IMPLICATVRA, in 18 volumes -- vol. XIII

Animatum -- philosophical psychology, -- vide H. P. Grice: “Method in philosophical psychology: from the banal to the bizarre” – in “Conception of Value,” Oxford, Clarendon Press. -- philosophy of mind, the branch of philosophy that includes the philosophy of psychology, philosophical psychology, and the area of metaphysics concerned with the nature of mental phenomena and how they fit into the causal structure of reality. Philosophy of psychology, a branch of the philosophy of science, examines what psychology says about the nature of psychological phenomena; examines aspects of psychological theorizing such as the models used, explanations offered, and laws invoked; and examines how psychology fits with the social sciences and natural sciences. Philosophical psychology investigates folk psychology, a body of commonsensical, protoscientific views about mental phenomena. Such investigations attempt to articulate and refine views found in folk psychology about conceptualization, memory, perception, sensation, consciousness, belief, desire, intention, reasoning, action, and so on. The mindbody problem, a central metaphysical one in the philosophy of mind, is the problem of whether mental phenomena are physical and, if not, how they are related to physical phenomena. Other metaphysical problems in the philosophy of mind include the free will problem, the problem of personal identity, and the problem of how, if at all, irrational phenomena such as akrasia and self-deception are possible. Mindbody dualism Cartesian dualism. The doctrine that the soul is distinct from the body is found in Plato and discussed throughout the history of philosophy, but Descartes is considered the father of the modern mindbody problem. He maintained that the essence of the physical is extension in space. Minds are unextended substances and thus are distinct from any physical substances. The essence of a mental substance is to think. This twofold view is called Cartesian dualism. Descartes was well aware of an intimate relationship between mind and the brain. There is no a priori reason to think that the mind is intimately related to the brain; Aristotle, e.g., did not associate them. Descartes mistakenly thought the seat of the relationship was in the pineal gland. He maintained, however, that our minds are not our brains, lack spatial location, and can continue to exist after the death and destruction of our bodies. Cartesian dualism invites the question: What connects the mind and brain? Causation is Descartes’s answer: states of our minds causally interact with states of our brains. When bodily sensations such as aches, pains, itches, and tickles cause us to moan, wince, scratch, or laugh, they do so by causing brain states events, processes, which in turn cause bodily movements. In deliberate action, we act on our desires, motives, and intentions to carry out our purposes; and acting on these mental states involves their causing brain states, which in turn cause our bodies to move, thereby causally influencing the physical world. The physical world, in turn, influences our minds through its influence on our brains. Perception of the physical world with five senses  sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch  involves causal transactions from the physical to the mental: what we perceive i.e., see, hear, etc. causes a sense experience i.e., a visual experience, aural experience, etc.. Thus, Descartes held that there is two-way psychophysical causal interaction: from the mental to the physical as in action and from the physical to the mental as in perception. The conjunction of Cartesian dualism and the doctrine of two-way psychophysical causal interaction is called Cartesian interactionism. Perhaps the most widely discussed difficulty for this view is how states of a non-spatial substance a mind can causally interact with states of a substance that is in space a brain. Such interactions have seemed utterly mysterious to many philosophers. Mystery would remain even if an unextended mind is locatable at a point in space say, the center of the pineal gland. For Cartesian interactionism would still have to maintain that causal transactions between mental states and brain states are fundamental, i.e., unmediated by any underlying mechanism. Brain states causally interact with mental states, but there is no answer to the question of how they do so. The interactions are brute facts. Many philosophers, including many of Descartes’s contemporaries, have found that difficult to accept. Parallelism. Malebranche and Leibniz, among others, rejected the possibility of psychophysical causal interaction. They espoused versions of parallelism: the view that the mental and physical realms run in parallel, in that types of mental phenomena co-occur with certain types of physical phenomena, but these co-occurrences never involve causal interactions. On all extant versions, the parallels hold because of God’s creation. Leibniz’s parallelism is preestablished harmony: the explanation of why mental types and certain physical types co-occur is that in the possible world God actualized i.e., this world they co-occur. In discussing the relation between the mental and physical realms, Leibniz used the analogy of two synchronized but unconnected clocks. The analogy is, however, somewhat misleading; suggesting causal mechanisms internal to each clock and intramental and intraphysical causal transactions. But Leibniz’s monadology doctrine excludes the possibility of such transactions: mental and physical phenomena have no effects even within their own realms. Malebranche is associated with occasionalism, according to which only God, through his continuous activities, causes things to happen: non-divine phenomena never cause anything. Occasionalism differs from preestablished harmony in holding that God is continually engaged in acts of creation; each moment creating the world anew, in such a way that the correlations hold. Both brands of parallelism face formidable difficulties. First, both rest on highly contentious, obscure theological hypotheses. The contention that God exists and the creation stories in question require extensive defense and explanation. God’s relationship to the world can seem at least as mysterious as the relationship Descartes posits between minds and brains. Second, since parallelism denies the possibility of psychophysical interaction, its proponents must offer alternatives to the causal theory of perception and the causal theory of action or else deny that we can perceive and that we can act intentionally. Third, since parallelism rejects intramental causation, it must either deny that reasoning is possible or explain how it is possible without causal connections between thoughts. Fourth, since parallelism rejects physical transactions, it is hard to see how it can allow, e.g., that one physical thing ever moves another; for that would require causing a change in location. Perhaps none of these weighty difficulties is ultimately insuperable; in any case, parallelism has been abandoned. Epiphenomenalism. Empirical research gives every indication that the occurrence of any brain state can, in principle, be causally explained by appeal solely to other physical states. To accommodate this, some philosophers espoused epiphenomenalism, the doctrine that physical states cause mental states, but mental states do not cause anything. This thesis was discussed under the name ‘conscious automatism’ by Huxley and Hogeson in the late nineteenth century. William James was the first to use the term ‘epiphenomena’ to mean phenomena that lack causal efficacy. And James Ward coined the term ‘epiphenomenalism’ in 3. Epiphenomenalism implies that there is only one-way psychophysical action  from the physical to the mental. Since epiphenomenalism allows such causal action, it can embrace the causal theory of perception. However, when combined with Cartesian dualism, epiphenomenalism, like Cartesian interactionism, implies the problematic thesis that states of an extended substance can affect states of an unextended substance. An epiphenomenalist can avoid this problem by rejecting the view that the mind is an unextended substance while maintaining that mental states and events are nonetheless distinct from physical states and events. Still, formidable problems would remain. It is hard to see how epiphenomenalism can allow that we are ever intentional agents. For intentional agency requires acting on reasons, which, according to the causal theory of action, requires a causal connection between reasons and actions. Since epiphenomenalism denies that such causal connections are possible, it must either maintain that our sense of agency is illusory or offer an alternative to the causal theory of action. Similarly, it must explain how thinking is possible given that there are no causal connections between thoughts. Monism The dual-aspect theory. Many philosophers reject Descartes’s bifurcation of reality into mental and physical substances. Spinoza held a dualattribute theory  also called the dual-aspect theory  according to which the mental and the physical are distinct modes of a single substance, God. The mental and the physical are only two of infinitely many modes of this one substance. Many philosophers opted for a thoroughgoing monism, according to which all of reality is really of one kind. Materialism, idealism, and neutral monism are three brands of monism. Hobbes, a contemporary of Descartes, espoused materialism, the brand of monism according to which everything is material or physical. Berkeley is associated with idealism, the brand of monism according to which everything is mental. He held that both mental and physical phenomena are perceptions in the mind of God. For Hegel’s idealism, everything is part of the World Spirit. The early twentieth-century British philosophers Bradley and McTaggart also held a version of idealism. Neutral monism is the doctrine that all of reality is ultimately of one kind, which is neither mental nor physical. Hume was a neutral monist, maintaining that mental and physical substances are really just bundles of the neutral entities. Versions of neutral monism were later held by Mach and, for a short time, Russell. Russell called his neutral entities sensibilia and claimed that minds and physical objects are logical constructions out of them. Phenomenalism. This view, espoused in the twentieth century by, among others, Ayer, argues that all empirical statements are synonymous with statements solely about phenomenal appearances. While the doctrine is about statements, phenomenalism is either a neutral monism or an idealism, depending on whether phenomenal appearances are claimed to be neither mental nor physical or, instead, mental. The required translations of physical statements into phenomenal ones proved not to be forthcoming, however. Chisholm offered a reason why they would not be: what appearances a physical state of affairs e.g., objects arrayed in a room has depends both on physical conditions of observation e.g., lighting and physical conditions of the perceiver e.g., of the nervous system. At best, a statement solely about phenomenal appearances is equivalent to one about a physical state of affairs, only when certain physical conditions of observation and certain physical conditions of the perceiver obtain. Materialism. Two problems face any monism: it must characterize the phenomena it takes as basic, and it must explain how the fundamental phenomena make up non-basic phenomena. The idealist and neutral monist theories proposed thus far have faltered on one or both counts. Largely because of scientific successes of the twentieth century, such as the rebirth of the atomic theory of matter, and the successes of quantum mechanics in explaining chemistry and of chemistry in turn in explaining much of biology, many philosophers today hold that materialism will ultimately succeed where idealism and neutral monism apparently failed. Materialism, however, comes in many different varieties and each faces formidable difficulties. Logical behaviorism. Ryle ridiculed Cartesianism as the view that there is a ghost in the machine the body. He claimed that the view that the mind is a substance rests on a category mistake: ‘mind’ is a noun, but does not name an object. Cartesianism confuses the logic of discourse about minds with the logic of discourse about bodies. To have a mind is not to possess a special sort of entity; it is simply to have certain capacities and dispositions. Compare the thesis that to be alive is to possess not a certain entity, an entelechy or élan vital, but rather certain capacities and dispositions. Ryle maintained, moreover, that it was a mistake to regard mental states such as belief, desire, and intention as internal causes of behavior. These states, he claimed, are dispositions to behave in overt ways. In part in response to the dualist point that one can understand our ordinary psychological vocabulary ‘belief’, ‘desire’, ‘pain’, etc. and know nothing about the physical states and events in the brain, logical behaviorism has been proposed as a materialist doctrine that explains this fact. On this view, talk of mental phenomena is shorthand for talk of actual and potential overt bodily behavior i.e., dispositions to overt bodily behavior. Logical behaviorism was much discussed from roughly the 0s until the early 0s. While Ryle is sometimes counted as a logical behaviorist, he was not committed to the thesis that all mental talk can be tr. into behavioral talk. The translations promised by logical behaviorism appear unachievable. As Putnam and others pointed out, one can fake being in pain and one can be in pain and yet not behave or be disposed to behave as if one were in pain e.g., one might be paralyzed or might be a “super-spartan”. Logical behaviorism faces similar difficulties in translating sentences about what Russell called propositional attitudes i.e., beliefs that p, desires that p, hopes that p, intentions that p, and the like. Consider the following sample proposal similar to one offered by Carnap: one believes that the cat is on the mat if and only if one is disposed to assent to ‘The cat is on the mat’. First, the proposed translation meets the condition of being purely behavioral only if assenting is understandable in purely behavioral terms. That is doubtful. The proposal also fails to provide a sufficient or a necessary condition: someone may assent to ‘The cat is on the mat’ and yet not believe the cat is on the mat for the person may be trying to deceive; and a belief that the cat is on the mat will dispose one to assent to ‘The cat is on the mat’ only if one understands what is being asked, wants to indicate that one believes the cat is on the mat, and so on. But none of these conditions is required for believing that the cat is on the mat. Moreover, to invoke any of these mentalistic conditions defeats the attempt to provide a purely behavioral translation of the belief sentence. Although the project of translation has been abandoned, in recent years Dennett has defended a view in the spirit of logical behaviorism, intentional systems theory: belief-desire talk functions to characterize overall patterns of dispositions to overt behavior in an environmental context for the purposes of predicting overt behavior. The theory is sometimes characterized as supervenient behaviorism since it implies that whether an individual has beliefs, desires, intentions and the like supervenes on his dispositions to overt behavior: if two individuals are exactly alike in respect of their dispositions to overt behavior, the one has intentional states if and only if the other does. This view allows, however, that the contents of an individual’s intentional states  what the individual believes, desires, etc.  may depend on environmental factors. So it is not committed to the supervenience of the contents of intentional states on dispositions to overt behavior.the discussion of content externalism below. One objection to this view, due to Ned Block, is that it would mistakenly count as an intentional agent a giant look-up table  “a Blockhead”  that has the same dispositions to peripheral behavior as a genuine intentional agent. A look-up table is a simple mechanical device that looks up preprogrammed responses. Identity theories. In the early 0s, Herbert Feigl claimed that mental states are brain states. He pointed out that if mental properties or state types are merely nomologically correlated with physical properties or state types, the connecting laws would be “nomological danglers”: irreducible to physical laws, and thus additional fundamental laws. According to the identity theory, the connecting laws are not fundamental laws and so not nomological danglers since they can be explained by identifying the mental and physical properties in question. In the late 0s and the early 0s, the philosopher Smart and the psychologist U. T. Place defended the materialist view that sensations are identical with brain processes. Smart claimed that while mental terms differ in meaning from physical terms, scientific investigation reveals that they have the same referents as certain physical terms. Compare the fact that while ‘the Morning Star’ and ‘the Evening Star’ differ in meaning empirical investigation reveals the same referent: Venus. Smart and Place claimed that feeling pain, e.g., is some brain process, exactly which one to be determined by scientific investigation. Smart claimed that sensation talk is paraphraseable in topic-neutral terms; i.e., in terms that leave open whether sensational properties are mental or physical. ‘I have an orange afterimage’ is paraphraseable roughly as: ‘There is something going on like what is going on when I have my eyes open, am awake, and there is an orange illuminated in good light in front of me, i.e., when I really see an orange’. The description is topic-neutral since it leaves open whether what is going on is mental or physical. Smart maintained that scientific investigation reveals that what in fact meets the topic-neutral description is a brain process. He held that psychophysical identity statements such as ‘Pain is C-fiber firing’ are contingent, likening these to, e.g., ‘Lightning is electrical discharge’, which is contingent and knowable only through empirical investigation. Central state materialism. This brand of materialism was defended in the late 0s and the early 0s by Armstrong and others. On this view, mental states are states that are apt to produce a certain range of behavior. Central state materialists maintain that scientific investigation reveals that such states are states of the central nervous system, and thus that mental states are contingently identical with states of the central nervous system. Unlike logical behaviorism, central state materialism does not imply that mental sentences can be tr. into physical sentences. Unlike both logical behaviorism and philosophy of mind philosophy of mind 687    687 intentional systems theory, central state materialism implies that mental states are actual internal states with causal effects. And unlike Cartesian interactionism, it holds that psychophysical interaction is just physical causal interaction. Some central state materialists held in addition that the mind is the brain. However, if the mind were the brain, every change in the brain would be a change in the mind; and that seems false: not every little brain change amounts to a change of mind. Indeed, the mind ceases to exist when brain death occurs, while the brain continues to exist. The moral that most materialists nowadays draw from such considerations is that the mind is not any physical substance, since it is not a substance of any sort. To have a mind is not to possess a special substance, but rather to have certain capacities  to think, feel, etc. To that extent, Ryle was right. However, central state materialists insist that the properly functioning brain is the material seat of mental capacities, that the exercise of mental capacities consists of brain processes, and that mental states are brain states that can produce behavior. Epistemological objections have been raised to identity theories. As self-conscious beings, we have a kind of privileged access to our own mental states. The exact avenue of privileged access, whether it is introspection or not, is controversial. But it has seemed to many philosophers that our access to our own mental states is privileged in being open only to us, whereas we lack any privileged access to the states of our central nervous systems. We come to know about central nervous system states in the same way we come to know about the central nervous system states of others. So, against central state materialism and the identity theory, it is claimed that mental states cannot be states of our central nervous systems. Taking privileged access to imply that we have incorrigible knowledge of our conscious mental states, and despairing of squaring privileged access so understood with materialism, Rorty advocated eliminative materialism, the thesis that there actually are no mental phenomena. A more common materialist response, however, is to deny that privileged access entails incorrigibility and to maintain that privileged access is compatible with materialism. Some materialists maintain that while certain types of mental states e.g., sensations are types of neurological states, it will be knowable only by empirical investigation that they are. Suppose pain is a neural state N. It will be only a posteriori knowable that pain is N. Via the avenue of privileged access, one comes to believe that one is in a pain state, but not that one is in an N-state. One can believe one is in a pain state without believing that one is in an N-state because the concept of pain is different from the concept of N. Nevertheless, pain is N. Compare the fact that while water is H2O, the concept of water is different from that of H2O. Thus, while water is H2O, one can believe there is water in the glass without believing that there is H2O in it. The avenue of privileged access presents N conceptualized as pain, but never as neurological state N. The avenue of privileged access involves the exercise of mental, but not neurophysiological, concepts. However, our mental concepts answer to  apply in virtue of  the same properties state types as do certain of our neurophysiological concepts. The identity theory and central state materialism both hold that there are contingent psychophysical property and type identities. Some theorists in this tradition tried to distinguish a notion of theoretical identity from the notion of strict identity. They held that mental states are theoretically, but not strictly, identical with brain states. Against any such distinction, Kripke argued that identities are metaphysically necessary, i.e., hold in every possible world. If A % B, then necessarily A % B. Kripke acknowledged that there can be contingent statements of identity. But such statements, he argued, will employ at least one term that is not a rigid designator, i.e., a term that designates the same thing in every world in which it designates anything. Thus, since ‘the inventor of bifocals’ is a non-rigid designator, ‘Benjamin Franklin is the inventor of bifocals’ is contingent. While Franklin is the inventor of bifocals, he might not have been. However, statements of identity in which the identity sign is flanked by rigid designators are, if true, metaphysically necessary. Kripke held that proper names are rigid designators, and hence, the true identity statement ‘Cicero is Tully’ is metaphysically necessary. Nonetheless, a metaphysically necessary identity statement can be knowable only a posteriori. Indeed, ‘Cicero is Tully’ is knowable only a posteriori. Both ‘water’ and ‘H2O’, he maintained, are rigid designators: each designates the same kind of stuff in every possible world. And he thus maintained that it is metaphysically necessary that water is H2O, despite its not being a priori knowable that water is H2O. On Kripke’s view, any psychophysical identity statement that employs mental terms and physical terms that are rigid designators will also be metaphysically necessary, if true. Central state materialists maintain that mental concepts are equivalent to concepts whose descriptive content is the state that is apt to produce such-and-such behavior in such-and-such circumstances. These defining descriptions for mental concepts are intended to be meaning-giving, not contingent reference-fixing descriptions; they are, moreover, not rigid designators. Thus, the central state materialists can concede that all identities are necessary, but maintain that psychophysical claims of identity are contingent claims of identity since the mental terms that figure in those statements are not rigid designators. However, Kripke maintained that our concepts of sensations and other qualitative states are not equivalent to the sorts of descriptions in question. The term ‘pain’, he maintained, is a rigid designator. This position might be refuted by a successful functional analysis of the concept of pain in physical and/or topic-neutral terms. However, no successful analysis of this sort has yet been produced. See the section on consciousness below. A materialist can grant Kripke that ‘pain’ is a rigid designator and claim that a statement such as ‘Pain is C-fiber firing’ will be metaphysically necessary if true, but only a posteriori knowable. However, Kripke raised a formidable problem for this materialism. He pointed out that if a statement is metaphysically necessary but only a posteriori knowable, its appearance of contingency calls for explanation. Despite being metaphysically necessary, ‘Water is H2O’ appears contingent. According to Kripke, we explain this appearance by noting that one can coherently imagine a world in which something has all the phenomenal properties of water, and so is an “epistemic counterpart” of it, yet is not H2O. The fact that we can coherently imagine such epistemic counterparts explains why ‘Water is H2O’ appears contingent. But no such explanation is available for e.g. ‘Pain is C-fiber firing’. For an epistemic counterpart of pain, something with the phenomenal properties of pain  the feel of pain  is pain. Something can look, smell, taste, and feel like water yet not be water. But whatever feels like pain is pain: pain is a feeling. In contrast, we can explain the apparent contingency of claims like ‘Water is H2O’ because water is not constituted by its phenomenal properties; our concept of water allows that it may have a “hidden essence,” i.e., an essential microstructure. If Kripke is right, then anyone who maintains that a statement of identity concerning a type of bodily sensation and a type of physical state is metaphysically necessary yet a posteriori, must explain the appearance of contingency in a way that differs from the way Kripke explains the appearance of contingency of ‘Water is H2O’. This is a formidable challenge. The final section, on consciousness, sketches some materialist responses to it. The general issue of property and state type identity is controversial. The claim that water is H2O despite the fact that the concept of water is distinct from the concept of H2O seems plausible. However, property or state type identity is more controversial than the identity of types of substances. For properties or state types, there are no generally accepted “non-duplication principles”  to use a phrase of David Lewis’s. A nonduplication principle for A’s will say that no two A’s can be exactly alike in a certain respect; e.g., no two sets can have exactly the same members. It is widely denied, for instance, that no two properties can be possessed by exactly the same things. Two properties, it is claimed, can be possessed by the same things; likewise, two state types can occur in the same space-time regions. Even assuming that mental concepts are distinct from physical concepts, the issue of whether mental state types are physical state types raises the controversial issue of the non-duplication principle for state types. Token and type physicalisms. Token physicalism is the thesis that every particular is physical. Type physicalism is the thesis that every type or kind of entity is physical; thus, the identity thesis and central state materialism are type physicalist theses since they imply that types of mental states are types of physical states. Type physicalism implies token physicalism: given the former, every token falls under some physical type, and therefore is token-token identical with some token of a physical type. But token physicalism does not imply type physicalism; the former leaves open whether physical tokens fall under non-physical types. Some doctrines billed as materialist or physicalist embrace token epiphenomenalism, but reject type physicalism. Non-reductive materialism. This form of materialism implies token physicalism, but denies type physicalism and, as well, that mental types properties, etc. are reducible to physical types. This doctrine has been discussed since at least the late nineteenth century and was widely discussed in the first third of the twentieth century. The British philosophers George Henry Lewes, Samuel Alexander, Lloyd Morgan, and C. D. Broad all held or thought plausible a certain version of non-reductive materialism. They held or sympathized with the view that every substance philosophy of mind philosophy of mind 689    689 either is or is wholly made up of physical particles, that the well-functioning brain is the material seat of mental capacities, and that token mental states events, processes, etc. are token neurophysiological states events, processes, etc.. However, they either held or thought plausible the view that mental capacities, properties, etc., emerge from, and thus do not reduce to, physical capacities, properties, etc. Lewes coined the term ‘emergence’; and Broad later labeled the doctrine emergent materialism. Emergent materialists maintain that laws correlating mental and physical properties are irreducible. These laws would be what Feigl called nomological danglers. Emergentists maintain that, despite their untidiness, such laws must be accepted with natural piety. Davidson’s doctrine of anomalous monism is a current brand of non-reductive materialism. He explicitly formulates this materialist thesis for events; and his irreducibility thesis is restricted to intentional mental types  e.g., believings, desirings, and intendings. Anomalous monism says that every event token is physical, but that intentional mental predicates and concepts ones expressing propositional attitudes do not reduce, by law or definition, to physical predicates or concepts. Davidson offers an original argument for this irreducibility thesis. Mental predicates and concepts are, he claims, governed by constitutive principles of rationality, but physical predicates and concepts are not. This difference, he contends, excludes the possibility of reduction of mental predicates and concepts to physical ones. Davidson denies, moreover, that there are strict psychological or psychophysical laws. He calls the conjunction of this thesis and his irreducibility thesis the principle of the anomalism of the mental. His argument for token physicalism for events appeals to the principle of the anomalism of the mental and to the principle of the nomological character of causality: when two events are causally related, they are subsumed by a strict law. He maintains that all strict laws are physical. Given that claim, and given the principle of the nomological character of causality, it follows that every event that is a cause or effect is a physical event. On this view, psychophysical causation is just causation between physical events. Stephen Schiffer has also maintained a non-reductive materialism, one he calls ontological physicalism and sentential dualism: every particular is physical, but mental truths are irreducible to physical truths. Non-reductive materialism presupposes that mental state event tokens can fall under physical state types and, thereby, count as physical state tokens. This presupposition is controversial; no uncontroversial non-duplication principle for state tokens settles the issue. Suppose, however, that mental state tokens are physical state tokens, despite mental state types not being physical state types. The issue of how mental state types and physical state types are related remains. Suppose that some physical token x is of a mental type M say, a belief that the cat is on the mat and some other physical token y is not of type M. There must, it seems, be some difference between x and y in virtue of which x is, and y is not, of type M. Otherwise, it is simply a brute fact that x is and y is not of type M. That, however, seems implausible. The claim that certain physical state tokens fall under mental state types simply as a matter of brute fact would leave the difference in question utterly mysterious. But if it is not a brute fact, then there is some explanation of why a certain physical state is a mental state of a certain sort. The non-reductive materialist owes us an explanation that does not imply psychophysical reduction. Moreover, even though the non-reductive materialist can claim that mental states are causes because they are physical states with physical effects, there is some question whether mental state types are relevant to causal relations. Suppose every state is a physical state. Given that physical states causally interact in virtue of falling under physical types, it follows that whenever states causally interact they do so in virtue of falling under physical types. That raises the issue of whether states are ever causes in virtue of falling under mental types. Type epiphenomenalism is the thesis that no state can cause anything in virtue of falling under a mental type. Token epiphenomenalism, the thesis that no mental state can cause anything, implies type epiphenomenalism, but not conversely. Nonreductive materialists are not committed to token physicalism. However, token epiphenomenalism may be false but type epiphenomenalism true since mental states may be causes only in virtue of falling under physical types, never in virtue of falling under mental types. Broad raised the issue of type epiphenomenalism and discussed whether emergent materialism is committed to it. Ted Honderich, Jaegwon Kim, Ernest Sosa, and others have in recent years raised the issue of whether non-reductive materialism is committed to type epiphenomenalism. Brian McLaughlin has argued that the claim that an event acts as a cause in virtue of falling under a certain physical type is consistent with the claim that it also acts as a cause in virtue of falling under a certain mental type, even when the mental type is not identical with the physical type. But even if this is so, the relationship between mental types and physical types must be addressed. Ernest LePore and Barry Loewer, Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit, Stephen Yablo, and others have attempted to characterize a relation between mental types and physical types that allows for the causal relevance of mental types. But whether there is a relation between mental and physical properties that is both adequate to secure the causal relevance of mental properties and available to non-reductive materialists remains an open question. Davidson’s anomalous monism may appear to be a kind of dual-aspect theory: there are events and they can have two sorts of autonomous aspects, mental and physical. However, while Davidson holds that mental properties or types do not reduce to physical ones, he also holds that the mental properties of an event depend on its physical properties in that the former supervene on the latter in this sense: no two events can be exactly alike in every physical respect and yet differ in some mental respect. This proposal introduced the notion of supervenience into contem- porary philosophy of mind. Often nonreductive materialists argue that mental properties types supervene on physical properties types. Kim, however, has distinguished various supervenience relations, and argues that some are too weak to count as versions of materialism as opposed to, say, dual-aspect theory, while other supervenience relations are too strong to use to formulate non-reductive materialism since they imply reducibility. According to Kim, non-reductive materialism is an unstable position. Materialism as a supervenience thesis. Several philosophers have in recent years attempted to define the thesis of materialism using a global supervenience thesis. Their aim is not to formulate a brand of non-reductive materialism; they maintain that their supervenience thesis may well imply reducibility. Their aim is, rather, to formulate a thesis to which anyone who counts as a genuine materialist must subscribe. David Lewis has maintained that materialism is true if and only if any non-alien possible worlds that are physically indiscernible are mentally indiscernible as well. Non-alien possible worlds are worlds that have exactly the same perfectly natural properties as the actual world. Frank Jackson has offered this proposal: materialism is true if and only if any minimal physical duplicate of the actual world is a duplicate simpliciter of the actual world. A world is a physical duplicate of the actual world if and only if it is exactly like the actual world in every physical respect physical particular for physical particular, physical property for physical property, physical relation for physical relation, etc.; and a world is a duplicate simpliciter of the actual world if and only if it is exactly like the actual world in every respect. A minimal physical duplicate of the actual world is a physical duplicate that contains nothing else by way of particulars, kinds, properties, etc. than it must in order to be a physical duplicate of the actual world. Two questions arise for any formulation of the thesis of materialism. Is it adequate to materialism? And, if it is, is it true? Functionalism. The nineteenth-century British philosopher George Henry Lewes maintained that while not every neurological event is mental, every mental event is neurological. He claimed that what makes certain neurological events mental events is their causal role in the organism. This is a very early version of functionalism, nowadays a leading approach to the mindbody problem. Functionalism implies an answer to the question of what makes a state token a mental state of a certain kind M: namely, that it is an instance of some functional state type identical with M. There are two versions of this proposal. On one, a mental state type M of a system will be identical with the state type that plays a certain causal role R in the system. The description ‘the state type that plays R in the system’ will be a nonrigid designator; moreover, different state types may play R in different organisms, in which case the mental state is multiply realizable. On the second version, a mental state type M is identical with a second-order state type, the state of being in some first-order state that plays causal role R. More than one first-order state may play role R, and thus M may be multiply realizable. On either version, if the relevant causal roles are specifiable in physical or topic-neutral terms, then the functional definitions of mental state types will be, in principle, physically reductive. Since the roles would be specified partly in topic-neutral terms, there may well be possible worlds in which the mental states are realized by non-physical states; thus, functionalism does not imply token physicalism. However, functionalists typically maintain that, on the empirical evidence, mental states are realized in our world only by physical states. Functionalism comes in many varieties. philosophy of mind philosophy of mind 691    691 Smart’s topic-neutral analysis of our talk of sensations is in the spirit of functionalism. And Armstrong’s central state materialism counts as a kind of functionalism since it maintains that mental states are states apt to produce a certain range of behavior, and thus identifies states as mental states by their performing this causal role. However, functionalists today typically hold that the defining causal roles include causal roles vis-à-vis input state types, as well as output state types, and also vis-à-vis other internal state types of the system in question. In the 0s David Lewis proposed a functionalist theory, analytical functionalism, according to which definitions of mental predicates such as ‘belief’, ‘desire’, and the like though not predicates such as ‘believes that p’ or ‘desires that q’ can be obtained by conjoining the platitudes of commonsense psychology and formulating the Ramsey sentence for the conjunction. The relevant Ramsey sentence is a second-order quantificational sentence that quantifies over the mental predicates in the conjunction of commonsense psychological platitudes, and from it one can derive definitions of the mental predicates. On this view, it will be analytic that a certain mental state e.g., belief is the state that plays a certain causal role vis-à-vis other states; and it is a matter of empirical investigation what state plays the role. Lewis claimed that such investigation reveals that the state types that play the roles in question are physical states. In the early 0s, Putnam proposed a version of scientific functionalism, machine state functionalism: according to this view, mental states are types of Turing machine table states. Turing machines are mechanical devices consisting of a tape with squares on it that either are blank or contain symbols, and an executive that can move one square to the left, or one square to the right, or stay where it is. And it can either write a symbol on a square, erase a symbol on a square, or leave the square as it is. According to the Church-Turing thesis, every computable function can be computed by a Turing machine. Now there are two functions specifying such a machine: one from input states to output states, the other from input states to input states. And these functions are expressible by counterfactuals e.g., ‘If the machine is in state s 1 and receives input I, it will emit output O and enter state s2’. Machine tables are specified by the counterfactuals that express the functions in question. So the main idea of machine state functionalism is that any given mental type is definable as the state type that participates in certain counterfactual relationships specified in terms of purely formal, and so not semantically interpreted, state types. Any system whose inputs, outputs, and internal states are counterfactually related in the way characterized by a machine table is a realization of that table. This version of machine state functionalism has been abandoned: no one maintains that the mind has the architecture of a Turing machine. However, computational psychology, a branch of cognitive psychology, presupposes a scientific functionalist view of cognitive states: it takes the mind to have a computational architecture. See the section on cognitive psychology below. Functionalism  the view that what makes a state a realization of a mental state is its playing a certain causal role  remains a leading theory of mind. But functionalism faces formidable difficulties. Block has pinpointed one. On the one hand, if the input and output states that figure in the causal role alleged to define a certain mental state are specified in insufficient detail, the functional definition will be too liberal: it will mistakenly classify certain states as of that mental type. On the other hand, if the input and output states are specified in too much detail, the functional definition will be chauvinistic: it will fail to count certain states as instances of the mental state that are in fact such instances. Moreover, it has also been argued that functionalism cannot capture conscious states since types of conscious states do not admit of functional definitions. Cognitive psychology, content, and consciousness Cognitive psychology. Many claim that one aim of cognitive psychology is to provide explanations of intentional capacities, capacities to be in intentional states e.g., believing and to engage in intentional activities e.g., reasoning. Fodor has argued that classical cognitive psychology postulates a cognitive architecture that includes a language of thought: a system of mental representation with a combinatorial syntax and semantics, and computational processes defined over these mental representations in virtue of their syntactic structures. On this view, cognition is rule-governed symbol manipulation. Mental symbols have meanings, but they participate in computational processes solely in virtue of their syntactic or formal properties. The mind is, so to speak, a syntactic engine. The view implies a kind of content parallelism: syntaxsensitive causal transitions between symbols will preserve semantic coherence. Fodor has mainphilosophy of mind philosophy of mind 692    692 tained that, on this language-of-thought view of cognition the classical view, being in a beliefthat-p state can be understood as consisting in bearing a computational relation one that is constitutive of belief to a sentence in the language of thought that means that p; and similarly for desire, intention, and the like. The explanation of intentional capacities will be provided by a computational theory for mental sentences in conjunction with a psychosemantic theory, a theory of meaning for mental sentences. A research program in cognitive science called connectionism postulates networks of neuron-like units. The units can be either on or off, or can have continuous levels of activation. Units are connected, the connections have various degrees of strength, and the connections can be either inhibitory or excitatory. Connectionism has provided fruitful models for studying how neural networks compute information. Moreover, connectionists have had much success in modeling pattern recognition tasks e.g., facial recognition and tasks consisting of learning categories from examples. Some connectionists maintain that connectionism will yield an alternative to the classical language-of-thought account of intentional states and capacities. However, some favor a mixed-models approach to cognition: some cognitive capacities are symbolic, some connectionist. And some hold that connectionism will yield an implementational architecture for a symbolic cognitive architecture, one that will help explain how a symbolic cognitive architecture is realized in the nervous system. Content externalism. Many today hold that Twin-Earth thought experiments by Putnam and Tyler Burge show that the contents of a subject’s mental states do not supervene on intrinsic properties of the subject: two individuals can be exactly alike in every intrinsic respect, yet be in mental states with different contents. In response to Twin-Earth thought experiments, some philosophers have, however, attempted to characterize a notion of narrow content, a kind of content that supervenes on intrinsic properties of thinkers. Content, externalists claim, depends on extrinsic-contextual factors. If externalism is correct, then a psychosemantic theory must examine the relation between mental symbols and the extrinsic, contextual factors that determine contents. Stephen Stich has argued that psychology should eschew psychosemantics and concern itself only with the syntactic properties of mental sentences. Such a psychology could not explain intentional capacities. But Stich urges that computational psychology also eschew that explanatory goal. If, however, psychology is to explain intentional capacities, a psychosemantic theory is needed. Dretske, Fodor, Ruth Millikan, and David Papineau have each independently attempted to provide, in physicalistically respectable terms, foundations for a naturalized externalist theory of the content of mental sentences or internal physical states. Perhaps the leading problem for these theories of content is to explain how the physical and functional facts about a state determine a unique content for it. Appealing to work by Quine and by Kripke, some philosophers argue that such facts will not determine unique contents. Both causal and epistemic concerns have been raised about externalist theories of content. Such theories invite the question whether the property of having a certain content is ever causally relevant. If content is a contextual property of a state that has it, can states have effects in virtue of their having a certain content? This is an important issue because intentional states figure in explanations not only in virtue of their intentional mode whether they are beliefs, or desires, etc. but also in virtue of their contents. Consider an everyday belief-desire explanation. The fact that the subject’s belief was that there was milk in the refrigerator and the fact that the subject’s desire was for milk are both essential to the belief and desire explaining why the subject went to the refrigerator. Dretske, who maintains that content depends on a causal-historical context, has attempted to explain how the property of having a certain content can be causally relevant even though the possession of the property depends on causal-historical factors. And various other philosophers have attempted to explain how the causal relevance of content can be squared with the fact that it fails to supervene on intrinsic properties of the subject. A further controversial question is whether externalism is consistent with our having privileged access to what we are thinking. Consciousness. Conscious states such as pain states, visual experiences, and so on, are such that it is “like” something for the subject of the state to be in them. Such states have a qualitative aspect, a phenomenological character. The what-it-is-like aspects of experiences are called qualia. Qualia pose a serious difficulty for physicalism. Broad argued that one can know all the physical properties of a chemical and how it causally interacts with other physical phenomena and yet not know what it is like to smell it. He concluded that the smell of the chemical is philosophy of mind philosophy of mind 693    693 not itself a physical property, but rather an irreducible emergent property. Frank Jackson has recently defended a version of the argument, which has been dubbed the knowledge argument. Jackson argues that a super-scientist, Mary, who knows all the physical and functional facts about color vision, light, and matter, but has never experienced redness since she has spent her entire life in a black and white room, would not know what it is like to visually experience red. He concludes that the physical and functional topic-neutral facts do not entail all the facts, and thus materialism is false. In response, Lawrence Nemirow, David Lewis, and others have argued that knowing what it is like to be in a certain conscious state is, in part, a matter of know-how e.g., to be able to imagine oneself in the state rather than factual knowledge, and that the failure of knowledge of the physical and functional facts to yield such know-how does not imply the falsity of materialism. Functionalism seems unable to solve the problem of qualia since qualia seem not to be functionally definable. In the 0s, Fodor and Ned Block argued that two states can have the same causal role, thereby realizing the same functional state, yet the qualia associated with each can be inverted. This is called the problem of inverted qualia. The color spectrum, e.g., might be inverted for two individuals a possibility raised by Locke, despite their being in the same functional states. They further argued that two states might realize the same functional state, yet the one might have qualia associated with it and the other not. This is called the problem of absent qualia. Sydney Shoemaker has argued that the possibility of absent qualia can be ruled out on functionalist grounds. However, he has also refined the inverted qualia scenario and further articulated the problem it poses for functionalism. Whether functionalism or physicalism can avoid the problems of absent and inverted qualia remains an open question. Thomas Nagel claims that conscious states are subjective: to fully understand them, one must understand what it is like to be in them, but one can do that only by taking up the experiential point of view of a subject in them. Physical states, in contrast, are objective. Physical science attempts to characterize the world in abstraction from the experiential point of view of any subject. According to Nagel, whether phenomenal mental states reduce to physical states turns on whether subjective states reduce to objective states; and, at present, he claims, we have no understanding of how they could. Nagel has suggested that consciousness may be explainable only by appeal to as yet undiscovered basic nonmental, non-physical properties  “proto-mental properties”  the idea being that experiential points of view might be constituted by protomental properties together with physical properties. He thus claims that panphysicism is worthy of serious consideration. Frank Jackson, James Van Cleve, and David Chalmers have argued that conscious properties are emergent, i.e., fundamental, irreducible macro-properties; and Chalmers sympathizes with a brand of panphysicism. Colin McGinn claims that while conscious properties are likely reductively explainable by brain properties, our minds seem conceptually closed to the explaining properties: we are unable to conceptualize them, just as a cat is unable to conceptualize a square root. Dennett attempts to explain consciousness in supervenient behaviorist terms. David Rosenthal argues that consciousness is a special case of intentionality  more specifically, that conscious states are just states we can come in a certain direct way to believe we are in. Dretske, William Lycan, and Michael Tye argue that conscious properties are intentional properties and physicalistically reducible. Patricia Churchland argues that conscious phenomena are reducible to neurological phenomena. Brian Loar contends that qualia are identical with either functional or neurological states of the brain; and Christopher Hill argues specifically that qualia are identical with neurological states. Loar and Hill attempt to explain away the appearance of contingency of psychophysical identity claims, but in a way different from the way Kripke attempts to explain the appearance of contingency of ‘Water is H2O’, since they concede that that mode of explanation is unavailable. They appeal to differences in the conceptual roles of neurological and functional concepts by contrast with phenomenal concepts. They argue that while such concepts are different, they answer to the same properties. The nature of consciousness thus remains a matter of dispute. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Method in philosophical psychology: from the banal to the bizarre,” in The Conception of Value, Oxford, Clarendon.

