its literal sense. By contrast, if one assertively uttered “Time is a river,” one would be using ‘river’ metaphorically – or be using it in a metaphorical sense. Metaphor has been a topic of philosophical discussion since Aristotle; in fact, it has almost certainly been more discussed by philosophers than all the other tropes together. Two themes are prominent in the discussions up to the nineteenth century. One is that metaphors, along with all the other tropes, are decorations of speech; hence the phrase ‘figures of speech’. Metaphors are adornments or figurations. They do not contribute to the cognitive meaning of the discourse; instead they lend it color, vividness, emotional impact, etc. Thus it was characteristic of the Enlightenment and proto-Enlightenment philosophers – Hobbes and Locke are good examples – to insist that though philosophers may sometimes have good reason to communicate their thought with metaphors, they themselves should do their thinking entirely without metaphors. The other theme prominent in discussions of metaphor up to the nineteenth century is that metaphors are, so far as their cognitive force is concerned, elliptical similes. The cognitive force of ‘Time is a river’, when ‘river’ in that sentence is used metaphorically, is the same as ‘Time is like a river’. What characterizes almost all theories of metaphor from the time of the Romantics up through our own century is the rejection of both these traditional themes. Metaphors – so it has been argued – are not cognitively dispensable decorations. They contribute to the cognitive meaning of our discourse; and they are indispensable, not only to religious discourse, but to ordinary, and even scientific, discourse, not to mention poetic. Nietzsche, indeed, went so far as to argue that all speech is metaphorical. And though no consensus has yet emerged on how and what metaphors contribute to meaning, nor how we recognize what they contribute, nearconsensus has emerged on the thesis that they do not work as elliptical similes.
metaphysical realism, in the widest sense, the view that (a) there are real objects (usually the view is concerned with spatiotemporal objects), (b) they exist independently of our experience or our knowledge of them, and (c) they have properties and enter into relations independently of the concepts with which we understand them or of the language with which we describe them. Anti-realism is any view that rejects one or more of these three theses, though if (a) is rejected the rejection of (b) and (c) follows trivially. (If it merely denies the existence of material things, then its traditional name is ‘idealism.’) Metaphysical realism, in all of its three parts, is shared by common sense, the sciences, and most philosophers. The chief objection to it is that we can form no conception of real objects, as understood by it, since any such conception must rest on the concepts we already have and on our language and experience. To accept the objection seems to imply that we can have no knowledge of real objects as they are in themselves, and that truth must not be understood as correspondence to such objects. But this itself has an even farther reaching consequence: either (i) we should accept the seemingly absurd view that there are no real objects (since the objection equally well applies to minds and their states, to concepts and words, to properties and relations, to experiences, etc.), for we should hardly believe in the reality of something of which we can form no conception at all; or (ii) we must face the seemingly hopeless task of a drastic change in what we mean by ‘reality’, ‘concept’, ‘experience’, ‘knowledge’, ‘truth’, and much else. On the other hand, the objection may be held to reduce to a mere tautology, amounting to ‘We (can) know reality only as we (can) know it’, and then it may be argued that no substantive thesis, which anti-realism claims to be, is derivable from a mere tautology. Yet even if the objection is a tautology, it serves to force us to avoid a simplistic view of our cognitive relationship to the world. In discussions of universals, metaphysical realism is the view that there are universals, and usually is contrasted with nominalism. But this either precludes a standard third alternative, namely conceptualism, or simply presupposes that concepts are general words (adjectives, common nouns, verbs) or uses of such words. If this presupposition is accepted, then indeed conceptualism would be the same as nominalism, but this should be argued, not legislated verbally. Traditional conceptualism holds that concepts are particular mental entities, or at least mental dispositions, that serve the classificatory function that universals have been supposed to serve and also explain the classificatory function that general words undoubtedly also serve.
metaphysics, most generally, the philosophical investigation of the nature, constitution, and structure of reality. It is broader in scope than science, e.g., physics and even cosmology (the science of the nature, structure, and origin of the universe as a whole), since one of its traditional concerns is the existence of non-physical entities, e.g., God. It is also more fundamental, since it investigates questions science does not address but the answers to which it presupposes. Are there, for instance, physical objects at all, and does every event have a cause? So understood, metaphysics was rejected by positivism on the ground that its statements are “cognitively meaningless” since they are not empirically verifiable. More recent philosophers, such as Quine, reject metaphysics on the ground that science alone provides genuine knowledge. In The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism (1954), Bergmann argued that logical positivism, and any view such as Quine’s, presupposes a metaphysical theory. And the positivists’ criterion of cognitive meaning was never formulated in a way satisfactory even to them. A successor of the positivist attitude toward metaphysics is P. F. Strawson’s preference (especially in Individuals, 1959) for what he calls descriptive metaphysics, which is “content to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world,” as contrasted with revisionary metaphysics, which is “concerned to produce a better structure.” The view, sometimes considered scientific (but an assumption rather than an argued theory), that all that there is, is spatiotemporal (a part of “nature”) and is knowable only through the methods of the sciences, is itself a metaphysics, namely metaphysical naturalism (not to be confused with natural philosophy). It is not part of science itself. In its most general sense, metaphysics may seem to coincide with philosophy as a whole, since anything philosophy investigates is presumably a part of reality, e.g., knowledge, values, and valid reasoning. But it is useful to reserve the investigation of such more specific topics for distinct branches of philosophy, e.g., epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and logic, since they raise problems peculiar to themselves. Perhaps the most familiar question in metaphysics is whether there are only material entities – materialism – or only mental entities, i.e., minds and their states – idealism – or both – dualism. Here ‘entity’ has its broadest sense: anything real. More specific questions of metaphysics concern the existence and nature of certain individuals – also called particulars – (e.g., God), or certain properties (e.g., are there properties that nothing exemplifies?) or relations (e.g., is there a relation of causation that is a necessary connection rather than a mere regular conjunction between events?). The nature of space and time is another important example of such a more specific topic. Are space and time peculiar individuals that “contain” ordinary individuals, or are they just systems of relations between individual things, such as being (spatially) higher or (temporally) prior. Whatever the answer, space and time are what render a world out of the totality of entities that are parts of it. Since on any account of knowledge, our knowledge of the world is extremely limited, concerning both its spatial and temporal dimensions and its inner constitution, we must allow for an indefinite number of possible ways the world may be, might have been, or will be. And this thought gives rise to the idea of an indefinite number of possible worlds. This idea is useful in making vivid our understanding of the nature of necessary truth (a necessarily true proposition is one that is true in all possible worlds) and thus is commonly employed in modal logic. But the idea can also make possible worlds seem real, a highly controversial doctrine. The notion of a spatiotemporal world is commonly that employed in discussions of the socalled issue of realism versus anti-realism, although this issue has also been raised with respect to universals, values, and numbers, which are not usually considered spatiotemporal. While there is no clear sense in asserting that nothing is real, there seems to be a clear sense in asserting that there is no spatiotemporal world, especially if it is added that there are minds and their ideas. This was Berkeley’s view. But contemporary philosophers who raise questions about the reality of the spatiotemporal world are not comfortable with Berkeleyan minds and ideas and usually just somewhat vaguely speak of “ourselves” and our “representations.” The latter are themselves often understood as material (states of our brains), a clearly inconsistent position for anyone denying the reality of the spatiotemporal world. Usually, the contemporary anti-realist does not actually deny it but rather adopts a view resembling Kant’s transcendental idealism. Our only conception of the world, the anti-realist would argue, rests on our perceptual and conceptual faculties, including our language. But then what reason do we have to think that this conception is true, that it corresponds to the world as the world is in itself? Had our faculties and language been different, surely we would have had very different conceptions of the world. And very different conceptions of it are possible even in terms of our present faculties, as seems to be shown by the fact that very different scientific theories can be supported by exactly the same data. So far, we do not have anti-realism proper. But it is only a short step to it: if our conception of an independent spatiotemporal world is necessarily subjective, then we have no good reason for supposing that there is such a world, especially since it seems selfcontradictory to speak of a conception that is independent of our conceptual faculties. It is clear that this question, like almost all the questions of general metaphysics, is at least in part epistemological. Metaphysics can also be understood in a more definite sense, suggested by Aristotle’s notion (in his Metaphysics, the title of which was given by an early editor of his works, not by Aristotle himself) of “first philosophy,” namely, the study of being qua being, i.e., of the most general and necessary characteristics that anything must have in order to count as a being, an entity (ens). Sometimes ‘ontology’ is used in this sense, but this is by no means common practice, ‘ontology’ being often used as a synonym of ‘metaphysics’. Examples of criteria (each of which is a major topic in metaphysics) that anything must meet in order to count as a being, an entity, are the following. (A) Every entity must be either an individual thing (e.g., Socrates and this book), or a property (e.g., Socrates’ color and the shape of this book), or a relation (e.g., marriage and the distance between two cities), or an event (e.g., Socrates’ death), or a state of affairs (e.g., Socrates’ having died), or a set (e.g., the set of Greek philosophers). These kinds of entities are usually called categories, and metaphysics is very much concerned with the question whether these are the only categories, or whether there are others, or whether some of them are not ultimate because they are reducible to others (e.g., events to states of affairs, or individual things to temporal series of events). (B) The existence, or being, of a thing is what makes it an entity. (C) Whatever has identity and is distinct from everything else is an entity. (D) The nature of the “connection” between an entity and its properties and relations is what makes it an entity. Every entity must have properties and perhaps must enter into relations with at least some other entities. (E) Every entity must be logically self-consistent. It is noteworthy that after announcing his project of first philosophy, Aristotle immediately embarked on a defense of the law of non-contradiction. Concerning (A) we may ask (i) whether at least some individual things (particulars) are substances, in the Aristotelian sense, i.e., enduring through time and changes in their properties and relations, or whether all individual things are momentary. In that case, the individuals of common sense (e.g., this book) are really temporal series of momentary individuals, perhaps events such as the book’s being on a table at a specific instant. We may also ask (ii) whether any entity has essential properties, i.e., properties without which it would not exist, or whether all properties are accidental, in the sense that the entity could exist even if it lost the property in question. We may ask (iii) whether properties and relations are particulars or universals, e.g., whether the color of this page and the color of the next page, which (let us assume) are exactly alike, are two distinct entities, each with its separate spatial location, or whether they are identical and thus one entity that is exemplified by, perhaps even located in, the two pages. Concerning (B), we may ask whether existence is itself a property. If it is, how is it to be understood, and if it is not, how are we to understand ‘x exists’ and ‘x does not exist’, which seem crucial to everyday and scientific discourse, just as the thoughts they express seem crucial to everyday and scientific thinking? Should we countenance, as Meinong did, objects having no existence, e.g. golden mountains, even though we can talk and think about them? We can talk and think about a golden mountain and even claim that it is true that the mountain is golden, while knowing all along that what we are thinking and talking about does not exist. If we do not construe non-existent objects as something, then we are committed to the somewhat startling view that everything exists. Concerning (C) we may ask how to construe informative identity statements, such as, to use Frege’s example, ‘The Evening Star is identical with the Morning Star’. This contrasts with trivial and perhaps degenerate statements, such as ‘The Evening Star is identical with the Evening Star’, which are almost never made in ordinary or scientific discourse. The former are essential to any coherent, systematic cognition (even to everyday recognition of persons and places). Yet they are puzzling. We cannot say that they assert of two things that they are one, even though ordinary language suggests precisely this. Neither can we just say that they assert that a certain thing is identical with itself, for this view would be obviously false if the statements are informative. The fact that Frege’s example includes definite descriptions (‘the Evening Star’, ‘the Morning Star’) is irrelevant, contrary to Russell’s view. Informative identity statements can also have as their subject terms proper names and even demonstrative pronouns (e.g., ‘Hesperus is identical with Phosphorus’ and ‘This [the shape of this page] is identical with that [the shape of the next page]’), the reference of which is established not by description but ostensively, perhaps by actual pointing. Concerning (D) we can ask about the nature of the relationship, usually called instantiation or exemplification, between an entity and its properties and relations. Surely, there is such a relationship. But it can hardly be like an ordinary relation such as marriage that connects things of the same kind. And we can ask what is the connection between that relation and the entities it relates, e.g., the individual thing on one hand and its properties and relations on the other. Raising this question seems to lead to an infinite regress, as Bradley held; for the supposed connection is yet another relation to be connected with something else. But how do we avoid the regress? Surely, an individual thing and its properties and relations are not unrelated items. They have a certain unity. But what is its character? Moreover, we can hardly identify the individual thing except by reference to its properties and relations. Yet if we say, as some have, that it is nothing but a bundle of its properties and relations, could there not be another bundle of exactly the same properties and relations, yet distinct from the first one? (This question concerns the so-called problem of individuation, as well as the principle of the identity of indiscernibles.) If an individual is something other than its properties and relations (e.g., what has been called a bare particular), it would seem to be unobservable and thus perhaps unknowable. Concerning (E), virtually no philosopher has questioned the law of non-contradiction. But there are important questions about its status. Is it merely a linguistic convention? Some have held this, but it seems quite implausible. Is the law of non-contradiction a deep truth about being qua being? If it is, (E) connects closely with (B) and (C), for we can think of the concepts of self-consistency, identity, and existence as the most fundamental metaphysical concepts. They are also fundamental to logic, but logic, even if ultimately grounded in metaphysics, has a rich additional subject matter (sometimes merging with that of mathematics) and therefore is properly regarded as a separate branch of philosophy. The word ‘metaphysics’ has also been used in at least two other senses: first, the investigation of entities and states of affairs “transcending” human experience, in particular, the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will (this was Kant’s conception of the sort of metaphysics that, according to him, required “critique”); and second, the investigation of any alleged supernatural or occult phenomena, such as ghosts and telekinesis. The first sense is properly philosophical, though seldom occurring today. The second is strictly popular, since the relevant supernatural phenomena are most questionable on both philosophical and scientific grounds. They should not be confused with the subject matter of philosophical theology, which may be thought of as part of metaphysics in the general philosophical sense, though it was included by Aristotle in the subject matter of metaphysics in his sense of the study of being qua being.
