IMPLICATVRA, in 18 volumes -- vol. XIV

principle of insufficient reason, the principle that if there is no sufficient reason or explanation for something’s being the case, then it will not be the case. Since the rise of modern probability theory, many have identified the principle of insufficient reason with the principle of indifference a rule for assigning a probability to an event based on “parity of reasons”. The two principles are closely related, but it is illuminating historically and logically to view the principle of insufficient reason as the general principle stated above which is related to the principle of sufficient reason and to view the principle of indifference as a special case of the principle of insufficient reason applying to probabilities. As Mach noted, the principle of insufficient reason, thus conceived, was used by Archimedes to argue that a lever with equal weights at equal distances from a central fulcrum would not move, since if there is no sufficient reason why it should move one way or the other, it would not move one way or the other. Philosophers from Anaximander to Leibniz used the same principle to argue for various metaphysical theses. The principle of indifference can be seen to be a special case of this principle of insufficient reason applying to probabilities, if one reads the principle of indifference as follows: when there are N mutually exclusive and exhaustive events and there is no sufficient reason to believe that any one of them is more probable than any other, then no one of them is more probable than any other they are equiprobable. The idea of “parity of reasons” associated with the principle of indifference is, in such manner, related to the idea that there is no sufficient reason for favoring one outcome over another. This is significant because the principle of insufficient reason is logically equivalent to the more familiar principle of sufficient reason if something is [the case], then there is a sufficient reason for its being [the case]  which means that the principle of indifference is a logical consequence of the principle of sufficient reason. If this is so, we can understand why so many were inclined to believe the principle of indifference was an a priori truth about probabilities, since it was an application to probabilities of that most fundamental of all alleged a priori principles of reasoning, the principle of sufficient reason. Nor should it surprise us that the alleged a priori truth of the principle of indifference was as controversial in probability theory as was the alleged a priori truth of the principle of sufficient reason in philosophy generally. 

principle of plenitude, the principle that every genuine possibility is realized or actualized. This principle of the “fullness of being” was named by A. O. Lovejoy, who showed that it was commonly assumed throughout the history of Western science and philosophy, from Plato to Plotinus who associated it with inexhaustible divine productivity, through Augustine and other medieval philosophers, to the modern rationalists Spinoza and Leibniz and the Enlightenment. Lovejoy connected plenitude to the great chain of being, the idea that the universe is a hierarchy of beings in which every possible form is actualized. In the eighteenth century, the principle was “temporalized”: every possible form of creature would be realized  not necessarily at all times  but at some stage “in the fullness of time.” A clue about the significance of plenitude lies in its connection to the principle of sufficient reason everything has a sufficient reason [cause or explanation] for being or not being. Plenitude says that if there is no sufficient reason for something’s not being i.e., if it is genuinely possible, then it exists  which is logically equivalent to the negative version of sufficient reason: if something does not exist, then there is a sufficient reason for its not being.

principle of verifiability, a claim about what meaningfulness is: at its simplest, a sentence is meaningful provided there is a method for verifying it. Therefore, if a sentence has no such method, i.e., if it does not have associated with it a way of telling whether it is conclusively true or conclusively false, then it is meaningless. The purpose for which this verificationist principle was originally introduced was to demarcate sentences that are “apt to make a significant statement of fact” from “nonsensical” or “pseudo-” sentences. It is part of the emotive theory of content, e.g., that moral discourse is not literally, cognitively meaningful, and therefore, not factual. And, with the verifiability principle, the central European logical positivists of the 0s hoped to strip “metaphysical discourse” of its pretensions of factuality. For them, whether there is a reality external to the mind, as the realists claim, or whether all reality is made up of “ideas” or “appearances,” as idealists claim, is a “meaningless pseudo-problem.” The verifiability principle proved impossible to frame in a form that did not admit all metaphysical sentences as meaningful. Further, it casts doubt on its own status. How was it to be verified? So, e.g., in the first edition of Language, Truth and Logic, Ayer proposed that a sentence is verifiable, and consequently meaningful, if some observation sentence can be deduced from it in conjunction with certain other premises, without being deducible from those other premises alone. It follows that any metaphysical sentence M is meaningful since ‘if M, then O’ always is an appropriate premise, where O is an observation sentence. In the preface to the second edition, Ayer offered a more sophisticated account: M is directly verifiable provided it is an observation sentence or it entails, in conjunction with certain observation sentences, some observation sentence that does not follow from them alone. And M is indirectly verifiable provided it entails, in conjunction with certain other premises, some directly verifiable sentence that does not follow from those other premises alone and these additional premises are either analytic or directly verifiable or are independently indirectly verifiable. The new verifiability principle is then that all and only sentences directly or indirectly verifiable are “literally meaningful.” Unfortunately, Ayer’s emendation admits every nonanalytic sentence. Let M be any metaphysical sentence and O1 and O2 any pair of observation sentences logically independent of each other. Consider sentence A: ‘either O1 or not-M and not-O2’. Conjoined with O2, A entails O1. But O2 alone does not entail O1. So A is directly verifiable. Therefore, since M conjoined with A entails O1, which is not entailed by A alone, M is indirectly verifiable. Various repairs have been attempted; none has succeeded. 