Animatum – vide: H. P. Grice, “Psychology, folk psychology, etc.” -- philosophy of psychology, the philosophical study of psychology. Psychology began to separate from philosophy with the work of the nineteenth-century G. experimentalists, especially Fechner 180187, Helmholtz 1821 94, and Wundt 18320. In the first half of the twentieth century, the separation was completed in this country insofar as separate psychology departments were set up in most universities, psychologists established their own journals and professional associations, and experimental methods were widely employed, although not in every area of psychology the first experimental study of the effectiveness of a psychological therapy did not occur until 3. Despite this achievement of autonomy, however, issues have remained about the nature of the connections, if any, that should continue between psychology and philosophy. One radical view, that virtually all such connections should be severed, was defended by the behaviorist John Watson in his seminal 3 paper “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It.” Watson criticizes psychologists, even the experimentalists, for relying on introspective methods and for making consciousness the subject matter of their discipline. He recommends that psychology be a purely objective experimental branch of natural science, that its theoretical goal be to predict and control behavior, and that it discard all reference to consciousness. In making behavior the sole subject of psychological inquiry, we avoid taking sides on “those time-honored relics of philosophical speculation,” namely competing theories about the mindbody problem, such as interactionism and parallelism. In a later work, published in 5, Watson claimed that the success of behaviorism threatened the very existence of philosophy: “With the behavioristic point of view now becoming dominant, it is hard to find a place for what has been called philosophy. Philosophy is passing  has all but passed, and unless new issues arise which will give a foundation for a new philosophy, the world has seen its last great philosopher.” One new issue was the credibility of behaviorism. Watson gave no argument for his view that prediction and control of behavior should be the only theoretical goals of psychology. If the attempt to explain behavior is also legitimate, as some anti-behaviorists argue, then it would seem to be an empirical question whether that goal can be met without appealing to mentalistic causes. Watson and his successors, such as B. F. Skinner, cited no credible empirical evidence that it could, but instead relied primarily on philosophical arguments for banning postulation of mentalistic causes. As a consequence, behaviorists virtually guaranteed that philosophers of psychology would have at least one additional task beyond wrestling with traditional mind body issues: the analysis and criticism of behaviorism itself. Although behaviorism and the mindbody problem were never the sole subjects of philosophy of psychology, a much richer set of topics developed after 0 when the so-called cognitive revolution occurred in  psychology. These topics include innate knowledge and the acquisition of transformational grammars, intentionality, the nature of mental representation, functionalism, mental imagery, the language of thought, and, more recently, connectionism. Such topics are of interest to many cognitive psychologists and those in other disciplines, such as linguistics and artificial intelligence, who contributed to the emerging discipline known as cognitive science. Thus, after the decline of various forms of behaviorism and the consequent rise of cognitivism, many philosophers of psychology collaborated more closely with psychologists. This increased cooperation was probably due not only to a broadening of the issues, but also to a methodological change in philosophy. In the period roughly between 5 and 5, conceptual analysis dominated both  and English philosophy of psychology and the closely related discipline, the philosophy of mind. Many philosophers took the position that philosophy was essentially an a priori discipline. These philosophers rarely cited the empirical studies of psychologists. In recent decades, however, philosophy of psychology has become more empirical, at least in the sense that more attention is being paid to the details of the empirical studies of psychologists. The result is more interchanges between philosophers and psychologists. Although interest in cognitive psychology appears to predominate in recent  philosophy of psychology, the new emphasis on empirical studies is also reflected in philosophic work on topics not directly related to cognitive psychology. For example, philosophers of psychology have written books in recent years on the clinical foundations of psychoanalysis, the foundations of behavior therapy and behavior modification, and self-deception. The emphasis on empirical data has been taken one step further by naturalists, who argue that in epistemology, at least, and perhaps in all areas of philosophy, philosophical questions should either be replaced by questions from empirical psychology or be answered by appeal to empirical studies in psychology and related disciplines. It is philosophy of psychology philosophy of psychology 695    695 still too early to predict the fruitfulness of the naturalist approach, but this new trend might well have pleased Watson. Taken to an extreme, naturalism would make philosophy dependent on psychology instead of the reverse and thus would further enhance the autonomy of psychology that Watson desired.

philosophical theology: Grice: “At Oxford, pretentious as they are, they like ‘divinity’ – there are doctors in divinity!” -- philosophy of religion, the subfield of philosophy devoted to the study of religious phenomena. Although religions are typically complex systems of theory and practice, including both myths and rituals, philosophers tend to concentrate on evaluating religious truth claims. In the major theistic traditions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the most important of these claims concern the existence, nature, and activities of God. Such traditions commonly understand God to be something like a person who is disembodied, eternal, free, all-powerful, all-knowing, the creator and sustainer of the universe, and the proper object of human obedience and worship. One important question is whether this conception of the object of human religious activity is coherent; another is whether such a being actually exists. Philosophers of religion have sought rational answers to both questions. The major theistic traditions draw a distinction between religious truths that can be discovered and even known by unaided human reason and those to which humans have access only through a special divine disclosure or revelation. According to Aquinas, e.g., the existence of God and some things about the divine nature can be proved by unaided human reason, but such distinctively Christian doctrines as the Trinity and Incarnation cannot be thus proved and are known to humans only because God has revealed them. Theists disagree about how such divine disclosures occur; the main candidates for vehicles of revelation include religious experience, the teachings of an inspired religious leader, the sacred scriptures of a religious community, and the traditions of a particular church. The religious doctrines Christian traditions take to be the content of revelation are often described as matters of faith. To be sure, such traditions typically affirm that faith goes beyond mere doctrinal belief to include an attitude of profound trust in God. On most accounts, however, faith involves doctrinal belief, and so there is a contrast within the religious domain itself between faith and reason. One way to spell out the contrast  though not the only way  is to imagine that the content of revelation is divided into two parts. On the one hand, there are those doctrines, if any, that can be known by human reason but are also part of revelation; the existence of God is such a doctrine if it can be proved by human reason alone. Such doctrines might be accepted by some people on the basis of rational argument, while others, who lack rational proof, accept them on the authority of revelation. On the other hand, there are those doctrines that cannot be known by human reason and for which the authority of revelation is the sole basis. They are objects of faith rather than reason and are often described as mysteries of faith. Theists disagree about how such exclusive objects of faith are related to reason. One prominent view is that, although they go beyond reason, they are in harmony with it; another is that they are contrary to reason. Those who urge that such doctrines should be accepted despite the fact that, or even precisely because, they are contrary to reason are known as fideists; the famous slogan credo quia absurdum ‘I believe because it is absurd’ captures the flavor of extreme fideism. Many scholars regard Kierkegaard as a fideist on account of his emphasis on the paradoxical nature of the Christian doctrine that Jesus of Nazareth is God incarnate. Modern philosophers of religion have, for the most part, confined their attention to topics treatable without presupposing the truth of any particular tradition’s claims about revelation and have left the exploration of mysteries of faith to the theologians of various traditions. A great deal of philosophical work clarifying the concept of God has been prompted by puzzles that suggest some incoherence in the traditional concept. One kind of puzzle concerns the coherence of individual claims about the nature of God. Consider the traditional affirmation that God is allpowerful omnipotent. Reflection on this doctrine raises a famous question: Can God make a stone so heavy that even God cannot lift it? No matter how this is answered, it seems that there is at least one thing that even God cannot do, i.e., make such a stone or lift such a stone, and so it appears that even God cannot be all-powerful. Such puzzles stimulate attempts by philosophers to analyze the concept of omnipotence in a way that specifies more precisely the scope of the powers coherently attributable to an omnipotent being. To the extent that such attempts succeed, they foster a deeper understanding of the concept of God and, if God exists, of the divine nature. Another sort of puzzle concerns the consistency of attributing two or more properties to philosophy of religion philosophy of religion 696    696 God. Consider the claim that God is both immutable and omniscient. An immutable being is one that cannot undergo internal change, and an omniscient being knows all truths, and believes no falsehoods. If God is omniscient, it seems that God must first know and hence believe that it is now Tuesday and not believe that it is now Wednesday and later know and hence believe that it is now Wednesday and not believe that it is now Tuesday. If so, God’s beliefs change, and since change of belief is an internal change, God is not immutable. So it appears that God is not immutable if God is omniscient. A resolution of this puzzle would further contribute to enriching the philosophical understanding of the concept of God. It is, of course, one thing to elaborate a coherent concept of God; it is quite another to know, apart from revelation, that such a being actually exists. A proof of the existence of God would yield such knowledge, and it is the task of natural theology to evaluate arguments that purport to be such proofs. As opposed to revealed theology, natural theology restricts the assumptions fit to serve as premises in its arguments to things naturally knowable by humans, i.e., knowable without special revelation from supernatural sources. Many people have hoped that such natural religious knowledge could be universally communicated and would justify a form of religious practice that would appeal to all humankind because of its rationality. Such a religion would be a natural religion. The history of natural theology has produced a bewildering variety of arguments for the existence of God. The four main types are these: ontological arguments, cosmological arguments, teleological arguments, and moral arguments. The earliest and most famous version of the ontological argument was set forth by Anselm of Canterbury in chapter 2 of his Proslogion. It is a bold attempt to deduce the existence of God from the concept of God: we understand God to be a perfect being, something than which nothing greater can be conceived. Because we have this concept, God at least exists in our minds as an object of the understanding. Either God exists in the mind alone, or God exists both in the mind and as an extramental reality. But if God existed in the mind alone, then we could conceive of a being greater than that than which nothing greater can be conceived, namely, one that also existed in extramental reality. Since the concept of a being greater than that than which nothing greater can be conceived is incoherent, God cannot exist in the mind alone. Hence God exists not only in the mind but also in extramental reality. The most celebrated criticism of this form of the argument was Kant’s, who claimed that existence is not a real predicate. For Kant, a real predicate contributes to determining the content of a concept and so serves as a part of its definition. But to say that something falling under a concept exists does not add to the content of a concept; there is, Kant said, no difference in conceptual content between a hundred real dollars and a hundred imaginary dollars. Hence whether or not there exists something that corresponds to a concept cannot be settled by definition. The existence of God cannot be deduced from the concept of a perfect being because existence is not contained in the concept or the definition of a perfect being. Contemporary philosophical discussion has focused on a slightly different version of the ontological argument. In chapter 3 of Proslogion Anselm suggested that something than which nothing greater can be conceived cannot be conceived not to exist and so exists necessarily. Following this lead, such philosophers as Charles Hartshorne, Norman Malcolm, and Alvin Plantinga have contended that God cannot be a contingent being who exists in some possible worlds but not in others. The existence of a perfect being is either necessary, in which case God exists in every possible world, or impossible, in which case God exists in no possible worlds. On this view, if it is so much as possible that a perfect being exists, God exists in every possible world and hence in the actual world. The crucial premise in this form of the argument is the assumption that the existence of a perfect being is possible; it is not obviously true and could be rejected without irrationality. For this reason, Plantinga concedes that the argument does not prove or establish its conclusion, but maintains that it does make it rational to accept the existence of God. The key premises of various cosmological arguments are statements of obvious facts of a general sort about the world. Thus, the argument to a first cause begins with the observation that there are now things undergoing change and things causing change. If something is a cause of such change only if it is itself caused to change by something else, then there is an infinitely long chain of causes of change. But, it is alleged, there cannot be a causal chain of infinite length. Therefore there is something that causes change, but is not caused to change by anything else, i.e., a first cause. Many critics of this form of the argument deny its assumption that there cannot be an infinite causal regress or chain of causes. This argument also fails to show that there is only one first cause and does not prove that a first cause must have such divine attributes as omniscience, omnipotence, and perfect goodness. A version of the cosmological argument that has attracted more attention from contemporary philosophers is the argument from contingency to necessity. It starts with the observation that there are contingent beings  beings that could have failed to exist. Since contingent beings do not exist of logical necessity, a contingent being must be caused to exist by some other being, for otherwise there would be no explanation of why it exists rather than not doing so. Either the causal chain of contingent beings has a first member, a contingent being not caused by another contingent being, or it is infinitely long. If, on the one hand, the chain has a first member, then a necessary being exists and causes it. After all, being contingent, the first member must have a cause, but its cause cannot be another contingent being. Hence its cause has to be non-contingent, i.e., a being that could not fail to exist and so is necessary. If, on the other hand, the chain is infinitely long, then a necessary being exists and causes the chain as a whole. This is because the chain as a whole, being itself contingent, requires a cause that must be noncontingent since it is not part of the chain. In either case, if there are contingent beings, a necessary being exists. So, since contingent beings do exist, there is a necessary being that causes their existence. Critics of this argument attack its assumption that there must be an explanation for the existence of every contingent being. Rejecting the principle that there is a sufficient reason for the existence of each contingent thing, they argue that the existence of at least some contingent beings is an inexplicable brute fact. And even if the principle of sufficient reason is true, its truth is not obvious and so it would not be irrational to deny it. Accordingly, William Rowe b.1 concludes that this version of the cosmological argument does not prove the existence of God, but he leaves open the question of whether it shows that theistic belief is reasonable. The starting point of teleological arguments is the phenomenon of goal-directedness in nature. Aquinas, e.g., begins with the claim that we see that things which lack intelligence act for an end so as to achieve the best result. Modern science has discredited this universal metaphysical teleology, but many biological systems do seem to display remarkable adaptations of means to ends. Thus, as William Paley 17431805 insisted, the eye is adapted to seeing and its parts cooperate in complex ways to produce sight. This suggests an analogy between such biological systems and human artifacts, which are known to be products of intelligent design. Spelled out in mechanical terms, the analogy grounds the claim that the world as a whole is like a vast machine composed of many smaller machines. Machines are contrived by intelligent human designers. Since like effects have like causes, the world as a whole and many of its parts are therefore probably products of design by an intelligence resembling the human but greater in proportion to the magnitude of its effects. Because this form of the argument rests on an analogy, it is known as the analogical argument for the existence of God; it is also known as the design argument since it concludes the existence of an intelligent designer of the world. Hume subjected the design argument to sustained criticism in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. If, as most scholars suppose, the character Philo speaks for Hume, Hume does not actually reject the argument. He does, however, think that it warrants only the very weak conclusion that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence. As this way of putting it indicates, the argument does not rule out polytheism; perhaps different minor deities designed lions and tigers. Moreover, the analogy with human artificers suggests that the designer or designers of the universe did not create it from nothing but merely imposed order on already existing matter. And on account of the mixture of good and evil in the universe, the argument does not show that the designer or designers are morally admirable enough to deserve obedience or worship. Since the time of Hume, the design argument has been further undermined by the emergence of Darwinian explanations of biological adaptations in terms of natural selection that give explanations of such adaptations in terms of intelligent design stiff competition. Some moral arguments for the existence of God conform to the pattern of inference to the best explanation. It has been argued that the hypothesis that morality depends upon the will of God provides the best explanation of the objectivity of moral obligations. Kant’s moral argument, which is probably the best-known specimen of this type, takes a different tack. According to Kant, the complete good consists of perfect virtue rewarded with perfect happiness, and virtue deserves to be rewarded with proportional happiness because it makes one worthy to be happy. If morality is to command the allegiance of reason, the complete good must be a real possibility, and so practical reason is entitled to postulate that the conditions necessary to guarantee its possibility obtain. As far as anyone can tell, nature and its laws do not furnish such a guarantee; in this world, apparently, the virtuous often suffer while the vicious flourish. And even if the operation of natural laws were to produce happiness in proportion to virtue, this would be merely coincidental, and hence finite moral agents would not have been made happy just because they had by their virtue made themselves worthy of happiness. So practical reason is justified in postulating a supernatural agent with sufficient goodness, knowledge, and power to ensure that finite agents receive the happiness they deserve as a reward for their virtue, though theoretical reason can know nothing of such a being. Critics of this argument have denied that we must postulate a systematic connection between virtue and happiness in order to have good reasons to be moral. Indeed, making such an assumption might actually tempt one to cultivate virtue for the sake of securing happiness rather than for its own sake. It seems therefore that none of these arguments by itself conclusively proves the existence of God. However, some of them might contribute to a cumulative case for the existence of God. According to Richard Swinburne, cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments individually increase the probability of God’s existence even though none of them makes it more probable than not. But when other evidence such as that deriving from providential occurrences and religious experiences is added to the balance, Swinburne concludes that theism becomes more probable than its negation. Whether or not he is right, it does appear to be entirely correct to judge the rationality of theistic belief in the light of our total evidence. But there is a case to be made against theism too. Philosophers of religion are interested in arguments against the existence of God, and fairness does seem to require admitting that our total evidence contains much that bears negatively on the rationality of belief in God. The problem of evil is generally regarded as the strongest objection to theism. Two kinds of evil can be distinguished. Moral evil inheres in the wicked actions of moral agents and the bad consequences they produce. An example is torturing the innocent. When evil actions are considered theologically as offenses against God, they are regarded as sins. Natural evils are bad consequences that apparently derive entirely from the operations of impersonal natural forces, e.g. the human and animal suffering produced by natural catastrophes such as earthquakes and epidemics. Both kinds of evil raise the question of what reasons an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good being could have for permitting or allowing their existence. Theodicy is the enterprise of trying to answer this question and thereby to justify the ways of God to humans. It is, of course, possible to deny the presuppositions of the question. Some thinkers have held that evil is unreal; others have maintained that the deity is limited and so lacks the power or knowledge to prevent the evils that occur. If one accepts the presuppositions of the question, the most promising strategy for theodicy seems to be to claim that each evil God permits is necessary for some greater good or to avoid some alternative to it that is at least as bad if not worse. The strongest form of this doctrine is the claim made by Leibniz that this is the best of all possible worlds. It is unlikely that humans, with their cognitive limitations, could ever understand all the details of the greater goods for which evils are necessary, assuming that such goods exist; however, we can understand how some evils contribute to achieving goods. According to the soul-making theodicy of John Hick b.2, which is rooted in a tradition going back to Irenaeus, admirable human qualities such as compassion could not exist except as responses to suffering, and so evil plays a necessary part in the formation of moral character. But this line of thought does not seem to provide a complete theodicy because much animal suffering occurs unnoticed by humans and child abuse often destroys rather than strengthens the moral character of its victims. Recent philosophical discussion has often focused on the claim that the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good being is logically inconsistent with the existence of evil or of a certain quantity of evil. This is the logical problem of evil, and the most successful response to it has been the free will defense. Unlike a theodicy, this defense does not speculate about God’s reasons for permitting evil but merely argues that God’s existence is consistent with the existence of evil. Its key idea is that moral good cannot exist apart from libertarian free actions that are not causally determined. If God aims to produce moral good, God must create free creatures upon whose cooperation he must depend, and so divine omnipotence is limited by the freedom God confers on creatures. Since such creatures are also free to do evil, it is possible that God could not have created a world containing moral good but no moral evil. Plantinga extends the defense from moral to natural evil by suggesting that it is also possible that all natural evil is due to the free actions of non-human persons such as Satan and his cohorts. Plantinga and Swinburne have also addressed the probabilistic problem of evil, which is the claim that the existence of evil disconfirms or renders improbable the hypothesis that God exists. Both of them argue for the conclusion that this is not the case. Finally, it is worth mentioning three other topics on which contemporary philosophers of religion have worked to good effect. Important studies of the meaning and use of religious language were stimulated by the challenge of logical positivism’s claim that theological language is cognitively meaningless. Defenses of such Christian doctrines as the Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement against various philosophical objections have recently been offered by people committed to elaborating an explicitly Christian philosophy. And a growing appreciation of religious pluralism has both sharpened interest in questions about the cultural relativity of religious rationality and begun to encourage progress toward a comparative philosophy of religions. Such work helps to make philosophy of religion a lively and diverse field of inquiry. Grice: “It is extremely important that in a dictionary entry we keep the ‘philosophical’ – surely we are not lower ourselves to the level of a theologian – if I am a theologican, I am a philosophical theologian. --  theodicy from Grecian theos, ‘God’, and dike, ‘justice’, a defense of the justice or goodness of God in the face of doubts or objections arising from the phenomena of evil in the world ‘evil’ refers here to bad states of affairs of any sort. Many types of theodicy have been proposed and vigorously debated; only a few can be sketched here. 1 It has been argued that evils are logically necessary for greater goods e.g., hardships for the full exemplification of certain virtues, so that even an omnipotent being roughly, one whose power has no logically contingent limits would have a morally sufficient reason to cause or permit the evils in order to obtain the goods. Leibniz, in his Theodicy 1710, proposed a particularly comprehensive theodicy of this type. On his view, God had adequate reason to bring into existence the actual world, despite all its evils, because it is the best of all possible worlds, and all actual evils are essential ingredients in it, so that omitting any of them would spoil the design of the whole. Aside from issues about whether actual evils are in fact necessary for greater goods, this approach faces the question whether it assumes wrongly that the end justifies the means. 2 An important type of theodicy traces some or all evils to sinful free actions of humans or other beings such as angels created by God. Proponents of this approach assume that free action in creatures is of great value and is logically incompatible with divine causal control of the creatures’ actions. It follows that God’s not intervening to prevent sins is necessary, though the sins themselves are not, to the good of created freedom. This is proposed as a morally sufficient reason for God’s not preventing them. It is a major task for this type of theodicy to explain why God would permit those evils that are not themselves free choices of creatures but are at most consequences of such choices. 3 Another type of theodicy, both ancient and currently influential among theologians, though less congenial to orthodox traditions in the major theistic religions, proposes to defend God’s goodness by abandoning the doctrine that God is omnipotent. On this view, God is causally, rather than logically, unable to prevent many evils while pursuing sufficiently great goods. A principal sponsor of this approach at present is the movement known as process theology, inspired by Whitehead; it depends on a complex metaphysical theory about the nature of causal relationships. 4 Other theodicies focus more on outcomes than on origins. Some religious beliefs suggest that God will turn out to have been very good to created persons by virtue of gifts especially religious gifts, such as communion with God as supreme Good that may be bestowed in a life Tetractys theodicy 910   910 after death or in religious experience in the present life. This approach may be combined with one of the other types of theodicy, or adopted by people who think that God’s reasons for permitting evils are beyond our finding out.  Then there’s heologia naturalis Latin, ‘natural theology’, theology that uses the methods of investigation and standards of rationality of any other area of philosophy. Traditionally, the central problems of natural theology are proofs for the existence of God and the problem of evil. In contrast with natural theology, supernatural theology uses methods that are supposedly revealed by God and accepts as fact beliefs that are similarly outside the realm of rational acceptability. Relying on a prophet or a pope to settle factual questions would be acceptable to supernatural, but not to natural, theology. Nothing prevents a natural theologian from analyzing concepts that can be used sanguinely by supernatural theologians, e.g., revelation, miracles, infallibility, and the doctrine of the Trinity. Theologians often work in both areas, as did, e.g., Anselm and Aquinas. For his brilliant critiques of traditional theology, Hume deserves the title of “natural anti-theologian.”  Grice was totally against “the philosophy of X” – never the philosophy of god – but philosophical theology -- theological naturalism, the attempt to develop a naturalistic conception of God. As a philosophical position, naturalism holds 1 that the only reliable methods of knowing what there is are methods continuous with those of the developed sciences, and 2 that the application of those methods supports the view that the constituents of reality are either physical or are causally dependent on physical things and their modifications. Since supernaturalism affirms that God is purely spiritual and causally independent of physical things, naturalists hold that either belief in God must be abandoned as rationally unsupported or the concept of God must be reconstituted consistently with naturalism. Earlier attempts to do the latter include the work of Feuerbach and Comte. In twentieth-century  naturalism the most significant attempts to develop a naturalistic conception of God are due to Dewey and Henry Nelson Wieman 45. In A Common Faith Dewey proposed a view of God as the unity of ideal ends resulting from human imagination, ends arousing us to desire and action. Supernaturalism, he argued, was the product of a primitive need to convert the objects of desire, the greatest ideals, into an already existing reality. In contrast to Dewey, Wieman insisted on viewing God as a process in the natural world that leads to the best that humans can achieve if they but submit to its working in their lives. In his earlier work he viewed God as a cosmic process that not only works for human good but is what actually produced human life. Later he identified God with creative interchange, a process that occurs only within already existing human communities. While Wieman’s God is not a human creation, as are Dewey’s ideal ends, it is difficult to see how love and devotion are appropriate to a natural process that works as it does without thought or purpose. Thus, while Dewey’s God ideal ends lacks creative power but may well qualify as an object of love and devotion, Wieman’s God a process in nature is capable of creative power but, while worthy of our care and attention, does not seem to qualify as an object of love and devotion. Neither view, then, satisfies the two fundamental features associated with the traditional idea of God: possessing creative power and being an appropriate object of supreme love and devotion.  H. P. Grice, “Why I never pursued a doctorate in divinity!” --.