methodological holism, also called metaphysical holism, the thesis that with respect to some system there is explanatory emergence, i.e., the laws of the more complex situations in the system are not deducible by way of any composition laws or laws of coexistence from the laws of the simpler or simplest situation(s). Explanatory emergence may exist in a system for any of the following reasons: that at some more complex level a variable interacts that does not do so at simpler levels, that a property of the “whole” interacts with properties of the “parts,” that the relevant variables interact by different laws at more complex levels owing to the complexity of the levels, or (the limiting case) that strict lawfulness breaks down at some more complex level. Thus, explanatory emergence does not presuppose descriptive emergence, the thesis that there are properties of “wholes” (or more complex situations) that cannot be defined through the properties of the “parts” (or simpler situations). The opposite of methodological holism is methodological individualism, also called explanatory reductionism, according to which all laws of the “whole” (or more complex situations) can be deduced from a combination of the laws of the simpler or simplest situation(s) and either some composition laws or laws of coexistence (depending on whether or not there is descriptive emergence). Methodological individualists need not deny that there may be significant lawful connections among properties of the “whole,” but must insist that all such properties are either definable through, or connected by laws of coexistence with, properties of the “parts.”
middle knowledge, knowledge of a particular kind of propositions, now usually called “counterfactuals of freedom,” first attributed to God by the sixteenth-century Jesuit Luis de Molina. These propositions state, concerning each possible free creature God could create, what that creature would do in each situation of (libertarian) free choice in which it could possibly find itself. The claim that God knows these propositions offers important theological advantages; it helps in explaining both how God can have foreknowledge of free actions and how God can maintain close providential control over a world containing libertarian freedom. Opponents of middle knowledge typically argue that it is impossible for there to be true counterfactuals of freedom.
Middle Platonism, the period of Platonism between Antiochus of Ascalon (c.130–68 B.C.) and Plotinus (A.D. 204–70), characterized by a rejection of the skeptical stance of the New Academy and by a gradual advance, with many individual variations, toward a comprehensive dogmatic position on metaphysical principles, while exhibiting a certain latitude, as between Stoicizing and Peripateticizing positions, in the sphere of ethics. Antiochus himself was much influenced by Stoic materialism (though disagreeing with the Stoics in ethics), but in the next generation a neo-Pythagorean influence made itself felt, generating the mix of doctrines that one may most properly term Middle Platonic. From Eudorus of Alexandria (fl. c.25 B.C.) on, a transcendental, two-world metaphysic prevailed, featuring a supreme god, or Monad, a secondary creator god, and a world soul, with which came a significant change in ethics, substituting, as an ‘end of goods’ (telos), “likeness to God” (from Plato, Theaetetus 176b), for the Stoicizing “assimilation to nature” of Antiochus. Our view of the period is hampered by a lack of surviving texts, but it is plain that, in the absence of a central validating authority (the Academy as an institution seems to have perished in the wake of the capture of Athens by Mithridates in 88 B.C.), a considerable variety of doctrine prevailed among individual Platonists and schools of Platonists, particularly in relation to a preference for Aristotelian or Stoic principles of ethics. Most known activity occurred in the late first and second centuries A.D. Chief figures in this period are Plutarch of Chaeronea (c.45–125), Calvenus Taurus (fl. c.145), and Atticus (fl. c.175), whose activity centered on Athens (though Plutarch remained loyal to Chaeronea in Boeotia); Gaius (fl. c.100) and Albinus (fl. c.130) – not to be identified with “Alcinous,” author of the Didaskalikos; the rhetorician Apuleius of Madaura (fl. c.150), who also composed a useful treatise on the life and doctrines of Plato; and the neo-Pythagoreans Moderatus of Gades (fl. c.90), Nicomachus of Gerasa (fl. c.140), and Numenius (fl. c.150), who do not, however, constitute a “school.” Good evidence for an earlier stage of Middle Platonism is provided by the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (c.25 B.C.–A.D. 50). Perhaps the single most important figure for the later Platonism of Plotinus and his successors is Numenius, of whose works we have only fragments. His speculations on the nature of the first principle, however, do seem to have been a stimulus to Plotinus in his postulation of a supraessential One. Plutarch is important as a literary figure, though most of his serious philosophical works are lost; and the handbooks of Alcinous and Apuleius are significant for our understanding of second-century Platonism.
Milesians, the pre-Socratic philosophers of Miletus, a Greek city-state on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor. During the 6th century B.C. Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes produced the earliest Western philosophies, stressing an arche or material source from which the cosmos and all things in it were generated.
Mill, James (1773–1836), Scottish-born philosopher and social theorist. He applied the utilitarianism of his contemporary Bentham to such social matters as systems of education and government, law and penal systems, and colonial policy. He also advocated the associationism of Hume. Mill was an influential thinker in early nineteenth-century London, but his most important role in the history of philosophy was the influence he had on his son, J. S. Mill. He raised his more famous son as a living experiment in his associationist theory of education. His utilitarian views were developed and extended by J. S. Mill, while his associationism was also adopted by his son and became a precursor of the latter’s phenomenalism.
Mill, John Stuart (1806–73), British empiricist philosopher and utilitarian social reformer. He was the son of James Mill, a historian of British India, a leading defender of Bentham’s utilitarianism, and an advocate of reforms based on that philosophy. The younger Mill was educated by his father in accordance with the principles of the associationist psychology adopted by the Benthamites and deriving from Hartley, and was raised with the expectation that he would become a defender of the principles of the Benthamite school. He began the study of Greek at three and Latin at eight, and later assisted his father in educating his younger brothers and sisters. At twenty he went to France to learn the language, and studied chemistry and mathematics at Montpellier. From 1824 to 1828 he wrote regularly for the Westminster Review, the Benthamite journal. In 1828 he underwent a mental crisis that lasted some months. This he later attributed to his rigid education; in any case he emerged from a period of deep depression still advocating utilitarianism but in a very much revised version. Mill visited Paris during the revolution of 1830, meeting Lafayette and other popular leaders, and was introduced to the writings of Saint-Simon and Comte. Also in 1830 he met Mrs. Harriet Taylor, to whom he immediately became devoted. They married only in 1851, when her husband died. He joined the India House headquarters of the East India Company in 1823, serving as an examiner until the company was dissolved in 1858 in the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny. Mill sat in Parliament from 1865 to 1868. Harriet Mill died in 1858, and was buried at Avignon, where Mill thereafter regularly resided for half of each year until his own death. Mill’s major works are his System of Logic, Deductive and Inductive (first edition, 1843), Political Economy (first edition, 1848), On Liberty (1860), Utilitarianism (first published in Fraser’s Magazine, 1861), The Subjection of Women (1869), An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy (1865), and the posthumous Three Essays on Religion (1874). His writing style is excellent, and his history of his own mental development, the Autobiography (1867), is a major Victorian literary text. His main opponents philosophically were Whewell and Hamilton, and it is safe to say that after Mill their intuitionism in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and ethics could no longer be defended. Mill’s own views were later to be eclipsed by those of T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, and the other British idealists. In the present century his views in metaphysics and philosophy of science have been revived and defended by Russell and the logical positivists, while his utilitarian ethics has regained its status as one of the major ethical theories. His social philosophy deeply infuenced the Fabians and other groups on the British left; its impact continues. Mill was brought up on the basis of, and to believe in, the strict utilitarianism of his father. His own development largely consisted in his attempts to broaden it, to include a larger and more sympathetic view of human nature, and to humanize its program to fit this broader view of human beings. In his own view, no doubt largely correct, he did not so much reject his father’s principles as fill in the gaps and eliminate rigidities and crudities. He continued throughout his life his father’s concern to propagate principles conceived as essential to promoting human happiness. These extended from moral principles to principles of political economy to principles of logic and metaphysics. Psychology. Mill’s vision of the human being was rooted in the psychological theories he defended. Arguing against the intuitionism of Reid and Whewell, he extended the associationism of his father. On this theory, ideas have their genetic antecedents in sensation, a complex idea being generated out of a unique set of simple, elementary ideas, through associations based on regular patterns in the presented sensations. Psychological analysis reveals the elementary parts of ideas and is thus the means for investigating the causal origins of our ideas. The elder Mill followed Locke in conceiving analysis on the model of definition, so that the psychological elements are present in the idea they compose and the idea is nothing but its associated elements. The younger Mill emerged from his mental crisis with the recognition that mental states are often more than the sum of the ideas that are their genetic antecedents. On the revised model of analysis, the analytical elements are not actually present in the idea, but are present only dispositionally, ready to be recovered by association under the analytical set. Moreover, it is words that are defined, not ideas, though words become general only by becoming associated with ideas. Analysis thus became an empirical task, rather than something settled a priori according to one’s metaphysical predispositions, as it had been for Mill’s predecessors. The revised psychology allowed the younger Mill to account empirically in a much more subtle way than could the earlier associationists for the variations in our states of feeling. Thus, for example, the original motive to action is simple sensations of pleasure, but through association things originally desired as means become associated with pleasure and thereby become desirable as ends, as parts of one’s pleasure. But these acquired motives are not merely the sum of the simple pleasures that make them up; they are more than the sum of those genetic antecedents. Thus, while Mill holds with his father that persons seek to maximize their pleasures, unlike his father he also holds that not all ends are selfish, and that pleasures are not only quantitatively but also qualitatively distinct. Ethics. In ethics, then, Mill can hold with the intuitionists that our moral sentiments are qualitatively distinct from the lower pleasures, while denying the intuitionist conclusion that they are innate. Mill urges, with his father and Bentham, that the basic moral norm is the principle of utility, that an action is right provided it maximizes human welfare. Persons always act to maximize their own pleasure, but the general human welfare can be among the pleasures they seek. Mill’s position thus does not have the problems that the apparently egoistic psychology of his father created. The only issue is whether a person ought to maximize human welfare, whether he ought to be the sort of person who is so motivated. Mill’s own ethics is that this is indeed what one ought to be, and he tries to bring this state of human being about in others by example, and by urging them to expand the range of their human sympathy through poetry like that of Wordsworth, through reading the great moral teachers such as Jesus and Socrates, and by other means of moral improvement. Mill also offers an argument in defense of the principle of utility. Against those who, like Whewell, argue that there is no basic right to pleasure, he argues that as a matter of psychological fact, people seek only pleasure, and concludes that it is therefore pointless to suggest that they ought to do anything other than this. The test of experience thus excludes ends other than pleasure. This is a plausible argument. Less plausible is his further argument that since each seeks her own pleasure, the general good is the (ultimate) aim of all. This latter argument unfortunately presupposes the invalid premise that the law for a whole follows from laws about the individual parts of the whole. Other moral rules can be justified by their utility and the test of experience. For example, such principles of justice as the rules of property and of promise keeping are justified by their role in serving certain fundamental human needs. Exceptions to such secondary rules can be justified by appeal to the principle of utility. But there is also utility in not requiring in every application a lengthy utilitarian calculation, which provides an objective justification for overlooking what might be, objectively considered in terms of the principle of utility, an exception to a secondary rule. Logic and philosophy of science. The test of experience is also brought to bear on norms other than those of morality, e.g., those of logic and philosophy of science. Mill argues, against the rationalists, that science is not demonstrative from intuited premises. Reason in the sense of deductive logic is not a logic of proof but a logic of consistency. The basic axioms of any science are derived through generalization from experience. The axioms are generic and delimit a range of possible hypotheses about the specific subject matter to which they are applied. It is then the task of experiment and, more generally, observation to eliminate the false and determine which hypothesis is true. The axioms, the most generic of which is the law of the uniformity of nature, are arrived at not by this sort of process of elimination but by induction by simple enumeration: Mill argues plausibly that on the basis of experience this method becomes more reliable the more generic is the hypothesis that it is used to justify. But like Hume, Mill holds that for any generalization from experience the evidence can never be sufficient to eliminate all possibility of doubt. Explanation for Mill, as for the logical positivists, is by subsumption under matter-of-fact generalizations. Causal generalizations that state sufficient or necessary and sufficient conditions are more desirable as explanations than mere regularities. Still more desirable is a law or body of laws that gives necessary and sufficient conditions for any state of a system, i.e., a body of laws for which there are no explanatory gaps. As for explanation of laws, this can proceed either by filling in gaps or by subsuming the law under a generic theory that unifies the laws of several areas. Mill, John Stuart Mill, John Stuart 569 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 569 Mill argues that in the social sciences the subject matter is too complex to apply the normal methods of experiment. But he also rejects the purely deductive method of the Benthamite political economists such as his father and David Ricardo. Rather, one must deduce the laws for wholes, i.e., the laws of economics and sociology, from the laws for the parts, i.e., the laws of psychology, and then test these derived laws against the accumulated data of history. Mill got the idea for this methodology of the social sciences from Comte, but unfortunately it is vitiated by the false idea, already noted, that one can deduce without any further premise the laws for wholes from the laws for the parts. Subsequent methodologists of the social sciences have come to substitute the more reasonable methods of statistics for this invalid method Mill proposes. Mill’s account of scientific method does work well for empirical sciences, such as the chemistry of his day. He was able to show, too, that it made good sense of a great deal of physics, though it is arguable that it cannot do justice to theories that explain the atomic and subatomic structure of matter – something Mill himself was prepared to acknowledge. He also attempted to apply his views to geometry, and even more implausibly, to arithmetic. In these areas, he was certainly bested by Whewell, and the world had to wait for the logical work of Russell and Whitehead before a reasonable empiricist account of these areas became available. Metaphysics. The starting point of all inference is the sort of observation we make through our senses, and since we know by experience that we have no ideas that do not derive from sense experience, it follows that we cannot conceive a world beyond what we know by sense. To be sure, we can form generic concepts, such as that of an event, which enable us to form concepts of entities that we cannot experience, e.g., the concept of the tiny speck of sand that stopped my watch or the concept of the event that is the cause of my present sensation. Mill held that what we know of the laws of sensation is sufficient to make it reasonable to suppose that the immediate cause of one’s present sensation is the state of one’s nervous system. Our concept of an objective physical object is also of this sort; it is the set of events that jointly constitute a permanent possible cause of sensation. It is our inductive knowledge of laws that justifies our beliefs that there are entities that fall under these concepts. The point is that these entities, while unsensed, are (we reasonably believe) part of the world we know by means of our senses. The contrast is to such things as the substances and transcendent Ideas of rationalists, or the God of religious believers, entities that can be known only by means that go beyond sense and inductive inferences therefrom. Mill remained essentially pre-Darwinian, and was willing to allow the plausibility of the hypothesis that there is an intelligent designer for the perceived order in the universe. But this has the status of a scientific hypothesis rather than a belief in a substance or a personal God transcending the world of experience and time. Whewell, at once the defender of rationalist ideas for science and for ethics and the defender of established religion, is a special object for Mill’s scorn. Social and political thought. While Mill is respectful of the teachings of religious leaders such as Jesus, the institutions of religion, like those of government and of the economy, are all to be subjected to criticism based on the principle of utility: Do they contribute to human welfare? Are there any alternatives that could do better? Thus, Mill argues that a free-market economy has many benefits but that the defects, in terms of poverty for many, that result from private ownership of the means of production may imply that we should institute the alternative of socialism or public ownership of the means of production. He similarly argues for the utility of liberty as a social institution: under such a social order individuality will be encouraged, and this individuality in turn tends to produce innovations in knowledge, technology, and morality that contribute significantly to improving the general welfare. Conversely, institutions and traditions that stifle individuality, as religious institutions often do, should gradually be reformed. Similar considerations argue on the one hand for democratic representative government and on the other for a legal system of rights that can defend individuals from the tyranny of public opinion and of the majority. Status of women. Among the things for which Mill campaigned were women’s rights, women’s suffrage, and equal access for women to education and to occupations. He could not escape his age and continued to hold that it was undesirable for a woman to work to help support her family. While he disagreed with his father and Bentham that all motives are egoistic and self-interested, he nonetheless held that in most affairs of ecoMill, John Stuart Mill, John Stuart 570 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 570 millet paradox Mill’s methods 571 nomics and government such motives are dominant. He was therefore led to disagree with his father that votes for women are unnecessary since the male can speak for the family. Women’s votes are needed precisely to check the pursuit of male self-interest. More generally, equality is essential if the interests of the family as such are to be served, rather than making the family serve male self-interest as had hitherto been the case. Changing the relation between men and women to one of equality will force both parties to curb their self-interest and broaden their social sympathies to include others. Women’s suffrage is an essential step toward the moral improvement of humankind.