prisoner’s dilemma, a problem in game theory, and more broadly the theory of rational choice, that takes its name from a familiar sort of pleabargaining situation: Two prisoners Robin and Carol are interrogated separately and offered the same deal: If one of them confesses “defects” and the other does not, the defector will be given immunity from prosecution and the other will get a stiff prison sentence. If both confess, both will get moderate prison terms. If both remain silent cooperate with each other, both will get light prison terms for a lesser offense. There are thus four possible outcomes: 1 Robin confesses and gets immunity, while Carol is silent and gets a stiff sentence. 2 Both are silent and get light sentences. 3 Both confess and get moderate sentences. 4 Robin is silent and gets a stiff sentence, while Carol confesses and gets immunity. Assume that for Robin, 1 would be the best outcome, followed by 2, 3, and 4, in that order. Assume that for Carol, the best outcome is 4, followed by 2, 3, and 1. Each prisoner then reasons as follows: “My confederate will either confess or remain silent. If she confesses, I must do likewise, in order to avoid the ‘sucker’s payoff’ immunity for her, a stiff sentence for me. If she remains silent, then I must confess in order to get immunity  the best outcome for me. Thus, no matter what my confederate does, I must confess.” Under those conditions, both will confess, effectively preventing each other from achieving anything better than the option they both rank as only third-best, even though they agree that option 2 is second-best. This illustrative story attributed to A. W. Tucker must not be allowed to obscure the fact that many sorts of social interactions have the same structure. In general, whenever any two parties must make simultaneous or independent choices over a range of options that has the ordinal payoff structure described in the plea bargaining story, they are in a prisoner’s dilemma. Diplomats, negotiators, buyers, and sellers regularly find themselves in such situations. They are called iterated prisoner’s dilemmas if the same parties repeatedly face the same choices with each other. Moreover, there are analogous problems of cooperation and conflict at the level of manyperson interactions: so-called n-person prisoner’s diemmas or free rider problems. The provision of public goods provides an example. Suppose there is a public good, such as clean air, national defense, or public radio, which we all want. Suppose that is can be provided only by collective action, at some cost to each of the contributors, but that we do not have to have a contribution from everyone in order to get it. Assume that we all prefer having the good to not having it, and that the best outcome for each of us would be to have it without cost to ourselves. So each of us reasons as follows: “Other people will either contribute enough to produce the good by themselves, or they will not. If they do, then I can have it cost-free the best option for me and thus I should not contribute. But if others do not contribute enough to produce the good by themselves, and if the probability is very low that my costly contribution would make the difference between success and failure, once again I should not contribute.” Obviously, if we all reason in this way, we will not get the public good we want. Such problems of collective action have been noticed by philosophers since Plato. Their current nomenclature, rigorous game-theoretic formulation, empirical study, and systematic philosophical development, however, has occurred since 0. 