Scientism: One of the twelve labours of H. P. Grice --. Grice: “When Cicero coined ‘scientia’ out of scire he didn’t know what he was doing!” -- philosophy of science, the branch of philosophy that is centered on a critical examination of the sciences: their methods and their results. One branch of the philosophy of science, methodology, is closely related to the theory of knowledge. It explores the methods by which science arrives at its posited truths concerning the world and critically explores alleged rationales for these methods. Issues concerning the sense in which theories are accepted in science, the nature of the confirmation relation between evidence and hypothesis, the degree to which scientific claims can be falsified by observational data, and the like, are the concern of methodology. Other branches of the philosophy of science are concerned with the meaning and content of the posited scientific results and are closely related to metaphysics and the philosophy of language. Typical problems examined are the nature of scientific laws, the cognitive content of scientific theories referring to unobservables, and the structure of scientific explanations. Finally, philosophy of science explores specific foundational questions arising out of the specific results of the sciences. Typical questions explored might be metaphysical presuppositions of space-time theories, the role of probability in statistical physics, the interpretation of measurement in quantum theory, the structure of explanations in evolutionary biology, and the like. Concepts of the credibility of hypotheses. Some crucial concepts that arise when issues of the credibility of scientific hypotheses are in question are the following: Inductivism is the view that hypotheses can receive evidential support from their predictive success with respect to particular cases falling under them. If one takes the principle of inductive inference to be that the future will be like the past, one is subject to the skeptical objection that this rule is empty of content, and even self-contradictory, if any kind of “similarity” of cases is permitted. To restore content and consistency to the rule, and for other methodological purposes as well, it is frequently alleged that only natural kinds, a delimited set of “genuine” properties, should be allowed in the formulation of scientific hypotheses. The view that theories are first arrived at as creative hypotheses of the scientist’s imagination and only then confronted, for justificatory purposes, with the observational predictions deduced from them, is called the hypotheticodeductive model of science. This model is contrasted with the view that the very discovery of hypotheses is somehow “generated” out of accumulated observational data. The view that hypotheses are confirmed to the degree that they provide the “best explanatory account” of the data is often called abduction and sometimes called inference to the best explanation. The alleged relation that evidence bears to hypothesis, warranting its truth but not, generally, guaranteeing that truth, is called confirmation. Methodological accounts such as inductivism countenance such evidential warrant, frequently speaking of evidence as making a hypothesis probable but not establishing it with certainty. Probability in the confirmational context is supposed to be a relationship holding between propositions that is quantitative and is described by the formal theory of probability. It is supposed to measure the “degree of support” that one proposition gives to another, e.g. the degree of support evidential statements give to a hypothesis allegedly supported by them. Scientific methodologists often claim that science is characterized by convergence. This is the claim that scientific theories in their historical order are converging to an ultimate, final, and ideal theory. Sometimes this final theory is said to be true because it corresponds to the “real world,” as in realist accounts of convergence. In pragmatist versions this ultimate theory is the defining standard of truth. It is sometimes alleged that one ground for choosing the most plausible theory, over and above conformity of the theory with the observational data, is the simplicity of the theory. Many versions of this thesis exist, some emphasizing formal elements of the theory and others, e.g., emphasizing paucity of ontological commitment by the theory as the measure of simplicity. It is sometimes alleged that in choosing which theory to believe, the scientific community opts for theories compatible with the data that make minimal changes in scientific belief necessary from those demanded by previously held theory. The believer in methodological conservatism may also try to defend such epistemic conservatism as normatively rational. An experiment that can decisively show a scientific hypothesis to be false is called a crucial experiment for the hypothesis. It is a thesis of many philosophers that for hypotheses that function in theories and can only confront observational data when conjoined with other theoretical hypotheses, no absolutely decisive crucial experiment can exist. Concepts of the structure of hypotheses. Here are some of the essential concepts encountered when it is the structure of scientific hypotheses that is being explored: In its explanatory account of the world, science posits novel entities and properties. Frequently these are alleged to be not accessible to direct observation. A theory is a set of hypotheses positing such entities and properties. Some philosophers of science divide the logical consequences of a theory into those referring only to observable things and features and those referring to the unobservables as well. Various reductionist, eliminationist, and instrumentalist approaches to theory agree that the full cognitive content of a theory is exhausted by its observational consequences reported by its observation sentences, a claim denied by those who espouse realist accounts of theories. The view that the parts of a theory that do not directly relate observational consequences ought not to be taken as genuinely referential at all, but, rather, as a “mere linguistic instrument” allowing one to derive observational results from observationally specifiable posits, is called instrumentalism. From this point of view terms putatively referring to unobservables fail to have genuine reference and individual non-observational sentences containing such terms are not individually genuinely true or false. Verificationism is the general name for the doctrine that, in one way or another, the semantic content of an assertion is exhausted by the conditions that count as warranting the acceptance or rejection of the assertion. There are many versions of verificationist doctrines that try to do justice both to the empiricist claim that the content of an assertion is its totality of empirical consequences and also to a wide variety of anti-reductionist intuitions about meaning. The doctrine that theoretical sentences must be strictly translatable into sentences expressed solely in observational terms in order that the theoretical assertions have genuine cognitive content is sometimes called operationalism. The “operation” by which a magnitude is determined to have a specified value, characterized observationally, is taken to give the very meaning of attributing that magnitude to an object. The doctrine that the meanings of terms in theories are fixed by the role the terms play in the theory as a whole is often called semantic holism. According to the semantic holist, definitions of theoretical terms by appeal to observational terms cannot be given, but all of the theoretical terms have their meaning given “as a group” by the structure of the theory as a whole. A related doctrine in confirmation theory is that confirmation accrues to whole theories, and not to their individual assertions one at a time. This is confirmational holism. To see another conception of cognitive content, conjoin all the sentences of a theory together. Then replace each theoretical term in the sentence so obtained with a predicate variable and existentially quantify over all the predicate variables so introduced. This is the Ramsey sentence for a finitely axiomatized theory. This sentence has the same logical consequences framable in the observational vocabulary alone as did the original theory. It is often claimed that the Ramsey sentence for a theory exhausts the cognitive content of the theory. The Ramsey sentence is supposed to “define” the meaning of the theoretical terms of the original theory as well as have empirical consequences; yet by asserting the existence of the theoretical properties, it is sometimes alleged to remain a realist construal of the theory. The latter claim is made doubtful, however, by the existence of “merely representational” interpretations of the Ramsey sentence. Theories are often said to be so related that one theory is reducible to another. The study of the relation theories bear to one another in this context is said to be the study of intertheoretic reduction. Such reductive claims can have philosophical origins, as in the alleged reduction of material objects to sense-data or of spatiotemporal relations to causal relations, or they can be scientific discoveries, as in the reduction of the theory of light waves to the theory of electromagnetic radiation. Numerous “models” of the reductive relation exist, appropriate for distinct kinds and cases of reduction. The term scientific realism has many and varied uses. Among other things that have been asserted by those who describe themselves as scientific realists are the claims that “mature” scientific theories typically refer to real features of the world, that the history of past falsifications of accepted scientific theories does not provide good reason for persistent skepticism as to the truth claims of contemporary theories, and that the terms of theories that putatively refer to unobservables ought to be taken at their referential face value and not reinterpreted in some instrumentalistic manner. Internal realism denies irrealist claims founded on the past falsification of accepted theories. Internal realists are, however, skeptical of “metaphysical” claims of “correspondence of true theories to the real world” or of any notion of truth that can be construed in radically non-epistemic terms. While theories may converge to some ultimate “true” theory, the notion of truth here must be understood in some version of a Peircian idea of truth as “ultimate warranted assertability.” The claim that any theory that makes reference to posited unobservable features of the world in its explanatory apparatus will always encounter rival theories incompatible with the original theory but equally compatible with all possible observational data that might be taken as confirmatory of the original theory is the claim of the underdetermination thesis. A generalization taken to have “lawlike force” is called a law of nature. Some suggested criteria for generalizations having lawlike force are the ability of the generalization to back up the truth of claims expressed as counterfactual conditions; the ability of the generalization to be confirmed inductively on the basis of evidence that is only a proper subset of all the particular instances falling under the generality; and the generalization having an appropriate place in the simple, systematic hierarchy of generalizations important for fundamental scientific theories of the world. The application of a scientific law to a given actual situation is usually hedged with the proviso that for the law’s predictions to hold, “all other, unspecified, features of the situation are normal.” Such a qualifying clause is called a ceteris paribus clause. Such “everything else being normal” claims cannot usually be “filled out,” revealing important problems concerning the “open texture” of scientific claims. The claim that the full specification of the state of the world at one time is sufficient, along with the laws of nature, to fix the full state of the world at any other time, is the claim of determinism. This is not to be confused with claims of total predictability, since even if determinism were true the full state of the world at a time might be, in principle, unavailable for knowledge. Concepts of the foundations of physical theories. Here, finally, are a few concepts that are crucial in discussing the foundations of physical theories, in particular theories of space and time and quantum theory: The doctrine that space and time must be thought of as a family of spatial and temporal relations holding among the material constituents of the universe is called relationism. Relationists deny that “space itself” should be considered an additional constituent of the world over and above the world’s material contents. The doctrine that “space itself” must be posited as an additional constituent of the world over and above ordinary material things of the world is substantivalism. Mach’s principle is the demand that all physical phenomena, including the existence of inertial forces used by Newton to argue for a substantivalist position, be explainable in purely relationist terms. Mach speculated that Newton’s explanation for the forces in terms of acceleration with respect to “space itself” could be replaced with an explanation resorting to the acceleration of the test object with respect to the remaining matter of the universe the “fixed stars”. In quantum theory the claim that certain “conjugate” quantities, such as position and momentum, cannot be simultaneously “determined” to arbitrary degrees of accuracy is the uncertainty principle. The issue of whether such a lack of simultaneous exact “determination” is merely a limitation on our knowledge of the system or is, instead, a limitation on the system’s having simultaneous exact values of the conjugate quantities, is a fundamental one in the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Bell’s theorem is a mathematical result aimed at showing that the explanation of the statistical correlations that hold between causally noninteractive systems cannot always rely on the positing that when the systems did causally interact in the past independent values were fixed for some feature of each of the two systems that determined their future observational behavior. The existence of such “local hidden variables” would contradict the correlational predictions of quantum mechanics. The result shows that quantum mechanics has a profoundly “non-local” nature. Can quantum probabilities and correlations be obtained as averages over variables at some deeper level than those specifying the quantum state of a system? If such quantities exist they are called hidden variables. Many different types of hidden variables have been proposed: deterministic, stochastic, local, non-local, etc. A number of proofs exist to the effect that positing certain types of hidden variables would force probabilistic results at the quantum level that contradict the predictions of quantum theory. Complementarity was the term used by Niels Bohr to describe what he took to be a fundamental structure of the world revealed by quantum theory. Sometimes it is used to indicate the fact that magnitudes occur in conjugate pairs subject to the uncertainty relations. Sometimes it is used more broadly to describe such aspects as the ability to encompass some phenomena in a wave picture of the world and other phenomena in a particle picture, but implying that no one picture will do justice to all the experimental results. The orthodox formalization of quantum theory posits two distinct ways in which the quantum state can evolve. When the system is “unobserved,” the state evolves according to the deterministic Schrödinger equation. When “measured,” however, the system suffers a discontinuous “collapse of the wave packet” into a new quantum state determined by the outcome of the measurement process. Understanding how to reconcile the measurement process with the laws of dynamic evolution of the system is the measurement problem. Conservation and symmetry. A number of important physical principles stipulate that some physical quantity is conserved, i.e. that the quantity of it remains invariant over time. Early conservation principles were those of matter mass, of energy, and of momentum. These became assimilated together in the relativistic principle of the conservation of momentum-energy. Other conservation laws such as the conservation of baryon number arose in the theory of elementary particles. A symmetry in physical theory expressed the invariance of some structural feature of the world under some transformation. Examples are translation and rotation invariance in space and the invariance under transformation from one uniformly moving reference frame to another. Such symmetries express the fact that systems related by symmetry transformations behave alike in their physical evolution. Some symmetries are connected with space-time, such as those noted above, whereas others such as the symmetry of electromagnetism under socalled gauge transformations are not. A very important result of the mathematician Emma Noether shows that each conservation law is derivable from the existence of an associated underlying symmetry. Chaos theory and chaotic systems. In the history of the scientific study of deterministic systems, the paradigm of explanation has been the prediction of the future states of a system from a specification of its initial state. In order for such a prediction to be useful, however, nearby initial states must lead to future states that are close to one another. This is now known to hold only in exceptional cases. In general deterministic systems are chaotic systems, i.e., even initial states very close to one another will lead in short intervals of time to future states that diverge quickly from one another. Chaos theory has been developed to provide a wide range of concepts useful for describing the structure of the dynamics of such chaotic systems. The theory studies the features of a system that will determine if its evolution is chaotic or non-chaotic and provides the necessary descriptive categories for characterizing types of chaotic motion. Randomness. The intuitive distinction between a sequence that is random and one that is orderly plays a role in the foundations of probability theory and in the scientific study of dynamical systems. But what is a random sequence? Subjectivist definitions of randomness focus on the inability of an agent to determine, on the basis of his knowledge, the future occurrences in the sequence. Objectivist definitions of randomness seek to characterize it without reference to the knowledge of any agent. Some approaches to defining objective randomness are those that require probability to be the same in the original sequence and in subsequences “mechanically” selectable from it, and those that define a sequence as random if it passes every “effectively constructible” statistical test for randomness. Another important attempt to characterize objective randomness compares the length of a sequence to the length of a computer program used to generate the sequence. The basic idea is that a sequence is random if the computer programs needed to generate the sequence are as long as the sequence itself.  H. P. Grice, “My labour with Scientism.”

Scientism – Grice: “Winch is not only happy with natural science that he wants a social science – linguistics included!” -- philosophy of the social sciences, the study of the logic and methods of the social sciences. Central questions include: What are the criteria of a good social explanation? How if at all are the social sciences distinct from the natural sciences? Is there a distinctive method for social research? Through what empirical procedures are social science assertions to be evaluated? Are there irreducible social laws? Are there causal relations among social phenomena? Do social facts and regularities require some form of reduction to facts about individuals? What is the role of theory in social explanation? The philosophy of social science aims to provide an interpretation of the social sciences that answers these questions. The philosophy of social science, like that of natural science, has both a descriptive and a prescriptive side. On the one hand, the field is about the social sciences  the explanations, methods, empirical arguments, theories, hypotheses, etc., that actually occur in the social science literature. This means that the philosopher needs extensive knowledge of several areas of social science research in order to be able to formulate an analysis of the social sciences that corresponds appropriately to scientists’ practice. On the other hand, the field is epistemic: it is concerned with the idea that scientific theories and hypotheses are put forward as true or probable, and are justified on rational grounds empirical and theoretical. The philosopher aims to provide a critical evaluation of existing social science methods and practices insofar as these methods are found to be less truth-enhancing than they might be. These two aspects of the philosophical enterprise suggest that philosophy of social science should be construed as a rational reconstruction of existing social science practice  a reconstruction guided by existing practice but extending beyond that practice by identifying faulty assumptions, forms of reasoning, and explanatory frameworks. Philosophers have disagreed over the relation between the social and natural sciences. One position is naturalism, according to which the methods of the social sciences should correspond closely to those of the natural sciences. This position is closely related to physicalism, the doctrine that all higher-level phenomena and regularities  including social phenomena  are ultimately reducible to physical entities and the laws that govern them. On the other side is the view that the social sciences are inherently distinct from the natural sciences. This perspective holds that social phenomena are metaphysically distinguishable from natural phenomena because they are intentional  they depend on the meaningful actions of individuals. On this view, natural phenomena admit of causal explanation, whereas social phenomena require intentional explanation. The anti-naturalist position also maintains that there is a corresponding difference between the methods appropriate to natural and social science. Advocates of the Verstehen method hold that there is a method of intuitive interpretation of human action that is radically distinct from methods of inquiry in the natural sciences. One important school within the philosophy of social science takes its origin in this fact of the meaningfulness of human action. Interpretive sociology maintains that the goal of social inquiry is to provide interpretations of human conduct within the context of culturally specific meaningful arrangements. This approach draws an analogy between literary texts and social phenomena: both are complex systems of meaningful elements, and the goal of the interpreter is to provide an interpretation of the elements that makes sense of them. In this respect social science involves a hermeneutic inquiry: it requires that the interpreter should tease out the meanings underlying a particular complex of social behavior, much as a literary critic pieces together an interpretation of the meaning of a complex philosophy of the social sciences philosophy of the social sciences 704    704 literary text. An example of this approach is Weber’s treatment of the relation between capitalism and the Protestant ethic. Weber attempts to identify the elements of western European culture that shaped human action in this environment in such a way as to produce capitalism. On this account, both Calvinism and capitalism are historically specific complexes of values and meanings, and we can better understand the emergence of capitalism by seeing how it corresponds to the meaningful structures of Calvinism. Interpretive sociologists often take the meaningfulness of social phenomena to imply that social phenomena do not admit of causal explanation. However, it is possible to accept the idea that social phenomena derive from the purposive actions of individuals without relinquishing the goal of providing causal explanations of social phenomena. For it is necessary to distinguish between the general idea of a causal relation between two events or conditions and the more specific idea of “causal determination through strict laws of nature.” It is true that social phenomena rarely derive from strict laws of nature; wars do not result from antecedent political tensions in the way that earthquakes result from antecedent conditions in plate tectonics. However, since non-deterministic causal relations can derive from the choices of individual persons, it is evident that social phenomena admit of causal explanation, and in fact much social explanation depends on asserting causal relations between social events and processes  e.g., the claim that the administrative competence of the state is a crucial causal factor in determining the success or failure of a revolutionary movement. A central goal of causal explanation is to discover the conditions existing prior to the event that, given the law-governed regularities among phenomena of this sort, were sufficient to produce this event. To say that C is a cause of E is to assert that the occurrence of C, in the context of a field of social processes and mechanisms F, brought about E or increased the likelihood of the occurrence of E. Central to causal arguments in the social sciences is the idea of a causal mechanism  a series of events or actions leading from cause to effect. Suppose it is held that the extension of a trolley line from the central city to the periphery caused the deterioration of public schools in the central city. In order to make out such a claim it is necessary to provide some account of the social and political mechanisms that join the antecedent condition to the consequent. An important variety of causal explanation in social science is materialist explanation. This type of explanation attempts to explain a social feature in terms of features of the material environment in the context of which the social phenomenon occurs. Features of the environment that often appear in materialist explanations include topography and climate; thus it is sometimes maintained that banditry thrives in remote regions because the rugged terrain makes it more difficult for the state to repress bandits. But materialist explanations may also refer to the material needs of society  e.g., the need to produce food and other consumption goods to support the population. Thus Marx holds that it is the development of the “productive forces” technology that drives the development of property relations and political systems. In each case the materialist explanation must refer to the fact of human agency  the fact that human beings are capable of making deliberative choices on the basis of their wants and beliefs  in order to carry out the explanation; in the banditry example, the explanation depends on the fact that bandits are prudent enough to realize that their prospects for survival are better in the periphery than in the core. So materialist explanations too accept the point that social phenomena depend on the purposive actions of individuals. A central issue in the philosophy of social science involves the relation between social regularities and facts about individuals. Methodological individualism is the position that asserts the primacy of facts about individuals over facts about social entities. This doctrine takes three forms: a claim about social entities, a claim about social concepts, and a claim about social regularities. The first version maintains that social entities are reducible to ensembles of individuals  as an insurance company might be reduced to the ensemble of employees, supervisors, managers, and owners whose actions constitute the company. Likewise, it is sometimes held that social concepts must be reducible to concepts involving only individuals  e.g., the concept of a social class might be defined in terms of concepts pertaining only to individuals and their behavior. Finally, it is sometimes held that social regularities must be derivable from regularities of individual behavior. There are several positions opposed to methodological individualism. At the extreme there is methodological holism  the doctrine that social entities, facts, and laws are autonomous and irreducible; for example, that social structures such as the state have dynamic properties independent of the beliefs and purposes of the particular persons who occupy positions within the structure. A third position intermediate between these two holds that every social explanation requires microfoundations  an account of the circumstances at the individual level that led individuals to behave in such ways as to bring about the observed social regularities. If we observe that an industrial strike is successful over an extended period of time, it is not sufficient to explain this circumstance by referring to the common interest that members of the union have in winning their demands. Rather, we need information about the circumstances of the individual union member that induce him or her to contribute to this public good. The microfoundations dictum does not require, however, that social explanations be couched in non-social concepts; instead, the circumstances of individual agents may be characterized in social terms. Central to most theories of explanation is the idea that explanation depends on general laws governing the phenomena in question. Thus the discovery of the laws of electrodynamics permitted the explanation of a variety of electromagnetic phenomena. But social phenomena derive from the actions of purposive men and women; so what kinds of regularities are available on the basis of which to provide social explanations? A fruitful research framework in the social sciences is the idea that men and women are rational, so it is possible to explain their behavior as the outcome of a deliberation about means of achieving their individual ends. This fact in turn gives rise to a set of regularities about individual behavior that may be used as a ground for social explanation. We may explain some complex social phenomenon as the aggregate result of the actions of a large number of individual agents with a hypothesized set of goals within a structured environment of choice. Social scientists have often been inclined to offer functional explanations of social phenomena. A functional explanation of a social feature is one that explains the presence and persistence of the feature in terms of the beneficial consequences the feature has for the ongoing working of the social system as a whole. It might be held, e.g., that sports clubs in working-class Britain exist because they give working-class people a way of expending energy that would otherwise go into struggles against an exploitative system, thus undermining social stability. Sports clubs are explained, then, in terms of their contribution to social stability. This type of explanation is based on an analogy between biology and sociology. Biologists explain species traits in terms of their contribution to reproductive fitness, and sociologists sometimes explain social traits in terms of their contribution to “social” fitness. However, the analogy is misleading, because there is a general mechanism establishing functionality in the biological realm that is not present in the social realm. This is the mechanism of natural selection, through which a species arrives at a set of traits that are locally optimal. There is no analogous process at work in the social realm, however; so it is groundless to suppose that social traits exist because of their beneficial consequences for the good of society as a whole or important subsystems within society. So functional explanations of social phenomena must be buttressed by specific accounts of the causal processes that underlie the postulated functional relationships. Grice: “It’s a good thing I studied at Oxford: at other places you HAVE to learn a non-Indo-Euroopean lingo!” --.

phrastic: It is convenient to take Grice mocking Hare in Prolegomena. “To say ‘x is good’ is to recommend x.’ An implicaturum: annullable:  “x is good but I don’t recommend it.” Hare was well aware of the implicaturum. Loving Grice’s account of ‘or,’ Hare gives the example: “Post the letter: therefore; post the letter or burn it.” Grice mainly quotes Hare’s duet, the phrastic and the neustic, and spends some time exploring what the phrastic actually is. He seems to prefer ‘radix.’ But then Hare also has then the ‘neustic,’ that Grice is not so concerned with since he has his own terminology for it. And for Urmson’s festschrift, Hare comes up with the tropic and the clistic. So each has a Griceian correlate.

physicalism: One of the twelve labours of H. P. Grice. (“As different from Naturalism, you know.”) - Churchland, p. s., philosopher and advocate of neurophilosophy. She received her B.Phil. from Oxford in 9 and held positions at the Unichün-tzu Churchland, Patricia Smith 140   140 versity of Manitoba and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, settling at the ofCalifornia,SanDiego, with appointments in philosophy and the Institute for Neural Computation. Skeptical of philosophy’s a priori specification of mental categories and dissatisfied with computational psychology’s purely top-down approach to their function, Churchland began studying the brain at the  of Manitoba medical school. The result was a unique merger of science and philosophy, a “neurophilosophy” that challenged the prevailing methodology of mind. Thus, in a series of articles that includes “Fodor on Language Learning” 8 and “A Perspective on Mind-Brain Research” 0, she outlines a new neurobiologically based paradigm. It subsumes simple non-linguistic structures and organisms, since the brain is an evolved organ; but it preserves functionalism, since a cognitive system’s mental states are explained via high-level neurofunctional theories. It is a strategy of cooperation between psychology and neuroscience, a “co-evolutionary” process eloquently described in Neurophilosophy 6 with the prediction that genuine cognitive phenomena will be reduced, some as conceptualized within the commonsense framework, others as transformed through the sciences. The same intellectual confluence is displayed through Churchland’s various collaborations: with psychologist and computational neurobiologist Terrence Sejnowski in The Computational Brain 2; with neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinas in The Mind-Brain Continuum 6; and with philosopher and husband Paul Churchland in On the Contrary 8 she and Paul Churchland are jointly appraised in R. McCauley, The Churchlands and Their Critics, 6. From the viewpoint of neurophilosophy, interdisciplinary cooperation is essential for advancing knowledge, for the truth lies in the intertheoretic details. Churchland: Paul M. b.2, -born  philosopher, leading proponent of eliminative materialism. He received his Ph.D. from the  of Pittsburgh in 9 and held positions at the Universities of Toronto, Manitoba, and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. He is professor of philosophy and member of the Institute for Neural Computation at the  of California, San Diego. Churchland’s literary corpus constitutes a lucidly written, scientifically informed narrative where his neurocomputational philosophy unfolds. Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind 9 maintains that, though science is best construed realistically, perception is conceptually driven, with no observational given, while language is holistic, with meaning fixed by networks of associated usage. Moreover, regarding the structure of science, higher-level theories should be reduced by, incorporated into, or eliminated in favor of more basic theories from natural science, and, in the specific case, commonsense psychology is a largely false empirical theory, to be replaced by a non-sentential, neuroscientific framework. This skepticism regarding “sentential” approaches is a common thread, present in earlier papers, and taken up again in “Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes” 1. When fully developed, the non-sentential, neuroscientific framework takes the form of connectionist network or parallel distributed processing models. Thus, with essays in A Neurocomputational Perspective 9, Churchland adds that genuine psychological processes are sequences of activation patterns over neuronal networks. Scientific theories, likewise, are learned vectors in the space of possible activation patterns, with scientific explanation being prototypical activation of a preferred vector. Classical epistemology, too, should be neurocomputationally naturalized. Indeed, Churchland suggests a semantic view whereby synonymy, or the sharing of concepts, is a similarity between patterns in neuronal state-space. Even moral knowledge is analyzed as stored prototypes of social reality that are elicited when an individual navigates through other neurocomputational systems. The entire picture is expressed in The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul 6 and, with his wife Patricia Churchland, by the essays in On the Contrary 8. What has emerged is a neurocomputational embodiment of the naturalist program, a panphilosophy that promises to capture science, epistemology, language, and morals in one broad sweep of its connectionist net. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Physicalism and naturalism.”

physicalism: one of the twelve labours of Grice. in the widest sense of the term, materialism applied to the question of the nature of mind. So construed, physicalism is the thesis  call it ontological physicalism  that whatever exists or occurs is ultimately constituted out of physical entities. But sometimes ‘physicalism’ is used to refer to the thesis that whatever exists or occurs can be completely described in the vocabulary of physics. Such a view goes with either reductionism or eliminativism about the mental. Here reductionism is the view that psychological explanations, including explanations in terms of “folk-psychological” concepts such as those of belief and desire, are reducible to explanations formulable in a physical vocabulary, which in turn would imply that entities referred to in psychological explanations can be fully described in physical terms; and elminativism is the view that nothing corresponds to the terms in psychological explanations, and that the only correct explanations are in physical terms. The term ‘physicalism’ appears to have originated in the Vienna Circle, and the reductionist version initially favored there was a version of behaviorism: psychological statements were held to be translatable into behavioral statements, mainly hypothetical conditionals, expressible in a physical vocabulary. The psychophysical identity theory held by Herbert Feigl, Smart, and others, sometimes called type physicalism, is reductionist in a somewhat different sense. This holds that mental states and events are identical with neurophysiological states and events. While it denies that there can be analytic, meaning-preserving translations of mental statements into physicalistic ones, it holds that by means of synthetic “bridge laws,” identifying mental types with physical ones, mental statements can in principle be tr. into physicalistic ones with which they are at least nomologically equivalent if the terms in the bridge laws are rigid designators, the equivalence will be necessary. The possibility of such a translation is typically denied by functionalist accounts of mind, on the grounds that the same mental state may have indefinitely many different physical realizations, and sometimes on the grounds that it is logically possible, even if it never happens, that mental states should be realized non-physically. In his classic paper “The ‘mental’ and the ‘physical’ “ 8, Feigl distinguishes two senses of ‘physical’: ‘physical1’ and ‘physical2’. ‘Physical1’ is practically synonymous with ‘scientific’, applying to whatever is “an essential part of the coherent and adequate descriptive and explanatory account of the spatiotemporal world.” ‘Physical2’ refers to “the type of concepts and laws which suffice in principle for the explanation and prediction of inorganic processes.” It would seem that if Cartesian dualism were true, supposing that possible, then once an integrated science of the interaction of immaterial souls and material bodies had been developed, concepts for describing the former would count as physical1. Construed as an ontological doctrine, physicalism says that whatever exists or occurs is entirely constituted out of those entities that constitute inorganic things and processes. Construed as a reductionist or elminativist thesis about description and explanation, it is the claim that a vocabulary adequate for describing and explaining inorganic things and processes is adequate for describing and explaining whatever exists. While the second of these theses seems to imply the first, the first does not imply the second. It can be questioned whether the notion of a “full” description of what exists makes sense. And many ontological physicalists materialists hold that a reduction to explanations couched in the terminology of physics is impossible, not only in the case of psychological explanations but also in the case of explanations couched in the terminology of such special sciences as biology. Their objection to such reduction is not merely that a purely physical description of e.g. biological or psychological phenomena would be unwieldy; it is that such descriptions necessarily miss important laws and generalizations, ones that can only be formulated in terms of biological, psychological, etc., concepts. If ontological physicalists materialists are not committed to the reducibility of psychology to physics, neither are they committed to any sort of identity theory claiming that entities picked out by mental or psychological descriptions are identical to entities fully characterizable by physical descriptions. As already noted, materialists who are functionalists deny that there are typetype identities between mental entities and physical ones. And some deny that materialists are even committed to token-token identities, claiming that any psychological event could have had a different physical composition and so is not identical to any event individuated in terms of a purely physical taxonomy.  Refs.: H. P. Grice, “From Physicalism to Naturalism – and Back: fighting two at once!”