Mill’s methods, procedures for discovering necessary conditions, sufficient conditions, and necessary and sufficient conditions, where these terms are used as follows: if whenever A then B (e.g., whenever there is a fire then oxygen is present), then B is a necessary (causal) condition for A; and if whenever C then D (e.g., whenever sugar is in water, then it dissolves), then C is a sufficient (causal) condition for D. Method of agreement. Given a pair of hypotheses about necessary conditions, e.g., (1) whenever A then B1 whenever A then B2, then an observation of an individual that is A but not B2 will eliminate the second alternative as false, enabling one to conclude that the uneliminated hypothesis is true. This method for discovering necessary conditions is called the method of agreement. To illustrate the method of agreement, suppose several people have all become ill upon eating potato salad at a restaurant, but have in other respects had quite different meals, some having meat, some vegetables, some desserts. Being ill and not eating meat eliminates the latter as the cause; being ill and not eating dessert eliminates the latter as cause; and so on. It is the condition in which the individuals who are ill agree that is not eliminated. We therefore conclude that this is the cause or necessary condition for the illness. Method of difference. Similarly, with respect to the pair of hypotheses concerning sufficient conditions, e.g., (2) whenever C1 then D whenever C2 then D, an individual that is C1 but not D will eliminate the first hypothesis and enable one to conclude that the second is true. This is the method of difference. A simple change will often yield an example of an inference to a sufficient condition by the method of difference. If something changes from C1 to C2, and also thereupon changes from notD to D, one can conclude that C2, in respect of which the instances differ, is the cause of D. Thus, Becquerel discovered that burns can be caused by radium, i.e., proximity to radium is a sufficient but not necessary condition for being burned, when he inferred that the radium he carried in a bottle in his pocket was the cause of a burn on his leg by noting that the presence of the radium was the only relevant causal difference between the time when the burn was present and the earlier time when it was not. Clearly, both methods can be generalized to cover any finite number of hypotheses in the set of alternatives. The two methods can be combined in the joint method of agreement and difference to yield the discovery of conditions that are both necessary and sufficient. Sometimes it is possible to eliminate an alternative, not on the basis of observation, but on the basis of previously inferred laws. If we know by previous inductions that no C2 is D, then observation is not needed to eliminate the second hypothesis of (2), and we can infer that what remains, or the residue, gives us the sufficient condition for D. Where an alternative is eliminated by previous inductions, we are said to use the method of residues. The methods may be generalized to cover quantitative laws. A cause of Q may be taken not to be a necessary and sufficient condition, but a factor P on whose magnitude the magnitude of Q functionally depends. If P varies when Q varies, then one can use methods of elimination to infer that P causes Q. This has been called the method of concomitant variation. More complicated methods are needed to infer what precisely is the function that correlates the two magnitudes. Clearly, if we are to conclude that one of (1) is true on the basis of the given data, we need an additional premise to the effect that there is at least one necessary condition for B and it is among the set consisting of A1 and A2. 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 571 Mimamsa mimesis 572 The existence claim here is known as a principle of determinism and the delimited range of alternatives is known as a principle of limited variety. Similar principles are needed for the other methods. Such principles are clearly empirical, and must be given prior inductive support if the methods of elimination are to be conclusive. In practice, generic scientific theories provide these principles to guide the experimenter. Thus, on the basis of the observations that justified Kepler’s laws, Newton was able to eliminate all hypotheses concerning the force that moved the planets about the sun save the inverse square law, provided that he also assumed as applying to this specific sort of system the generic theoretical framework established by his three laws of motion, which asserted that there exists a force accounting for the motion of the planets (determinism) and that this force satisfies certain conditions, e.g., the action-reaction law (limited variety). The eliminative methods constitute the basic logic of the experimental method in science. They were first elaborated by Francis Bacon (see J. Weinberg, Abstraction, Relation, and Induction, 1965). They were restated by Hume, elaborated by J. F. W. Herschel, and located centrally in scientific methodology by J. S. Mill. Their structure was studied from the perspective of modern developments in logic by Keynes, W. E. Johnson, and especially Broad.
Mimamsa, also called Purva Mimamsa, an orthodox school within Hinduism that accepts the existence of everlasting souls or minds to which consciousness is not intrinsic, everlasting material atoms, and mind-independent physical objects caused by the natural mutual attraction of atoms. Atheistic, it accepts – in common with the other orthodox schools – the doctrines of the beginningless transmigration of souls and the operation of karma. Mimamsa accepts perception, inference, and testimony (or authority) as reliable sources of knowledge. Testimony comes in two kinds, personal and impersonal. Personal testimony (someone’s spoken or written word, giving knowledge if the person giving it is reliable) is descriptive. Impersonal testimony (the Vedas) is imperatival, giving commands that ritual actions be performed; properly understanding and following these commands is essential to achieving enlightenment. Reliable personal testimony presupposes reliable perception and inference; impersonal testimony does not. Postulation is taken to be a fourth source of knowledge. If the postulation that event A occurred adequately explains that event B occurred, though A is unobserved and there is no necessary or universal connection between events like A and events like B, one can know that A occurred, but this knowledge is neither perceptual nor inferential. In effect, this distinguishes inference to best explanation (abduction) from inductive reasoning.
mimesis (from Greek mimesis, ‘imitation’), the modeling of one thing on another, or the presenting of one thing by another; imitation. The concept played a central role in the account formulated by Plato and Aristotle of what we would now call the fine arts. The poet, the dramatist, the painter, the musician, the sculptor, all compose a mimesis of reality. Though Plato, in his account of painting, definitely had in mind that the painter imitates physical reality, the general concept of mimesis used by Plato and Aristotle is usually better translated by ‘representation’ than by ‘imitation’: it belongs to the nature of the work of art to represent, to re-present, reality. This representational or mimetic theory of art remained far and away the dominant theory in the West until the rise of Romanticism – though by no means everyone agreed with Plato that it is concrete items of physical reality that the artist represents. The hold of the mimetic theory was broken by the insistence of the Romantics that, rather than the work of art being an imitation, it is the artist who, in his or her creative activity, imitates Nature or God by composing an autonomous object. Few contemporary theorists of art would say that the essence of art is to represent; the mimetic theory is all but dead. In part this is a reflection of the power of the Romantic alternative to the mimetic theory; in part it is a reflection of the rise to prominence over the last century of nonobjective, abstract painting and sculpture and of “absolute” instrumental music. Nonetheless, the phenomenon of representation has not ceased to draw the attention of theorists. In recent years three quite different general theories of representation have appeared: Nelson Goodman’s (The Languages of Art), Nicholas Wolterstorff’s (Works and Worlds of Art), and Kendall Walton’s (Mimesis as Make-Believe).
ming, Chinese term meaning ‘fate’, ‘mandate’. In general, ming is what is outside of human control. ‘Ming’ is thus nearly synonymous with one use of ‘t’ien’, as in the observation by Mencius: “That which is done when no one does it is due to t’ien; that which comes about when no one brings it about is due to ming.” Ming can also refer to the mandate to rule given by t’ien or the “moral endowment” of each human.
miracle, an extraordinary event brought about by God. In the medieval understanding of nature, objects have certain natural powers and tendencies to exercise those powers under certain circumstances. Stones have the power to fall to the ground, and the tendency to exercise that power when liberated from a height. A miracle is then an extraordinary event in that it is not brought about by any object exercising its natural powers – e.g., a liberated stone rising in the air – but brought about directly by God. In the modern understanding of nature, there are just events (states of objects) and laws of nature that determine which events follow which other events. There is a law of nature that heavy bodies when liberated fall to the ground. A miracle is then a “violation” of a law of nature by God. We must understand by a law a principle that determines what happens unless there is intervention from outside the natural order, and by a “violation” such an intervention. There are then three problems in identifying a miracle. The first is to determine whether an event of some kind, if it occurred, would be a violation of a law of nature (beyond the natural power of objects to bring about). To know this we must know what are the laws of nature. The second problem is to find out whether such an event did occur on a particular occasion. Our own memories, the testimony of witnesses, and physical traces will be the historical evidence of this, but they can mislead. And the evidence from what happened on other occasions that some law L is a law of nature is evidence supporting the view that on the occasion in question L was operative, and so there was no violation. Hume claimed that in practice there has never been enough historical evidence for a miracle to outweigh the latter kind of counterevidence. Finally, it must be shown that God was the cause of the violation. For that we need grounds from natural theology for believing that there is a God and that this is the sort of occasion on which he is likely to intervene in nature.
Miskawayh (936–c.1030), Persian courtierstatesman, historian, physician, and advocate of Greek and other ancient learning in Islam. His On the Refinement of Character (tr. Constantine Zurayk, 1968) has been called “the most influential work on philosophical ethics” in Islam. It transmutes Koranic command ethics into an Aristotelian virtue ethics whose goal is the disciplining (ta’dib, cf. the Greek paideia) of our natural irascibility, allowing our deeper unity to be expressed in love and fellowship. Miskawayh’s system was copied widely – crucially, in al-Ghazali’s all-but-canonical treatment of virtue ethics – but denatured by al-Ghazali’s substitution of pietistic themes where Miskawayh seemed too secular or humanistic.