private language argument, an argument designed to show that there cannot be a language that only one person can speak  a language that is essentially private, that no one else can in principle understand. In addition to its intrinsic interest, the private language argument is relevant to discussions of linguistic rules and linguistic meaning, behaviorism, solipsism, and phenomenalism. The argument is closely associated with Vitters’s Philosophical Investigations 8. The exact structure of the argument is controversial; this account should be regarded as a standard one, but not beyond dispute. The argument begins with the supposition that a person assigns signs to sensations, where these are taken to be private to the person who has them, and attempts to show that this supposition cannot be sustained because no standards for the correct or incorrect application of the same sign to a recurrence of the same sensation are possible. Thus Vitters supposes that he undertakes to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation; he associates it with the sign ‘S’, and marks ‘S’ on a calendar every day he has that sensation. Vitters finds the nature of the association of the sign and sensation obscure, on the ground that ‘S’ cannot be given an ordinary definition this would make its meaning publicly accessible or even an ostensive definition. He further argues that there is no difference between correct and incorrect entries of ‘S’ on subsequent days. The initial sensation with which the sign ‘S’ was associated is no longer present, and so it cannot be compared with a subsequent sensation taken to be of the same kind. He could at best claim to remember the nature of the initial sensation, and judge that it is of the same kind as today’s. But since the memory cannot confirm its own accuracy, there is no possible test of whether he remembers the initial association of sign and sensation right today. Consequently there is no criterion for the correct reapplication of the sign ‘S’. Thus we cannot make sense of the notion of correctly reapplying ‘S’, and cannot make sense of the notion of a private language. The argument described appears to question only the claim that one could have terms for private mental occurrences, and may not seem to impugn a broader notion of a private language whose expressions are not restricted to signs for sensations. Advocates of Vitters’s argument would generalize it and claim that the focus on sensations simply highlights the absence of a distinction between correct and incorrect reapplications of words. A language with terms for publicly accessible objects would, if private to its user, still be claimed to lack criteria for the correct reapplication of such terms. This broader notion of a private language would thus be argued to be equally incoherent. 

privation: H. P. Grice, “Negation and privation,” a lack of something that it is natural or good to possess. The term is closely associated with the idea that evil is itself only a lack of good, privatio boni. In traditional theistic religions everything other than God is created by God out of nothing, creation ex nihilo. Since, being perfect, God would create only what is good, the entire original creation and every creature from the most complex to the simplest are created entirely good. The original creation contains no evil whatever. What then is evil and how does it enter the world? The idea that evil is a privation of good does not mean, e.g., that a rock has some degree of evil because it lacks such good qualities as consciousness and courage. A thing has some degree of evil only if it lacks some good that is    741 privileged access privileged access 742 proper for that thing to possess. In the original creation each created thing possessed the goods proper to the sort of thing it was. According to Augustine, evil enters the world when creatures with free will abandon the good above themselves for some lower, inferior good. Human beings, e.g., become evil to the extent that they freely turn from the highest good God to their own private goods, becoming proud, selfish, and wicked, thus deserving the further evils of pain and punishment. One of the problems for this explanation of the origin of evil is to account for why an entirely good creature would use its freedom to turn from the highest good to a lesser good. 

privileged access: H. P. Grice, “Privileged access and incorrigibility,” special first-person awareness of the contents of one’s own mind. Since Descartes, many philosophers have held that persons are aware of the occurrent states of their own minds in a way distinct from both their mode of awareness of physical objects and their mode of awareness of the mental states of others. Cartesians view such apprehension as privileged in several ways. First, it is held to be immediate, both causally and epistemically. While knowledge of physical objects and their properties is acquired via spatially intermediate causes, knowledge of one’s own mental states involves no such causal chains. And while beliefs about physical properties are justified by appeal to ways objects appear in sense experience, beliefs about the properties of one’s own mental states are not justified by appeal to properties of a different sort. I justify my belief that the paper on which I write is white by pointing out that it appears white in apparently normal light. By contrast, my belief that white appears in my visual experience seems to be self-justifying. Second, Cartesians hold that first-person apprehension of occurrent mental contents is epistemically privileged in being absolutely certain. Absolute certainty includes infallibility, incorrigibility, and indubitability. That a judgment is infallible means that it cannot be