physis, Grecian term for nature, primarily used to refer to the nature or essence of a living thing Aristotle, Metaphysics V.4. Physis is defined by Aristotle in Physics II.1 as a source of movement and rest that belongs to something in virtue of itself, and identified by him primarily with the form, rather than the matter, of the thing. The term is also used to refer to the natural world as a whole. Physis is often contrasted with techne, art; in ethics it is also contrasted with nomos, convention, e.g. by Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias 482e ff., who distinguishes natural from conventional justice. 

physiologicum: Oddly, among the twelve isms that attack Grice on his ascent to the city of eternal truth, there is Naturalism and Physicalism – but Roman natura is Grecian physis. In “Some remarks about the senses,” Grice distinguishes a physicalist identification of the senses (in terms of the different stimuli and the mechanisms that connects the organs to the brain) versus other criteria, notably one involving introspection and the nature of ‘experience’ – “providing,” he adds, that ‘seeing’ is an experience! Grice would use ‘natural,’ relying on the idea that it’s Grecian ‘physis.’ Liddell and Scott have “φύσις,” from “φύω,” and which they render as “origin.” the natural form or constitution of a person or thing as the result of growth, and hence nature, constitution, and nature as an originating power, “φ. λέγεται . . ὅθεν ἡ κίνησις ἡ πρώτη ἐν ἑκάστῳ τῶν φύσει ὄντων” Arist.Metaph.1014b16; concrete, the creation, 'Nature.’ Grice is casual in his use of ‘natural’ versus ‘non-natural’ in 1948 for the Oxford Philosophical Society. In later works, there’s a reference to naturalism, which is more serious. Refs.: The keyword should be ‘naturalism,’ but also Grice’s diatribes against ‘physicalism,’ and of course the ‘natural’ and ‘non-natural,’ BANC.

lapis philosophorum: alchemy: a quasi-scientific practice and mystical art, mainly ancient and medieval, that had two broad aims: to change baser metals into gold and to develop the elixir of life, the means to immortality. Classical Western alchemy probably originated in Egypt in the first three centuries A.D. with earlier Chin. and later Islamic and  variants and was practiced in earnest in Europe by such figures as Paracelsus and Newton until the eighteenth century. Western alchemy addressed concerns of practical metallurgy, but its philosophical significance derived from an early Grecian theory of the relations among the basic elements and from a religious-allegorical understanding of the alchemical transmutation of ores into gold, an understanding that treats this process as a spiritual ascent from human toward divine perfection. The purification of crude ores worldly matter into gold material perfection was thought to require a transmuting agent, the philosopher’s stone, a mystical substance that, when mixed with alcohol and swallowed, was believed to produce immortality spiritual perfection. The alchemical search for the philosopher’s stone, though abortive, resulted in the development of ultimately useful experimental tools e.g., the steam pump and methods e.g., distillation.

piaget: philosopher who profoundly influenced questions, theories, and methods in the study of cognitive development. The philosophical interpretation and implications of his work, however, remain controversial. Piaget regarded himself as engaged in genetic epistemology, the study of what knowledge is through an empirical investigation of how our epistemic relations to objects are improved. Piaget hypothesized that our epistemic relations are constructed through the progressive organization of increasingly complex behavioral interactions with physical objects. The cognitive system of the adult is neither learned, in the Skinnerian sense, nor genetically preprogrammed. Rather, it results from the organization of specific interactions whose character is shaped both by the features of the objects interacted with a process called accommodation and by the current cognitive system of the child a process called assimilation. The tendency toward equilibrium results in a change in the nature of the interaction as well as in the cognitive system. Of particular importance for the field of cognitive development were Piaget’s detailed descriptions and categorizations of changes in the organization of the cognitive system from birth through adolescence. That work focused on changes in the child’s understanding of such things as space, time, cause, number, length, weight, and morality. Among his major works are The Child’s Conception of Number 1, Biology and Knowledge 7, Genetic Epistemology 0, and Psychology and Epistemology 0.

pico della mirandola -- philosopher who wrote a series of 900 theses which he hoped to dispute publicly in Rome. Thirteen of these theses are criticized by a papal commission. When Pico defends himself in his “Apologia,” the pope condemns all 900 theses. Pico flees to France, but is imprisoned. On his escape, he returns to Florence and devotes himself to private study at the swimming-pool at his villa. He hoped to write a Concord of Plato and Aristotle, but the only part he was able to complete was “On Being and the One,” – “Blame it on the Toscana!” -- in which he uses Aquinas and Christianity to reconcile Plato’s and Aristotle’s views about God’s being and unity. Mirandola is often described as a syncretist, but in fact he made it clear that the truth of Christianity has priority over the prisca theologia or ancient wisdom found in the hermetic corpus and the cabala. Though he was interested in magic and astrology, Mirandola adopts a guarded attitude toward them in his “Heptaplus,” which contains a mystical interpretation of Genesis; and in his Disputations Against Astrology, he rejects them both. The treatise is largely technical, and the question of human freedom is set aside as not directly relevant. This fact casts some doubt on the popular thesis that Pico’s philosophy is a celebration of man’s freedom and dignity. Great weight has been placed on Pico’s “On the Dignity of Man.” This is a short oration intended as an introduction to the disputation of his 900 theses – all condemned by the evil pope --, and the title was suggested by his wife (“She actually suggested, “On the dignity of woman,” but I found that otiose.””). Mirandola has been interpreted as saying that man (or woman) is set apart from the rest of creation, and is completely free to form his (or her) own nature. In fact, as The Heptaplus shows, Pico sees man as a microcosm containing elements of the angelic, celestial, and elemental worlds. Man (if not woman) is thus firmly within the hierarchy of nature, and is a bond and link between the worlds. In the oration, the emphasis on freedom is a moral one: man is free to choose between good and evil. Grice: “This irritated Nietzsche so much that he wrote ‘beyond good and evil.’ Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Goodwill and illwill – must we have both?”

pilgrimage: Grice’s pilgrimage. In his pilgrimage towards what he calls the city of Eternal Truth he finds twelve perils – which he lists. The first is Extensionalism (as opposed to Intensionalism – vide intentum -- consequentes rem intellectam: intendere est essentialiter ipsum esse intentio ... quam a concepto sibi adequato: Odint 226; esse intentum est esse non reale: The second is Nominalism (opposite Realism and Conceptualism – Universalism, Abstractionism). It is funny that Grice was criticised for representing each of the perils!The third is Positivism. Opposite to Negativism. Just kidding.  Opposite to anything Sir Freddie Ayer was opposite to!The fourth is Naturalism. Opposite Non-Naturalism. Just joking! But that’s the hateful word brought by G. E. Moore, whom Grice liked (“Some like Witters, but Moore’s MY man.”) The fifth is Mechanism. Opposite Libertarianism, or Finalism, But I guess one likes Libertarianism.The sixth is Phenomenalism. You cannot oppose it to Physicalism, beause that comes next. So this is G. A. Paul (“Is there a problem about sense data?). And the opposite is anything this Scots philosopher was against!The seventh is Reductionism. Opposite Reductivism. Grice was proud to teach J. M. Rountree the distinction between a benevolent reductionist and a malignant eliminationist reductionist. The eighth is physicalism.Opposite metaphysicalism.  The ninth is materialism. Hyleism. Opposite Formalism. Or Immaterialism. The tenth is Empiricism. Opposite Rationalism. The eleventh is Scepticism.Opposite Dogmatism.and the twelfth is functionalism. Opposite Grice! So now let’s order the twelve perils alphabetically. Empiricism. Extensionalism. Functionalism. MaterialismMechanism. Naturalism. Nominalism. Phenomenalism. Positivism. Physicalism. Reductionism. Scepticism. Now let us see how they apply to the theory of the conversational implicaturum and conversation as rational cooperation. Empiricism – Grice is an avowed rationalist.Extensionalism – His main concern is that the predicate in the proposition which is communicated is void, we yield the counterintuitive result that an emissor who communicates that the S is V, where V is vacuous communicates the same thing he would be communicating for any other vacuous predicate V’Functionalism – There is a purely experiential qualia in some emissor communicating that p that is not covered by the common-or-garden variety of functionalism. E.g. “I love myself.” Materialism – rationalism means dealing with a realm of noumena which goes beyond materialismMechanism – rationalism entails end-setting unweighed finality and freedom. Naturalism – communication involves optimality which is beyond naturalism Nominalism – a predicate is an abstractum. Phenomenalism – there is realism which gives priority to the material thing, not the sense datum. A sense datum of an apple does not nourish us. Positivism – an emissor may communicate a value, which is not positivistically reduced to something verifiable. Physicalism – there must be multiple realization, and many things physicalists say sound ‘harsh’ to Grice’s ears (“Smith’s brain being in state C doesn’t have adequate evidence”). Reductionism – We are not eliminating anything. Scepticism – there are dogmas which are derived from paradigm cases, even sophisticated ones.How to introduce the twelve entriesEmpiricism – from Greek empereia – cf. etymology for English ‘experience.’Extensionalism -- extensumFunctionalism – functum. Materialism  -- Mechanism Naturalism Nominalism Phenomenalism Positivism Physicalism Reductionism Scepticism.  this section events are reviewed according to principal scenes of action. Place names appear in the order in which major incidents occur. City of Destruction. The city stands as a symbol of the entire world as it is, with all of its sins, corruptions, and sorrows. No one living there can have any hope of salvation. Convinced that the city is about to be blasted by the wrath of God, Christian flees and sets out alone on a pilgrimage which he hopes will lead him to Mount Zion, to the Celestial City, where he can enjoy eternal life in the happy company of God and the Heavenly Host. Slough of Despond. A swamp, a bog, a quagmire, the first obstacle in Christian's course. Pilgrims are apt to get mired down here by their doubts and fears. After much difficulty and with some providential help, Christian finally manages to flounder across the treacherous bog and is on his way again. Village of Morality. Near the village Christian meets Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who, though not religiously inclined, is a friendly and well-disposed person. He tells Christian that it would be foolish of him to continue his pilgrimage, the end of which could only be hunger, pain, and death. Christian should be a sensible fellow and settle down in the Village of Morality. It would be a good place to raise a family, for living was cheap there and they would have honest, well-behaved people as neighbors — people who lived by the Ten Commandments. More than a little tempted by this, Christian decides that he should at least have a look at Morality. But along the way he is stopped by his friend Evangelist, who berates him sharply for having listened to anything Mr. Worldly Wiseman might have to say. If Christian is seriously interested in saving his soul, he would be well advised to get back as quickly as possible on the path to the Wicket Gate which Evangelist had pointed out to him before. Wicket Gate. Arriving almost out of breath, Christian reads the sign on the gate: "Knock and it shall be opened unto you." He knocks a number of times before arousing the gatekeeper, a "grave person" named Good-will, who comes out to ask what Christian wants. After the latter has explained his mission, he is let through the gate, which opens on the Holy Way, a straight and narrow path leading toward the Celestial City. Christian asks if he can now be relieved of the heavy burden — a sack filled with his sins and woes — that he has been carrying on his back for so long. Good-will replies that he cannot help him, but that if all goes well, Christian will be freed of his burden in due course. Interpreter's House. On Good-will's advice, Christian makes his first stop at the large house of Interpreter, a character symbolizing the Holy Spirit. Interpreter shows his guest a number of "excellent things." These include a portrait of the ideal pastor with the Bible in his hand and a crown of gold on his head; a dusty parlor which is like the human heart before it is cleansed with the Gospel; a sinner in an iron cage, an apostate doomed to suffer the torments of Hell through all eternity; a wall with a fire burning against it. A figure (the Devil himself) is busily throwing water on the fire to put it out. But he would never succeed, Interpreter explains, because the fire represents the divine spirit in the human heart and a figure on the far side of the wall keeps the fire burning brightly by secretly pouring oil on it — "the oil of Christ's Grace." The Cross. Beyond Interpreter's House, Christian comes to the Cross, which stands on higher ground beside the Holy Way. Below it, at the foot of the gentle slope, is an open sepulcher. When Christian stops by the Cross, the burden on his back suddenly slips from his shoulders, rolls down the slope, and falls into the open sepulcher, to be seen no more. As Christian stands weeping with joy, three Shining Ones (angels) appear. They tell him all his sins are now forgiven, give him bright new raiment to replace his old ragged clothes, and hand him a parchment, "a Roll with a seal upon it." For his edification and instruction, Christian is to read the Roll as he goes along, and when he reaches the Pearly Gates, he is to present it as his credentials a sort of passport to Heaven, as it were. Difficulty Hill. The Holy Way beyond the Cross is fenced in with a high wall on either side. The walls have been erected to force all aspiring Pilgrims to enter the Holy Way in the proper manner, through the Wicket Gate. As Christian is passing along, two men — Formalist and Hypocrisy — climb over the wall and drop down beside him. Christian finds fault with this and gives the wall-jumpers a lecture on the dangers of trying shortcuts. They have been successfully taking shortcuts all their lives, the intruders reply, and all will go well this time. Not too pleased with his company, Christian proceeds with Hypocrisy and Formalist to the foot of Difficulty Hill, where three paths join and they must make a choice. One path goes straight ahead up the steep slope of the hill; another goes around the base of the hill to the right; the third, around the hill to the left. Christian argues that the right path is the one leading straight ahead up Difficulty Hill. Not liking the prospect of much exertion, Formalist and Hypocrisy decide to take the easier way on the level paths going around the hill. Both get lost and perish. Halfway up Difficulty Hill, so steep in places that he has to inch forward on hands and knees, Christian comes to a pleasant arbor provided for the comfort of weary Pilgrims. Sitting down to rest, Christian reaches into his blouse and takes out his precious Roll. While reading it, he drops off to sleep, being awakened when he hears a voice saying sternly: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise." Jumping up, Christian makes with all speed to the top of the hill, where he meets two Pilgrims coming toward him — Timorous and Mistrust. They have been up ahead, they say, and there are lions there. They are giving up their pilgrimage and returning home, and unsuccessfully try to persuade Christian to come with them. Their report about the lions disturbs Christian, who reaches into his blouse to get his Roll so that he may read it and be comforted. To his consternation, the Roll is not there. Carefully searching along the way, Christian retraces his steps to the arbor, where, as he recalls, he had been reading the Roll when he allowed himself to doze off in "sinful sleep." Not finding his treasure immediately, he sits down and weeps, considering himself utterly undone by his carelessness in losing "his pass into the Celestial City." When in deepest despair, he chances to see something lying half-covered in the grass. It is his precious Roll, which he tucks away securely in his blouse. Having offered a prayer of thanks "to God for directing his eye to the place where it lay," Christian wearily climbs back to the top of Difficulty Hill. From there he sees a stately building and as it is getting on toward dark, hastens there. Palace Beautiful. A narrow path leads off the Holy Way to the lodge in front of Palace Beautiful. Starting up the path, Christian sees two lions, stops, and turns around as if to retreat. The porter at the lodge, Watchful, who has been observing him, calls out that there is nothing to be afraid of if one has faith. The lions are chained, one on either side of the path, and anyone with faith can pass safely between them if he keeps carefully to the middle of the path, which Christian does. Arriving at the lodge, he asks if he can get lodging for the night. The porter, Watchful, replies that he will find out from those in charge of Palace Beautiful. Soon, four virgins come out to the lodge, all of them "grave and beautiful damsels": Discretion, Prudence, Piety, and Charity. Satisfied with Christian's answers to their questions, they invite him in, introduce him to the rest of the family, serve him supper, and assign him to a beautiful bedroom — Peace — for the night. Next morning, the virgins show him the "rarities" of the place: First, the library, filled with ancient documents dating back to the beginning of time; next, the armory, packed with swords, shields, helmets, breastplates, and other things sufficient to equip all servants of the Lord, even if they were as numerous as the stars in the sky. Leading their guest to the roof of the palace, the virgins point to mountains in the distance — the Delectable Mountains, which lie on the way to the Celestial City. Before allowing Christian to depart, the virgins give him arms and armor to protect himself during the next stretch of his journey, which they warn will be dangerous. Valley of Humiliation. Here Christian is attacked and almost overcome by a "foul fiend" named Apollyon — a hideous monster with scales like a fish, wings like a dragon, mouth like a lion, and feet like a bear; flames and smoke belch out of a hole in his belly. Christian, after a painful struggle, wounds the fiend with his sword and drives him off. Valley of the Shadow of Death. This is a wilderness, a land of deserts and pits, inhabited only by yowling hobgoblins and other dreadful creatures. The path here is very narrow, edged on one side by a deep, water-filled ditch in which many have drowned; on the other side, by a treacherous bog. Walking carefully, Christian goes on and soon finds himself close to the open mouth of Hell, the Burning Pit, out of which comes a cloud of noxious fumes, long fingers of fire, showers of sparks, and hideous noises. With flames flickering all around and smoke almost choking him, Christian manages to get through by use of "All-prayer." Nearing the end of the valley, he hears a shout raised by someone up ahead: "Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear none ill, for Thou art with me." As only a Pilgrim could have raised that cry, Christian hastens forward to see who it might be. To his surprise and delight he finds that it is an old friend, Faithful, one of his neighbors in the City of Destruction. Vanity Fair. Happily journeying together, exchanging stories about their adventures and misadventures, the two Pilgrims come to the town of Vanity Fair, through which they must pass. Interested only in commerce and money-making, the town holds a year-round fair at which all kinds of things are bought and sold — "houses, lands, trades, titles, . . . lusts, pleasures, . . . bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, and what not." Christian and Faithful infuriate the merchandisers by turning up their noses at the wares offered them, saying that they would buy nothing but the Truth. Their presence and their attitude cause a hubbub in the town, which leads the authorities to jail them for disturbing the peace. The prisoners conduct themselves so well that they win the sympathy of many townspeople, producing more strife and commotion in the streets, and the prisoners are held responsible for this, too, though they have done nothing. It is decided to indict them on the charge of disrupting trade, creating dissension, and treating with contempt the customs and laws laid down for the town by its prince, old Beelzebub himself. Brought to trial first, Faithful is convicted and sentenced to be executed in the manner prescribed by the presiding judge, Lord Hate-good. The hapless Faithful is scourged, brutally beaten, lanced with knives, stoned, and then burned to ashes at the stake. Thus, he becomes another of the Christian martyrs assured of enjoying eternal bliss up on high. Doubting Castle and Giant Despair. In a manner only vaguely explained, Christian gets free and goes on his way — but not alone, for he has been joined by Hopeful, a native of Vanity Fair who is fleeing in search of better things. After a few minor adventures, the two reach a sparkling stream, the River of the Water of Life, which meanders through beautiful meadows bright with flowers. For a time the Holy Way follows the river bank but then veers off into rougher ground which is hard on the sore tired feet of the travelers. Wishing there were an easier way, they plod along until they come to another meadow behind a high fence. Having climbed the fence to have a look, Christian persuades Hopeful that they should move over into By-path Meadow, where there is a soft grassy path paralleling theirs. Moving along, they catch up with Vain-confidence, who says that he is bound for the Celestial City and knows the way perfectly. Night comes on, but he continues to push ahead briskly, with Christian and Hopeful following. Suddenly, the latter hear a frightened cry and a loud thud. Vain-confidence has been dashed to pieces by falling into a deep pit dug by the owner of the meadow. Christian and Hopeful retreat, but as they can see nothing in the dark, they decide to lie down in the meadow to pass the night. Next morning, they are surprised and seized by the prince of By-path Meadow, a giant named Despair. Charging them with malicious trespassing, he hauls them to his stronghold, Doubting Castle, and throws them into a deep dark dungeon, where they lie for days without food or drink. At length, Giant Despair appears, beats them almost senseless, and advises them to take their own lives so that he will not have to come back to finish them off himself. When all seems hopeless, Christian suddenly brightens up, "as one half amazed," and exclaims: "What a fool am I, thus to lie in a stinking dungeon when I may as well walk at liberty. I have a key in my bosom called Promise which will (I am persuaded) open any lock in Doubting Castle." Finding that the magic key works, the prisoners are soon out in the open and running as fast as they can to get back onto the Holy Way, where they erect a sign warning other Pilgrims against being tempted by the apparent ease of traveling by way of By-path Meadow. Delectable Mountains. Christian and Hopeful next come to the Delectable Mountains, where they find gardens, orchards, vineyards, and fountains of water. Four shepherds — Experience, Knowledge, Watchful, and Sincere — come to greet them, telling them that the mountains are the Lord's, as are the flocks of sheep grazing there. Having been escorted around the mountains and shown the sights there, the two Pilgrims on the eve of their departure receive from the shepherds a paper instructing them on what to do and what to avoid on the journey ahead. For one thing, they should not lie down and sleep in the Enchanted Ground, for that would be fatal. Country of Beulah. This is a happy land where the sun shines day and night, flowers bloom continuously, and the sweet and pleasant air is filled with bird-song. There is no lack of grain and wine. Christian and Hopeful stop to rest and enjoy themselves here, pleased that the Celestial City is now within sight, which leads them to assume that the way there is now clear. Dark River. Proceeding, they are amazed when they come to the Dark River, a wide, swift-flowing stream. They look around for a bridge or boat on which to cross. A Shining One appears and tells them that they must make their way across as best they can, that fording the river is a test of faith, that those with faith have nothing to fear. Wading into the river, Hopeful finds firm footing, but Christian does not He is soon floundering in water over his head, fearing that he will be drowned, that he will never see "the land that flows with milk and honey." Hopeful helps Christian by holding his head above water, and the two finally achieve the crossing. Celestial City. On the far side of the river, two Shining Ones are waiting for the Pilgrims and take them by the arm to assist them in climbing the steep slope to the Celestial City, which stands on a "mighty hill . . . higher than the clouds." Coming to the gate of the city, built all of precious stones, Christian and Hopeful present their credentials, which are taken to the King (God). He orders the gate to be opened, and the two weary but elated Pilgrims go in, to find that the streets are paved with gold and that along them walk many men with crowns on their heads and golden harps in their hands.

Plantinga: Grice, “A philosopher of religion – which means he is not possibly good at it! I kid!” – Plantinga’s deas have determined the direction of debate in many aspects of the discipline. He has also contributed substantially to analytic epistemology and the metaphysics of modality. Plantinga is director of the Center for Philosophy of Religion and John O’Brien (an Irishman) Professor of Philosophy at the  of Notre Dame. Plantinga’s philosophy of religion has centered on the epistemology of religious belief. His God and Other Minds 7 introduced a defining claim of his career  that belief in God may be rational even if it is not supported by successful arguments from natural theology. This claim was fully developed in a series of articles published in the 0s, in which he argued for the position he calls “Reformed Epistemology.” Borrowing from the work of theologians such as Calvin, Bavinck, and Barth, Plantinga reasoned that theistic belief is “properly basic,” justified not by other beliefs but by immediate experience. This position was most thoroughly treated in his article “Reason and Belief in God” Plantinga and Wolterstorff, eds., Faith and Rationality, 3. In early work Plantinga assumed an internalist view of epistemic justification. Later he moved to externalism, arguing that basic theistic belief would count as knowledge if true and appropriately produced. He developed this approach in “Justification and Theism” Faith and Philosophy, 7. These ideas led to the development of a full-scale externalist epistemological theory, first presented in his 9 Gifford Lectures and later published in the two-volume set Warrant: The Current Debate and Warrant and Proper Function 3. This theory has become the focal point of much contemporary debate in analytic epistemology. Plantinga is also a leading theorist in the metaphysics of modality. The Nature of Necessity 4 developed a possible worlds semantics that has become standard in the literature. His analysis of possible worlds as maximally consistent states of affairs offers a realist compromise between nominalist and extreme reificationist conceptions. In the last two chapters, Plantinga brings his modal metaphysics to bear on two classical topics in the philosophy of religion. He presented what many consider the definitive version of the free will defense against the argument from evil and a modal version of the ontological argument that may have produced more response than any version since Anselm’s original offering. 