M’Naghten rule, a rule in Anglo-American criminal law defining legal insanity for purposes of creating a defense to criminal liability: legal insanity is any defect of reason, due to disease of the mind, that causes an accused criminal either not to know the nature and quality of his act, or not to know that his act was morally or legally wrong. Adopted in the M’Naghten case in England in 1843, the rule harks back to the responsibility test for children, which was whether they were mature enough to know the difference between right and wrong. The rule is alternatively viewed today as being either a test of a human being’s general status as a moral agent or a test of when an admitted moral agent is nonetheless excused because of either factual or moral/legal mistakes. On the first (or status) interpretation of the rule, the insane are exempted from criminal liability because they, like young children, lack the rational agency essential to moral personhood. On the second (or mistake) interpretation of the rule, the insane are exempted from criminal liability because they instantiate the accepted moral excuses of mistake or ignorance. See also
mnemic causation, a type of causation in which, in order to explain the proximate cause of an organism’s behavior, it is necessary to specify not only the present state of the organism and the present stimuli operating upon it, but also the past experiences of the organism. The term was introduced by Russell in The Analysis of Mind (1921).
modality, the manner in which a proposition (or statement) describes or applies to its subject matter. Derivatively ‘modality’ refers to characteristics of entities or states of affairs described by modal propositions. Modalities are classified as follows: Assertoric propositions are expressions of mere fact. Alethic modalities include necessity and possibility (the latter two sometimes are referred to respectively as the apodictic and problematic modalities). The causal modalities include causal (or empirical) necessity and possibility, whereas the deontic modalities include obligation and permittedness. There are epistemic modalities such as knowing that and doxastic ones such as believing that. Following medieval logicians, propositions can be distinguished on the basis of whether the modality is introduced via adverbial modification of the copula or verb (sensus divisus) or via a modal operator that modifies the proposition (sensus compositus). Today many deny the distinction or confine attention just to modal operators. Modal operators in non-assertoric propositions are said to produce referential opacity or oblique contexts in which truth is not preserved under substitution of extensionally equivalent expressions. Modal and deontic logics provide formal analyses of various modalities. Intensional logics investigate the logic of oblique contexts. Modal logicians have produced possible worlds semantics interpretations wherein propositions MP with modal operator M are true provided P is true in all suitable (e.g., logically possible, causally possible, morally permissible, rationally acceptable) possible worlds. Modal realism grants ontological status to possible worlds other than the actual world or otherwise commits to objective modalities in nature or reality.
modal logic, the study of the logic of the operators ‘it is possible that’ and ‘it is necessary that’. These operators are usually symbolized by B and A respectively, and each can be defined in terms of the other. To say that a proposition is possible, or possibly true, is to say that it is not necessarily false. Thus B f could be regarded as an abbreviation of -A-f. Equally, to say that a proposition is necessary, or necessarily true, is to deny that its negation is possible. Thus Af could be regarded as an abbreviation of -B-f. However, it aids comprehension to take both operators as primitive. Systems of sentential modal logic are obtained by adding B and A to sentential logic; if the sentential logic is classical/intuitionist/minimal, so is the corresponding modal logic. We concentrate on the classical case here. As with any kind of logic, there are three components to a system of modal logic: a syntax, which determines the formal language + and the notion of well-formed formula (wff); a semantics, which determines the semantic consequence relation X on +-wffs; and a system of inference, which determines the mnemic causation modal logic 574 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 574 deductive consequence relation Y on +-wffs. The syntax of the modal operators is the same in every system: briefly, the modal operators are one-place connectives like negation. There are many different systems of modal logic, some of which can be generated by different ways of setting up the semantics. Each of the familiar ways of doing this can be associated with a sound and complete system of inference. Alternatively, a system of inference can be laid down first and we can search for a semantics for it relative to which it is sound and complete. Here we give primacy to the semantic viewpoint. Semantic consequence is defined in modal logic in the usual classical way: a set of sentences 9 semantically entails a sentence s, 9 X s, if and only if no interpretation I makes all members of 9 true and s false. The question is how to extend the notion of interpretation from sentential logic to accommodate the modal operators. In classical sentential logic, an interpretation is an assignment to each sentence letter of exactly one of the two truth-values = and where n % m ! 1. So to determine relative possibility in a model, we identify R with a collection of pairs of the form where each of u and v is in W. If a pair is in R, v is possible relative to u, and if is not in R, v is impossible relative to u. The relative possibility relation then enters into the rules for evaluating modal operators. For example, we do not want to say that at the actual world, it is possible for me to originate from a different sperm and egg, since the only worlds where this takes place are impossible relative to the actual world. So we have the rule that B f is true at a world u if f is true at some world v such that v is possible relative to u. Similarly, Af is true at a world u if f is true at every world v which is possible relative to u. R may have simple first-order properties such as reflexivity, (Ex)Rxx, symmetry, (Ex)(Ey)(Rxy P Ryx), and transitivity, (Ex)(Ey)(Ez)((Rxy & Ryz) P Rxz), and different modal systems can be modal logic modal logic 575 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 575 obtained by imposing different combinations of these on R (other systems can be obtained from higher-order constraints). The least constrained system is the system K, in which no structural properties are put on R. In K we have B (B & C) X B B, since if B (B & C) holds at w* then (B & C) holds at some world w possible relative to w*, and thus by the truth-function for &, B holds at w as well, so B B holds at w*. Hence any interpretation that makes B (B & C) true (% true at w*) also makes B B true. Since there are no restrictions on R in K, we can expect B (B & C) X B B in every system of modal logic generated by constraining R. However, for K we also have C Z B C. For suppose C holds at w*. B C holds at w* only if there is some world possible relative to w* where C holds. But there need be no such world. In particular, since R need not be reflexive, w* itself need not be possible relative to w*. Concomitantly, in any system for which we stipulate a reflexive R, we will have C X B C. The simplest such system is known as T, which has the same semantics as K except that R is stipulated to be reflexive in every interpretation. In other systems, further or different constraints are put on R. For example, in the system B, each interpretation must have an R that is reflexive and symmetric, and in the system S4, each interpretation must have an R that is reflexive and transitive. In B we have B C Z B B C, as can be shown by an interpretation with nontransitive R, while in S4 we have B AC Z C, as can be shown by an interpretation with non-symmetric R. Correspondingly, in S4, B C X B B C, and in B, B AC X C. The system in which R is reflexive, transitive, and symmetric is called S5, and in this system, R can be omitted. For if R has all three properties, R is an equivalence relation, i.e., it partitions W into mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive equivalence classes. If Cu is the equivalence class to which u belongs, then the truthvalue of a formula at u is independent of the truth-values of sentence letters at worlds not in Cu, so only the worlds in Cw* are relevant to the truth-values of sentences in an S5 interpretation. But within Cw* R is universal: every world is possible relative to every other. Consequently, in an S5 interpretation, we need not specify a relative possibility relation, and the evaluation rules for B and A need not mention relative possibility; e.g., we can say that B f is true at a world u if there is at least one world v at which f is true. Note that by the characteristics of R, whenever 9 X s in K, T, B, or S4, then 9 X s in S5: the other systems are contained in S5. K is contained in all the systems we have mentioned, while T is contained in B and S4, neither of which is contained in the other. Sentential modal logics give rise to quantified modal logics, of which quantified S5 is the bestknown. Just as, in the sentential case, each world in an interpretation is associated with a valuation of sentence letters as in non-modal sentential logic, so in quantified modal logic, each world is associated with a valuation of the sort familiar in non-modal first-order logic. More specifically, in quantified S5, each world w is assigned a domain Dw – the things that exist at w – such that at least one Dw is non-empty, and each atomic n-place predicate of the language is assigned an extension Extw of n-tuples of objects that satisfy the predicate at w. So even restricting ourselves to just the one first-order extension of a sentential system, S5, various degrees of freedom are already evident. We discuss the following: (a) variability of domains, (b) interpretation of quantifiers, and (c) predication. (a) Should all worlds have the same domain or may the domains of different worlds be different? The latter appears to be the more natural choice; e.g., if neither of of Dw* and Du are subsets of the other, this represents the intuitive idea that some things that exist might not have, and that there could have been things that do not actually exist (though formulating this latter claim requires adding an operator for ‘actually’ to the language). So we should distinguish two versions of S5, one with constant domains, S5C, and the other with variable domains, S5V. (b) Should the truth of (Dn)f at a world w require that f is true at w of some object in Dw or merely of some object in D (D is the domain of all possible objects, 4weWDw)? The former treatment is called the actualist reading of the quantifiers, the latter, the possibilist reading. In S5C there is no real choice, since for any w, D % Dw, but the issue is live in S5V. (c) Should we require that for any n-place atomic predicate F, an n-tuple of objects satisfies F at w only if every member of the n-tuple belongs to Dw, i.e., should we require that atomic predicates be existence-entailing? If we abbreviate (Dy) (y % x) by Ex (for ‘x exists’), then in S5C, A(Ex)AEx is logically valid on the actualist reading of E (%-D-) and on the possibilist. On the former, the formula says that at each world, anything that exists at that world exists at every world, which is true; while on the latter, using the definition of ‘Ex’, it says that at each world, anything that exists at some world or other is such that at every world, it exists at some world or other, which is also true; indeed, the formula stays valid in S5C with possibilist quantifiers even if we make E a primitive logical constant, stipulated to be true at every w of modal logic modal logic 576 4065m-r.qxd 08/02/1999 7:42 AM Page 576 exactly the things that exist at w. But in S5V with actualist quantifiers, A(Ex)AEx is invalid, as is (Ex)AEx – consider an interpretation where for some u, Du is a proper subset of Dw*. However, in S5V with possibilist quantifiers, the status of the formula, if ‘Ex’ is defined, depends on whether identity is existence-entailing. If it is existenceentailing, then A(Ex)AEx is invalid, since an object in D satisfies (Dy)(y % x) at w only if that object exists at w, while if identity is not existence-entailing, the formula is valid. The interaction of the various options is also evident in the evaluation of two well-known schemata: the Barcan formula, B (Dx)fx P (Dx) B fx; and its converse, (Dx) B fx P B (Dx)fx. In S5C with ‘Ex’ either defined or primitive, both schemata are valid, but in S5V with actualist quantifiers, they both fail. For the latter case, if we substitute -E for f in the converse Barcan formula we get a conditional whose antecedent holds at w* if there is u with Du a proper subset of Dw*, but whose consequent is logically false. The Barcan formula fails when there is a world u with Du not a subset of Dw*, and the condition f is true of some non-actual object at u and not of any actual object there. For then B (Dx)f holds at w* while (Dx) B fx fails there. However, if we require atomic predicates to be existence-entailing, then instances of the converse Barcan formula with f atomic are valid. In S5V with possibilist quantifiers, all instances of both schemata are valid, since the prefixes (Dx) B and B (Dx) correspond to (Dx) (Dw) and (Dw) (Dx), which are equivalent (with actualist quantifiers, the prefixes correspond to (Dx 1 Dw*), and (Dw) (Dx 1 Dw) which are non-equivalent if Dw and Dw* need not be the same set). Finally in S5V with actualist quantifiers, the standard quantifier introduction and elimination rules must be adjusted. Suppose c is a name for an object that does not actually exist; then - Ec is true but (Dx) - Ex is false. The quantifier rules must be those of free logic: we require Ec & fc before we infer (Dv)fv and Ec P fc, as well as the usual EI restrictions, before we infer (Ev)fv.
mode from Latin modus, ‘way’, ‘fashion’, a term used in many senses in philosophy. In Aristotelian logic, it refers either to the arrangement of universal, particular, affirmative, or negative propositions within a syllogism, only certain of which are valid this is often tr. as ‘mood’ in English, or to the property a proposition has by virtue of which it is necessary or contingent, possible or impossible. In Scholastic metaphysics, it was often used in a not altogether technical sense to mean that which characterizes a thing and distinguishes it from others. Micraelius Lexicon philosophicum, 1653 writes that “a mode does not compose a thing, but distinguishes it and makes it determinate.” It was also used in the context of the modal distinction in the theory of distinctions to designate the distinction that holds between a substance and its modes or between two modes of a single substance. The term ‘mode’ also appears in the technical vocabulary of medieval speculative grammar in connection with the notions of modes of signifying modi significandi, modes of understanding modi intelligendi, and modes of being modi essendi. The term ‘mode’ became especially important in the seventeenth century, when Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke each took it up, giving it three somewhat different special meanings within their respective systems. Descartes makes ‘mode’ a central notion in his metaphysics in his Principia philosophiae. For Descartes, each substance is characterized by a principal attribute, thought for mind and extension for body. Modes, then, are particular ways of being extended or thinking, i.e., particular sizes, shapes, etc., or particular thoughts, properties in the broad sense that individual things substances have. In this way, ‘mode’ occupies the role in Descartes’s philosophy that ‘accident’ does in Aristotelian philosophy. But for Descartes, each mode must be connected with the principal attribute of a substance, a way of being extended or a way of thinking, whereas for the Aristotelian, accidents may or may not be connected with the essence of the substance in which they inhere. Like Descartes, Spinoza recognizes three basic metaphysical terms, ‘substance,’ ‘attribute’, and ‘mode’. Recalling Descartes, he defines ‘mode’ as “the affections of a substance, or that which is in another, and which is also conceived through another” Ethics I. But for Spinoza, there is only one substance, which has all possible attributes. This makes it somewhat difficult to determine exactly what Spinoza means by ‘modes’, whether they are to be construed as being in some sense “properties” of God, the one infinite modal logic of programs mode 577 577 substance, or whether they are to be construed more broadly as simply individual things that depend for their existence on God, just as Cartesian modes depend on Cartesian substance. Spinoza also introduces somewhat obscure distinctions between infinite and finite modes, and between immediate and mediate infinite modes. Locke uses ‘mode’ in a way that evidently derives from Descartes’s usage, but that also differs from it. For Locke, modes are “such complex Ideas, which however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but are considered as Dependences on, or Affections of Substances” Essay II. Modes are thus ideas that represent to us the complex properties of things, ideas derived from what Locke calls the simple ideas that come to us from experience. Locke distinguishes between simple modes like number, space, and infinity, which are supposed to be constructed by compounding the same idea many times, and mixed modes like obligation or theft, which are supposed to be compounded of many simple ideas of different sorts.