mistaken; its being believed entails its being true even though judgments regarding occurrent mental contents are not necessary truths. That it is incorrigible means that it cannot be overridden or corrected by others or by the subject himself at a later time. That it is indubitable means that a subject can never have grounds for doubting it. Philosophers sometimes claim also that a subject is omniscient with regard to her own occurrent mental states: if a property appears within her experience, then she knows this. Subjects’ privileged access to the immediate contents of their own minds can be held to be necessary or contingent. Regarding corrigibility, for example, proponents of the stronger view hold that first-person reports of occurrent mental states could never be overridden by conflicting evidence, such as conflicting readings of brain states presumed to be correlated with the mental states in question. They point out that knowledge of such correlations would itself depend on first-person reports of mental states. If a reading of my brain indicates that I am in pain, and I sincerely claim not to be, then the law linking brain states of that type with pains must be mistaken. Proponents of the weaker view hold that, while persons are currently the best authorities as to the occurrent contents of their own minds, evidence such as conflicting readings of brain states could eventually override such authority, despite the dependence of the evidence on earlier firstperson reports. Weaker views on privileged access may also deny infallibility on more general grounds. In judging anything, including an occurrent mental state, to have a particular property P, it seems that I must remember which property P is, and memory appears to be always fallible. Even if such judgments are always fallible, however, they may be more immediately justified than other sorts of judgments. Hence there may still be privileged access, but of a weaker sort. In the twentieth century, Ryle attacked the idea of privileged access by analyzing introspection, awareness of what one is thinking or doing, in terms of behavioral dispositions, e.g. dispositions to give memory reports of one’s mental states when asked to do so. But while behaviorist or functional analyses of some states of mind may be plausible, for instance analyses of cognitive states such as beliefs, accounts in these terms of occurrent states such as sensations or images are far less plausible. A more influential attack on stronger versions of privileged access was mounted by Wilfrid Sellars. According to him, we must be trained to report non-inferentially on properties of our sense experience by first learning to respond with whole systems of concepts to public, physical objects. Before I can learn to report a red sense impression, I must learn the system of color concepts and the logical relations among them by learning to respond to colored objects. Hence, knowledge of my own mental states cannot be the firm basis from which I progress to other knowledge.  Even if this order of concept acquisition is determined necessarily, it still may be that persons’ access to their own mental states is privileged in some of the ways indicated, once the requisite concepts have been acquired. Beliefs about one’s own occurrent states of mind may still be more immediately justified than beliefs about physical properties, for example. 

pro attitude, a favorable disposition toward an object or state of affairs. Although some philosophers equate pro attitudes with desires, the expression is more often intended to cover a wide range of conative states of mind including wants, feelings, wishes, values, and principles. My regarding a certain course of action open to me as morally required and my regarding it as a source of selfish satisfaction equally qualify as pro attitudes toward the object of that action. It is widely held that intentional action, or, more generally, acting for reasons, is necessarily based, in part, on one or more pro attitudes. If I go to the store in order to buy some turnips, then, in addition to my regarding my store-going as conducive to turnip buying, I must have some pro attitude toward turnip buying. 

Probability -- doomsday argument, an argument examined by Grice -- an argument associated chiefly with the mathematician Brandon Carter and the philosopher John Leslie purporting to show, by appeal to Bayes’s theorem and Bayes’s rule, that whatever antecedent probability we may have assigned to the hypothesis that human life will end relatively soon is magnified, perhaps greatly, upon our learning or noticing that we are among the first few score thousands of millions of human beings to exist.Leslie’s The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction 6. The argument is based on an allegedly close analogy between the question of the probability of imminent human extinction given our ordinal location in the temporal swath of humanity and the fact that the reader’s name being among the first few drawn randomly from an urn may greatly enhance for the reader the probability that the urn contains fairly few names rather than very many.  probability, a numerical value that can attach to items of various kinds e.g., propositions, events, and kinds of events that is a measure of the degree to which they may or should be expected  or the degree to which they have “their own disposition,” i.e., independently of our psychological expectations  to be true, to occur, or to be exemplified depending on the kind of item the value attaches to. There are both multiple interpretations of probability and two main kinds of theories of probability: abstract formal calculi and interpretations of the calculi. An abstract formal calculus axiomatically characterizes