platonic --: Grice: “At Oxford you HAVE to be platonic! Aristotelian is jaded!” -- H. P. Grice as a Platonian commentator – vide his “Metaphysics, Philosophical Eschatology, and Plato’s Republic” -- commentaries on Plato, a term designating the works in the tradition of commentary hypomnema on Plato that may go back to the Old Academy Crantor is attested by Proclus to have been the first to have “commented” on the Timaeus. More probably, the tradition arises in the first century B.C. in Alexandria, where we find Eudorus commenting, again, on the Timaeus, but possibly also if the scholars who attribute to him the Anonymous Theaetetus Commentary are correct on the Theaetetus. It seems also as if the Stoic Posidonius composed a commentary of some sort on the Timaeus. The commentary form such as we can observe in the biblical commentaries of Philo of Alexandria owes much to the Stoic tradition of commentary on Homer, as practiced by the second-century B.C. School of Pergamum. It was normal to select usually consecutive portions of text lemmata for general, and then detailed, comment, raising and answering “problems” aporiai, refuting one’s predecessors, and dealing with points of both doctrine and philology. By the second century A.D. the tradition of Platonic commentary was firmly established. We have evidence of commentaries by the Middle Platonists Gaius, Albinus, Atticus, Numenius, and Cronius, mainly on the Timaeus, but also on at least parts of the Republic, as well as a work by Atticus’s pupil Herpocration of Argos, in twentyfour books, on Plato’s work as a whole. These works are all lost, but in the surviving works of Plutarch we find exegesis of parts of Plato’s works, such as the creation of the soul in the Timaeus 35a36d. The Latin commentary of Calcidius fourth century A.D. is also basically Middle Platonic. In the Neoplatonic period after Plotinus, who did not indulge in formal commentary, though many of his essays are in fact informal commentaries, we have evidence of much more comprehensive exegetic activity. Porphyry initiated the tradition with commentaries on the Phaedo, commentaries on Plato commentaries on Plato 160   160 Cratylus, Sophist, Philebus, Parmenides of which the surviving anonymous fragment of commentary is probably a part, and the Timaeus. He also commented on the myth of Er in the Republic. It seems to have been Porphyry who is responsible for introducing the allegorical interpretation of the introductory portions of the dialogues, though it was only his follower Iamblichus who also commented on all the above dialogues, as well as the Alcibiades and the Phaedrus who introduced the principle that each dialogue should have only one central theme, or skopos. The tradition was carried on in the Athenian School by Syrianus and his pupils Hermeias on the Phaedrus  surviving and Proclus Alcibiades, Cratylus, Timaeus, Parmenides  all surviving, at least in part, and continued in later times by Damascius Phaedo, Philebus, Parmenides and Olympiodorus Alcibiades, Phaedo, Gorgias  also surviving, though sometimes only in the form of pupils’ notes. These commentaries are not now to be valued primarily as expositions of Plato’s thought though they do contain useful insights, and much valuable information; they are best regarded as original philosophical treatises presented in the mode of commentary, as is so much of later Grecian philosophy, where it is not originality but rather faithfulness to an inspired master and a great tradition that is being striven for.  Platonism Platonism -- Damascius c.462c.550, Grecian Neoplatonist philosopher, last head of the Athenian Academy before its closure by Justinian in A.D. 529. Born probably in Damascus, he studied first in Alexandria, and then moved to Athens shortly before Proclus’s death in 485. He returned to Alexandria, where he attended the lectures of Ammonius, but came back again to Athens in around 515, to assume the headship of the Academy. After the closure, he retired briefly with some other philosophers, including Simplicius, to Persia, but left after about a year, probably for Syria, where he died. He composed many works, including a life of his master Isidorus, which survives in truncated form; commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories, On the Heavens, and Meteorologics I all lost; commentaries on Plato’s Alcibiades, Phaedo, Philebus, and Parmenides, which survive; and a surviving treatise On First Principles. His philosophical system is a further elaboration of the scholastic Neoplatonism of Proclus, exhibiting a great proliferation of metaphysical entities.  Platonism -- Eudoxus, Grecian astronomer and mathematician, a student of Plato. He created a test of the equality of two ratios, invented the method of exhaustion for calculating areas and volumes within curved boundaries, and introduced an astronomical system consisting of homocentric celestial spheres. This system views the visible universe as a set of twenty-seven spheres contained one inside the other and each concentric to the earth. Every celestial body is located on the equator of an ideal eudaimonia Eudoxus of Cnidus 291   291 sphere that revolves with uniform speed on its axis. The poles are embedded in the surface of another sphere, which also revolves uniformly around an axis inclined at a constant angle to that of the first sphere. In this way enough spheres are introduced to capture the apparent motions of all heavenly bodies. Aristotle adopted the system of homocentric spheres and provided a physical interpretation for it in his cosmology. R.E.B. Euler diagram, a logic diagram invented by the mathematician Euler that represents standard form statements in syllogistic logic by two circles and a syllogism by three circles. In modern adaptations of Euler diagrams, distributed terms are represented by complete circles and undistributed terms by partial circles circle segments or circles made with dotted lines: Euler diagrams are more perspicuous ways of showing validity and invalidity of syllogisms than Venn diagrams, but less useful as a mechanical test of validity since there may be several choices of ways to represent a syllogism in Euler diagrams, only one of which will show that the syllogism is invalid.  Plato: preeminent Grecian philosopher whose chief contribution consists in his conception of the observable world as an imperfect image of a realm of unobservable and unchanging “Forms,” and his conception of the best life as one centered on the love of these divine objects. Life and influences. Born in Athens to a politically powerful and aristocratic family, Plato came under the influence of Socrates during his youth and set aside his ambitions for a political career after Socrates was executed for impiety. His travels in southern Italy and Sicily brought him into closer contact with the followers of Pythagoras, whose research in mathematics played an important role in his intellectual development. He was also acquainted with Cratylus, a follower of Heraclitus, and was influenced by their doctrine that the world is in constant flux. He wrote in opposition to the relativism of Protagoras and the purely materialistic mode of explanation adopted by Democritus. At the urging of a devoted follower, Dion, he became involved in the politics of Syracuse, the wealthiest city of the Grecian world, but his efforts to mold the ideas of its tyrant, Dionysius II, were unmitigated failures. These painful events are described in Plato’s Letters Epistles, the longest and most important of which is the Seventh Letter, and although the authenticity of the Letters is a matter of controversy, there is little doubt that the author was well acquainted with Plato’s life. After returning from his first visit to Sicily in 387, Plato established the Academy, a fraternal association devoted to research and teaching, and named after the sacred site on the outskirts of Athens where it was located. As a center for political training, it rivaled the school of Isocrates, which concentrated entirely on rhetoric. The bestknown student of the Academy was Aristotle, who joined at the age of seventeen when Plato was sixty and remained for twenty years. Chronology of the works. Plato’s works, many of which take the form of dialogues between Socrates and several other speakers, were composed over a period of about fifty years, and this has led scholars to seek some pattern of philosophical development in them. Increasingly sophisticated stylometric tests have been devised to calculate the linguistic similarities among the dialogues. Ancient sources indicate that the Laws was Plato’s last work, and there is now consensus that many affinities exist between the style of this work and several others, which can therefore also be safely regarded as late works; these include the Sophist, Statesman, and Philebus perhaps written in that order. Stylometric tests also support a rough division of Plato’s other works into early and middle periods. For example, the Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthyphro, Hippias Minor, Ion, Laches, and Protagoras listed alphabetically are widely thought to be early; while the Phaedo, Symposium, Republic, and Phaedrus perhaps written in that order are agreed to belong to his middle period. But in some cases it is difficult or impossible to tell which of two works belonging to the same general period preceded the other; this is especially true of the early dialogues. The most controversial chronological question concerns the Timaeus: stylometric tests often place it with the later dialogues, though some scholars think that its philosophical doctrines are discarded in the later dialogues, and they therefore assign it to Plato’s middle period. The underlying issue is whether he abandoned some of the main doctrines of this middle period. Early and middle dialogues. The early dialogues typically portray an encounter between Socrates and an interlocutor who complacently assumes that he understands a common evaluative concept like courage, piety, or beauty. For example, Euthyphro, in the dialogue that bears his name, denies that there is any impiety in prosecuting his father, but repeated questioning by Socrates shows that he cannot say what single thing all pious acts have in common by virtue of which they are rightly called pious. Socrates professes to have no answer to these “What is X?” questions, and this fits well with the claim he makes in the Apology that his peculiarly human form of wisdom consists in realizing how little he knows. In these early dialogues, Socrates seeks but fails to find a philosophically defensible theory that would ground our use of normative terms. The Meno is similar to these early dialogues  it asks what virtue is, and fails to find an answer  but it goes beyond them and marks a transition in Plato’s thinking. It raises for the first time a question about methodology: if one does not have knowledge, how is it possible to acquire it simply by raising the questions Socrates poses in the early dialogues? To show that it is possible, Plato demonstrates that even a slave ignorant of geometry can begin to learn the subject through questioning. The dialogue then proposes an explanation of our ability to learn in this way: the soul acquired knowledge before it entered the body, and when we learn we are really recollecting what we once knew and forgot. This bold speculation about the soul and our ability to learn contrasts with the noncommittal position Socrates takes in the Apology, where he is undecided whether the dead lose all consciousness or continue their activities in Hades. The confidence in immortality evident in the Meno is bolstered by arguments given in the Phaedo, Republic, and Phaedrus. In these dialogues, Plato uses metaphysical considerations about the nature of the soul and its ability to learn to support a conception of what the good human life is. Whereas the Socrates of the early dialogues focuses almost exclusively on ethical questions and is pessimistic about the extent to which we can answer them, Plato, beginning with the Meno and continuing throughout the rest of his career, confidently asserts that we can answer Socratic questions if we pursue ethical and metaphysical inquiries together. The Forms. The Phaedo is the first dialogue in which Plato decisively posits the existence of the abstract objects that he often called “Forms” or “Ideas.” The latter term should be used with caution, since these objects are not creations of a mind, but exist independently of thought; the singular Grecian terms Plato often uses to name these abstract objects are eidos and idea. These Forms are eternal, changeless, and incorporeal; since they are imperceptible, we can come to have knowledge of them only through thought. Plato insists that it would be an error to identify two equal sticks with what Equality itself is, or beautiful bodies with what Beauty itself is; after all, he says, we might mistakenly take two equal sticks to be unequal, but we would never suffer from the delusion that Equality itself is unequal. The unchanging and incorporeal Form is the sort of object that is presupposed by Socratic inquiry; what every pious act has in common with every other is that it bears a certain relationship  called “participation”  to one and the same thing, the Form of Piety. In this sense, what makes a pious act pious and a pair of equal sticks equal are the Forms Piety and Equality. When we call sticks equal or acts pious, we are implicitly appealing to a standard of equality or piety, just as someone appeals to a standard when she says that a painted portrait of someone is a man. Of course, the pigment on the canvas is not a man; rather, it is properly called a man because it bears a certain relationship to a very different sort of object. In precisely this way, Plato claims that the Forms are what many of our words refer to, even though they are radically different sorts of objects from the ones revealed to the senses. For Plato the Forms are not merely an unusual item to be added to our list of existing objects. Rather, they are a source of moral and religious inspiration, and their discovery is therefore a decisive turning point in one’s life. This process is described by a fictional priestess named Diotima in the Symposium, a dialogue containing a series of speeches in praise of love and concluding with a remarkable description of the passionate response Socrates inspired in Alcibiades, his most notorious admirer. According to Diotima’s account, those who are in love are searching for something they do not yet understand; whether they realize it or not, they seek the eternal possession of the good, and they can obtain it only through productive activity of some sort. Physical love perpetuates the species and achieves a lower form of immortality, but a more beautiful kind of offspring is produced by those who govern cities and shape the moral characteristics of future generations. Best of all is the kind of love that eventually attaches itself to the Form of Beauty, since this is the most beautiful of all objects and provides the greatest happiness to the lover. One develops a love for this Form by ascending through various stages of emotional attachment and understanding. Beginning with an attraction to the beauty of one person’s body, one gradually develops an appreciation for the beauty present in all other beautiful bodies; then one’s recognition of the beauty in people’s souls takes on increasing strength, and leads to a deeper attachment to the beauty of customs, laws, and systems of knowledge; and this process of emotional growth and deepening insight eventually culminates in the discovery of the eternal and changeless beauty of Beauty itself. Plato’s theory of erotic passion does not endorse “Platonic love,” if that phrase designates a purely spiritual relationship completely devoid of physical attraction or expression. What he insists on is that desires for physical contact be restrained so that they do not subvert the greater good that can be accomplished in human relationships. His sexual orientation like that of many of his Athenian contemporaries is clearly homosexual, and he values the moral growth that can occur when one man is physically attracted to another, but in Book I of the Laws he condemns genital activity when it is homosexual, on the ground that such activity should serve a purely procreative purpose. Plato’s thoughts about love are further developed in the Phaedrus. The lover’s longing for and physical attraction to another make him disregard the norms of commonplace and dispassionate human relationships: love of the right sort is therefore one of four kinds of divine madness. This fourfold classificatory scheme is then used as a model of proper methodology. Starting with the Phaedrus, classification  what Plato calls the “collection and division of kinds”  becomes the principal method to be used by philosophers, and this approach is most fully employed in such late works as the Sophist, Statesman, and Philebus. Presumably it contributed to Aristotle’s interest in categories and biological classification. The Republic. The moral and metaphysical theory centered on the Forms is most fully developed in the Republic, a dialogue that tries to determine whether it is in one’s own best interests to be a just person. It is commonly assumed that injustice pays if one can get away with it, and that just behavior merely serves the interests of others. Plato attempts to show that on the contrary justice, properly understood, is so great a good that it is worth any sacrifice. To support this astonishing thesis, he portrays an ideal political community: there we will see justice writ large, and so we will be better able to find justice in the individual soul. An ideal city, he argues, must make radical innovations. It should be ruled by specially trained philosophers, since their understanding of the Form of the Good will give them greater insight into everyday affairs. Their education is compared to that of a prisoner who, having once gazed upon nothing but shadows in the artificial light of a cave, is released from bondage, leaves the cave, eventually learns to see the sun, and is thereby equipped to return to the cave and see the images there for what they are. Everything in the rulers’ lives is designed to promote their allegiance to the community: they are forbidden private possessions, their sexual lives are regulated by eugenic considerations, and they are not to know who their children are. Positions of political power are open to women, since the physical differences between them and men do not in all cases deprive them of the intellectual or moral capacities needed for political office. The works of poets are to be carefully regulated, for the false moral notions of the traditional poets have had a powerful and deleterious impact on the general public. Philosophical reflection is to replace popular poetry as the force that guides moral education. What makes this city ideally just, according to Plato, is the dedication of each of its components to one task for which it is naturally suited and specially trained. The rulers are ideally equipped to rule; the soldiers are best able to enforce their commands; and the economic class, composed of farmers, craftsmen, builders, and so on, are content to do their work and to leave the tasks of making and enforcing the laws to others. Accordingly what makes the soul of a human being just is the same principle: each of its components must properly perform its own task. The part of us that is capable of understanding and reasoning is the part that must rule; the assertive part that makes us capable of anger and competitive spirit must give our understanding the force it needs; and our appetites for food and sex must be trained so that they seek only those objects that reason approves. It is not enough to educate someone’s reason, for unless the emotions and appetites are properly trained they will overpower it. Just individuals are those who have fully integrated these elements of the soul. They do not unthinkingly follow a list of rules; rather, their just treatment of others flows from their own balanced psychological condition. And the paradigm of a just person is a philosopher, for reason rules when it becomes passionately attached to the most intelligible objects there are: the Forms. It emerges that justice pays because attachment to these supremely valuable objects is part of what true justice of the soul is. The worth of our lives depends on the worth of the objects to which we devote ourselves. Those who think that injustice pays assume that wealth, domination, or the pleasures of physical appetite are supremely valuable; their mistake lies in their limited conception of what sorts of objects are worth loving. Late dialogues. The Republic does not contain Plato’s last thoughts on moral or metaphysical matters. For example, although he continues to hold in his final work, the Laws, that the family and private wealth should ideally be abolished, he describes in great detail a second-best community that retains these and many other institutions of ordinary political life. The sovereignty of law in such a state is stressed continually; political offices are to be filled by elections and lots, and magistrates are subject to careful scrutiny and prosecution. Power is divided among several councils and offices, and philosophical training is not a prerequisite for political participation. This second-best state is still worlds apart from a modern liberal democracy  poetic works and many features of private life are carefully regulated, and atheism is punished with death  but it is remarkable that Plato, after having made no concessions to popular participation in the Republic, devoted so much energy to finding a proper place for it in his final work. Plato’s thoughts about metaphysics also continued to evolve, and perhaps the most serious problem in interpreting his work as a whole is the problem of grasping the direction of these further developments. One notorious obstacle to understanding his later metaphysics is presented by the Parmenides, for here we find an unanswered series of criticisms of the theory of Forms. For example, it is said that if there is reason to posit one Form of Largeness to select an arbitrary example then there is an equally good reason to posit an unlimited number of Forms of this type. The “first” Form of Largeness must exist because according to Plato whenever a number of things are large, there is a Form of Largeness that makes them large; but now, the argument continues, if we consider this Form together with the other large things, we should recognize still another Form, which makes the large things and Largeness itself large. The argument can be pursued indefinitely, but it seems absurd that there should be an unlimited number of Forms of this one type. In antiquity the argument was named the Third Man, because it claims that in addition to a second type of object called “man”  the Form of Man  there is even a third. What is Plato’s response to this and other objections to his theory? He says in the Parmenides that we must continue to affirm the existence of such objects, for language and thought require them; but instead of responding directly to the criticisms, he embarks on a prolonged examination of the concept of unity, reaching apparently conflicting conclusions about it. Whether these contradictions are merely apparent and whether this treatment of unity contains a response to the earlier critique of the Forms are difficult matters of interpretation. But in any case it is clear that Plato continues to uphold the existence of unchanging realities; the real difficulty is whether and how he modifies his earlier views about them. In the Timaeus, there seem to be no modifications at all  a fact that has led some scholars to believe, in spite of some stylometric evidence to the contrary, that this work was written before Plato composed the critique of the Forms in the Parmenides. This dialogue presents an account of how a divine but not omnipotent craftsman transformed the disorderly materials of the universe into a harmonious cosmos by looking to the unchanging Forms as paradigms and creating, to the best of his limited abilities, constantly fluctuating images of those paradigms. The created cosmos is viewed as a single living organism governed by its own divinely intelligent soul; time itself came into existence with the cosmos, being an image of the timeless nature of the Forms; space, however, is not created by the divine craftsman but is the characterless receptacle in which all change takes place. The basic ingredients of the universe are not earth, air, fire, and water, as some thinkers held; rather, these elements are composed of planes, which are in turn made out of elementary triangular shapes. The Timaeus is an attempt to show that although many other types of objects besides the Forms must be invoked in order to understand the orderly nature of the changing universe  souls, triangles, space  the best scientific explanations will portray the physical world as a purposeful and very good approximation to a perfect pattern inherent in these unchanging and eternal objects. But Forms do not play as important a role in the Philebus, a late dialogue that contains Plato’s fullest answer to the question, What is the good? He argues that neither pleasure not intelligence can by itself be identified with the good, since no one would be satisfied with a life that contained just one of these but totally lacked the other. Instead, goodness is identified with proportion, beauty, and truth; and intelligence is ranked a superior good to pleasure because of its greater kinship to these three. Here, as in the middle dialogues, Plato insists that a proper understanding of goodness requires a metaphysical grounding. To evaluate the role of pleasure in human life, we need a methodology that applies to all other areas of understanding. More specifically, we must recognize that everything can be placed in one of four categories: the limited, the unlimited, the mixture of these two, and the intelligent creation of this mixture. Where Forms are to be located in this scheme is unclear. Although metaphysics is invoked to answer practical questions, as in the Republic, it is not precisely the same metaphysics as before. Though we naturally think of Plato primarily as a writer of philosophical works, he regards the written word as inferior to spoken interchange as an instrument for learning and teaching. The drawbacks inherent in written composition are most fully set forth in the Phaedrus. There is no doubt that in the Academy he participated fully in philosophical debate, and on at least one occasion he lectured to a general audience. We are told by Aristoxenus, a pupil of Aristotle, that many in Plato’s audience were baffled and disappointed by a lecture in which he maintained that Good is one. We can safely assume that in conversation Plato put forward important philosophical ideas that nonetheless did not find their way into his writings. Aristotle refers in Physics IV.2 to one of Plato’s doctrines as unwritten, and the enigmatic positions he ascribes to Plato in Metaphysics I.6  that the Forms are to be explained in terms of number, which are in turn generated from the One and the dyad of great and small  seem to have been expounded solely in discussion. Some scholars have put great weight on the statement in the Seventh Letter that the most fundamental philosophical matters must remain unwritten, and, using later testimony about Plato’s unwritten doctrines, they read the dialogues as signs of a more profound but hidden truth. The authenticity of the Seventh Letter is a disputed question, however. In any case, since Aristotle himself treats the middle and late dialogues as undissembling accounts of Plato’s philosophy, we are on firm ground in adopting the same approach. H. P. Grice, “Commentary on Plato’s Republic,” H. P. Grice, “Semantics as footnotes to Cratylus.” H. P. Grice, “Plato and Cassirer, Aristotle and I.”

playgroup: Grice: “Strictly, a playgroup is institutional – I wouldn’t say that Tom and Jerry form a playgroup if they played chess together only once!” -- The motivation for the three playgroups were different. Austin’s first playgroup was for fun. Grice never attended. Austin’s new playgroup, or ‘second’ playgroup, if you must, was a sobriquet Grice gave because it was ANYTHING BUT. Grice’s playgroup upon Austin’s death was for fun, like the ‘first’ playgroup. Since Grice participated in the second and third, he expanded. The second playgroup was for ‘philosophical hacks’ who needed ‘para-philosophy.’ The third playgroup was for fun fun. While Austin belonged to the first and the second playgroups, there were notorious differences. In the first playgroup, he was not the master, and his resentment towards Ayer can be seen in “Sense and Sensibilia.” The second playgroup had Austin as the master. It is said that the playgroup survived Austin’s demise with Grice’s leadership – But Grice’s playgroup was still a different thing – some complained about the disorderly and rambling nature – Austin had kept a very tidy organisation and power structure. Since Grice does NOT mention his own playgroup, it is best to restrict playgroup as an ironic sobriquet by Grice to anything but a playgroup, conducted after the war by Austin, by invitation only, to full-time university lecturers in philosophy. Austin would hold a central position, and Austin’s motivation was to ‘reach’ agreement. Usually, when agreement was not reached, Austin could be pretty impolite. Grice found himself IN THE PLAYGROUP. He obviously preferred a friendlier atmosphere, as his own group later testified. But he was also involved in philosophical activity OTHER than the play group. Notably his joint endeavours with Strawson, Warnock, Pears, and Thomson. For some reason he chose each for a specific area: Warnock for the philosophy of perception (Grice’s implicaturum is that he would not explore meta-ethics with Warnock – he wouldn’t feel like, nor Warnock would). Philosophy of action of all things, with J. F. Thomson. Philosophical psychology with D. F. Pears – so this brings Pears’s observations on intending, deciding, predicting, to the fore. And ontology with P. F. Strawson. Certainlty he would not involve with Strawson on endless disagreements about the alleged divergence or lack thereof between truth-functional devices and their vernacular counterparts! Grice also mentions collaboration with Austin in teaching – “an altogether flintier experience,” as Warnock knows and “Grice can testify.” – There was joint seminars with A. M. Quinton, and a few others. One may add the tutorials. Some of his tutees left Griceian traces: A. G. N. Flew, David Bostock, J. L. Ackrill, T. C. Potts.  The term was meant ironically. The playgroup activities smack of military or civil service!  while this can be safely called Grice’s playgroup, it was founded by Austin at All Souls, where it had only seven members. After the war, Grice joined in. The full list is found elsewhere. With Austin’s death, Grice felt the responsibility to continue with it, and plus, he enjoyed it! In alphabetical order. It is this group that made history.  J. L. Austin, A. G. N. Flew, P. L. Gardiner, H. P. Grice, S. N. Hampshire, R. M. Hare, H. L. A. Hart,  P. H. Nowell-Smith, G. A. Paul, D. F. Pears, P. F. Strawson, J. F. Thomson, J. O. Urmson, G. J. Warnock, A. D. Woozley. Grice distinguishes it very well from Ryle’s group, and the group of neo-Wittgensteinians. And those three groups were those only involved with ‘ordinary language.’

Plekhanov, Georgy Valentinovich 18568, a leading theoretician of the Russian revolutionary movement and the father of Russian Marxism. Exiled from his native Russia for most of his adult life, in 3 he founded in Switzerland the first Russian Marxist association  the Emancipation of Labor, a forerunner of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ party. In philosophy he sought to systematize and disseminate the outlook of Marx and Engels, for which he popularized the name ‘dialectical materialism’. For the most part an orthodox Marxist in his understanding of history, Plekhanov argued that historical developments cannot be diverted or accelerated at will; he believed that Russia was not ready for a proletarian revolution in the first decades of the twentieth century, and consequently he opposed the Bolshevik faction in the Plato, commentaries on Plekhanov, Georgy Valentinovich 713    713 split 3 of the Social Democratic party. At the same time he was not a simplistic economic determinist: he accepted the role of geographical, psychological, and other non-economic factors in historical change. In epistemology, Plekhanov agreed with Kant that we cannot know things in themselves, but he argued that our sensations may be conceived as “hieroglyphs,” corresponding point by point to the elements of reality without resembling them. In ethics, too, Plekhanov sought to supplement Marx with Kant, tempering the class analysis of morality with the view that there are universally binding ethical principles, such as the principle that human beings should be treated as ends rather than means. Because in these and other respects Plekhanov’s version of Marxism conflicted with Lenin’s, his philosophy was scornfully rejected by doctrinaire Marxist-Leninists during the Stalin era. 

Plotinus, Greco-Roman Neoplatonist philosopher. Born in Egypt, though doubtless of Grecian ancestry, he studied Platonic philosophy in Alexandria with Ammonius Saccas 23243; then, after a brief adventure on the staff of the Emperor Gordian III on an unsuccessful expedition against the Persians, he came to Rome in 244 and continued teaching philosophy there until his death. He enjoyed the support of many prominent people, including even the Emperor Gallienus and his wife. His chief pupils were Amelius and Porphyry, the latter of whom collected and edited his philosophical essays, the Enneads so called because arranged by Porphyry in six groups of nine. The first three groups concern the physical world and our relation to it, the fourth concerns Soul, the fifth Intelligence, and the sixth the One. Porphyry’s arrangement is generally followed today, though a chronological sequence of tractates, which he also provides in his introductory Life of Plotinus, is perhaps preferable. The most important treatises are I.1; I.2; I.6; II.4; II.8; III.23; III.6; III.7; IV.34; V.1; V.3; VI.45; VI.7; VI.8; VI.9; and the group III.8, V.8, V.5, and II.9 a single treatise, split up by Porphyry, that is a wide-ranging account of Plotinus’s philosophical position, culminating in an attack on gnosticism. Plotinus saw himself as a faithful exponent of Plato see especially Enneads V.1, but he is far more than that. Platonism had developed considerably in the five centuries that separate Plato from Plotinus, taking on much from both Aristotelianism and Stoicism, and Plotinus is the heir to this process. He also adds much himself. 

pluralism, a philosophical perspective on the world that emphasizes diversity rather than homogeneity, multiplicity rather than unity, difference rather than sameness. The philosophical consequences of pluralism were addressed by Grecian antiquity in its preoccupation with the problem of the one and the many. The proponents of pluralism, represented principally by Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists Leucippus and Democritus, maintained that reality was made up of a multiplicity of entities. Adherence to this doctrine set them in opposition to the monism of the Eleatic School Parmenides, which taught that reality was an impermeable unity and an unbroken solidarity. It was thus that pluralism came to be defined as a philosophical alternative to monism. In the development of Occidental thought, pluralism came to be contrasted not only with monism but also with dualism, the philosophical doctrine that there are two, and only two, kinds of existents. Descartes, with his doctrine of two distinct substances  extended non-thinking substance versus non-extended thinking substance  is commonly regarded as having provided the clearest example of philosophical dualism. Pluralism thus needs to be understood as marking out philosophical alternatives to both monism and dualism. Pluralism as a metaphysical doctrine requires that we distinguish substantival from attributive pluralism. Substantival pluralism views the world as containing a multiplicity of substances that remain irreducible to each other. Attributive pluralism finds the multiplicity of kinds not among the furniture of substances that make up the world but rather among a diversity of attributes and distinguishing properties. However, pluralism came to be defined not only as a metaphysical doctrine but also as a regulative principle of explanation that calls upon differing explanatory principles and conceptual schemes to account for the manifold events of nature and the varieties of human experience. Recent philosophical thought has witnessed a resurgence of interest in pluralism. This was evident in the development of  pragmatism, where pluralism received piquant expression in James’s A Pluralistic Universe 9. More recently pluralism was given a voice in the thought of the later Vitters, with its heavy accent on the plurality of language games displayed in our ordinary discourse. Also, in the current developments of philosophical postmodernism Jean-François Lyotard, one finds an explicit pluralistic orientation. Here the emphasis falls on the multiplicity of signifiers, phrase regimens, genres of discourse, and narrational strategies. The alleged unities and totalities of thought, discourse, and action are subverted in the interests of reclaiming the diversified and heterogeneous world of human experience. Pluralism in contemporary thought initiates a move into a postmetaphysical age. It is less concerned with traditional metaphysical and epistemological issues, seeking answers to questions about the nature and kinds of substances and attributes; and it is more attuned to the diversity of social practices and the multiple roles of language, discourse, and narrative in the panoply of human affairs. 

pluralitive logic, also called pleonetetic logic, the logic of ‘many’, ‘most’, ‘few’, and similar terms including ‘four out of five’, ‘over 45 percent’ and so on. Consider 1 ‘Almost all F are G’ 2 ‘Almost all F are not G’ 3 ‘Most F are G’ 4 ‘Most F are not G’ 5 ‘Many F are G’ 6 ‘Many F are not G’ 1 i.e., ‘Few F are not G’ and 6 are contradictory, as are 2 and 5 and 3 and 4. 1 and 2 cannot be true together i.e., they are contraries, nor can 3 and 4, while 5 and 6 cannot be false together i.e., they are subcontraries. Moreover, 1 entails 3 which entails 5, and 2 entails 4 which entails 6. Thus 16 form a generalized “square of opposition” fitting inside the standard one. Sometimes 3 is said to be true if more than half the F’s are G, but this makes ‘most’ unnecessarily precise, for ‘most’ does not literally mean ‘more than half’. Although many pluralitive terms are vague, their interrelations are logically precise. Again, one might define ‘many’ as ‘There are at least n’, for some fixed n, at least relative to context. But this not only erodes the vagueness, it also fails to work for arbitrarily large and infinite domains. ‘Few’, ‘most’, and ‘many’ are binary quantifiers, a type of generalized quantifier. A unary quantifier, such as the standard quantifiers ‘some’ and ‘all’, connotes a second-level property, e.g., ‘Something is F’ means ‘F has an instance’, and ‘All F’s are G’ means ‘F and not G has no instance’. A generalized quantifier connotes a second-level relation. ‘Most F’s are G’ connotes a binary relation between F and G, one that cannot be reduced to any property of a truth-functional compound of F and G. In fact, none of the standard pluralitive terms can be defined in first-order logic. 

plurality of causes, as used by J. S. Mill, more than one cause of a single effect; i.e., tokens of different event types causing different tokens of the same event type. Plurality of causes is distinct from overdetermination of an event by more than one actual or potential token cause. For example, an animal’s death has a plurality of causes: it may die of starvation, of bleeding, of a blow to the head, and so on. Mill thought these cases were important because he saw that the existence of a plurality of causes creates problems for his four methods for determining causes. Mill’s method of agreement is specifically vulnerable to the problem: the method fails to reveal the cause of an event when the event has more than one type of cause, because the method presumes that causes are necessary for their effects. Actually, plurality of causes is a commonplace fact about the world because very few causes are necessary for their effects. Unless the background conditions are specified in great detail, or the identity of the effect type is defined very narrowly, almost all cases involve a plurality of causes. For example, flipping the light switch is a necessary cause of the light’s going on, only if one assumes that there will be no short circuit across the switch, that the wiring will remain as it is, and so on, or if one assumes that by ‘the light’s going on’ one means the light’s going on in the normal way. 

Po-hu tung “White Tiger Hall Consultations”, an important Chin. Confucian work of the later Han dynasty, resulting from discussions at the imperial palace in A.D. 79 on the classics and their commentaries. Divided into forty-three headings, the text sums up the dominant teachings of Confucianism by affirming the absolute position of the monarch, a cosmology and moral psychology based on the yinyang theory, and a comprehensive social and political philosophy. While emphasizing benevolent government, it legitimizes the right of the ruler to use force to quell disorder. A system of “three bonds and six relationships” defines the hierarchical structure of society. Human nature, identified with the yang cosmic force, must be cultivated, while feelings yin are to be controlled especially by rituals and education. The Confucian orthodoxy affirmed also marks an end to the debate between the Old Text school and the New Text school that divided earlier Han scholars. 

poiesis Grecian, ‘production’, behavior aimed at an external end. In Aristotle, poiesis is opposed to praxis action. It is characteristic of crafts  e.g. building, the end of which is houses. It is thus a kinesis process. For Aristotle, exercising the virtues, since it must be undertaken for its own sake, cannot be poiesis. The knowledge involved in virtue is therefore not the same as that involved in crafts. R.C.

Poincaré: j. h., philosopher of science. Born into a prominent family in Nancy, he showed extraordinary talent in mathematics from an early age. He studied at the École des Mines and worked as a mining engineer while completing his doctorate in mathematics 1879. In 1, he was appointed professor at the  of Paris, where he lectured on mathematics, physics, and astronomy until his death. His original contributions to the theory of differential equations, algebraic topology, and number theory made him the leading mathematician of his day. He published almost five hundred technical papers as well as three widely read books on the philosophy of science: Science and Hypothesis 2, The Value of Science 5, and Science and Method 8. Poincaré’s philosophy of science was shaped by his approach to mathematics. Geometric axioms are neither synthetic a priori nor empirical; they are more properly understood as definitions. Thus, when one set of axioms is preferred over another for use in physics, the choice is a matter of “convention”; it is governed by criteria of simplicity and economy of expression rather than by which geometry is “correct.” Though Euclidean geometry is used to describe the motions of bodies in space, it makes no sense to ask whether physical space “really” is Euclidean. Discovery in mathematics resembles discovery in the physical sciences, but whereas the former is a construction of the human mind, the latter has to be fitted to an order of nature that is ultimately independent of mind. Science provides an economic and fruitful way of expressing the relationships between classes of sensations, enabling reliable predictions to be made. These sensations reflect the world that causes them; the limited objectivity of science derives from this fact, but science does not purport to determine the nature of that underlying world. Conventions, choices that are not determinable by rule, enter into the physical sciences at all levels. Such principles as that of the conservation of energy may appear to be empirical, but are in fact postulates that scientists have chosen to treat as implicit definitions. The decision between alternative hypotheses also involves an element of convention: the choice of a particular curve to represent a finite set of data points, e.g., requires a judgment as to which is simpler. Two kinds of hypotheses, in particular, must be distinguished. Inductive generalizations from observation “real generalizations” are hypothetical in the limited sense that they are always capable of further precision. Then there are theories “indifferent hypotheses” that postulate underlying entities or structures. These entities may seem explanatory, but strictly speaking are no more than devices useful in calculation. For atomic theory to explain, atoms would have to exist. But this cannot be established in the only way permissible for a scientific claim, i.e. directly by experiment. Shortly before he died, Poincaré finally allowed that Perrin’s experimental verification of Einstein’s predictions regarding Brownian motion, plus his careful marshaling of twelve other distinct experimental methods of calculating Avogadro’s number, constituted the equivalent of an experimental proof of the existence of atoms: “One can say that we see them because we can count them. . . . The atom of the chemist is now a reality.”

polarity, the relation between distinct phenomena, terms, or concepts such that each inextricably requires, though it is opposed to, the other, as in the relation between the north and south poles of a magnet. In application to terms or concepts, polarity entails that the meaning of one involves the meaning of the other. This is conceptual polarity. Terms are existentially polar provided an instance of one cannot exist unless there exists an instance of the other. The second sense implies the first. Supply and demand and good and evil are instances of conceptual polarity. North and south and buying and selling are instances of existential polarity. Some polar concepts are opposites, such as truth and falsity. Some are correlative, such as question and answer: an answer is always an answer to a question; a question calls for an answer, but a question can be an answer, and an answer can be a question. The concept is not restricted to pairs and can be extended to generate mutual interdependence, multipolarity.