model theory: H. P. Grice, “A conversational model,” a branch of mathematical logic that deals with the connection between a language and its interpretations or structures. Basic to it is the characterization of the conditions under which a sentence is true in structure. It is confusing that the term ‘model’ itself is used slightly differently: a model for a sentence is a structure for the language of the sentence in which it is true. Model theory was originally developed for explicitly constructed, formal languages, with the purpose of studying foundational questions of mathematics, but was later applied to the semantical analysis of empirical theories, a development initiated by the Dutch philosopher Evert Beth, and of natural languages, as in Montague grammar. More recently, in situation theory, we find a theory of semantics in which not the concept of truth in a structure, but that of information carried by a statement about a situation, is central. The term ‘model theory’ came into use in the 0s, with the work on first-order model theory by Tarski, but some of the most central results of the field date from before that time. The history of the field is complicated by the fact that in the 0s and 0s, when the first model-theoretic findings were obtained, the separation between first-order logic and its extensions was not yet completed. Thus, in 5, there appeared an article by Leopold Löwenheim, containing the first version of what is now called the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem. Löwenheim proved that every satisfiable sentence has a countable model, but he did not yet work in firstorder logic as we now understand it. One of the first who did so was the Norwegian logician Thoralf Skolem, who showed in 0 that a set of first-order sentences that has a model, has a countable model, one form of the LöwenheimSkolem theorem. Skolem argued that logic was first-order logic and that first-order logic was the proper basis for metamathematical investigations, fully accepting the relativity of set-theoretic notions in first-order logic. Within philosophy this thesis is still dominant, but in the end it has not prevailed in mathematical logic. In 0 Kurt Gödel solved an open problem of Hilbert-Ackermann and proved a completeness theorem for first-order logic. This immediately led to another important model-theoretic result, the compactness theorem: if every finite subset of a set of sentences has a model then the set has a model. A good source for information about the model theory of first-order logic, or classical model theory, is still Model Theory by C. C. Chang and H. J. Keisler 3. When the separation between first-order logic and stronger logics had been completed and the model theory of first-order logic had become a mature field, logicians undertook in the late 0s the study of extended model theory, the model theory of extensions of first-order logic: first of cardinality quantifiers, later of infinitary languages and of fragments of second-order logic. With so many examples of logics around where sometimes classical theorems did generalize, sometimes not Per Lindström showed in 9 what sets first-order logic apart from its extensions: it is the strongest logic that is both compact and satisfies the LöwenheimSkolem theorem. This work has been the beginning of a study of the relations between various properties logics may possess, the so-called abstract model.
modularity, the commitment to functionally independent and specialized cognitive systems in psychological organization, or, more generally, in the organization of any complex system. Modularity entails that behavior is the product of components with subordinate functions, that these functions are realized in discrete physical systems, and that the subsystems are minimally interactive. Modular organization varies from simple decomposability to what Herbert Simon calls near decomposability. In the former, component systems are independent, operating according to intrinsically determined principles; system behavior is an additive or aggregative function of these independent contributions. In the latter, the short-run behavior of components is independent of the behavior of other components; the system behavior is a relatively simple function of component contributions. In the early nineteenth century, Franz Joseph Gall 17581828 defended a modular organization for the mind/brain, holding that the cerebral hemispheres consist of a variety of organs, or centers, each subserving specific intellectual and moral functions. This picture of the brain as a collection of relatively independent organs contrasts sharply with the traditional view that intellectual activity involves the exercise of a general faculty in a variety of domains, a view that was common to Descartes and Hume as well as Gall’s major opponents such as Pierre Flourens 17941867. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the physicians Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud 17961 and Pierre-Paul Broca 182480 defended the view that language is controlled by localized structures in the left hemisphere and is relatively independent of other cognitive activities. It was later discovered by Karl Wernicke 18485 that there are at least two centers for the control of language, one more posterior and one more anterior. On these views, there are discrete physical structures responsible for language, which are largely independent of one another and of structures responsible for other psychological functions. This is therefore a modular organization. This view of the neurophysiological organization of language continues to have advocates into the late twentieth century, though the precise characterization of the functions these two centers serve is controversial. Many more recent views have tended to limit modularity to more peripheral functions such as vision, hearing, and motor control and speech, but have excluded so-called higher cognitive processes.
modus ponens, in full, modus ponendo ponens Latin, ‘proposing method’, 1 the argument form ‘If A then B; A; therefore, B’, and arguments of this form compare fallacy of affirming the consequent; 2 the rule of inference that permits one to infer the consequent of a conditional from that conditional and its antecedent. This is also known as the rule of /-elimination or rule of /- detachment.
modus tollens, in full, modus tollendo tollens Latin, ‘removing method’, 1 the argument form ‘If A then B; not-B; therefore, not-A’, and arguments of this form compare fallacy of denying the antecedent; 2 the rule of inference that permits one to infer the negation of the antecedent of a conditional from that conditional and the negation of its consequent.
Molina, L. de 15351600, Jesuit theologian and philosopher. He studied and taught at Coimbra and Évora and also taught in Lisbon and Madrid. His most important works are the Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis“Free Will and Grace,” 1588, Commentaria in primam divi Thomae partem “Commentary on the First Part of Thomas’s Summa,” 1592, and De justitia et jure “On Justice and Law,” 15921613. Molina is best known for his doctrine of middle knowledge scientia media. Its aim was to preserve free will while maintaining the Christian doctrine of the efficacy of divine grace. It was opposed by Thomists such as Bañez, who maintained that God exercises physical predetermination over secondary causes of human action and, thus, that grace is intrinsically efficacious and independent of human will and merits. For Molina, although God has foreknowledge of what human beings will choose to do, neither that knowledge nor God’s grace determine human will; the cooperation concursus of divine grace with human will does not determine the will to a particular action. This is made possible by God’s middle knowledge, which is a knowledge in between the knowledge God has of what existed, exists, and will exist, and the knowledge God has of what has not existed, does not exist, and will not exist. Middle knowledge is God’s knowledge of conditional future contingent events, namely, of what persons would do under any possible set of circumstances. Thanks to this knowledge, God can arrange for certain human acts to occur by prearranging the circumstances surrounding the choice without determining the human will. Thus, God’s grace is concurrent with the act of the will and does not predetermine it, rendering the Thomistic distinction between sufficient and efficacious grace superfluous.
Molyneux question, also called Molyneux’s problem, the question that, in correspondence with Locke, William Molyneux or Molineux, 1656 98, a Dublin lawyer and member of the Irish Parliament, posed and Locke inserted in the second edition of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1694; book 2, chap. 9, section 8: Suppose a Man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish a Cube, and a Sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and t’other, which is the Cube, which the Sphere. Suppose then the Cube and Sphere placed on a Table, and the Blind Man to be made to see. Quære, Whether by his sight, before he touch’d them, he could now distinguish, and tell, which is the Globe, which the Cube. Although it is tempting to regard Molyneux’s question as straightforwardly empirical, attempts to gauge the abilities of newly sighted adults have yielded disappointing and ambiguous results. More interesting, perhaps, is the way in which different theories of perception answer the question. Thus, according to Locke, sensory modalities constitute discrete perceptual channels, the contents of which perceivers must learn to correlate. Such a theory answers the question in the negative as did Molyneux himself. Other theories encourage different responses.
Montaigne, Michel de 153392, essayist and philosopher who set forth the Renaissance version of Grecian skepticism. Born and raised in Bordeaux, he became its mayor, and was an adviser to leaders of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. In 1568 he tr. the work of the rationalist theologian Raimund Sebond on natural theology. Shortly thereafter he began writing essais, attempts, as the author said, to paint himself. These, the first in this genre, are rambling, curious discussions of various topics, suggesting tolerance and an undogmatic Stoic morality. The longest essai, the “Apology for Raimund Sebond,” “defends” Sebond’s rationalism by arguing that since no adequate reasons or evidence could be given to support any point of view in theology, philosophy, or science, one should not blame Sebond for his views. Montaigne then presents and develops the skeptical arguments found in Sextus Empiricus and Cicero. Montaigne related skeptical points to thencurrent findings and problems. Data of explorers, he argues, reinforce the cultural and ethical relativism of the ancient Skeptics. Disagreements between Scholastics, Platonists, and Renaissance naturalists on almost everything cast doubt on whether any theory is correct. Scientists like Copernicus and Paracelsus contradict previous scientists, and will probably be contradicted by future ones. Montaigne then offers the more theoretical objections of the Skeptics, about the unreliability of sense experience and reasoning and our inability to find an unquestionable criterion of true knowledge. Trying to know reality is like trying to clutch water. What should we then do? Montaigne advocates suspending judgment on all theories that go beyond experience, accepting experience undogmatically, living according to the dictates of nature, and following the rules and customs of one’s society. Therefore one should remain in the religion in which one was born, and accept only those principles that God chooses to reveal to us. Montaigne’s skepticism greatly influenced European thinkers in undermining confidence in previous theories and forcing them to seek new ways of grounding knowledge. His acceptance of religion on custom and faith provided a way of living with total skepticism. His presentation of skepticism in a modern language shaped the vocabulary and the problems of philosophy in modern times.
Montanism, a charismatic, schismatic movement in early Christianity, originating in Phrygia in the late second century. It rebuked the mainstream church for laxity and apathy, and taught moral purity, new, i.e. postbiblical, revelation, and the imminent end of the world. Traditional accounts, deriving from critics of the movement, contain exaggerations and probably some fabrications. Montanus himself, abetted by the prophetesses Maximilla and Prisca, announced in ecstatic speech a new, final age of prophecy. This fulfilled the biblical promises that in the last days the Holy Spirit would be poured out universally Joel 2: 28ff.; Acts 2: 16ff. and would teach “the whole truth” Jon. 14:26; 16:13. It also empowered the Montanists to enjoin more rigorous discipline than that required by Jesus. The sect denied that forgiveness through baptism covered serious subsequent sin; forbade remarriage for widows and widowers; practiced fasting; and condemned believers who evaded persecution. Some later followers may have identified Montanus with the Holy Spirit itself, though he claimed only to be the Spirit’s mouthpiece. The “new prophecy” flourished for a generation, especially in North Africa, gaining a famous convert in Tertullian. But the church’s bishops repudiated the movement’s criticisms and innovations, and turned more resolutely against postapostolic revelation, apocalyptic expectation, and ascetic extremes.
Montesquieu, Baron de La Brède et de, title of Charles-Louis de Secondat 16891755, political philosopher, the political philosophe of the Enlightenment. He was born at La Brède, educated at the Oratorian Collège de Juilly 170005, and received law degrees from the of Bordeaux 1708. From his uncle he inherited the barony of Montesquieu 1716 and the office of Président à Mortier at the Parliament of Guyenne at Bordeaux. Fame, national monism Montesquieu 581 581 and international, came suddenly 1721 with the Lettres persanes “The Persian Letters”, published in Holland and France, a landmark of the Enlightenment. His Réflexions sur la monarchie universelle en Europe, written and printed 1734 to remind the authorities of his qualifications and availability, delivered the wrong message at the wrong time anti-militarism, pacifism, free trade, while France supported Poland’s King Stanislas, dethroned by Russia and Austria. Montesquieu withdrew the Réflexions before publication and substituted the Considerations on the Romans: the same thesis is expounded here, but in the exclusively classical context of ancient history. The stratagem succeeded: the Amsterdam edition was freely imported; the Paris edition appeared with a royal privilège 1734. A few months after the appearance of the Considerations, he undertook L’Esprit des lois, the outline of a modern political science, conceived as the foundation of an effective governmental policy. His optimism was shaken by the disasters of the War of Austrian Succession 174048; the Esprit des lois underwent hurried changes that upset its original plan. During the very printing process, the author was discovering the true essence of his philosophie pratique: it would never culminate in a final, invariable program, but in an orientation, continuously, intelligently adapting to the unpredictable circumstances of historical time in the light of permanent values. According to L’Esprit des lois, governments are either republics, monarchies, or despotisms. The principles, or motivational forces, of these types of government are, respectively, political virtue, honor, and fear. The type of government a people has depends on its character, history, and geographical situation. Only a constitutional government that separates its executive, legislative, and judicial powers preserves political liberty, taken as the power to do what one ought to will. A constitutional monarchy with separation of powers is the best form of government. Montesquieu influenced the authors of the U.S. Constitution and the political philosophers Burke and Rousseau.