formal properties of probability functions, where the arguments of the function are often thought of as sets, or as elements of a Boolean algebra. In application, the nature of the arguments of a probability function, as well as the meaning of probability, are given by interpretations of probability. The most famous axiomatization is Kolmogorov’s Foundations of the Theory of Probability, 3. The three axioms for probability functions Pr are: 1 PrX M 0 for all X; 2 PrX % 1 if X is necessary e.g., a tautology if a proposition, a necessary event if an event, and a “universal set” if a set; and 3 PrX 7 Y % PrX ! PrY where ‘7’ can mean, e.g., logical disjunction, or set-theoretical union if X and Y are mutually exclusive X & Y is a contradiction if they are propositions, they can’t both happen if they are events, and their set-theoretical intersection is empty if they are sets. Axiom 3 is called finite additivity, which is sometimes generalized to countable additivity, involving infinite disjunctions of propositions, or infinite unions of sets. Conditional probability, PrX/Y the probability of X “given” or “conditional on” Y, is defined as the quotient PrX & Y/PrY. An item X is said to be positively or negatively statistically or probabilistically correlated with an item Y according to whether PrX/Y is greater than or less than PrX/-Y where -Y is the negation of a proposition Y, or the non-occurrence of an event Y, or the set-theoretical complement of a set Y; in the case of equality, X is said to be statistically or probabilistically independent of Y. All three of these probabilistic relations are symmetric, and sometimes the term ‘probabilistic relevance’ is used instead of ‘correlation’. From the axioms, familiar theorems can be proved: e.g., 4 Pr-X % 1  PrX; 5 PrX 7 Y % PrX ! PrY  PrX & Y for all X and Y; and 6 a simple version of Bayes’s theorem PrX/Y % PrY/XPrX/PrY. Thus, an abstract formal calculus of probability allows for calculation of the probabilities of some items from the probabilities of others. The main interpretations of probability include the classical, relative frequency, propensity, logical, and subjective interpretations. According to the classical interpretation, the probability of an event, e.g. of heads on a coin toss, is equal to the ratio of the number of “equipossibilities” or equiprobable events favorable to the event in question to the total number of relevant equipossibilities. On the relative frequency interpretation, developed by Venn The Logic of Chance, 1866 and Reichenbach The Theory of Probability, probability attaches to sets of events within a “reference class.” Where W is the reference class, and n is the number of events in W, and m is the number of events in or of kind X, within W, then the probability of X, relative to W, is m/n. For various conceptual and technical reasons, this kind of “actual finite relative frequency” interpretation has been refined into various infinite and hypothetical infinite relative frequency accounts, where probability is defined in terms of limits of series of relative frequencies in finite nested populations of increasing sizes, sometimes involving hypothetical infinite extensions of an actual population. The reasons for these developments involve, e.g.: the artificial restriction, for finite populations, of probabilities to values of the form i/n, where n is the size of the reference class; the possibility of “mere coincidence” in the actual world, where these may not reflect the true physical dispositions involved in the relevant events; and the fact that probability is often thought to attach to possibilities involving single events, while probabilities on the relative frequency account attach to sets of events this is the “problem of the single case,” also called the “problem of the reference class”. These problems also have inspired “propensity” accounts of probability, according to which probability is a more or less primitive idea that measures the physical propensity or disposition of a given kind of physical situation to yield an outcome of a given type, or to yield a “long-run” relative frequency of an outcome of a given type. A theorem of probability proved by Jacob Bernoulli Ars Conjectandi, 1713 and sometimes called Bernoulli’s theorem or the weak law of large numbers, and also known as the first limit theorem, is important for appreciating the frequency interpretation. The theorem states, roughly, that in the long run, frequency settles down to probability. For example, suppose the probability of a certain coin’s landing heads on any given toss is 0.5, and let e be any number greater than 0. Then the theorem implies that as the number of tosses grows without bound, the probability approaches 1 that the frequency of heads will be within e of 0.5. More generally, let p be the probability of an outcome O on a trial of an experiment, and assume that this probability remains constant as the experiment is repeated. After n trials, there will be a frequency, f n, of trials yielding outcome O. The theorem says that for any numbers d and e greater than 0, there is an n such that the probability P that _pf n_ ‹ e is within d of 1 P  1d. Bernoulli also showed how to calculate such n for given values of d, e, and p. It is important to notice that the theorem concerns probabilities, and not certainty, for a long-run frequency. Notice also the assumption that the probability p of O remains constant as the experiment is repeated, so that the outcomes on trials are probabilistically independent of earlier outcomes. The kinds of interpretations of probability just described are sometimes called “objective” or “statistical” or “empirical” since the value of a probability, on these accounts, depends on what actually happens, or on what