Polish logic, logic as researched, elucidated, and taught in Poland, 939. Between the two wars colleagues Jan Lukasiewicz, Tadeusz Kotarbigki, and Stanislaw Lesniewski, assisted by students-become-collaborators such as Alfred Tarski, Jerzy Slupecki, Stanislaw Jaskowski, and Boleslaw Sobocigski, together with mathematicians in Warsaw and philosophical colleagues elsewhere, like Kasimir Ajdukiewicz and Tadeusz Czezowski, made Warsaw an internationally known center of research in logic, metalogic, semantics, and foundations of mathematics. The Warsaw “school” also dominated Polish philosophy, and made Poland the country that introduced modern logic even in secondary schools. All three founders took their doctorates in Lvov under Kasimir Twardowski 18668, mentor of leading thinkers of independent Poland between the wars. Arriving from Vienna to take the chair of philosophy at twenty-nine, Twardowski had to choose between concentrating on his own research and organizing the study of philosophy in Poland. Dedicating his life primarily to the community task, he became the founder of modern Polish philosophy. Twardowski’s informal distinction between distributive and collective conceptions influenced classification of philosophy and the sciences, and anticipated Lesniewski’s formal axiomatizations in ontology and mereology, respectively. Another common inheritance important in Polish logic was Twardowski’s stress on the processproduct ambiguity. He applied this distinction to disambiguate ‘meaning’ and refine his teacher Brentano’s account of mental acts as meaningful “intentional” events, by differentiating 1 what is meant or “intended” by the act, its objective noema or noematic “intentional object,” from 2 its corresponding noetic meaning or subjective “content,” the correlated characteristic or structure by which it “intends” its “object” or “objective”  i.e., means that: suchand-such is so. Twardowski’s teaching  especially this careful analysis of “contents” and “objects” of mental acts  contributed to Meinong’s theory of objects, and linked it, Husserl’s phenomenology, and Anton Marty’s “philosophical grammar” with the “descriptive psychology” of their common teacher, the Aristotelian and Scholastic empiricist Brentano, and thus with sources of the analytic movements in Vienna and Cambridge. Twardowski’s lectures on the philosophical logic of content and judgment prepared the ground for scientific semantics; his references to Boolean algebra opened the door to mathematical logic; and his phenomenological idea of a general theory of objects pointed toward Lesniewski’s ontology. Twardowski’s maieutic character, integrity, grounding in philosophical traditions, and arduous training lectures began at six a.m., together with his realist defense of the classical Aristotelian correspondence theory of truth against “irrationalism,” dogmatism, skepticism, and psychologism, influenced his many pupils, who became leaders of Polish thought in diverse fields. But more influential than any doctrine was his rigorist ideal of philosophy as a strict scientific discipline of criticism and logical analysis, precise definition, and conceptual clarification. His was a school not of doctrine but of method. Maintaining this common methodological inheritance in their divergent ways, and encouraged to learn more mathematical logic than Twardowski himself knew, his students in logic were early influenced by Frege’s and Husserl’s critique of psychologism in logic, Husserl’s logical investigations, and the logical reconstruction of classical mathematics by Frege, Schröder, Whitehead, and Russell. As lecturer in Lvov from 8 until his appointment to Warsaw in 5, Lukasiewicz introduced mathematical logic into Poland. To Lesniewski, newly arrived from studies in G.y as an enthusiast for Marty’s philosophy of language, Lukasiewicz’s influential 0 Critique of Aristotle’s principle of contradiction was a “revelation” in 1. Among other things it revealed paradoxes like Russell’s, which preoccupied him for the next eleven years as, logically refuting Twardowski’s Platonist theory of abstraction, he worked out his own solutions and, influenced also by Leon Chwistek, outgrew the influence of Hans Cornelius and Leon Petraz´ycki, and developed his own “constructively nominalist” foundations. In 9 Kotarbisski and Lesniewski joined Lukasiewicz in Warsaw, where they attracted students like Tarski, Sobocigski, and Slupecki in the first generation, and Andrzej Mostowski and Czeslaw Lejewski in the next. When the war came, the survivors were scattered and the metalogicians Morchaj Wajsberg, Moritz Presburger, and Adolf Lindenbaum were killed or “disappeared” by the Gestapo. Lukasiewicz concentrated increasingly on history of logic especially in reconstructing the logic of Aristotle and the Stoics and deductive problems concerning syllogistic and propositional logic. His idea of logical probability and development of three- or manyvalued and modal calculi reflected his indeterminist sympathies in prewar exchanges with Kotarbigski and Lesniewski on the status of truths eternal, sempiternal, or both?, especially as concerns future contingencies. Lesniewski concentrated on developing his logical systems. He left elaboration of many of his seminal metalogical and semantic insights to Tarski, who, despite a divergent inclination to simplify metamathematical deductions by expedient postulation, shared with Lesniewski, Lukasiewicz, and Ajdukiewicz the conviction that only formalized languages can be made logically consistent subjects and instruments of rigorous scientific investigation. Kotarbigski drew on Lesniewski’s logic of predication to defend his “reism” as one possible application of Lesniewski’s ontology, to facilitate his “concretist” program for translating abstractions into more concrete terms, and to rationalize his “imitationist” account of mental acts or dispositions. Inheriting Twardowski’s role as cultural leader and educator, Kotarbigski popularized the logical achievements of his colleagues in e.g. his substantial 9 treatise on the theory of knowledge, formal logic, and scientific methodology; this work became required reading for serious students and, together with the lucid textbooks by Lukasiewicz and Ajdukiewicz, raised the level of philosophical discussion in Poland. Jaskowski published a system of “natural deduction” by the suppositional method practiced by Lesniewski since 6. Ajdukiewicz based his syntax on Lesniewski’s logical grammar, and by his searching critiques influenced Kotarbigski’s “reist” and “concretist” formulations. Closest in Poland to the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle, Ajdukiewicz brought new sophistication to the philosophy of language and of science by his examination of the role of conventions and meaning postulates in scientific theory and language, distinguishing axiomatic, deductive, and empirical rules of meaning. His evolving and refined conventionalist analyses of theories, languages, “world perspectives,” synonymy, translation, and analyticity, and his philosophical clarification by paraphrase anticipated views of Carnap, Feigl, and Quine. But the Polish thinkers, beyond their common methodological inheritance and general adherence to extensional logic, subscribed to little common doctrine, and in their exchanges with the Vienna positivists remained “too sober” said Lukasiewicz to join in sweeping antimetaphysical manifestos. Like Twardowski, they were critics of traditional formulations, who sought not to proscribe but to reform metaphysics, by reformulating issues clearly enough to advance understanding. Indeed, except for Chwistek, the mathematician Jan Slezygski, and the historians I. M. Bochegski, Z. A. Jordan, and Jan Salamucha, in addition to the phenomenologist Roman Ingarden, the key figures in Polish logic were all philosophical descendants of Twardowski. 

political philosophy, the study of the nature and justification of coercive institutions. Coercive institutions range in size from the family to the nation-state and world organizations like the United Nations. They are institutions that at least sometimes employ force or the threat of force to control the behavior of their members. Justifying such coercive institutions requires showing that the authorities within them have a right to be obeyed and that their members have a corresponding obligation to obey them, i.e., that these institutions have legitimate political authority over their members. Classical political philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle, were primarily interested in providing a justification for city-states like Athens or Sparta. But historically, as larger coercive institutions became possible and desirable, political philosophers sought to justify them. After the seventeenth century, most political philosophers focused on providing a justification for nationstates whose claim to legitimate authority is restricted by both geography and nationality. But from time to time, and more frequently in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, some political philosophers have sought to provide a justification for various forms of world government with even more extensive powers than those presently exercised by the United Nations. And quite recently, feminist political philosophers have raised important challenges to the authority of the family as it is presently constituted. Anarchism from Grecian an archos, ‘no government’ rejects this central task of political philosophy. It maintains that no coercive institutions are justified. Proudhon, the first self-described anarchist, believed that coercive institutions should be replaced by social and economic organizations based on voluntary contractual agreement, and he advocated peaceful change toward anarchism. Others, notably Blanqui and Bakunin, advocated the use of violence to destroy the power of coercive institutions. Anarchism inspired the anarcho-syndicalist movement, Makhno and his followers during the Russian Civil War, the  anarchists during the  Civil War, and the anarchist gauchistes during the 8 “May Events” in France. Most political philosophers, however, have sought to justify coercive institutions; they have simply disagreed over what sort of coercive institutions are justified. Liberalism, which derives from the work of Locke, is the view that coercive institutions are justified when they promote liberty. For Locke, liberty requires a constitutional monarchy with parliamentary government. Over time, however, the ideal of liberty became subject to at least two interpretations. The view that seems closest to Locke’s is classical liberalism, which is now more frequently called political libertarianism. This form of liberalism interprets constraints on liberty as positive acts i.e., acts of commission that prevent people from doing what they otherwise could do. According to this view, failing to help people in need does not restrict their liberty. Libertarians maintain that when liberty is so interpreted only a minimal or night-watchman state that protects against force, theft, and fraud can be justified. In contrast, in welfare liberalism, a form of liberalism that derives from the work of T. H. Green, constraints on liberty are interpreted to include, in addition, negative acts i.e., acts of omission that prevent people from doing what they otherwise could do. According to this view, failing to help people in need does restrict their liberty. Welfare liberals maintain that when liberty is interpreted in this fashion, coercive institutions of a welfare state requiring a guaranteed social minimum and equal opportunity are justified. While no one denies that when liberty is given a welfare liberal interpretation some form of welfare state is required, there is considerable debate over whether a minimal state is required when liberty is given a libertarian interpretation. At issue is whether the liberty of the poor is constrained when they are prevented from taking from the surplus possessions of the rich what they need for survival. If such prevention does constrain the liberty of the poor, it could be argued that their liberty should have priority over the liberty of the rich not to be interfered with when using their surplus possessions for luxury purposes. In this way, it could be shown that even when the ideal of liberty is given a libertarian interpretation, a welfare state, rather than a minimal state, is justified. Both libertarianism and welfare liberalism are committed to individualism. This view takes the rights of individuals to be basic and justifies the actions of coercive institutions as promoting those rights. Communitarianism, which derives from the writings of Hegel, rejects individualism. It maintains that rights of individuals are not basic and that the collective can have rights that are independent of and even opposed to what liberals claim are the rights of individuals. According to communitarians, individuals are constituted by the institutions and practices of which they are a part, and their rights and obligations derive from those same institutions and practices. Fascism is an extreme form of communitarianism that advocates an authoritarian state with limited rights for individuals. In its National Socialism Nazi variety, fascism was also antiSemitic and militarist. In contrast to liberalism and communitarianism, socialism takes equality to be the basic ideal and justifies coercive institutions insofar as they promote equality. In capitalist societies where the means of production are owned and controlled by a relatively small number of people and used primarily for their benefit, socialists favor taking control of the means of production and redirecting their use to the general welfare. According to Marx, the principle of distribution for a socialist society is: from each according to ability, to each according to needs. Socialists disagree among themselves, however, over who should control the means of production in a socialist society. In the version of socialism favored by Lenin, those who control the means of production are to be an elite seemingly differing only in their ends from the capitalist elite they replaced. In other forms of socialism, the means of production are to be controlled democratically. In advanced capitalist societies, national defense, police and fire protection, income redistribution, and environmental protection are already under democratic control. Democracy or “government by the people” is thought to apply in these areas, and to require some form of representation. Socialists simply propose to extend the domain of democratic control to include control of the means of production, on the ground that the very same arguments that support democratic control in these recognized areas also support democratic control of the means of production. In addition, according to Marx, socialism will transform itself into communism when most of the work that people perform in society becomes its own reward, making differential monetary reward generally unnecessary. Then distribution in society can proceed according to the principle, from each according to ability, to each according to needs. It so happens that all of the above political views have been interpreted in ways that deny that women have the same basic rights as men. By contrast, feminism, almost by definition, is the political view that women and men have the same basic rights. In recent years, most political philosophers have come to endorse equal basic rights for women and men, but rarely do they address questions that feminists consider of the utmost importance, e.g., how responsibilities and duties are to be assigned in family structures. Each of these political views must be evaluated both internally and externally by comparison with the other views. Once this is done, their practical recommendations may not be so different. For example, if welfare liberals recognize that the basic rights of their view extend to distant peoples and future generations, they may end up endorsing the same degree of equality socialists defend. Whatever their practical requirements, each of these political views justifies civil disobedience, even revolution, when certain of those requirements have not been met. Civil disobedience is an illegal action undertaken to draw attention to a failure by the relevant authorities to meet basic moral requirements, e.g., the refusal of Rosa Parks to give up her seat in a bus to a white man in accord with the local ordinance in Montgomery, Alabama, in 5. Civil disobedience is justified when illegal action of this sort is the best way to get the relevant authorities to bring the law into better correspondence with basic moral requirements. By contrast, revolutionary action is justified when it is the only way to correct a radical failure of the relevant authorities to meet basic moral requirements. When revolutionary action is justified, people no longer have a political obligation to obey the relevant authorities; that is, they are no longer morally required to obey them, although they may still continue to do so, e.g. out of habit or fear. Recent contemporary political philosophy has focused on the communitarianliberal debate. In defense of the communitarian view, Alasdair MacIntyre has argued that virtually all forms of liberalism attempt to separate rules defining right action from conceptions of the human good. On this account, he contends, these forms of liberalism must fail because the rules defining right action cannot be adequately grounded apart from a conception of the good. Responding to this type of criticism, some liberals have openly conceded that their view is not grounded independently of some conception of the good. Rawls, e.g., has recently made clear that his liberalism requires a conception of the political good, although not a comprehensive conception of the good. It would seem, therefore, that the debate between communitarians and liberals must turn on a comparative evaluation of their competing conceptions of the good. Unfortunately, contemporary communitarians have not yet been very forthcoming about what particular conception of the good their view requires. 

political theory, reflection concerning the empirical, normative, and conceptual dimensions of political life. There are no topics that all political theorists do or ought to address, no required procedures, no doctrines acknowledged to be authoritative. The meaning of ‘political theory’ resides in its fluctuating uses, not in any essential property. It is nevertheless possible to identify concerted tendencies among those who have practiced this activity over twenty-five centuries. Since approximately the seventeenth century, a primary question has been how best to justify the political rule of some people over others. This question subordinated the issue that had directed and organized most previous political theory, namely, what constitutes the best form of political regime. Assuming political association to be a divinely ordained or naturally necessary feature of the human estate, earlier thinkers had asked what mode of political association contributes most to realizing the good for humankind. Signaling the variable but intimate relationship between political theory and political practice, the change in question reflected and helped to consolidate acceptance of the postulate of natural human equality, the denial of divinely or naturally given authority of some human beings over others. Only a small minority of postseventeenth-century thinkers have entertained the possibility, perhaps suggested by this postulate, that no form of rule can be justified, but the shift in question altered the political theory agenda. Issues concerning consent, individual liberties and rights, various forms of equality as integral to justice, democratic and other controls on the authority and power of government  none of which were among the first concerns of ancient or medieval political thinkers  moved to the center of political theory. Recurrent tendencies and tensions in political theory may also be discerned along dimensions that cross-cut historical divisions. In its most celebrated representations, political theory is integral to philosophy. Systematic thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, Hobbes and Hegel, present their political thoughts as supporting and supported by their ethics and theology, metaphysics and epistemology. Political argumentation must satisfy the same criteria of logic, truth, and justification as any other; a political doctrine must be grounded in the nature of reality. Other political theorists align themselves with empirical science rather than philosophy. Often focusing on questions of power, they aim to give accurate accounts and factually grounded assessments of government and politics in particular times and places. Books IVVI of Aristotle’s Politics inaugurate this conception of political theory; it is represented by Montesquieu, Marx, and much of utilitarianism, and it is the numerically predominant form of academic political theorizing in the twentieth century. Yet others, e.g., Socrates, Machiavelli, Rousseau, and twentieth-century thinkers such as Rawls, mix the previously mentioned modes but understand themselves as primarily pursuing the practical objective of improving their own political societies.

polysyllogism, a series of syllogisms connected by the fact that the conclusion of one syllogism becomes a premise of another. The syllogism whose conclusion is used as a premise in another syllogism within the chain is called the prosyllogism; the syllogism is which the conclusion of another syllogism within the chain is used as a premise is called the episyllogism. To illustrate, take the standard form of the simplest polysyllogism: a 1 Every B is A 2 Every C is B 3 , Every C is A b 4 Every C is A 5 Every D is C 6 , Every D is A. The first member a of this polysyllogism is the prosyllogism, since its conclusion, 3, occurs as a premise, 4, in the second argument. This second member, b, is the episyllogism, since it employs as one of its premises 4 the conclusion 3 of the first syllogism. It should be noted that the terms ‘prosyllogism’ and ‘episyllogism’ are correlative terms. Moreover, a polysyllogism may have more than two members. 

Pomponazzi, Pietro 14621525,  philosopher, an Aristotelian who taught at the universities of Padua and Bologna. In De incantationibus “On Incantations,” 1556, he regards the world as a system of natural causes that can explain apparently miraculous phenomena. Human beings are subject to the natural order of the world, yet divine predestination and human freedom are compatible De fato, “On Fate,” 1567. Furthermore, he distinguishes between what is proved by natural reason and what is accepted by faith, and claims that, since there are arguments for and against the immortality of the human individual soul, this belief is to be accepted solely on the basis of faith De immortalitate animae, “On the Immortality of the Soul,” He defended his view of immortality in the Apologia 1518 and in the Defensorium 1519. These three works were reprinted as Tractatus acutissimi 1525. Pomponazzi’s work was influential until the seventeenth century, when Aristotelianism ceased to be the main philosophy taught at the universities. The eighteenth-century freethinkers showed new interest in his distinction between natural reason and faith. P.Gar. pons asinorum Latin, ‘asses’ bridge’, a methodological device based upon Aristotle’s description of the ways in which one finds a suitable middle term to demonstrate categorical propositions. Thus, to prove the universal affirmative, one should consider the characters that entail the predicate P and the characters entailed by the subject S. If we find in the two groups of characters a common member, we can use it as a middle term in the syllogistic proof of say ‘All S are P’. Take ‘All men are mortal’ as the contemplated conclusion. We find that ‘organism’ is among the characters entailing the predicate ‘mortal’ and is also found in the group of characters entailed by the subject ‘men’, and thus it may be used in a syllogistic proof of ‘All men are mortal’. To prove negative propositions we must, in addition, consider characters incompatible with the predicate, or incompatible with the subject. Finally, proofs of particular propositions require considering characters that entail the subject. 

Popper, Karl Raimund, Austrian-born British philosopher best known for contributions to philosophy of science and to social and political philosophy. Educated at the  of Vienna Ph.D., 8, he taught philosophy in New Zealand for a decade before becoming a reader and then professor in logic and scientific method at the London School of Economics 669. He was knighted in 5, elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 6, and appointed Companion of Honour in 2 see his autobiography, Unended Quest, 6. In opposition to logical positivism’s verifiability criterion of cognitive significance, Popper proposes that science be characterized by its method: the criterion of demarcation of empirical science from pseudo-science and metaphysics is falsifiability Logik der Forschung, 4, tr. as The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 9. According to falsificationism, science grows, and may even approach the truth, not by amassing supporting evidence, but through an unending cycle of problems, tentative solutions  unjustifiable conjectures  and error elimination; i.e., the vigorous testing of deductive consequences and the refutation of conjectures that fail Conjectures and Refutations, 3. Since conjectures are not inferences and refutations are not inductive, there is no inductive inference or inductive logic. More generally, criticism is installed as the hallmark of rationality, and the traditional justificationist insistence on proof, conclusive or inconclusive, on confirmation, and on positive argument, is repudiated. Popper brings to the central problems of Kant’s philosophy an uncompromising realism and objectivism, the tools of modern logic, and a Darwinian perspective on knowledge, thereby solving Hume’s problem of induction without lapsing into irrationalism Objective Knowledge, 2. He made contributions of permanent importance also to the axiomatization of probability theory The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 9; to its interpretation, especially the propensity interpretation Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 3 vols. 283; and to many other problems The Self and Its Brain, with John C. Eccles, 7. Popper’s social philosophy, like his epistemology, is anti-authoritarian. Since it is a historicist error to suppose that we can predict the future of mankind The Poverty of Historicism, 7, the prime task of social institutions in an open society  one that encourages criticism and allows rulers to be replaced without violence  must be not large-scale utopian planning but the minimization, through piecemeal reform, of avoidable suffering. This way alone permits proper assessment of success or failure, and thus of learning from experience The Open Society and Its Enemies, 5. 

Porphyry, Grecian Neoplatonist philosopher, second to Plotinus in influence. He was born in Tyre, and is thus sometimes called Porphyry the Phoenician. As a young man he went to Athens, where he absorbed the Platonism of Cassius Longinus, who had in turn been influenced by Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria. Porphyry went to Rome in 263, where he became a disciple of Plotinus, who had also been influenced by Ammonius. Porphyry lived in Rome until 269, when, urged by Plotinus to pons asinorum Porphyry 722    722 travel as a cure for severe depression, he traveled to Sicily. He remained there for several years before returning to Rome to take over Plotinus’s school. He apparently died in Rome. Porphyry is not noted for original thought. He seems to have dedicated himself to explicating Aristotle’s logic and defending Plotinus’s version of Neoplatonism. During his years in Sicily, Porphyry wrote his two most famous works, the lengthy Against the Christians, of which only fragments survive, and the Isagoge, or “Introduction.” The Isagoge, which purports to give an elementary exposition of the concepts necessary to understand Aristotle’s Categories, was tr. into Latin by Boethius and routinely published in the Middle Ages with Latin editions of Aristotle’s Organon, or logical treatises. Its inclusion in that format arguably precipitated the discussion of the so-called problem of universals in the twelfth century. During his later years in Rome, Porphyry collected Plotinus’s writings, editing and organizing them into a scheme of his own  not Plotinus’s  design, six groups of nine treatises, thus called the Enneads. Porphyry prefaced his edition with an informative biography of Plotinus, written shortly before Porphyry’s own death. 

Port-Royal Logic, originally entitled “La logique, ou L’art de penser,” a treatise on logic, language, and method composed by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole 162595, possibly with the help of Pascal, all of whom were solitaires associated with the convent at Port-Royal-des-Champs, the spiritual and intellectual center of  Jansenism. Originally written as an instruction manual for the son of the Duc de Luynes, the Logic was soon expanded and published the first edition appeared in 1662, but it was constantly being modified, augmented, and rewritten by its authors; by 1685 six editions in  had appeared. The work develops the linguistic theories presented by Arnauld and Claude Lancelot in the Grammaire générale et raisonnée 1660, and reflects the pedagogical principles embodied in the curriculum of the “little schools” run by PortRoyal. Its content is also permeated by the Cartesianism to which Arnauld was devoted. The Logic’s influence grew beyond Jansenist circles, and it soon became in seventeenth-century France a standard manual for rigorous thinking. Eventually, it was adopted as a textbook in  schools. The authors declare their goal to be to make thought more precise for better distinguishing truth from error  philosophical and theological  and to develop sound judgment. They are especially concerned to dispel the errors and confusions of the Scholastics. Logic is “the art of directing reason to a knowledge of things for the instruction of ourselves and others.” This art consists in reflecting on the mind’s four principal operations: conceiving, judging, reasoning, and ordering. Accordingly, the Logic is divided into four sections: on ideas and conception, on judgments, on reasoning, and on method..

positive and negative freedom, respectively, the area within which the individual is self-determining and the area within which the individual is left free from interference by others. More specifically, one is free in the positive sense to the extent that one has control over one’s life, or rules oneself. In this sense the term is very close to that of ‘autonomy’. The forces that can prevent this self-determination are usually thought of as internal, as desires or passions. This conception of freedom can be said to have originated with Plato, according to whom a person is free when the parts of the soul are rightly related to each other, i.e. the rational part of the soul rules the other parts. Other advocates of positive freedom include Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel. One is free in the negative sense if one is not prevented from doing something by another person. One is prevented from doing something if another person makes it impossible for one to do something or uses coercion to prevent one from doing something. Hence persons are free in the negative sense if they are not made unfree in the negative sense. The term ‘negative liberty’ was coined by Bentham to mean the absence of coercion. Advocates of negative freedom include Hobbes, Locke, and Hume.  

possible worlds, alternative worlds in terms of which one may think of possibility. The idea of thinking about possibility in terms of such worlds has played an important part, both in Leibnizian philosophical theology and in the development of modal logic and philosophical reflection about it in recent decades. But there are important differences in the forms the idea has taken, and the uses to which it has been put, in the two contexts. Leibniz used it in his account of creation. In his view God’s mind necessarily and eternally contains the ideas of infinitely many worlds that God could have created, and God has chosen the best of these and made it actual, thus creating it. Similar views are found in the thought of Leibniz’s contemporary, Malebranche. The possible worlds are thus the complete alternatives among which God chose. They are possible at least in the sense that they are logically consistent; whether something more is required in order for them to be coherent as worlds is a difficult question in Leibniz interpretation. They are complete in that they are possible totalities of creatures; each includes a whole possible universe, in its whole spatial extent and its whole temporal history if it is spatially and temporally ordered. The temporal completeness deserves emphasis. If “the world of tomorrow” is “a better world” than “the world of today,” it will still be part of the same “possible world” the actual one; for the actual “world,” in the relevant sense, includes whatever actually has happened or will happen throughout all time. The completeness extends to every detail, so that a milligram’s difference in the weight of the smallest bird would make a different possible world. The completeness of possible worlds may be limited in one way, however. Leibniz speaks of worlds as aggregates of finite things. As alternatives for God’s creation, they may well not be thought of as including God, or at any rate, not every fact about God. For this and other reasons it is not clear that in Leibniz’s thought the possible can be identified with what is true in some possible world, or the necessary with what is true in all possible worlds. That identification is regularly assumed, however, in the recent development of what has become known as possible worlds semantics for modal logic the logic of possibility and necessity, and of other conceptions, e.g. those pertaining to time and to morality, that have turned out to be formally analogous. The basic idea here is that such notions as those of validity, soundness, and completeness can be defined for modal logic in terms of models constructed from sets of alternative “worlds.” Since the late 0s many important results have been obtained by this method, whose best-known exponent is Saul Kripke. Some of the most interesting proofs depend on the idea of a relation of accessibility between worlds in the set. Intuitively, one world is accessible from another if and only if the former is possible in or from the point of view of the latter. Different systems of modal logic are appropriate depending on the properties of this relation e.g., on whether it is or is not reflexive and/or transitive and/or symmetrical. The purely formal results of these methods are well established. The application of possible worlds semantics to conceptions occurring in metaphysically richer discourse is more controversial, however. Some of the controversy is related to debates over the metaphysical reality of various sorts of possibility and necessity. Particularly controversial, and also a focus of much interest, have been attempts to understand modal claims de re, about particular individuals as such e.g., that I could not have been a musical performance, in terms of the identity and nonidentity of individuals in different possible worlds. Similarly, there is debate over the applicability of a related treatment of subjunctive conditionals, developed by Robert Stalnaker and David Lewis, though it is clear that it yields interesting formal results. What is required, on this approach, for the truth of ‘If it were the case that A, then it would be the case that B’, is that, among those possible worlds in which A is true, some world in which B is true be more similar, in the relevant respects, to the actual world than any world in which B is false. One of the most controversial topics is the nature of possible worlds themselves. Mathematical logicians need not be concerned with this; a wide variety of sets of objects, real or fictitious, can be viewed as having the properties required of sets of “worlds” for their purposes. But if metaphysically robust issues of modality e.g., whether there are more possible colors than we ever see are to be understood in terms of possible worlds, the question of the nature of the worlds must be taken seriously. Some philosophers would deny any serious metaphysical role to the notion of possible worlds. At the other extreme, David Lewis has defended a view of possible worlds as concrete totalities, things of the same sort as the whole actual universe, made up of entities like planets, persons, and so forth. On his view, the actuality of the actual world consists only in its being this one, the one that we are in; apart from its relation to us or our linguistic acts, the actual is not metaphysically distinguished from the merely possible. Many philosophers find this result counterintuitive, and the infinity of concrete possible worlds an extravagant ontology; but Lewis argues that his view makes possible attractive reductions of modality both logical and causal, and of such notions as that of a proposition, to more concrete notions. Other philosophers are prepared to say there are non-actual possible worlds, but that they are entities of a quite different sort from the actual concrete universe  sets of propositions, perhaps, or some other type of “abstract” object. Leibniz himself held a view of this kind, thinking of possible worlds as having their being only in God’s mind, as intentional objects of God’s thought. 

post-modern – H. P. Grice plays with the ‘modernists,’ versus the ‘neo-traditionalists.’ Since he sees a neotraditionalist like Strawson (neotraditionalist, like neocon, is a joke) and a modernist like Whitehead as BOTH making the same mistake, it is fair to see Grice as a ‘post-modernist’ -- of or relating to a complex set of reactions to modern philosophy and its presuppositions, as opposed to the kind of agreement on substantive doctrines or philosophical questions that often characterizes a philosophical movement. Although there is little agreement on precisely what the presuppositions of modern philosophy are, and disagreement on which philosophers exemplify these presuppositions, postmodern philosophy typically opposes foundationalism, essentialism, and realism. For Rorty, e.g., the presuppositions to be set aside are foundationalist assumptions shared by the leading sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century philosophers. For Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida, the contested presuppositions to be set aside are as old as metaphysics itself, and are perhaps best exemplified by Plato. Postmodern philosophy has even been characterized, by Lyotard, as preceding modern philosophy, in the sense that the presuppositions of philosophical modernism emerge out of a disposition whose antecedent, unarticulated beliefs are already postmodern. Postmodern philosophy is therefore usefully regarded as a complex cluster concept that includes the following elements: an anti- or post- epistemological standpoint; anti-essentialism; anti-realism; anti-foundationalism; opposition to transcendental arguments and transcendental standpoints; rejection of the picture of knowledge as accurate representation; rejection of truth as correspondence to reality; rejection of the very idea of canonical descriptions; rejection of final vocabularies, i.e., rejection of principles, distinctions, and descriptions that are thought to be unconditionally binding for all times, persons, and places; and a suspicion of grand narratives, metanarratives of the sort perhaps best illustrated by dialectical materialism. In addition to these things postmodern philosophy is “against,” it also opposes characterizing this menu of oppositions as relativism, skepticism, or nihilism, and it rejects as “the metaphysics of presence” the traditional, putatively impossible dream of a complete, unique, and closed explanatory system, an explanatory system typically fueled by binary oppositions. On the positive side, one often finds the following themes: its critique of the notion of the neutrality and sovereignty of reason  including insistence on its pervasively gendered, historical, and ethnocentric character; its conception of the social construction of wordworld mappings; its tendency to embrace historicism; its critique of the ultimate status of a contrast between epistemology, on the one hand, and the sociology of knowledge, on the other hand; its dissolution of the notion of the autonomous, rational subject; its insistence on the artifactual status of divisions of labor in knowledge acquisition and production; and its ambivalence about the Enlightenment and its ideology. Many of these elements or elective affinities were already surfacing in the growing opposition to the spectator theory of knowledge, in Europe and in the English-speaking world, long before the term ‘postmodern’ became a commonplace. In Anglophone philosophy this took the early form of Dewey’s and pragmatism’s opposition to positivism, early Kuhn’s redescription of scientific practice, and Vitters’s insistence on the language-game character of representation; critiques of “the myth of the given” from Sellars to Davidson and Quine; the emergence of epistemology naturalized; and the putative description-dependent character of data, tethered to the theory dependence of descriptions in Kuhn, Sellars, Quine, and Arthur Fine  perhaps in all constructivists in the philosophy of science. In Europe, many of these elective affinities surfaced explicitly in and were identified with poststructuralism, although traces are clearly evident in Heidegger’s and later in Derrida’s attacks on Husserl’s residual Cartesianism; the rejection of essential descriptions Wesensanschauungen in Husserl’s sense; Saussure’s and structuralism’s attack on the autonomy and coherence of a transcendental signified standing over against a selftransparent subject; Derrida’s deconstructing the metaphysics of presence; Foucault’s redescriptions of epistemes; the convergence between - and English-speaking social constructivists; attacks on the language of enabling conditions as reflected in worries about the purchase of necessary and sufficient conditions talk on both sides of the Atlantic; and Lyotard’s many interventions, particularly those against grand narratives. Many of these elective affinities that characterize postmodern philosophy can also be seen in the virtually universal challenges to moral philosophy as it has been understood traditionally in the West, not only in G. and  philosophy, but in the reevaluation of “the morality of principles” in the work of MacIntyre, Williams, Nussbaum, John McDowell, and others. The force of postmodern critiques can perhaps best be seen in some of the challenges of feminist theory, as in the work of Judith Butler and Hélène Cixous, and gender theory generally. For it is in gender theory that the conception of “reason” itself as it has functioned in the shared philosophical tradition is redescribed as a conception that, it is often argued, is engendered, patriarchal, homophobic, and deeply optional. The term ‘postmodern’ is less clear in philosophy, its application more uncertain and divided than in some other fields, e.g., postmodern architecture. In architecture the concept is relatively clear. It displaces modernism in assignable ways, emerges as an oppositional force against architectural modernism, a rejection of the work and tradition inaugurated by Walter Gropius, Henri Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe, especially the International Style. In postmodern architecture, the modernist principle of abstraction, of geometric purity and simplicity, is displaced by multivocity and pluralism, by renewed interest in buildings as signs and signifiers, interest in their referential potential and resources. The modernist’s aspiration to buildings that are timeless in an important sense is itself read by postmodernists as an iconography that privileges the brave new world of science and technology, an aspiration that glorifies uncritically the industrial revolution of which it is itself a quintessential expression. This aspiration to timelessness is displaced in postmodern architecture by a direct and self-conscious openness to and engagement with history. It is this relative specificity of the concept postmodern architecture that enabled Charles Jencks to write that “Modern Architecture died in St. Louis Missouri on July 15, 2 at 3:32 P.M.” Unfortunately, no remotely similar sentence can be written about postmodern philosophy. 