Moore: g. e. – cited by H. P. Grice. Irish London-born philosopher who spearheaded the attack on idealism and was a major supporter of realism in all its forms: metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological. He was born in Upper Norwood, a suburb of London; did his undergraduate work at Cambridge ; spent 84 as a fellow of Trinity ; returned to Cambridge in 1 as a lecturer; and was granted a professorship there in 5. He also served as editor of Mind. The bulk of his work falls into four categories: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and philosophical methodology. Metaphysics. In this area, Moore is mainly known for his attempted refutation of idealism and his defense thereby of realism. In his “The Refutation of Idealism” 3, he argued that there is a crucial premise that is essential to all possible arguments for the idealistic conclusion that “All reality is mental spiritual.” This premise is: “To be is to be perceived” in the broad sense of ‘perceive’. Moore argued that, under every possible interpretation of it, that premise is either a tautology or false; hence no significant conclusion can ever be inferred from it. His positive defense of realism had several prongs. One was to show that there are certain claims held by non-realist philosophers, both idealist ones and skeptical ones. Moore argued, in “A Defense of Common Sense” 5, that these claims are either factually false or self-contradictory, or that in some cases there is no good reason to believe them. Among the claims that Moore attacked are these: “Propositions about purported material facts are false”; “No one has ever known any such propositions to be true”; “Every purported physical fact is logically dependent on some mental fact”; and “Every physical fact is causally dependent on some mental fact.” Another major prong of Moore’s defense of realism was to argue for the existence of an external world and later to give a “Proof of an External World” 3. Epistemology. Most of Moore’s work in this area dealt with the various kinds of knowledge we have, why they must be distinguished, and the problem of perception and our knowledge of an external world. Because he had already argued for the existence of an external world in his metaphysics, he here focused on how we know it. In many papers and chapters e.g., “The Nature and Reality of Objects of Perception,” 6 he examined and at times supported three main positions: naive or direct realism, representative or indirect realism, and phenomenalism. Although he seemed to favor direct realism at first, in the majority of his papers he found representative realism to be the most supportable position despite its problems. It should also be noted that, in connection with his leanings mood toward representative realism, Moore maintained the existence of sense-data and argued at length for an account of just how they are related to physical objects. That there are sense-data Moore never doubted. The question was, What is their ontological status? With regard to the various kinds of knowledge or ways of knowing, Moore made a distinction between dispositional or non-actualized and actualized knowledge. Within the latter Moore made distinctions between direct apprehension often known as knowledge by acquaintance, indirect apprehension, and knowledge proper or propositional knowledge. He devoted much of his work to finding the conditions for knowledge proper. Ethics. In his major work in ethics, Principia Ethica 3, Moore maintained that the central problem of ethics is, What is good? meaning by this, not what things are good, but how ‘good’ is to be defined. He argued that there can be only one answer, one that may seem disappointing, namely: good is good, or, alternatively, ‘good’ is indefinable. Thus ‘good’ denotes a “unique, simple object of thought” that is indefinable and unanalyzable. His first argument on behalf of that claim consisted in showing that to identify good with some other object i.e., to define ‘good’ is to commit the naturalistic fallacy. To commit this fallacy is to reduce ethical propositions to either psychological propositions or reportive definitions as to how people use words. In other words, what was meant to be an ethical proposition, that X is good, becomes a factual proposition about people’s desires or their usage of words. Moore’s second argument ran like this: Suppose ‘good’ were definable. Then the result would be even worse than that of reducing ethical propositions to non-ethical propositions ethical propositions would be tautologies! For example, suppose you defined ‘good’ as ‘pleasure’. Then suppose you maintained that pleasure is good. All you would be asserting is that pleasure is pleasure, a tautology. To avoid this conclusion ‘good’ must mean something other than ‘pleasure’. Why is this the naturalistic fallacy? Because good is a non-natural property. But even if it were a natural one, there would still be a fallacy. Hence some have proposed calling it the definist fallacy the fallacy of attempting to define ‘good’ by any means. This argument is often known as the open question argument because whatever purported definition of ‘good’ anyone offers, it would always be an open question whether whatever satisfies the definition really is good. In the last part of Principia Ethica Moore turned to a discussion of what sorts of things are the greatest goods with which we are acquainted. He argued for the view that they are personal affection and aesthetic enjoyments. Philosophical methodology. Moore’s methodology in philosophy had many components, but two stand out: his appeal to and defense of common sense and his utilization of various methods of philosophical/conceptual analysis. “A Defense of Common Sense” argued for his claim that the commonsense view of the world is wholly true, and for the claim that any view which opposed that view is either factually false or self-contradictory. Throughout his writings Moore distinguished several kinds of analysis and made use of them extensively in dealing with philosophical problems. All of these may be found in the works cited above and other essays gathered into Moore’s Philosophical Studies2 and Philosophical Papers 9. These have been referred to as refutational analysis, with two subforms, showing contradictions and “translation into the concrete”; distinctional analysis; decompositional analysis either definitional or divisional; and reductional analysis. Moore was greatly revered as a teacher. Many of his students and colleagues have paid high tribute to him in very warm and grateful terms. .
Moore’s paradox, as first discussed by G. E. Moore, the perplexity involving assertion of what is expressed by conjunctions such as ‘It’s raining, but I believe it isn’t’ and ‘It’s raining, but I don’t believe it is’. The oddity of such presenttense first-person uses of ‘to believe’ seems peculiar to those conjunctions just because it is assumed both that, when asserting roughly, representing as true a conjunction, one also asserts its conjuncts, and that, as a rule, the assertor believes the asserted proposition. Thus, no perplexity arises from assertions of, for instance, ‘It’s raining today, but I falsely believed it wasn’t until I came out to the porch’ and ‘If it’s raining but I believe it isn’t, I have been misled by the weather report’. However, there are reasons to think that, if we rely only on these assumptions and examples, our characterization of the problem is unduly narrow. First, assertion seems relevant only because we are interested in what the assertor believes. Secondly, those conjunctions are disturbing only insofar as they show that Moore’s paradox Moore’s paradox 583 583 some of the assertor’s beliefs, though contingent, can only be irrationally held. Thirdly, autobiographical reports that may justifiably be used to charge the reporter with irrationality need be neither about his belief system, nor conjunctive, nor true e.g., ‘I don’t exist’, ‘I have no beliefs’, nor false e.g., ‘It’s raining, but I have no evidence that it is’. So, Moore’s paradox is best seen as the problem posed by contingent propositions that cannot be justifiably believed. Arguably, in forming a belief of those propositions, the believer acquires non-overridable evidence against believing them. A successful analysis of the problem along these lines may have important epistemological consequences.
moral dilemma. 1 Any problem where morality is relevant. This broad use includes not only conflicts among moral reasons but also conflicts between moral reasons and reasons of law, religion, or self-interest. In this sense, Abraham is in a moral dilemma when God commands him to sacrifice his son, even if he has no moral reason to obey. Similarly, I am in a moral dilemma if I cannot help a friend in trouble without forgoing a lucrative but morally neutral business opportunity. ’Moral dilemma’ also often refers to 2 any topic area where it is not known what, if anything, is morally good or right. For example, when one asks whether abortion is immoral in any way, one could call the topic “the moral dilemma of abortion.” This epistemic use does not imply that anything really is immoral at all. Recently, moral philosophers have discussed a much narrower set of situations as “moral dilemmas.” They usually define ‘moral dilemma’ as 3 a situation where an agent morally ought to do each of two acts but cannot do both. The bestknown example is Sartre’s student who morally ought to care for his mother in Paris but at the same time morally ought to go to England to join the Free and fight the Nazis. However, ‘ought’ covers ideal actions that are not morally required, such as when someone ought to give to a certain charity but is not required to do so. Since most common examples of moral dilemmas include moral obligations or duties, or other requirements, it is more accurate to define ‘moral dilemma’ more narrowly as 4 a situation where an agent has a moral requirement to do each of two acts but cannot do both. Some philosophers also refuse to call a situation a moral dilemma when one of the conflicting requirements is clearly overridden, such as when I must break a trivial promise in order to save a life. To exclude such resolvable conflicts, ‘moral dilemma’ can be defined as 5 a situation where an agent has a moral requirement to adopt each of two alternatives, and neither requirement is overridden, but the agent cannot fulfill both. Another common move is to define ‘moral dilemma’ as 6 a situation where every alternative is morally wrong. This is equivalent to 4 or 5, respectively, if an act is morally wrong whenever it violates any moral requirement or any non-overridden moral requirement. However, we usually do not call an act wrong unless it violates an overriding moral requirement, and then 6 rules out moral dilemmas by definition, since overriding moral requirements clearly cannot conflict. Although 5 thus seems preferable, some would object that 5 includes trivial requirements and conflicts, such as conflicts between trivial promises. To include only tragic situations, we could define ‘moral dilemma’ as 7 a situation where an agent has a strong moral obligation or requirement to adopt each of two alternatives, and neither is overridden, but the agent cannot adopt both alternatives. This definition is strong enough to raise the important controversies about moral dilemmas without being so strong as to rule out their possibility by definition.
moral epistemology, the discipline, at the intersection of ethics and epistemology, that studies the epistemic status and relations of moral judgments and principles. It has developed out of an interest, common to both ethics and epistemology, in questions of justification and justifiability in epistemology, of statements or beliefs, and in ethics, of actions as well as judgments of actions and also general principles of judgment. Its most prominent questions include the following. Can normative claims be true or false? If so, how can they be known to be true or false? If not, what status do they have, and are they capable of justification? If they are capable of justification, how can they be justified? Does the justification of normative claims differ with respect to particular claims and with respect to general principles? In epistemology recent years have seen a tendency to accept as valid an account of knowledge as entailing justified true belief, a conception that requires an account not just of truth but also of justification and of justified belief. Thus, under what conditions is someone justified, epistemically, in believing something? Justification, of actions, of judgments, and of principles, has long been a central element in ethics. It is only recently that justification in ethics came to be thought of as an epistemological problem, hence ‘moral epistemology’, as an expression, is a fairly recent coinage, although its problems have a long lineage. One long-standing linkage is provided by the challenge of skepticism. Skepticism in ethics can be about the existence of any genuine distinction between right and wrong, or it can focus on the possibility of attaining any knowledge of right and wrong, good or bad. Is there a right answer? is a question in the metaphysics of ethics. Can we know what the right answer is, and if so how? is one of moral epistemology. Problems of perception and observation and ones about observation statements or sense-data play an important role in epistemology. There is not any obvious parallel in moral epistemology, unless it is the role of prereflective moral judgments, or commonsense moral judgments moral judgments unguided by any overt moral theory which can be taken to provide the data of moral theory, and which need to be explained, systematized, coordinated, or revised to attain an appropriate relation between theory and data. This would be analogous to taking the data of epistemology to be provided, not by sense-data or observations but by judgments of perception or observation statements. Once this step is taken the parallel is very close. One source of moral skepticism is the apparent lack of any observational counterpart for moral predicates, which generates the question how moral judgments can be true if there is nothing for them to correspond to. Another source of moral skepticism is apparently constant disagreement and uncertainty, which would appear to be explained by the skeptical hypothesis denying the reality of moral distinctions. Noncognitivism in ethics maintains that moral judgments are not objects of knowledge, that they make no statements capable of truth or falsity, but are or are akin to expressions of attitudes. Some other major differences among ethical theories are largely epistemological in character. Intuitionism maintains that basic moral propositions are knowable by intuition. Empiricism in ethics maintains that moral propositions can be established by empirical means or are complex forms of empirical statements. Ethical rationalism maintains that the fundamental principles of morality can be established a priori as holding of necessity. This is exemplified by Kant’s moral philosophy, in which the categorical imperative is regarded as synthetic a priori; more recently by what Alan Gewirth b.2 calls the “principle of generic consistency,” which he claims it is selfcontradictory to deny. Ethical empiricism is exemplified by classical utilitarianism, such as that of Bentham, which aspires to develop ethics as an empirical science. If the consequences of actions can be scientifically predicted and their utilities calculated, then ethics can be a science. Situationism is equivalent to concrete case intuitionism in maintaining that we can know immediately what ought to be done in specific cases, but most ethical theories maintain that what ought to be done is, in J. S. Mill’s words, determined by “the application of a law to an individual case.” Different theories differ on the epistemic status of these laws and on the process of application. Deductivists, either empiricistic or rationalistic, hold that the law is essentially unchanged in the application; non-deductivists hold that the law is modified in the process of application. This distinction is explained in F. L. Will [998], Beyond Deduction, 8. There is similar variation about what if anything is selfevident, Sidgwick maintaining that only certain highly abstract principles are self-evident, Ross that only general rules are, and Prichard that only concrete judgments are, “by an act of moral thinking.” Other problems in moral epistemology are provided by the factvalue distinction and controversies about whether there is any such distinction and the isought question, the question how a moral judgment can be derived from statements of fact alone. Naturalists affirm the possibility, non-naturalists deny it. Prescriptivists claim that moral judgments are prescriptions and cannot be deduced from descriptive statements alone. This question ultimately leads to the question how an ultimate principle can be justified. If it cannot be deduced from statements of fact, that route is out; if it must be deduced from some other moral principle, then the principle deduced cannot be ultimate and in any case this process is either circular or leads to an infinite regress. If the ultimate principle is self-evident, then the problem may have an answer. But if it is not it would appear to be arbitrary. The problem of the justification of an ultimate principle continues to be a leading one in moral epistemology. Recently there has been much interest in the status and existence of “moral facts.” Are there any, what are they, and how are they established as “facts”? This relates to questions about moral realism. Moral realism maintains that moral predicates are real and can be known to be so; anti-realists deny this. This denial links with the view that moral properties supervene on natural ones, and the problem of supervenience is another recent link between ethics and epistemology. Pragmatism in ethics maintains that a moral problem is like any problem in that it is the occasion for inquiry and moral judgments are to be regarded as hypotheses to be tested by how well they resolve the problem. This amounts to an attempt to bypass the isought problem and all such “dualisms.” So is constructivism, a development owing much to the work of Rawls, which contrasts with moral realism. Constructivism maintains that moral ideas are human constructs and the task is not epistemological or metaphysical but practical and theoretical that of attaining reflective equilibrium between considered moral judgments and the principles that coordinate and explain them. On this view there are no moral facts. Opponents maintain that this only replaces a foundationalist view of ethics with a coherence conception. The question whether questions of moral epistemology can in this way be bypassed can be regarded as itself a question of moral epistemology. And the question of the foundations of morality, and whether there are foundations, can still be regarded as a question of moral epistemology, as distinct from a question of the most convenient and efficient arrangement of our moral ideas.