Potentia -- dunamis, also dynamis Grecian, ‘power’, ‘capacity’, as used by pre-Socratics such as Anaximander and Anaxagoras, one of the elementary character-powers, such as the hot or the cold, from which they believed the world was constructed. Plato’s early theory of Forms borrowed from the concept of character-powers as causes present in things; courage, e.g., is treated in the Laches as a power in the soul. Aristotle also used the word in this sense to explain the origins of the elements. In the Metaphysics especially Book IX, Aristotle used dunamis in a different sense to mean ‘potentiality’ in contrast to ‘actuality’ energeia or entelecheia. In the earlier sense of dunamis, matter is treated as potentiality, in that it has the potential to receive form and so be actualized as a concrete substance. In the later Aristotelian sense of dunamis, dormant abilities are treated as potentialities, and dunamis is to energeia as sleeping is to waking, or having sight to seeing.  Potentia -- dynamic logic, a branch of logic in which, in addition to the usual category of formulas interpretable as propositions, there is a category of expressions interpretable as actions. Dynamic logic originally called the modal logic of programs emerged in the late 0s as one step in a long tradition within theoretical computer science aimed at providing a way to formalize the analysis of programs and their action. A particular concern here was program verification: what can be said of the effect of a program if started at a certain point? To this end operators [a] and ‹a were introduced with the following intuitive readings: [a]A to mean ‘after every terminating computation according to a it is the case that A’ and ‹aA to mean ‘after some terminating computation according to a it is the case that A’. The logic of these operators may be seen as a generalization of ordinary modal logic: where modal logic has one box operator A and one diamond operator B, dynamic logic has one box operator [a] and one diamond operator ‹a for every program expression a in the language. In possible worlds semantics for modal logic a model is a triple U, R, V where U is a universe of points, R a binary relation, and V a valuation assigning to each atomic formula a subset of U. In dynamic logic, a model is a triple U, R, V where U and V are as before but R is a family of binary relations Ra, one for every program expression a in the language. Writing ‘Xx A’, where x is a point in U, for ‘A is true at x’ in the model in question, we have the following characteristic truth conditions truth-functional compounds are evaluated by truth tables, as in modal logic: Xx P if and only if x is a point in VP, where P is an atomic formula, Xx[a]A if and only if, for all y, if x is Ra- related to y then Xy A, Xx ‹a if and only if, for some y, x is Ra-related to y and Xy A. Traditionally, dynamic logic will contain machinery for rendering the three regular operators on programs: ‘!’ sum, ‘;’ composition, and ‘*’ Kleene’s star operation, as well as the test operator ‘?’, which, operating on a proposition, will yield a program. The action a ! b consists in carrying out a or carrying out b; the action a;b in first carrying out a, then carrying out b; the action a* in carrying out a some finite number of times not excluding 0; the action ?A in verifying that A. Only standard models reflect these intuitions: Ra ! b % Ra 4 Rb, Ra;b % Ra _ Rb, Ra* % Ra*, R?A % {x,x : Xx A} where ‘*’ is the ancestral star The smallest propositional dynamic logic PDL is the set of formulas true at every point in every standard model. Note that dynamic logic analyzes non-deterministic action  this is evident at the level of atomic programs p where Rp is a relation, not necessarily a function, and also in the definitions of Ra + b and Ra*. Dynamic logic has been extended in various ways, e.g., to first- and second-order predicate logic. Furthermore, just as deontic logic, tense logic, etc., are referred to as modal logic in the wide sense, so extensions of dynamic logic in the narrow sense such as process logic are often loosely referred to as dynamic logic in the wide sense. Dyad dynamic logic 250   250 The philosophical interest in dynamic logic rests with the expectation that it will prove a fruitful instrument for analyzing the concept of action in general: a successful analysis would be valuable in itself and would also be relevant to other disciplines such as deontic logic and the logic of imperatives. 

potency, for Aristotle, a kind of capacity that is a correlative of action. We require no instruction to grasp the difference between ‘X can do Y’ and ‘X is doing Y’, the latter meaning that the deed is actually being done. That an agent has a potency to do something is not a pure prediction so much as a generalization from past performance of individual or kind. Aristotle uses the example of a builder, meaning someone able to build, and then confronts the Megaric objection that the builder can be called a builder only when he actually builds. Clearly one who is doing something can do it, but Aristotle insists that the napping carpenter has the potency to hammer and saw. A potency based on an acquired skill like carpentry derives from the potency shared by those who acquire and those who do not acquire the skill. An unskilled worker can be said to be a builder “in potency,” not in the sense that he has the skill and can employ it, but in the sense that he can acquire the skill. In both acquisition and employment, ‘potency’ refers to the actual  either the actual acquisition of the skill or its actual use. These post-structuralism potency 726    726 potentiality, first practical attitude 727 correlatives emerged from Aristotle’s analysis of change and becoming. That which, from not having the skill, comes to have it is said to be “in potency” to that skill. From not having a certain shape, wood comes to have a certain shape. In the shaped wood, a potency is actualized. Potency must not be identified with the unshaped, with what Aristotle calls privation. Privation is the negation of P in a subject capable of P. Parmenides’ identification of privation and potency, according to Aristotle, led him to deny change. How can not-P become P? It is the subject of not-P to which the change is attributed and which survives the change that is in potency to X. 

poverty of the stimulus, a psychological phenomenon exhibited when behavior is stimulusunbound, and hence the immediate stimulus characterized in straightforward physical terms does not completely control behavior. Human beings sort stimuli in various ways and hosts of influences seem to affect when, why, and how we respond  our background beliefs, facility with language, hypotheses about stimuli, etc. Suppose a person visiting a museum notices a painting she has never before seen. Pondering the unfamiliar painting, she says, “an ambitious visual synthesis of the music of Mahler and the poetry of Keats.” If stimulus painting controls response, then her utterance is a product of earlier responses to similar stimuli. Given poverty of the stimulus, no such control is exerted by the stimulus the painting. Of course, some influence of response must be conceded to the painting, for without it there would be no utterance. However, the utterance may well outstrip the visitor’s conditioning and learning history. Perhaps she had never before talked of painting in terms of music and poetry. The linguist Noam Chomsky made poverty of the stimulus central to his criticism of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior 7. Chomsky argued that there is no predicting, and certainly no critical stimulus control of, much human behavior.

power, a disposition; an ability or capacity to yield some outcome. One tradition which includes Locke distinguishes active and passive powers. A knife has the active power to slice an apple, which has the passive power to be sliced by the knife. The distinction seems largely grammatical, however. Powers act in concert: the power of a grain of salt to dissolve in water and the water’s power to dissolve the salt are reciprocal and their manifestations mutual. Powers or dispositions are sometimes thought to be relational properties of objects, properties possessed only in virtue of objects standing in appropriate relations to other objects. However, if we distinguish, as we must, between a power and its manifestation, and if we allow that an object could possess a power that it never manifested a grain of salt remains soluble even if it never dissolves, it would seem that an object could possess a power even if appropriate reciprocal partners for its manifestation were altogether non-existent. This appears to have been Locke’s view An Essay concerning Human Understanding, 1690 of “secondary qualities” colors, sounds, and the like, which he regarded as powers of objects to produce certain sorts of sensory experience in observers. Philosophers who take powers seriously disagree over whether powers are intrinsic, “built into” properties this view, defended by C. B. Martin, seems to have been Locke’s, or whether the connection between properties and the powers they bestow is contingent, dependent perhaps upon contingent laws of nature a position endorsed by Armstrong. Is the solubility of salt a characteristic built into the salt, or is it a “second-order” property possessed by the salt in virtue of i the salt’s possession of some “firstorder” property and ii the laws of nature? Reductive analyses of powers, though influential, have not fared well. Suppose a grain of salt is soluble in water. Does this mean that if the salt were placed in water, it would dissolve? No. Imagine that were the salt placed in water, a technician would intervene, imposing an electromagnetic field, thereby preventing the salt from dissolving. Attempts to exclude “blocking” conditions  by appending “other things equal” clauses perhaps  face charges of circularity: in nailing down what other things must be equal we find ourselves appealing to powers. Powers evidently are fundamental features of our world. 

practical reason, the capacity for argument or demonstrative inference, considered in its application to the task of prescribing or selecting behavior. Some philosophical concerns in this area pertain to the actual thought processes by which plans of action are formulated and carried out in practical situations. A second major issue is what role, if any, practical reason plays in determining norms of conduct. Here there are two fundamental positions. Instrumentalism is typified by Hume’s claim that reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions. According to instrumentalism, reason by itself is incapable of influencing action directly. It may do so indirectly, by disclosing facts that arouse motivational impulses. And it fulfills an indispensable function in discerning meansend relations by which our objectives may be attained. But none of those objectives is set by reason. All are set by the passions  the desiderative and aversive impulses aroused in us by what our cognitive faculties apprehend. It does not follow from this alone that ethical motivation reduces to mere desire and aversion, based on the pleasure and pain different courses of action might afford. There might yet be a specifically ethical passion, or it might be that independently based moral injunctions have in themselves a special capacity to provoke ordinary desire and aversion. Nevertheless, instrumentalism is often associated with the view that pleasure and pain, happiness and unhappiness, are the sole objects of value and disvalue, and hence the only possible motivators of conduct. Hence, it is claimed, moral injunctions must be grounded in these motives, and practical reason is of interest only as subordinated to inclination. The alternative to instrumentalism is the view championed by Kant, that practical reason is an autonomous source of normative principles, capable of motivating behavior independently of ordinary desire and aversion. On this view it is the passions that lack intrinsic moral import, and the function of practical reason is to limit their motivational role by formulating normative principles binding for all rational agents and founded in the operation of practical reason itself. Theories of this kind usually view moral principles as grounded in consistency, and an impartial respect for the autonomy of all rational agents. To be morally acceptable, principles of conduct must be universalizable, so that all rational agents could behave in the same way without their conduct either destroying itself or being inconsistently motivated. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these views. Instrumentalism offers a simpler account of both the function of practical reason and the sources of human motivation. But it introduces a strong subjective element by giving primacy to desire, thereby posing a problem of how moral principles can be universally binding. The Kantian approach offers more promise here, since it makes universalizability essential to any type of behavior being moral. But it is more complex, and the claim that the deliverances of practical reason carry intrinsic motivational force is open to challenge. 

practical reasoning, the inferential process by which considerations for or against envisioned courses of action are brought to bear on the formation and execution of intention. The content of a piece of practical reasoning is a practical argument. Practical arguments can be complex, but they are often summarized in syllogistic form. Important issues concerning practical reasoning include how it relates to theoretical reasoning, whether it is a causal process, and how it can be evaluated. Theories of practical reasoning tend to divide into two basic categories. On one sort of view, the intrinsic features of practical reasoning exhibit little or no difference from those of theoretical reasoning. What makes practical reasoning practical is its subject matter and motivation. Hence the following could be a bona fide practical syllogism: Exercise would be good for me. Jogging is exercise. Therefore, jogging would be good for me. This argument has practical subject matter, and if made with a view toward intention formation it would be practical in motivation also. But it consists entirely of propositions, which are appropriate contents for belief-states. In principle, therefore, an agent could accept its conclusion without intending or even desiring to jog. Intention formation requires a further step. But if the content of an intention cannot be a proposition, that step could not count in itself as practical reasoning unless such reasoning can employ the contents of strictly practical mental states. Hence many philosophers call for practical syllogisms such as: Would that I exercise. Jogging is exercise. Therefore, I shall go jogging. Here the first premise is optative and understood to represent the content of a desire, and the conclusion is the content of a decision or act of intention formation. These contents are not true or false, and so are not propositions. Theories that restrict the contents of practical reasoning to propositions have the advantage that they allow such reasoning to be evaluated in terms of familiar logical principles. Those that permit the inclusion of optative content entail a need for more complex modes of evaluation. However, they bring more of the process of intention formation under the aegis of reason; also, they can be extended to cover the execution of intentions, in terms of syllogisms that terminate in volition. Both accounts must deal with cases of self-deception, in which the considerations an agent cites to justify a decision are not those from which it sprang, and cases of akrasia, where the agent views one course of action as superior, yet carries out another. Because mental content is always abstract, it cannot in itself be a nomic cause of behavior. But the states and events to which it belongs  desires, beliefs, etc.  can count as causes, and are so treated in deterministic explanations of action. Opponents of determinism reject this step, and seek to explain action solely through the teleological or justifying force carried by mental content. Practical syllogisms often summarize very complex thought processes, in which multiple options are considered, each with its own positive and negative aspects. Some philosophers hold that when successfully concluded, this process issues in a judgment of what action would be best all things considered  i.e., in light of all relevant considerations. Practical reasoning can be evaluated in numerous ways. Some concern the reasoning process itself: whether it is timely and duly considers the relevant alternatives, as well as whether it is well structured logically. Other concerns have to do with the products of practical reasoning. Decisions may be deemed irrational if they result in incompatible intentions, or conflict with the agent’s beliefs regarding what is possible. They may also be criticized if they conflict with the agent’s best interests. Finally, an agent’s intentions can fail to accord with standards of morality. The relationship among these ways of evaluating intentions is important to the foundations of ethics. 

practition, Castaneda’s term for the characteristic content of practical thinking. Each practition represents an action as something to be done, say, as intended, commanded, recommended, etc., and not as an accomplishment or prediction. Thus, unlike propositions, practitions are not truth-valued, but they can be components of valid arguments and so possess values akin to truth; e.g., the command ‘James, extinguish your cigar!’ seems legitimate given that James is smoking a cigar in a crowded bus. Acknowledging practitions is directly relevant to many other fields. 

praedicamenta singular: praedicamentum, in medieval philosophy, the ten Aristotelian categories: substance, quantity, quality, relation, where, when, position i.e., orientation  e.g., “upright”, having, action, and passivity. These were the ten most general of all genera. All of them except substance were regarded as accidental. It was disputed whether this tenfold classification was intended as a linguistic division among categorematic terms or as an ontological division among extralinguistic realities. Some authors held that the division was primarily linguistic, and that extralinguistic realities were divided according to some but not all the praedicamenta. Most authors held that everything in any way real belonged to one praedicamentum or another, although some made an exception for God. But authors who believed in complexe significabile usually regarded them as not belonging to any praedicamentum. 

pragmatic contradiction, a contradiction that is generated by pragmatic rather than logical implication. A logically implies B if it is impossible for B to be false if A is true, whereas A pragmatically implies B if in most but not necessarily all contexts, saying ‘A’ can reasonably be taken as indicating that B is true. Thus, if I say, “It’s raining,” what I say does not logically imply that I believe that it is raining, since it is possible for it to be raining without my believing it is. Nor does my saying that it is raining logically imply that I believe that it is, since it is possible for me to say this without believing it. But my saying this does pragmatically imply that I believe that it is raining, since normally my saying this can reasonably be taken to indicate that I believe it. Accordingly, if I were to say, “It’s raining but I don’t believe that it’s raining,” the result would be a pragmatic contradiction. The first part “It’s raining” does not logically imply the negation of the second part “I don’t believe that it’s raining” but my saying the first part does pragmatically imply the negation of the second part. 

pragmatism, a philosophy that stresses the relation of theory to praxis and takes the continuity of experience and nature as revealed through the outcome of directed action as the starting point for reflection. Experience is the ongoing transaction of organism and environment, i.e., both subject and object are constituted in the process. When intelligently ordered, initial conditions are deliberately transformed according to ends-inview, i.e., intentionally, into a subsequent state of affairs thought to be more desirable. Knowledge is therefore guided by interests or values. Since the reality of objects cannot be known prior to experience, truth claims can be justified only as the fulfillment of conditions that are experimentally determined, i.e., the outcome of inquiry. As a philosophic movement, pragmatism was first formulated by Peirce in the early 1870s in the Metaphysical Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts; it was announced as a distinctive position in James’s 8 address to the Philosophical Union at the  of California at Berkeley, and further elaborated according to the Chicago School, especially by Dewey, Mead, and Jane Addams 18605. Emphasis on the reciprocity of theory and praxis, knowledge and action, facts and values, follows from its postDarwinian understanding of human experience, including cognition, as a developmental, historically contingent, process. C. I. Lewis’s pragmatic a priori and Quine’s rejection of the analytic synthetic distinction develop these insights further. Knowledge is instrumental  a tool for organizing experience satisfactorily. Concepts are habits of belief or rules of action. Truth cannot be determined solely by epistemological criteria because the adequacy of these criteria cannot be determined apart from the goals sought and values instantiated. Values, which arise in historically specific cultural situations, are intelligently appropriated only to the extent that they satisfactorily resolve problems and are judged worth retaining. According to pragmatic theories of truth, truths are beliefs that are confirmed in the course of experience and are therefore fallible, subject to further revision. True beliefs for Peirce represent real objects as successively confirmed until they converge on a final determination; for James, leadings that are worthwhile; and according to Dewey’s theory of inquiry, the transformation of an indeterminate situation into a determinate one that leads to warranted assertions. Pragmatic ethics is naturalistic, pluralistic, developmental, and experimental. It reflects on the motivations influencing ethical systems, examines the individual developmental process wherein an individual’s values are gradually distinguished from those of society, situates moral judgments within problematic situations irreducibly individual and social, and proposes as ultimate criteria for decision making the value for life as growth, determined by all those affected by the actual or projected outcomes. The original interdisciplinary development of pragmatism continues in its influence on the humanities. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., member of the Metaphysical Club, later justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, developed a pragmatic theory of law. Peirce’s Principle of Pragmatism, by which meaning resides in conceivable practical effects, and his triadic theory of signs developed into the field of semiotics. James’s Principles of Psychology 0 not only established experimental psychology in North America, but shifted philosophical attention away from abstract analyses of rationality to the continuity of the biological and the mental. The reflex arc theory was reconstructed into an interactive loop of perception, feeling, thinking, and behavior, and joined with the selective interest of consciousness to become the basis of radical empiricism. Mead’s theory of the emergence of self and mind in social acts and Dewey’s analyses of the individual and society influenced the human sciences. Dewey’s theory of education as community-oriented, based on the psychological developmental stages of growth, and directed toward full participation in a democratic society, was the philosophical basis of progressive education. 

praxis from Grecian prasso, ‘doing’, ‘acting’, in Aristotle, the sphere of thought and action that comprises the ethical and political life of man, contrasted with the theoretical designs of logic and epistemology theoria. It was thus that ‘praxis’ acquired its general definition of ‘practice’ through a contrastive comparison with ‘theory’. Throughout the history of Western philosophy the concept of praxis found a place in a variety of philosophical vocabularies. Marx and the neoMarxists linked the concept with a production paradigm in the interests of historical explanation. Within such a scheme of things the activities constituting the relations of production and exchange are seen as the dominant features of the socioeconomic history of humankind. Significations of ‘praxis’ are also discernible in the root meaning of pragma deed, affair, which informed the development of  pragmatism. In more recent times the notion of praxis has played a prominent role in the formation of the school of critical theory, in which the performatives of praxis are seen to be more directly associated with the entwined phenomena of discourse, communication, and social practices. The central philosophical issues addressed in the current literature on praxis have to do with the theorypractice relationship and the problems associated with a value-free science. The general thrust is that of undermining or subverting the traditional bifurcation of theory and practice via a recognition of praxis-oriented endeavors that antedate both theory construction and the construal of practice as a mere application of theory. Both the project of “pure theory,” which makes claims for a value-neutral standpoint, and the purely instrumentalist understanding of practice, as itself shorn of discernment and insight, are jettisoned. The consequent philosophical task becomes that of understanding human thought and action against the backdrop of the everyday communicative endeavors, habits, and skills, and social practices that make up our inheritance in the world. 

Praxis school, a school of philosophy originating in Zagreb and Belgrade which, from 4 to 4, published the international edition of the leading postwar Marxist journal Praxis. During the same period, it organized the Korcula Summer School, which attracted scholars from around the Western world. In a reduced form the school continues each spring with the Social Philosophy Course in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The founders of praxis philosophy include Gajo Petrovic Zagreb, Milan Kangrga Zagreb, and Mihailo Markovic Belgrade. Another wellknown member of the group is Svetozar Stojanovic Belgrade, and a second-generation leader is Gvozden Flego Zagreb. The Praxis school emphasized the writings of the young Marx while subjecting dogmatic Marxism to one of its strongest criticisms. Distinguishing between Marx’s and Engels’s writings and emphasizing alienation and a dynamic concept of the human being, it contributed to a greater understanding of the interrelationship between the individual and society. Through its insistence on Marx’s call for a “ruthless critique,” the school stressed open inquiry and freedom of speech in both East and West. Quite possibly the most important and original philosopher of the group, and certainly Croatia’s leading twentieth-century philosopher, was Gajo Petrovic 793. He called for 1 understanding philosophy as a radical critique of all existing things, and 2 understanding human beings as beings of praxis and creativity. This later led to a view of human beings as revolutionary by nature. At present he is probably best remembered for his Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century and Philosophie und Revolution. Milan Kangrga b.3 also emphasizes human creativity while insisting that one should understand human beings as producers who humanize nature. An ethical problematic of humanity can pragmatism, ethical Praxis school 731    731 be realized through a variety of disciplines that include aesthetics, philosophical anthropolgy, theory of knowledge, ontology, and social thought. Mihailo Markovic b.3, a member of the Belgrade Eight, is best known for his theory of meaning, which leads him to a theory of socialist humanism. His most widely read work in the West is From Affluence to Praxis: Philosophy and Social Criticism. 

Pre-analytic, considered but naive; commonsensical; not tainted by prior explicit theorizing; said of judgments and, derivatively, of beliefs or intuitions underlying such judgments. Preanalytic judgments are often used to test philosophical theses. All things considered, we prefer theories that accord with preanalytic judgments to those that do not, although most theorists exhibit a willingness to revise preanalytic assessments in light of subsequent inquiry. Thus, a preanalytic judgment might be thought to constitute a starting point for the philosophical consideration of a given topic. Is justice giving every man his due? It may seem so, preanalytically. Attention to concrete examples, however, may lead us to a different view. It is doubtful, even in such cases, that we altogether abandon preanalytic judgments. Rather, we endeavor to reconcile apparently competing judgments, making adjustments in a way that optimizes overall coherence. 

principle of economy of rational effort -- cheapest-cost avoider, in the economic analysis of law, the party in a dispute that could have prevented the dispute, or minimized the losses arising from it, with the lowest loss to itself. The term encompasses several types of behavior. As the lowest-cost accident avoider, it is the party that could have prevented the accident at the lowest cost. As the lowest-cost insurer, it is the party that could been have insured against the losses arising from the dispute. This could be the party that could have purchased insurance at the lowest cost or self-insured, or the party best able to appraise the expected losses and the probability of the occurrence. As the lowest-cost briber, it is the party least subject to transaction costs. This party is the one best able to correct any legal errors in the assignment of the entitlement by purchasing the entitlement from the other party. As the lowest-cost information gatherer, it is the party best able to make an informed judgment as to the likely benefits and costs of an action.  Principle of economy of rational effort: Coase theorem, a non-formal insight by R. Coase: 1: assuming that there are no transaction costs involved in exchanging rights for money, then no matter how rights are initially distributed, rational agents will buy and sell them so as to maximize individual returns. In jurisprudence this proposition has been the basis for a claim about how rights should be distributed even when as is usual transaction costs are high: the law should confer rights on those who would purchase them were they for sale on markets without transaction costs; e.g., the right to an indivisible, unsharable resource should be conferred on the agent willing to pay the highest price for it. 

principium. Grice. Principle of conversational helpfulness. “I call it ‘principle,’ echoing Boethius.”Mention should also he made of Boethius’ conception, that there are certain principles, sentences which have no demonstration — probatio — which he calls principales propositiones or probationis principia. Here is the fragment from his Commentary on Topics treating of principles; El iliac quidem (propositiones) quarum nulla probatio est, maximae ac principales vocantur, quod his illas necesse est approbari, quae ut demonstrari valeant, non recusant/ est auteni maxima proposiiio ut liaec « si de aequalibus aequalia demas, quae derelinquitur aequalia sunt », ita enim hoc per se notion est, ut aliud notius quo approbari valeat esse non possit; quae proposi- tiones cum (idem sui natura propria gerant, non solum alieno ad (idem non egent argumento, oerum ceteris quoque probationis sclent esse principium; igitur per se notae propositiones, quibus nihil est notius, indemonstrabiles ac maxime et principales vocantur (“Indeed those sentences that have no demonstration are called maximum or principal [sentences], because they are not rejected since they are necessary to those that have to be demonstrated and which are valid for making a demonstration ; but a maximum sentence such as « if from equal [quantifies], equal [quantities] are taken, what is left are equal [quantities]*, is self- evident, and there is nothing which can be better known self-evidently valid, and self- demonstrating, therefore they are sentences containing their certitude in their very nature and not only do they need no additional argument to demonstrate their certitude, but are also the principles of demonstration of the other [sentences]; so they are, self-evident sen- tences, nothing being better known than they are, and are called undemonstrable or maxi- mum and principal”). Boethius’ idea coincides with Aristotle’s; deduction must start from somewhere, we must begin with something unproved. The Stagirite, how- ever, gave an explanation of the existence of principles and the possibility of their being grasjied by the active intellect, whereas with Boethius princi- ples appear as severed from the sentences demonstrated in a more formal manner: there are two kinds of sentences: some which are demonstrable and others which need no demonstration

praedicabile: As in qualia being the plural of quale and universalia being the plural of universale, predicabilia is Boethius’s plural for the ‘predicabile’ -- something Grice knew by heart from giving seminars at Oxfrod on Aristotle’s categories with Austin and Strawson. He found the topic boring enough to give the seminar ALONE!

prædicatum: vide Is there a praedicatum in Blackburn’s one-off predicament. He draws a skull and communicates that there is danger. The drawsing of the skull is not syntactically structured. So it is difficult to isolate the ‘praedicatum.’ That’s why Grice leaves matters of the praedicatum’ to reductive analyses at a second stage of his programme, where one wants to apply, metabolically, ‘communicate’ to what an emissum does. The emissum of the form, The S is P, predicates P of S.  Vide subjectification, and subjectum. Of especial interest to Grice and Strawson. Lewis and Short have “praedīco,” which they render as “to say or mention before or beforehand, to premise.” Grice as a modista is interested in parts of speech: nomen (onoma) versus verbum (rhema) being the classical, since Plato. The mediaeval modistae like Alcuin adapted Aristotle, and Grice follows suit. Of particular relevance are the ‘syncategoremata,’ since Grice was obsessed with particles, and we cannot say that ‘and’ is a predicate! This relates to the ‘categorema.’ Liddell and Scott have “κατηγόρ-ημα,” which they render as “accusation, charge,” Gorg.Pal.22; but in philosophy, as “predicate,” as per Arist.Int.20b32, Metaph.1053b19, etc.; -- “οὐκ εὔοδον τὸ ἁπλοῖν ἐστι κ.” Epicur.Fr.18. – and as “head of predicables,” in Arist.Metaph.1028a33,Ph.201a1,  Zeno Stoic.1.25, etc.; περὶ κατηγορημάτων Sphaer.ib.140. The term syncategorema comes from a passage of Priscian in his Institutiones grammatice II , 15. “coniunctae plenam faciunt orationem, alias autem partes, κατηγορήματα, hoc est consignificantia, appellabant.” A distinction is made between two types of word classes ("partes orationis," singular, "pars orationis") distinguished by philosophers since Plato, viz. nouns (nomen, onoma) and verbs (verbum, rhema) on the one hand, and a  'syncategorema or consignificantium. A consignificantium, just as the unary functor "non," and any of the three dyadic functors, "et," "vel" (or "aut") and "si," does not have a definitive meaning on its own -- cf. praepositio, cited by Grice, -- "the meaning of 'to,' the meaning of 'of,'" -- rather, they acquire meaning in combination or when con-joined to one or more categorema. It is one thing to say that we employ a certain part of speech when certain conditions are fulfilled and quite another to claim that the role in the language of that part of speech is to say, even in an extended sense, that those conditions are fulfilled. In Logic, the verb 'kategoreo' is 'predicate of a person or thing,' “τί τινος” Arist.Cat.3a19,al., Epicur.Fr.250; κυρίως, καταχρηστικῶς κ., Phld.Po.5.15; “ἐναντίως ὑπὲρ τῶν αὐτῶν” Id.Oec.p.60 J.: —more freq. in Pass., to be predicated of . . , τινος Arist.Cat.2a21, APr. 26b9, al.; “κατά τινος” Id.Cat.2a37; “κατὰ παντὸς ἢ μηδενός” Id.APr.24a15: less freq. “ἐπί τινος” Id.Metaph.998b16, 999a15; so later “ἐφ᾽ ἑνὸς οἴονται θεοῦ ἑκάτερον τῶν ὀνομάτων -εῖσθαι” D.H.2.48; “περί τινος” Arist. Top.140b37; “τὸ κοινῇ -ούμενον ἐπὶ πᾶσιν” Id.SE179a8: abs., τὸ κατηγορούμενον the predicate, opp. τὸ ὑποκείμενον (the subject), Id.Cat.1b11, cf.Metaph.1043a6, al.; κατηγορεῖν καὶ -εῖσθαι to be subject and predicate, Id.APr.47b1. BANC.

prejudices: the life and opinions of H. P. Grice, by H. P. Grice! PGRICE had been in the works for a while. Knowing this, Grice is able to start his auto-biography, or memoir, to which he later adds a specific reply to this or that objection by the editors. The reply is divided in neat sections. After a preamble displaying his gratitude for the volume in his honour, Grice turns to his prejudices and predilections; which become, the life and opinions of H. P. Grice. The third section is a reply to the editorss overview of his work. This reply itself is itself subdivided into questions of meaning and rationality, and questions of Met. , philosophical psychology, and value. As the latter is repr. in “Conception” it is possible to cite this sub-section from the Reply as a separate piece. Grice originally entitles his essay in a brilliant manner, echoing the style of an English non-conformist, almost: Prejudices and predilections; which become, the life and opinions of H. P. Grice. With his Richards, a nice Welsh surNames, Grice is punning on the first Names of both Grandy and Warner. Grice is especially concerned with what Richards see as an ontological commitment on Grices part to the abstract, yet poorly individuated entity of a proposition. Grice also deals with the alleged insufficiency in his conceptual analysis of reasoning. He brings for good measure a point about a potential regressus ad infinitum in his account of a chain of intentions involved in meaning that p and communicating that p. Even if one of the drafts is titled festschrift, not by himself, this is not strictly a festschrift in that Grices Names is hidden behind the acronym: PGRICE. Notably on the philosophy of perception. Also in “Conception,” especially that tricky third lecture on a metaphysical foundation for objective value. Grice is supposed to reply to the individual contributors, who include Strawson, but does not. I cancelled the implicaturum! However, we may identify in his oeuvre points of contacts of his own views with the philosophers who contributed, notably Strawson. Most of this material is reproduced verbatim, indeed, as the second part of his Reply to Richards, and it is a philosophical memoir of which Grice is rightly proud. The life and opinions are, almost in a joke on Witters, distinctly separated. Under Life, Grice convers his conservative, irreverent rationalism making his early initial appearance at Harborne under the influence of his non-conformist father, and fermented at his tutorials with Hardie at Corpus, and his associations with Austins play group on Saturday mornings, and some of whose members he lists alphabetically: Austin, Gardiner, Grice, Hampshire, Hare, Hart, Nowell-Smith, Paul, Pears, Strawson, Thomson, Urmson, and Warnock.  Also, his joint philosophising with Austin, Pears, Strawson, Thomson, and Warnock. Under Opinions, Grice expands mainly on ordinary-language philosophy and his Bunyanesque way to the City of Eternal Truth. Met. , Philosophical Psychology, and Value, in “Conception,” is thus part of his Prejudices and predilections. The philosophers Grice quotes are many and varied, such as Bosanquet and Kneale, and from the other place, Keynes. Grice spends some delightful time criticising the critics of ordinary-language philosophy such as Bergmann (who needs an English futilitarian?) and Gellner. He also quotes from Jespersen, who was "not a philosopher but wrote a philosophy of grammar!" And Grice includes a reminiscence of the bombshells brought from Vienna by the enfant terrible of Oxford philosophy Freddie Ayer, after being sent to the Continent by Ryle. He recalls an air marshal at a dinner with Strawson at Magdalen relishing on Cook Wilsons adage, What we know we know. And more besides! After reminiscing for Clarendon, Grice will go on to reminisce for Harvard University Press in the closing section of the Retrospective epilogue. Refs.: The main source is “Reply to Richards,” and references to Oxonianism, and linguistic botanising, BANC.

prelatum -- anaphora: a device of reference or cross-reference in which a term called an anaphor, typically a pronoun, has its semantic properties determined by a term or noun phrase called the anaphor’s antecedent that occurs earlier. Sometimes the antecedent is a proper name or other independently referring expression, as in ‘Jill went up the hill and then she came down again’. In such cases, the anaphor refers to the same object as its antecedent. In other cases, the anaphor seems to function as a variable bound by an antecedent quantifier, as in ‘If any miner bought a donkey, he is penniless’. But anaphora is puzzling because not every example falls neatly into one of these two groups. Thus, in ‘John owns some sheep and Harry vaccinates them’ an example due to Gareth Evans the anaphor is arguably not bound by its antecedent ‘some sheep’. And in ‘Every miner who owns a donkey beats it’ a famous type of case discovered by Geach, the anaphor is arguably neither bound by ‘a donkey’ nor a uniquely referring expression.

predicables, also praedicabilia, sometimes called the quinque voces five words, in medieval philosophy, genus, species, difference, proprium, and accident, the five main ways general predicates can be predicated. The list comes from Porphyry’s Isagoge. It was debated whether it applies to linguistic predicates only or also to extralinguistic universals. Things that have accidents can exist without them; other predicables belong necessarily to whatever has them. The Aristotelian/Porphyrian notion of “inseparable accident” blurs this picture. Genus and species are natural kinds; other predicables are not. A natural kind that is not a narrowest natural kind is a genus; one that is not a broadest natural kind is a species. Some genera are also species. A proprium is not a species, but is coextensive with one. A difference belongs necessarily to whatever has it, but is neither a natural kind nor coextensive with one. 