morality, an informal public system applying to all rational persons, governing behavior that affects others, having the lessening of evil or harm as its goal, and including what are commonly known as the moral rules, moral ideals, and moral virtues. To say that it is a public system means that all those to whom it applies must understand it and that it must not be irrational for them to use it in deciding what to do and in judging others to whom the system applies. Games are the paradigm cases of public systems; all games have a point and the rules of a game apply to all who play it. All players know the point of the game and its rules, and it is not irrational for them to be guided by the point and rules and to judge the behavior of other players by them. To say that morality is informal means that there is no decision procedure or authority that can settle all its controversial questions. Morality thus resembles a backyard game of basketball more than a professional game. Although there is overwhelming agreement on most moral matters, certain controversial questions must be settled in an ad hoc fashion or not settled at all. For example, when, if ever, abortion is acceptable is an unresolvable moral matter, but each society and religion can adopt its own position. That morality has no one in a position of authority is one of the most important respects in which it differs from law and religion. Although morality must include the commonly accepted moral rules such as those prohibiting killing and deceiving, different societies can interpret these rules somewhat differently. They can also differ in their views about the scope of morality, i.e., about whether morality protects newborns, fetuses, or non-human animals. Thus different societies can have somewhat different moralities, although this difference has limits. Also within each society, a person may have his own view about when it is justified to break one of the rules, e.g., about how much harm would have to be prevented in order to justify deceiving someone. Thus one person’s morality may differ somewhat from another’s, but both will agree on the overwhelming number of non-controversial cases. A moral theory is an attempt to describe, explain, and if possible justify, morality. Unfortunately, most moral theories attempt to generate some simplified moral code, rather than to describe the complex moral system that is already in use. Morality does not resolve all disputes. Morality does not require one always to act so as to produce the best consequences or to act only in those ways that one would will everyone to act. Rather morality includes both moral rules that no one should transgress and moral ideals that all are encouraged to follow, but much of what one does will not be governed by morality.
moral psychology, 1 the subfield of psychology that traces the development over time of moral reasoning and opinions in the lives of individuals this subdiscipline includes work of Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Carol Gilligan; 2 the part of philosophy where philosophy of mind and ethics overlap, which concerns all the psychological issues relevant to morality. There are many different psychological matters relevant to ethics, and each may be relevant in more than one way. Different ethical theories imply different sorts of connections. So moral psychology includes work of many and diverse kinds. But several traditional clusters of concern are evident. Some elements of moral psychology consider the psychological matters relevant to metaethical issues, i.e., to issues about the general nature of moral truth, judgment, and knowledge. Different metaethical theories invoke mental phenomena in different ways: noncognitivism maintains that sentences expressing moral judgments do not function to report truths or falsehoods, but rather, e.g., to express certain emotions or to prescribe certain actions. So some forms of noncognitivism imply that an understanding of certain sorts of emotions, or of special activities like prescribing that may involve particular psychological elements, is crucial to a full understanding of how ethical sentences are meaningful. Certain forms of cognitivism, the view that moral declarative sentences do express truths or falsehoods, imply that moral facts consist of psychological facts, that for instance moral judgments consist of expressions of positive psychological attitudes of some particular kind toward the objects of those judgments. And an understanding of psychological phenomena like sentiment is crucial according to certain sorts of projectivism, which hold that the supposed moral properties of things are mere misleading projections of our sentiments onto the objects of those sentiments. Certain traditional moral sense theories and certain traditional forms of intuitionism have held that special psychological faculties are crucial for our epistemic access to moral truth. Particular views in normative ethics, particular views about the moral status of acts, persons, and other targets of normative evaluation, also often suggest that an understanding of certain psychological matters is crucial to ethics. Actions, intentions, and character are some of the targets of evaluation of normative ethics, and their proper understanding involves many issues in philosophy of mind. Also, many normative theorists have maintained that there is a close connection between pleasure, happiness, or desiresatisfaction and a person’s good, and these things are also a concern of philosophy of mind. In addition, the rightness of actions is often held to be closely connected to the motives, beliefs, and other psychological phenomena that lie behind those actions. Various other traditional philosophical concerns link ethical and psychological issues: the nature of the patterns in the long-term development in individuals of moral opinions and reasoning, the appropriate form for moral education and punishment, the connections between obligation and motivation, i.e., between moral reasons and psychological causes, and the notion of free will and its relation to moral responsibility and autonomy. Some work in philosophy of mind also suggests that moral phenomena, or at least normative phenomena of some kind, play a crucial role in illuminating or constituting psychological phenomena of various kinds, but the traditional concern of moral psychology has been with the articulation of the sort of philosophy of mind that can be useful to ethics.
moral rationalism, the view that the substance of morality, usually in the form of general moral principles, can be known a priori. The view is defended by Kant in Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, but it goes back at least to Plato. Both Plato and Kant thought that a priori moral knowledge could have an impact on what we do quite independently of any desire that we happen to have. This motivational view is also ordinarily associated with moral rationalism. It comes in two quite different forms. The first is that a priori moral knowledge consists in a sui generis mental state that is both belief-like and desire-like. This seems to have been Plato’s view, for he held that the belief that something is good is itself a disposition to promote that thing. The second is that a priori moral knowledge consists in a belief that is capable of rationally producing a distinct desire. Rationalists who make the first claim have had trouble accommodating the possibility of someone’s believing that something is good but, through weakness of will, not mustering the desire to do it. Accordingly, they have been forced to assimilate weakness of will to ignorance of the good. Rationalists who make the second claim about reason’s action-producing capacity face no such problem. For this reason, their view is often preferred. The best-known anti-rationalist about morality is Hume. His Treatise of Human Nature denies both that morality’s substance can be known by reason alone and that reason alone is capable of producing action.
moral realism, a metaethical view committed to the objectivity of ethics. It has 1 metaphysical, 2 semantic, and 3 epistemological components. 1 Its metaphysical component is the claim that there are moral facts and moral properties whose existence and nature are independent of people’s beliefs and attitudes about what is right or wrong. In this claim, moral realism contrasts with an error theory and with other forms of nihilism that deny the existence of moral facts and properties. It contrasts as well with various versions of moral relativism and other forms of ethical constructivism that make moral facts consist in facts about people’s moral beliefs and attitudes. 2 Its semantic component is primarily cognitivist. Cognitivism holds that moral judgments should be construed as assertions about the moral properties of actions, persons, policies, and other objects of moral assessment, that moral predicates purport to refer to properties of such objects, that moral judgments or the propositions that they express can be true or false, and that cognizers can have the cognitive attitude of belief toward the propositions that moral judgments express. These cognitivist claims contrast with the noncognitive claims of emotivism and prescriptivism, according to which the primary purpose of moral judgments is to express the appraiser’s attitudes or commitments, rather than to state facts or ascribe properties. Moral realism also holds that truth for moral judgments is non-epistemic; in this way it contrasts with moral relativism and other forms of ethical constructivism that make the truth of a moral judgment epistemic. The metaphysical and semantic theses imply that there are some true moral propositions. An error theory accepts the cognitivist semantic claims but denies the realist metaphysical thesis. It holds that moral judgments should be construed as containing referring expressions and having truth-values, but insists that these referring expressions are empty, because there are no moral facts, and that no moral claims are true. Also on this theory, commonsense moral thought presupposes the existence of moral facts and properties, but is systematically in error. In this way, the error theory stands to moral realism much as atheism stands to theism in a world of theists. J. L. Mackie introduced and defended the error theory in his Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, 7. 3 Finally, if moral realism is to avoid skepticism it must claim that some moral beliefs are true, that there are methods for justifying moral beliefs, and that moral knowledge is possible. While making these metaphysical, semantic, and epistemological claims, moral realism is compatible with a wide variety of other metaphysical, semantic, and epistemological principles and so can take many different forms. The moral realists in the early part of the twentieth century were generally intuitionists. Intuitionism combined a commitment to moral realism with a foundationalist moral epistemology according to which moral knowledge must rest on self-evident moral truths and with the nonnaturalist claim that moral facts and properties are sui generis and not reducible to any natural facts or properties. Friends of noncognitivism found the metaphysical and epistemological commitments of intuitionism extravagant and so rejected moral realism. Later moral realists have generally sought to defend moral realism without the metaphysical and epistemological trappings of intuitionism. One such version of moral realism takes a naturalistic form. This form of ethical naturalism claims that our moral beliefs are justified when they form part of an explanatorily coherent system of beliefs with one another and with various non-moral beliefs, and insists that moral properties are just natural properties of the people, actions, and policies that instantiate them. Debate between realists and anti-realists and within the realist camp centers on such issues as the relation between moral judgment and action, the rational authority of morality, moral epistemology and methodology, the relation between moral and non-moral natural properties, the place of ethics in a naturalistic worldview, and the parity of ethics and the sciences.
moral sense theory, an ethical theory, developed by eighteenth-century British philosophers notably Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume according to which the pleasure or pain a person feels upon thinking about or “observing” certain character traits is indicative of the virtue or vice, respectively, of those features. It is a theory of “moral perception,” offered in response to moral rationalism, the view that moral distinctions are derived by reason alone, and combines Locke’s empiricist doctrine that all ideas begin in experience with the belief, widely shared at the time, that feelings play a central role in moral evaluation and motivation. On this theory, our emotional responses to persons’ characters are often “perceptions” of their morality, just as our experiences of an apple’s redness and sweetness are perceptions of its color and taste. These ideas of morality are seen as products of an “internal” sense, because they are produced in the “observer” only after she forms a concept of the conduct or trait being observed or contemplated as when a person realizes that she is seeing someone intentionally harm another and reacts with displeasure at what she sees. The moral sense is conceived as being analogous to, or possibly an aspect of, our capacity to recognize varying degrees of beauty in things, which modern writers call “the sense of beauty.” Rejecting the popular view that morality is based on the will of God, Shaftesbury maintains rather that morality depends on human nature, and he introduces the notion of a sense of right and wrong, possessed uniquely by human beings, who alone are capable of reflection. Hutcheson argues that to approve of a character is to regard it as virtuous. For him, reason, which discovers relations of inanimate objects to rational agents, is unable to arouse our approval in the absence of a moral sense. Ultimately, we can explain why, for example, we approve of someone’s temperate character only by appealing to our natural tendency to feel pleasure sometimes identified with approval at the thought of characters that exhibit benevolence, the trait to which all other virtues can be traced. This disposition to feel approval and disapproval is what Hutcheson identifies as the moral sense. Hume emphasizes that typical human beings make moral distinctions on the basis of their feelings only when those sentiments are experienced from a disinterested or “general” point of view. In other words, we turn our initial sentiments into moral judgments by compensating for the fact that we feel more strongly about those to whom we are emotionally close than those from whom we are more distant. On a widely held interpretation of Hume, the moral sense provides not only judgments, but also motives to act according to those judgments, since its feelings may be motivating passions or arouse such passions. Roderick Firth’s 787 twentieth-century ideal observer theory, according to which moral good is designated by the projected reactions of a hypothetically omniscient, disinterested observer possessing other ideal traits, as well as Brandt’s contemporary moral spectator theory, are direct descendants of the moral sense theory.
moral scepticism, any metaethical view that raises fundamental doubts about morality as a whole. Different kinds of doubts lead to different kinds of moral skepticism. The primary kinds of moral skepticism are epistemological. Moral justification skepticism is the claim that nobody ever has any or adequate justification for believing any substantive moral claim. Moral knowledge skepticism is the claim that nobody ever knows that any substantive moral claim is true. If knowledge implies justification, as is often assumed, then moral justification skepticism implies moral knowledge skepticism. But even if knowledge requires justification, it requires more, so moral knowledge skepticism does not imply moral justification skepticism. Another kind of skeptical view in metaethics rests on linguistic analysis. Some emotivists, expressivists, and prescriptivists argue that moral claims like “Cheating is morally wrong” resemble expressions of emotion or desire like “Boo, cheating” or prescriptions for action like “Don’t cheat”, which are neither true nor false, so moral claims themselves are neither true nor false. This linguistic moral skepticism, which is sometimes called noncognitivism, implies moral knowledge skepticism if knowledge implies truth. Even if such linguistic analyses are rejected, one can still hold that no moral properties or facts really exist. This ontological moral skepticism can be combined with the linguistic view that moral claims assert moral properties and facts to yield an error theory that all positive moral claims are false. A different kind of doubt about morality is often raised by asking, “Why should I be moral?” Practical moral skepticism answers that there is not always any reason or any adequate reason to be moral or to do what is morally required. This view concerns reasons to act rather than reasons to believe. Moral skepticism of all these kinds is often seen as immoral, but moral skeptics can act and be motivated and even hold moral beliefs in much the same way as non-skeptics. Moral skeptics just deny that their or anyone else’s moral beliefs are justified or known or true, or that they have adequate reason to be moral.
moral status, the suitability of a being to be viewed as an appropriate object of direct moral concern; the nature or degree of a being’s ability to count as a ground of claims against moral agents; the moral standing, rank, or importance of a kind of being; the condition of being a moral patient; moral considerability. Ordinary moral reflection involves considering others. But which others ought to be considered? And how are the various objects of moral consideration to be weighed against one another? Anything might be the topic of moral discussion, but not everything is thought to be an appropriate object of direct moral concern. If there are any ethical constraints on how we may treat a ceramic plate, these seem to derive from considerations about other beings, not from the interests or good or nature of the plate. The same applies, presumably, to a clod of earth. Many philosophers view a living but insentient being, such as a dandelion, in the same way; others have doubts. According to some, even sentient animal life is little more deserving of moral consideration than the clod or the dandelion. This tradition, which restricts significant moral status to humans, has come under vigorous and varied attack by defenders of animal liberation. This attack criticizes speciesism, and argues that “humanism” is analogous to theories that illegitimately base moral status on race, gender, or social class. Some philosophers have referred to beings that are appropriate objects of direct moral concern as “moral patients.” Moral agents are those beings whose actions are subject to moral evaluation; analogously, moral patients would be those beings whose suffering in the sense of being the objects of the actions of moral agents permits or demands moral evaluation. Others apply the label ‘moral patients’ more narrowly, just to those beings that are appropriate objects of direct moral concern but are not also moral agents. The issue of moral status concerns not only whether beings count at all morally, but also to what degree they count. After all, beings who are moral patients might still have their claims outweighed by the preferred claims of other beings who possess some special moral status. We might, with Nozick, propose “utilitarianism for animals, Kantianism for people.” Similarly, the bodily autonomy argument in defense of abortion, made famous by Thomson, does not deny that the fetus is a moral patient, but insists that her/his/its claims are limited by the pregnant woman’s prior claim to control her bodily destiny. It has often been thought that moral status should be tied to the condition of “personhood.” The idea has been either that only persons are moral patients, or that persons possess a special moral status that makes them morally more important than nonpersons. Personhood, on such theories, is a minimal condition for moral patiency. Why? Moral patiency is said to be “correlative” with moral agency: a creature has both or neither. Alternatively, persons have been viewed not as the only moral patients, but as a specially privileged elite among moral patients, possessing rights as well as interests.
More, Henry 161487, English philosopher, theologian, and poet, the most prolific of the Cambridge Platonists. In 1631 he entered Christ’s , where he spent the rest of his life after becoming Fellow in 1641. He was primarily an apologist of anti-Calvinist, latitudinarian stamp whose inalienable philosophico- theological purpose was to demonstrate the existence and immortality of the soul and to cure “two enormous distempers of the mind,” atheism and “enthusiasm.” He described himself as “a Fisher for Philosophers, desirous to draw them to or retain them in the Christian Faith.” His eclectic method deployed Neoplatonism notably Plotinus and Ficino, mystical theologies, cabalistic doctrines as More misconceived them, empirical findings including reports of witchcraft and ghosts, the new science, and the new philosophy, notably the philosophy of Descartes. Yet he rejected Descartes’s beast-machine doctrine, his version of dualism, and the pretensions of Cartesian mechanical philosophy to explain all physical phenomena. Animals have souls; the universe is alive with souls. Body and spirit are spatially extended, the former being essentially impenetrable, inert, and discerpible divisible into parts, the latter essentially penetrable, indiscerpible, active, and capable of a spiritual density, which More called essential spissitude, “the redoubling or contracting of substance into less space than it does sometimes occupy.” Physical processes are activated and ordered by the spirit of nature, a hylarchic principle and “the vicarious power of God upon this great automaton, the world.” More’s writings on natural philosophy, especially his doctrine of infinite space, are thought to have influenced Newton. More attacked Hobbes’s materialism and, in the 1660s and 1670s, the impieties of Dutch Cartesianism, including the perceived atheism of Spinoza and his circle. He regretted the “enthusiasm” for and conversion to Quakerism of Anne Conway, his “extramural” tutee and assiduous correspondent. More had a partiality for coinages and linguistic exotica. We owe to him ‘Cartesianism’ 1662, coined a few years before the first appearance of the equivalent, and the substantive ‘materialist’ 1668.
More, Sir Thomas 1477 or 14781535, English humanist, statesman, martyr, and saint. A lawyer by profession, he entered royal service in 1517 and became lord chancellor in 1529. After refusing to swear to the Act of Supremacy, which named Henry VIII the head of the English church, More was beheaded as a traitor. Although his writings include biography, poetry, letters, and anti-heretical tracts, his only philosophical work, Utopia published in Latin, 1516, is his masterpiece. Covering a wide variety of subjects including government, education, punishment, religion, family life, and euthanasia, Utopia contrasts European social institutions with their counterparts on the imaginary island of Utopia. Inspired in part by Plato’s Republic, the Utopian communal system is designed to teach virtue and reward it with happiness. The absence of money, private property, and most social distinctions allows Utopians the leisure to develop the faculties in which happiness consists. Because of More’s love of irony, Utopia has been subject to quite different interpretations.
Mosca, Gaetano 18581, political scientist who made pioneering contributions to the theory of democratic elitism. Combining the life of a professor with that of a politician, he taught such subjects as constitutional law, public law, political science, and history of political theory; at various times he was also an editor of the Parliamentary proceedings, an elected member of the Chamber of Deputies, an under-secretary for colonial affairs, a newspaper columnist, and a member of the Senate. For Mosca ‘elitism’ refers to the empirical generalization that every society is ruled by an organized minority. His democratic commitment is embodied in what he calls juridical defense: the normative principle that political developments are to be judged by whether and how they prevent any one person, class, force, or institution from dominating the others. His third main contribution is a framework consisting of two intersecting distinctions that yield four possible ideal types, defined as follows: in autocracy, authority flows from the rulers to the ruled; in liberalism, from the ruled to the rulers; in democracy, the ruling class is open to renewal by members of other classes; in aristocracy it is not. He was influenced by, and in turn influenced, positivism, for the elitist thesis presumably constitutes the fundamental “law” of political “science.” Even deeper is his connection with the tradition of Machiavelli’s political realism. There is also no question that he practiced an empirical approach. In the tradition of elitism, he may be compared and contrasted with Pareto, Michels, and Schumpeter; and in the tradition of political philosophy, to Croce, Gentile, and Gramsci.
motivation, a property central in motivational explanations of intentional conduct. To assert that Ann is driving to Boston today because she wants to see the Red Sox play and believes that they are playing today in Boston is to offer a More, Sir Thomas motivation 591 591 motivational explanation of this action. On a popular interpretation, the assertion mentions a pair of attitudes: a desire and a belief. Ann’s desire is a paradigmatic motivational attitude in that it inclines her to bring about the satisfaction of that very attitude. The primary function of motivational attitudes is to bring about their own satisfaction by inducing the agent to undertake a suitable course of action, and, arguably, any attitude that has that function is, ipso facto, a motivational one. The related thesis that only attitudes having this function are motivational or, more precisely, motivation-constituting is implausible. Ann hopes that the Sox won yesterday. Plainly, her hope cannot bring about its own satisfaction, since Ann has no control over the past. Even so, the hope seemingly may motivate action e.g., Ann’s searching for sports news on her car radio, in which case the hope is motivation-constituting. Some philosophers have claimed that our beliefs that we are morally required to take a particular course of action are motivation-constituting, and such beliefs obviously do not have the function of bringing about their own satisfaction i.e., their truth. However, the claim is controversial, as is the related claim that beliefs of this kind are “besires” that is, not merely beliefs but desires as well.
motivational explanation, a type of explanation of goal-directed behavior where the explanans appeals to the motives of the agent. The explanation usually is in the following form: Smith swam hard in order to win the race. Here the description of what Smith did identifies the behavior to be explained, and the phrase that follows ‘in order to’ identifies the goal or the state of affairs the obtaining of which was the moving force behind the behavior. The general presumption is that the agent whose behavior is being explained is capable of deliberating and acting on the decisions reached as a result of the deliberation. Thus, it is dubious whether the explanation contained in ‘The plant turned toward the sun in order to receive more light’ is a motivational explanation. Two problems are thought to surround motivational explanations. First, since the state of affairs set as the goal is, at the time of the action, non-existent, it can only act as the “moving force” by appearing as the intentional object of an inner psychological state of the agent. Thus, motives are generally desires for specific objects or states of affairs on which the agent acts. So motivational explanation is basically the type of explanation provided in folk psychology, and as such it inherits all the alleged problems of the latter. And second, what counts as a motive for an action under one description usually fails to be a motive for the same action under a different description. My motive for saying “hello” may have been my desire to answer the phone, but my motive for saying “hello” loudly was to express my irritation at the person calling me so late at night.
motivational internalism, the view that moral motivation is internal to moral duty or the sense of duty. The view represents the contemporary understanding of Hume’s thesis that morality is essentially practical. Hume went on to point out the apparent logical gap between statements of fact, which express theoretical judgments, and statements about what ought to be done, which express practical judgments. Motivational internalism offers one explanation for this gap. No motivation is internal to the recognition of facts. The specific internal relation the view affirms is that of necessity. Thus, motivational internalists hold that if one sees that one has a duty to do a certain action or that it would be right to do it, then necessarily one has a motive to do it. For example, if one sees that it is one’s duty to donate blood, then necessarily one has a motive to donate blood. Motivational externalism, the opposing view, denies this relation. Its adherents hold that it is possible for one to see that one has a duty to do a certain action or that it would be right to do it yet have no motive to do it. Motivational externalists typically, though not universally, deny any real gap between theoretical and practical judgments. Motivational internalism takes either of two forms, rationalist and anti-rationalist. Rationalists, such as Plato and Kant, hold that the content or truth of a moral requirement guarantees in those who understand it a motive of compliance. Anti-rationalists, such as Hume, hold that moral judgment necessarily has some affective or volitional component that supplies a motive for the relevant action but that renders morality less a matter of reason and truth than of feeling or commitment. It is also possible in the abstract to draw an analogous distinction between two forms of motivational externalism, cognitivist and noncognitivist, but because the view springs from an interest in assimilating practical judgment to theoretical judgment, its only influential form has been cognitivist.
mystical experience, an experience alleged to reveal some aspect of reality not normally accessible to sensory experience or cognition. The experience typically characterized by its profound emotional impact on the one who experiences it, its transcendence of spatial and temporal distinctions, its transitoriness, and its ineffability is often but not always associated with some religious tradition. In theistic religions, mystical experiences are claimed to be brought about by God or by some other superhuman agent. Theistic mystical experiences evoke feelings of worshipful awe. Their content can vary from something no more articulate than a feeling of closeness to God to something as specific as an item of revealed theology, such as, for a Christian mystic, a vision of the Trinity. Non-theistic mystical experiences are usually claimed to reveal the metaphysical unity of all things and to provide those who experience them with a sense of inner peace or bliss. MYSTICISM. W.E.M. mysticism, a doctrine or discipline maintaining that one can gain knowledge of reality that is not accessible to sense perception or to rational, conceptual thought. Generally associated with a religious tradition, mysticism can take a theistic form, as it has in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, or a non-theistic form, as it has in Buddhism and some varieties of Hinduism. Mystics claim that the mystical experience, the vehicle of mystical knowledge, is usually the result of spiritual training, involving some combination of prayer, meditation, fasting, bodily discipline, and renunciation of worldly concerns. Theistic varieties of mysticism describe the mystical experience as granted by God and thus not subject to the control of the mystic. Although theists claim to feel closeness to God during the mystical experience, they regard assertions of identity of the self with God as heretical. Non-theistic varieties are more apt to describe the experience as one that can be induced and controlled by the mystic and in which distinctions between the self and reality, or subject and object, are revealed to be illusory. Mystics claim that, although veridical, their experiences cannot be adequately described in language, because ordinary communication is based on sense experience and conceptual differentiation: mystical writings are thus characterized by metaphor and simile. It is con 593 troversial whether all mystical experiences are basically the same, and whether the apparent diversity among them is the result of interpretations influenced by different cultural traditions.
myth of Er, a tale at the end of Plato’s Republic dramatizing the rewards of justice and philosophy by depicting the process of reincarnation. Complementing the main argument of the work, that it is intrinsically better to be just than unjust, this longest of Plato’s myths blends traditional lore with speculative cosmology to show that justice also pays, usually in life and certainly in the afterlife. Er, a warrior who revived shortly after death, reports how judges assign the souls of the just to heaven but others to punishment in the underworld, and how most return after a thousand years to behold the celestial order, to choose their next lives, and to be born anew.
Nagarjuna fl. early second century A.D., Mahayana Buddhist philosopher, founder of the Madhyamika view. The Mulanadhyamakarika Prajña “The Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way” and the Sunyatasaptati “The Septuagint on Emptiness” are perhaps his major works. He distinguishes between “two truths”: a conditional truth, which is provisional and reflects the sort of distinctions we make in everyday speech and find in ordinary experience; and a final truth, which is that there exists only an ineffable independent reality. Overcoming acceptance of the conventional, conditional truth is requisite for seeing the final truth in enlightenment.
Nagel, Ernest 185, Czech-born philosopher, the preeminent philosopher of science in the period from the mid-0s to the 0s. Arriving in New York as a ten-yearold immigrant, he earned his B.S. degree from the of the City of New York and his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1. He was a member of the Philosophy Department at Columbia from 0 to 0. He coauthored the influential An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method with his former teacher, M. R. Cohen. His many publications include two well-known classics: Principles of the Theory of Probability 9 and Structure of Science 0. Nagel was sensitive to developments in logic, foundations of mathematics, and probability theory, and he shared with Russell and with members of the Vienna Circle like Carnap and Phillip Frank a respect for the relevance of scientific inquiry for philosophical reflection. But his writing also reveals the influences of M. R. Cohen and that strand in the thinking of the pragmatism of Peirce and Dewey which Nagel himself called “contextualist naturalism.” He was a persuasive critic of Russell’s views of the data of sensation as a source of non-inferential premises for knowledge and of cognate views expressed by some members of the Vienna Circle. Unlike Frege, Russell, Carnap, Popper, and others, he rejected the view that taking account of context in characterizing method threatened to taint philosophical reflection with an unacceptable psychologism. This stance subsequently allowed him to oppose historicist and sociologist approaches to the philosophy of science. Nagel’s contextualism is reflected in his contention that ideas of determinism, probability, explanation, and reduction “can be significantly discussed only if they are directed to the theories or formulations of a science and not its subject matter” Principles of the Theory of Probability, 9. This attitude infused his influential discussions of covering law explanation, statistical explanation, functional explanation, and reduction of one theory to another, in both natural and social science. Similarly, his contention that participants in the debate between realism and instrumentalism should clarify the import of their differences for context-sensitive scientific methodology served as the core of his argument casting doubt on the significance of the dispute. In addition to his extensive writings on scientific knowledge methodology, Nagel wrote influential essays on measurement, the history of mathematics, and the philosophy of law.
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