Pre-existence, existence of the individual soul or psyche prior to its current embodiment, when the soul or psyche is taken to be separable and capable of existing independently from its embodiment. The current embodiment is then often described as a reincarnation of the soul. Plato’s Socrates refers to such a doctrine several times in the dialogues, notably in the myth of Er in Book X of the Republic. The doctrine is distinguished from two other teachings about the soul: creationism, which holds that the individual human soul is directly created by God, and traducianism, which held that just as body begets body in biological generation, so the soul of the new human being is begotten by the parental soul. In Hinduism, the cycle of reincarnations represents the period of estrangement and trial for the soul or Atman before it achieves release moksha.

prescriptivism, the theory that evaluative judgments necessarily have prescriptive meaning. Associated with noncognitivism and moral antirealism, prescriptivism holds that moral language is such that, if you say that you think one ought to do a certain kind of act, and yet you are not committed to doing that kind of act in the relevant circumstances, then you either spoke insincerely or are using the word ‘ought’ in a less than full-blooded sense. Prescriptivism owes its stature to Hare. One of his innovations is the distinction between “secondarily evaluative” and “primarily evaluative” words. The prescriptive meaning of secondarily evaluative words, such as ‘soft-hearted’ or ‘chaste’, may vary significantly while their descriptive meanings stay relatively constant. Hare argues the reverse for the primarily evaluative words ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘right’, ‘wrong’, ‘ought’, and ‘must’. For example, some people assign to ‘wrong’ the descriptive meaning ‘forbidden by God’, others assign it the descriptive meaning ‘causes social conflict’, and others give it different descriptive meanings; but since all use ‘wrong’ with the same prescriptive meaning, they are using the same concept. In part to show how moral judgments can be prescriptive and yet have the same logical relations as indicative sentences, Hare distinguished between phrastics and neustics. The phrastic, or content, can be the same in indicative and prescriptive sentences; e.g., ‘Sam’s leaving’ is the phrastic not only of the indicative ‘Sam will leave’ but also of the prescription ‘Sam ought to leave’. Hare’s Language of Morals 2 specified that the neustic indicates mood, i.e., whether the sentence is indicative, imperative, interrogative, etc. However, in an article in Mind 9 and in Sorting Out Ethics 7, he used ‘neustic’ to refer to the sign of subscription, and ‘tropic’ to refer to the sign of mood. Prescriptivity is especially important if moral judgments are universalizable. For then we can employ golden rulestyle moral reasoning. 

pre-Socratics: cf. pre-Griceians. the early Grecian philosophers who were not influenced by Socrates. Generally they lived before Socrates, but some are contemporary with him or even younger. The classification though not the term goes back to Aristotle, who saw Socrates’ humanism and emphasis on ethical issues as a watershed in the history of philosophy. Aristotle rightly noted that philosophers prior to Socrates had stressed natural philosophy and cosmology rather than ethics. He credited them with discovering material principles and moving causes of natural events, but he criticized them for failing to stress structural elements of things formal causes and values or purposes final causes. Unfortunately, no writing of any pre-Socratic survives in more than a fragmentary form, and evidence of their views is thus often indirect, based on reports or criticisms of later writers. In order to reconstruct pre-Socratic thought, scholars have sought to collect testimonies of ancient sources and to identify quotations from the preSocratics in those sources. As modern research has revealed flaws in the interpretations of ancient witnesses, it has become a principle of exegesis to base reconstructions of their views on the actual words of the pre-Socratics themselves wherever possible. Because of the fragmentary and derivative nature of our evidence, even basic principles of a philosopher’s system sometimes remain controversial; nevertheless, we can say that thanks to modern methods of historiography, there are many points we understand better than ancient witnesses who are our secondary sources. Our best ancient secondary source is Aristotle, who lived soon after the pre-Socratics and had access to most of their writings. He interprets his predecessors from the standpoint of his own theory; but any historian must interpret philosophers in light of some theoretical background. Since we have extensive writings of Aristotle, we  understand his system and can filter out his own prejudices. His colleague Theophrastus was the first professional historian of philosophy. Adopting Aristotle’s general framework, he systematically discussed pre-Socratic theories. Unfortunately his work itself is lost, but many fragments and summaries of parts of it remain. Indeed, virtually all ancient witnesses writing after Theophrastus depend on him for their general understanding of the early philosophers, sometimes by way of digests of his work. When biography became an important genre in later antiquity, biographers collected facts, anecdotes, slanders, chronologies often based on crude a priori assumptions, lists of book titles, and successions of school directors, which provide potentially valuable information. By reconstructing ancient theories, we can trace the broad outlines of pre-Socratic development with some confidence. The first philosophers were the Milesians, philosophers of Miletus on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, who in the sixth century B.C. broke away from mythological modes of explanation by accounting for all phenomena, even apparent prodigies of nature, by means of simple physical hypotheses. Aristotle saw the Milesians as material monists, positing a physical substrate  of water, or the apeiron, or air; but their material source was probably not a continuing substance that underlies all changes as Aristotle thought, but rather an original stuff that was transformed into different stuffs. Pythagoras migrated from Ionia to southern Italy, founding a school of Pythagoreans who believed that souls transmigrated and that number was the basis of all reality. Because Pythagoras and his early followers did not publish anything, it is difficult to trace their development and influence in detail. Back in Ionia, Heraclitus criticized Milesian principles because he saw that if substances changed into one another, the process of transformation was more important than the substances that appeared in the cycle of changes. He thus chose the unstable substance fire as his material principle and stressed the unity of opposites. Parmenides and the Eleatic School criticized the notion of notbeing that theories of physical transformations seemed to presuppose. One cannot even conceive of or talk of not-being; hence any conception that presupposes not-being must be ruled out. But the basic notions of coming-to-be, differentiation, and indeed change in general presuppose not-being, and thus must be rejected. Eleatic analysis leads to the further conclusion, implicit in Parmenides, explicit in Melissus, that there is only one substance, what-is. Since this substance does not come into being or change in any way, nor does it have any internal differentiations, the world is just a single changeless, homogeneous individual. Parmenides’ argument seems to undermine the foundations of natural philosophy. After Parmenides philosophers who wished to continue natural philosophy felt compelled to grant that coming-to-be and internal differentiation of a given substance were impossible. But in order to accommodate natural processes, they posited a plurality of unchanging, homogeneous elements  the four elements of Empedocles, the elemental stuffs of Anaxagoras, the atoms of Democritus  that by arrangement and rearrangement could produce the cosmos and the things in it. There is no real coming-to-be and perishing in the world since the ultimate substances are everlasting; but some limited kind of change such as chemical combination or mixture or locomotion could account for changing phenomena in the world of experience. Thus the “pluralists” incorporated Eleatic principles into their systems while rejecting the more radical implications of the Eleatic critique. Pre-Socratic philosophers developed more complex systems as a response to theoretical criticisms. They focused on cosmology and natural philosophy in general, championing reason and nature against mythological traditions. Yet the pre-Socratics have been criticized both for being too narrowly scientific in interest and for not being scientific experimental enough. While there is some justice in both criticisms, their interests showed breadth as well as narrowness, and they at least made significant conceptual progress in providing a framework for scientific and philosophical ideas. While they never developed sophisticated theories of ethics, logic, epistemology, or metaphysics, nor invented experimental methods of confirmation, they did introduce the concepts that ultimately became fundamental in modern theories of cosmic, biological, and cultural evolution, as well as in atomism, genetics, and social contract theory. Because the Socratic revolution turned philosophy in different directions, the pre-Socratic line died out. But the first philosophers supplied much inspiration for the sophisticated fourthcentury systems of Plato and Aristotle as well as the basic principles of the great Hellenistic schools, Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Skepticism. 

presupposition, 1 a relation between sentences or statements, related to but distinct from entailment and assertion; 2 what a speaker takes to be understood in making an assertion. The first notion is semantic, the second pragmatic. The semantic notion was introduced by Strawson in his attack on Russell’s theory of descriptions, and perhaps anticipated by Frege. Strawson argued that ‘The present king of France is bald’ does not entail ‘There is a present king of France’ as Russell held, but instead presupposes it. Semantic presupposition can be defined thus: a sentence or statement S presupposes a sentence or statement SH provided S entails SH and the negation of S also entails SH . SH is a condition of the truth or falsity of S. Thus, since ‘There is a present king of France’ is false, ‘The present king of France is bald’ is argued to be neither true nor false. So construed, presupposition is defined in terms of, but is distinct from, entailment. It is also distinct from assertion, since it is viewed as a precondition of the truth or falsity of what is asserted. The pragmatic conception does not appeal to truth conditions, but instead contrasts what a speaker presupposes and what that speaker asserts in making an utterance. Thus, someone who utters ‘The present king of France is bald’ presupposes  believes and believes that the audience believes  that there is a present king of France, and asserts that this king is bald. So conceived, presuppositions are beliefs that the speaker takes for granted; if these beliefs are false, the utterance will be inappropriate in some way, but it does not follow that the sentence uttered lacks a truth-value. These two notions of presupposition are logically independent. On the semantic characterization, presupposition is a relation between sentences or statements requiring that there be truth-value gaps. On the pragmatic characterization, it is speakers rather than sentences or statements that have presuppositions; no truth-value gaps are required. Many philosophers and linguists have argued for treating what have been taken to be cases of semantic presupposition, including the one discussed above, as pragmatic phenomena. Some have denied that semantic presuppositions exist. If not, intuitions about presupposition do not support the claims that natural languages have truth-value gaps and that we need a three-valued logic to represent the semantics of natural language adequately. Presupposition is also distinct from implicaturum. If someone reports that he has just torn his coat and you say, “There’s a tailor shop around the corner,” you conversationally implicate that the shop is open. This is not a semantic presupposition because if it is false that the shop is open, there is no inclination to say that your assertion was neither true nor false. It is not a pragmatic presupposition because it is not something you believe the hearer believes.

pretheoretical, independent of theory. More specifically, a proposition is pretheoretical, according to some philosophers, if and only if it does not depend for its plausibility or implausibility on theoretical considerations or considerations of theoretical analysis. The term ‘preanalytic’ is often used synonymously with ‘pretheoretical’, but the former is more properly paired with analysis rather than with theory. Some philosophers characterize pretheoretical propositions as “intuitively” plausible or implausible. Such propositions, they hold, can regulate philosophical theorizing as follows: in general, an adequate philosophical theory should not conflict with intuitively plausible propositions by implying intuitively implausible propositions, and should imply intuitively plausible propositions. Some philosophers grant that theoretical considerations can override “intuitions”  in the sense of intuitively plausible propositions  when overall theoretical coherence or reflective equilibrium is thereby enhanced. 

prescriptum: prescriptivism. According to Grice’s prescriptive meta-ethics, by uttering ‘p,’ the emissor may intend his recipient to entertain a desiderative state of content ‘p.’ In which case, the emissor is ‘prescribing’ a course of conduct. As opposed to the ‘descriptum,’ which just depicts a ‘state’ of affairs that the emissor wants to inform his recipient about.  Surely there are for Grice at least two different modes, the buletic, which tends towards the prescriptive, and the doxastic, which is mostly ‘descriptive.’ One has to be careful because Grice thinks that what a philosopher like Strawson does with ‘descriptive’ expression (like ‘true,’ ‘know’ and ‘good’) and talk of pseudo-descriptive. What is that gives the buletic a ‘prescritive’ or deontic ring to it? This is Kant’s question. Grice kept a copy of Foots on morality as a system of hypothetical imperatives. “So Somervillian Oxonian it hurts!”. Grice took virtue ethics more seriously than the early Hare. Hare will end up a virtue ethicist, since he changed from a meta-ethicist to a moralist embracing a hedonistic version of eudaemonist utilitarianism. Grice was more Aristotelianly conservative! Unlike Hares and Grices meta-ethical sensitivities (as members of the Oxonian school of ordinary-language philosophy), Foot suggests a different approach to ethics. Grice admired Foots ability to make the right conceptual distinction. Foot is following a very Oxonian tradition best represented by the work of Warnock. Of course, Grice was over-familiar with the virtue vs. vice distinction, since Hardie had instilled it on him at Corpus! For Grice, virtue and vice (and the mesotes), display an interesting logical grammar, though. Grice would say that rationality is a virtue; fallacious reasoning is a vice. Some things Grice takes more of a moral standpoint about. To cheat is neither irrational nor unreasonble: just plain repulsive.  As such, it would be a vice ‒ mind not getting caught in its grip! Grice is concerned with vice in his account of akrasia or incontinentia. If agent A KNOWS that doing x is virtuous, yet decides to do ~x, which is vicious, A is being akratic. For Grice, akratic behaviour applies both in the buletic or boulomaic realm and in the doxastic realm. And it is part of the philosopher’s job to elucidate the conceptual intricacies attached to it. 1. prima-facie (p⊃!q) V probably (p⊃q). 2. prima-facie ((A and B) ⊃!p) V probably ( (A and B) ⊃p). 3. prima-facie ((A and B and C) ⊃!p) V probably ( (A and B and C,) ⊃p). 4. prima-facie ((all things before P V!p) V probably ((all things before P) ⊃ p). 5. prima-facie ((all things are considered ⊃ !p) V probably (all things are considered, ⊃ p). 6. !q V .q 7. Acc. Reasoning P wills that !q V Acc. Reasoning P that judges q. Refs.: The main sources under ‘meta-ethics,’ above, BANC.

Price, Richard 172391, Welsh Dissenting minister, actuary, and moral philosopher. His main work, A Review of the Principal Question in Morals 1758, is a defense of rationalism in ethics. He argued that the understanding immediately perceives simple, objective, moral qualities of actions. The resulting intuitive knowledge of moral truths is accompanied by feelings of approval and disapproval responsible for moral motivation. He also wrote influential papers on life expectancy, public finance, and annuities; communicated to the Royal Society the paper by his deceased friend Thomas Bayes containing Bayes’s theorem; and defended the  and  revolutions. Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France is a response to one of Price’s sermons.

Prichard: h. a. – H. P. Grice called himself a neo-Prichardian, but then “I used to be a neo-Stoutian before that!” -- English philosopher and founder of the Oxford school of intuitionism. An Oxford fellow and professor, he published Kant’s Theory of Knowledge 9 and numerous essays, collected in Moral Obligation 9, 8 and in Knowledge and Perception 0. Prichard was a realist in his theory of knowledge, following Cook Wilson. He held that through direct perception in concrete cases we obtain knowledge of universals and of necessary connections between them, and he elaborated a theory about our knowledge of material objects. In “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” 2 he argued powerfully that it is wrong to think that a general theory of obligation is possible. No single principle captures the various reasons why obligatory acts are obligatory. Only by direct perception in particular cases can we see what we ought to do. With this essay Prichard founded the Oxford school of intuitionism, carried on by, among others, Ross.

Priestley, J.: British philosopher. In 1774 he prepared oxygen by heating mercuric oxide. Although he continued to favor the phlogiston hypothesis, his work did much to discredit that idea. He discovered many gases, including ammonia, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrochloric acid. While studying the layer of carbon dioxide over a brewing vat, he conceived the idea of dissolving it under pressure. The resulting “soda water” was famous throughout Europe. His Essay on Government 1768 influenced Jefferson’s ideas in the  Declaration of Independence. The essay also contributed to the utilitarianism of Bentham, supplying the phrase “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” Priestley modified the associationism of Locke, Hume, and Hartley, holding that a sharp distinction must be drawn between the results of association in forming natural propensities and its effects on the development of moral ideas. On the basis of this distinction, he argued, against Hume, that differences in individual moral sentiments are results of education, through the association of ideas, a view anticipated by Helvétius. Priestley served as minister to anti-Establishment congregations. His unpopular stress on individual freedom resulted in his move to Pennsylvania, where he spent his last years.

prime mover, the original source and cause of motion change in the universe  an idea that was developed by Aristotle and became important in Judaic, Christian, and Islamic thought about God. According to Aristotle, something that is in motion a process of change is moving from a state of potentiality to a state of actuality. For example, water that is being heated is potentially hot and in the process of becoming actually hot. If a cause of change must itself actually be in the state that it is bringing about, then nothing can produce motion in itself; whatever is in motion is being moved by another. For otherwise something would be both potentially and actually in the same state. Thus, the water that is potentially hot can become hot only by being changed by something else the fire that is actually hot. The prime mover, the original cause of motion, must itself, therefore, not be in motion; it is an unmoved mover. Aquinas and other theologians viewed God as the prime mover, the ultimate cause of all motion. Indeed, for these theologians the argument to establish the existence of a first mover, itself unmoved, was a principal argument used in their efforts to prove the existence of God on the basis of reason. Many modern thinkers question the argument for a first mover on the ground that it does not seem to be logically impossible that the motion of one thing be caused by a second thing whose motion in turn is caused by a third thing, and so on without end. Defenders of the argument claim that it presupposes a distinction between two different causal series, one temporal and one simultaneous, and argue that the objection succeeds only against a temporal causal series.

PRIMA PHILOSOPHIA -- first philosophy, in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the study of being qua being, including the study of theology as understood by him, since the divine is being par excellence. Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy was concerned chiefly with the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the nature of matter and of the mind.

Prince Maurice’s parrot: The ascription of ‘that’-clause in the report of a communicatum by a pirot of stage n-1 may be a problem by a priot in stage n. Do we want to say that the parrot communicates that he finds Prince Maurice an idiot? While some may not be correct that Griciean principles can be explained on practical, utilitarian grounds, Grice’s main motivation is indeed to capture the ‘rational’ capacity. Since I think I may be confident, that, whoever should see a creature of his own shape or make, though it had no more reason all its life than a cat or a parrot, would call him still a man; or whoever should hear a cat or a parrot discourse, reason, and philosophize, would call or think it nothing but a cat or a parrot; and say, the one was a dull irrational man, and the other a very intelligent rational parrot. A relation we have in an author of great note, is sufficient to countenance the supposition of a rational parrot. His words are: "I had a mind to know, from Prince Maurice's own mouth, the account of a common, but much credited story, that I had heard so often from many others, of an old parrot he had in Brazil, during his government there, that spoke, and asked, and answered common questions, like a reasonable creature: so that those of his train there generally concluded it to be witchery or possession; and one of his chaplains, who lived long afterwards in Holland, would never from that time endure a parrot, but said they all had a devil in them. I had heard many particulars of this story, and as severed by people hard to be discredited, which made me ask Prince Maurice what there was of it. He said, with his usual plainness and dryness in talk, there was something true, but a great deal false of what had been reported. I desired to know of him what there was of the first. He told me short and coldly, that he had heard of such an old parrot when he had been at Brazil; and though he believed nothing of it, and it was a good way off, yet he had so much curiosity as to send for it: that it was a very great and a very old one; and when it came first into the room where the prince was, with a great many Dutchmen about him, it said presently, What a company of white men are here! They asked it, what it thought that man was, pointing to the prince. It answered, Some General or other. When they brought it close to him, he asked it, D'ou venez-vous? It answered, De Marinnan. The Prince, A qui estes-vous? The Parrot, A un Portugais. The Prince, Que fais-tu la? Parrot, Je garde les poulles. The Prince laughed, and said, Vous gardez les poulles? The Parrot answered, Oui, moi; et je scai bien faire; and made the chuck four or five times that people use to make to chickens when they call them. I set down the words of this worthy dialogue in French, just as Prince Maurice said them to me. I asked him in what language the parrot spoke, and he said in Brazilian. I asked whether he understood Brazilian; he said No, but he had taken care to have two interpreters by him, the one a Dutchman that spoke Brazilian, and the other a Brazilian that spoke Dutch; that he asked them separately and privately, and both of them agreed in telling him just the same thing that the parrot had said. I could not but tell this odd story, because it is so much out of the way, and from the first hand, and what may pass for a good one; for I dare say this Prince at least believed himself in all he told me, having ever passed for a very honest and pious man: I leave it to naturalists to reason, and to other men to believe, as they please upon it; however, it is not, perhaps, amiss to relieve or enliven a busy scene sometimes with such digressions, whether to the purpose or no." I have taken care that the reader should have the story at large in the author's own words, because he seems to me not to have thought it incredible; for it cannot be imagined that so able a man as he, who had sufficiency enough to warrant all the testimonies he gives of himself, should take so much pains, in a place where it had nothing to do, to pin so close, not only on a man whom he mentions as his friend, but on a Prince in whom he acknowledges very great honesty and piety, a story which, if he himself thought incredible, he could not but also think ridiculous. The Prince, it is plain, who vouches this story, and our author, who relates it from him, both of them call this talker a parrot: and I ask any one else who thinks such a story fit to be told, whether, if this parrot, and all of its kind, had always talked, as we have a prince's word for it this one did,- whether, I say, they would not have passed for a race of rational animals; but yet, whether, for all that, they would have been allowed to be men, and not parrots? For I presume it is not the idea of a thinking or rational being alone that makes the idea of a man in most people's sense: but of a body, so and so shaped, joined to it: and if that be the idea of a man, the same successive body not shifted all at once, must, as well as the same immaterial spirit, go to the making of the same man.

principle of economy of rational effort: (principium oeconomiae effortis rationalis). Cf. his metaphor of the hamburger. Grice knew that ‘economy’ is vague. It relates to the ‘open house.’ But is a crucial concept. It is not the principle of parsimony of rational effort. It is not the principle of ‘minimisaation’ of rational effort. It is the principle of the ‘economy’ of rational effort. ‘Economy’ is already a value-oriented word, since it is a branch of politics and meta-ethics. oecŏnŏmĭcus , a, um, adj., = οἰκονομικός. I. Of or relating to domestic economy; subst.: oecŏnŏmĭcus , i, m., a work of Xenophon on domestic economy. in eo libro, qui Oeconomicus inscribitur, Cic. Off. 2, 24, 87; Gell. 15, 5, 8.— II. Of or belonging to a proper (oratorical) division or arrangement; orderly, methodical: “oeconomica totius causae dispositio,” Quint. 7, 10, 11. οἰκονομ-ικός , ή, όν, A.practised in the management of a household or family, opp. πολιτικός, Pl.Alc.1.133e, Phdr.248d, X.Oec.1.3, Arist.Pol.1252a8, etc. : Sup., [κτημάτων] τὸ βέλτιστον καὶ-ώτατον, of man, Phld.Oec.p.30 J. : hence, thrifty, frugal, economical, X.Mem.4.2.39, Phylarch.65 J. (Comp.) : ὁ οἰ. title of treatise on the duties of domestic life, by Xenophon ; and τὰ οἰ. title of treatise on public finance, ascribed to Aristotle, cf. X.Cyr.8.1.14 : ἡ -κή (sc. τέχνη) domestic economy, husbandry, Pl.Plt.259c, X.Mem. 3.4.11, etc. ; οἰ. ἀρχή defined as ἡ τέκνων ἀρχὴ καὶ γυναικὸς καὶ τῆς οἰκίας πάσης, Arist.Pol.1278b38 ; applied to patriarchal rule, ib.1285b32. Adv.“-κῶς” Ph.2.426, Plu.2.1126a ; also in literary sense, in a well ordered manner, Sch.Th.1.63. Grice’s conversational maximin. Blackburn draws a skull to communicate that there is danger. The skull complete with the rest of the body will not do. So abiding by this principle has nothing to do with an arbitrary convention. Vide principle of least conversational effort. Principle of conversational least effort. No undue effort (candour), no unnecessary trouble (self-love) if doing A involves too much conversational effort, never worry: you will be DEEMED to have made the effort. Invoked by Grice in “Prejudices and predilections; which become, the life and opinions of H. P. Grice.” When Grice qualifies this as ‘rational’ effort, what other efforts are there? Note that the lexeme ‘effort’ does NOT feature in the formulation of the principle itself. Grice confesses to be strongly inclined to assent to the principle of economy of rational conversational effort or the principle of economy of conversational effort, or the principle of economy of conversational expenditure, or the principle of minimisation of rational expenditure, or the principle of minimization of conversational expenditure, or the principle of minimisation of rational cost, or the conversational maximin. The principle of least cost. The principle of economy of rational expenditure states that, where there is a ratiocinative procedure for arriving rationally at certain outcome, a procedure which, because it is ratiocinative, involves an expenditure of time and energy, if there is a NON-ratiocinative, and so more economical procedure which is likely, for the most part, to reach the same outcome as the ratiocinative procedure, provided the stakes are not too high, it is rational to employ the cheaper though somewhat less reliable non-ratiocinative procedure as a substitute for ratiocination. Grice thinks this principle would meet with genitorial approval, in which case the genitor would install it for use should opportunity arise. This applies to the charge of overcomplexity and ‘psychological irreality’ of the reasoning involved in the production and design of the maximally efficient conversational move and the reasoning involved in the recognition of the implicaturum by the addressee. In “Epilogue” he goes by yet another motto, Do not multiply rationalities beyond necessity: The principle of conversational rationality, as he calls it in the Epilogue, is a sub-principle of a principle of rationality simpiciter, not applying to a pursuit related to ‘communication,’ as he puts it.

principium individuationis, the cause or basis of individuality in individuals; what makes something individual as opposed to universal, e.g., what makes the cat Minina individual and thus different from the universal, cat. Questions regarding the principle of individuation were first raised explicitly in the early Middle Ages. Classical authors largely ignored individuation; their ontological focus was on the problem of universals. The key texts that originated the discussion of the principle of individuation are found in Boethius. Between Boethius and 1150, individuation was always discussed in the context of more pressing issues, particularly the problem of universals. After 1150, individuation slowly emerged as a focus of attention, so that by the end of the thirteenth century it had become an independent subject of discussion, especially in Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Most early modern philosophers conceived the problem of individuation epistemically rather than metaphysically; they focused on the discernibility of individuals rather than the cause of individuation, as in Descartes. With few exceptions, such as Karl Popper, the twentieth century has followed this epistemic approach e. g. P. F. Strawson. 

principle of bivalence, the principle that any significant statement is either true or false. It is often confused with the principle of excluded middle. Letting ‘Tp’ stand for ‘p is true’ and ‘Tp’ for ‘p is false’ and otherwise using standard logical notation, bivalence is ‘Tp 7 T-p’ and excluded middle is ‘T p 7 -p’. That they are different principles is shown by the fact that in probability theory, where ‘Tp’ can be expressed as ‘Prp % 1’, bivalence ‘Pr p % 1 7 Pr ~p % 1’ is not true for all values of p  e.g. it is not true where ‘p’ stands for ‘given a fair toss of a fair die, the result will be a six’ a statement with a probability of 1 /6, where -p has a probability of 5 /6  but excluded middle ‘Prp 7 -p % 1’ is true for all definite values of p, including the probability case just given. If we allow that some significant statements have no truth-value or probability and distinguish external negation ‘Tp’ from internal negation ‘T-p’, we can distinguish bivalence and excluded middle from the principle of non-contradiction, namely, ‘-Tp • T-p’, which is equivalent to ‘-Tp 7 -T-p’. Standard truth-functional logic sees no difference between ‘p’ and ‘Tp’, or ‘-Tp’ and ‘T-p’, and thus is unable to distinguish the three principles. Some philosophers of logic deny there is such a difference.

principle of contradiction, also called principle of non-contradiction, the principle that a statement and its negation cannot both be true. It can be distinguished from the principle of bivalence, and given certain controversial assumptions, from the principle of excluded middle; but in truth-functional logic all three are regarded as equivalent. Outside of formal logic the principle of non-contradiction is best expressed as Aristotle expresses it: “Nothing can both be and not be at the same time in the same respect.” 

principle of double effect, the view that there is a morally relevant difference between those consequences of our actions we intend and those we do not intend but do still foresee. According to the principle, if increased literacy means a higher suicide rate, those who work for education are not guilty of driving people to kill themselves. A physician may give a patient painkillers foreseeing that they will shorten his life, even though the use of outright poisons is forbidden and the physician does not intend to shorten the patient’s life. An army attacking a legitimate military target may accept as inevitable, without intending to bring about, the deaths of a number of civilians. Traditional moral theologians affirmed the existence of exceptionless prohibitions such as that against taking an innocent human life, while using the principle of double effect to resolve hard cases and avoid moral blind alleys. They held that one may produce a forbidden effect, provided 1 one’s action also had a good effect, 2 one did not seek the bad effect as an end or as a means, 3 one did not produce the good effect through the bad effect, and 4 the good effect was important enough to outweigh the bad one. Some contemporary philosophers and Roman Catholic theologians hold that a modified version of the principle of double effect is the sole justification of deadly deeds, even when the person killed is not innocent. They drop any restriction on the causal sequence, so that e.g. it is legitimate to cut off the head of an unborn child to save the mother’s life. But they oppose capital punishment on the ground that those who inflict it require the death of the convict as part of their plan. They also play down the fourth requirement, on the ground that the weighing of incommensurable goods it requires is impossible. Consequentialists deny the principle of double effect, as do those for whom the crucial distinction is between what we cause by our actions and what just happens. In the most plausible view, the principle does not presuppose exceptionless moral prohibitions, only something stronger than prima facie duties. It is easier to justify an oblique evasion of a moral requirement than a direct violation, even if direct violations are sometimes permissible. So understood, the principle is a guide to prudence rather than a substitute for it. 

principle of excluded middle, the principle that the disjunction of any significant statement with its negation is always true; e.g., ‘Either there is a tree over 500 feet tall or it is not the case that there is such a tree’. The principle is often confused with the principle of bivalence.

principle of indifference, a rule for assigning a probability to an event based on “parity of reasons.” According to the principle, when the “weight of reasons” favoring one event is equal to the “weight of reasons” favoring another, the two events should be assigned the same probability. When there are n mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive events, and there is no reason to favor one over another, then we should be “indifferent” and the n events should each be assigned probability 1/n the events are equiprobable, according to the principle. This principle is usually associated with the names Bernoulli Ars Conjectandi, 1713 and Laplace Théorie analytique des probabilités, 1812, and was so called by J. M. Keynes A Treatise on Probability, 1. The principle gives probability both a subjective “degree of belief” and a logical “partial logical entailment” interpretation. One rationale for the principle says that in ignorance, when no reasons favor one event over another, we should assign equal probabilities. It has been countered that any assignment of probabilities at all is a claim to some knowledge. Also, several seemingly natural applications of the principle, involving non-linearly related variables, have led to some mathematical contradictions, known as Bertrand’s paradox, and pointed out by Keynes.