actual given physical situations are disposed to produce  as opposed to depending only on logical relations between the relevant events or propositions, or on what we should rationally expect to happen or what we should rationally believe. In contrast to these accounts, there are the “logical” and the “subjective” interpretations of probability. Carnap “The Two Concepts of Probability,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 5 has marked this kind of distinction by calling the second concept probability1 and the first probability2. According to the logical interpretation, associated with Carnap  Logical Foundations of Probability, 0; and Continuum of Inductive Methods, 2, the probability of a proposition X given a proposition Y is the “degree to which Y logically entails X.” Carnap developed an ingenious and elaborate set of systems of logical probability, including, e.g., separate systems depending on the degree to which one happens to be, logically and rationally, sensitive to new information in the reevaluation of probabilities. There is, of course, a connection between the ideas of logical probability, rationality, belief, and belief revision. It is natural to explicate the “logical-probabilistic” idea of the probability of X given Y as the degree to which a rational person would believe X having come to learn Y taking account of background knowledge. Here, the idea of belief suggests a subjective sometimes called epistemic or partial belief or degree of belief interpretation of probability; and the idea of probability revision suggests the concept of induction: both the logical and the subjective interpretations of probability have been called “inductive probability”  a formal apparatus to characterize rational learning from experience. The subjective interpretation of probability, according to which the probability of a proposition is a measure of one’s degree of belief in it, was developed by, e.g., Ramsey “Truth and Probability,” in his Foundations of Mathematics and Other Essays, 6; Definetti “Foresight: Its Logical Laws, Its Subjective Sources,” 7, translated by H. Kyburg, Jr., in H. E. Smokler, Studies in Subjective Probability, 4; and Savage The Foundations of Statistics, 4. Of course, subjective probability varies from person to person. Also, in order for this to be an interpretation of probability, so that the relevant axioms are satisfied, not all persons can count  only rational, or “coherent” persons should count. Some theorists have drawn a connection between rationality and probabilistic degrees of belief in terms of dispositions to set coherent betting odds those that do not allow a “Dutch book”  an arrangement that forces the agent to lose come what may, while others have described the connection in more general decision-theoretic terms. 

problem of induction. First stated by Hume, this problem concerns the logical basis of inferences from observed matters of fact to unobserved matters of fact. Although discussion often focuses upon predictions of future events e.g., a solar eclipse, the question applies also to inferences to past facts e.g., the extinction of dinosaurs and to present occurrences beyond the range of direct observation e.g., the motions of planets during daylight hours. Long before Hume the ancient Skeptics had recognized that such inferences cannot be made with certainty; they realized there can be no demonstrative deductive inference, say, from the past and present to the future. Hume, however, posed a more profound difficulty: Are we justified in placing any degree of confidence in the conclusions of such inferences? His question is whether there is any type of non-demonstrative or inductive inference in which we can be justified in placing any confidence at all. According to Hume, our inferences from the observed to the unobserved are based on regularities found in nature. We believe, e.g., that the earth, sun, and moon move in regular patterns according to Newtonian mechanics, and on that basis astronomers predict solar and lunar eclipses. Hume notes, however, that all of our evidence for such uniformities consists of past and present experience; in applying these uniformities to the future behavior of these bodies we are making an inference from the observed to the unobserved. This point holds in general. Whenever we make inferences from the observed to the unobserved we rely on the uniformity of nature. The basis for our belief that nature is reasonably uniform is our experience of such uniformity in the past. If we infer that nature will continue to be uniform in the future, we are making an inference from the observed to the unobserved  precisely the kind of inference for which we are seeking a justification. We are thus caught up in a circular argument. Since, as Hume emphasized, much of our reasoning from the observed to the unobserved is based on causal relations, he analyzed causality to ascertain whether it could furnish a necessary connection between distinct events that could serve as a basis for such inferences. His conclusion was negative. We cannot establish any such connection a priori, for it is impossible to deduce the nature of an effect from its cause  e.g., we cannot deduce from the appearance of falling snow that it will cause a sensation of cold rather than heat. Likewise, we cannot deduce the nature of a cause from its effect  e.g., looking at a diamond, we cannot deduce that it was produced by great heat and pressure. All such knowledge is based on past experience. If we infer that future snow will feel cold or that future diamonds will be produced by great heat and pressure, we are again making inferences from the observed to the unobserved. Furthermore, if we carefully observe cases in which we believe a causeeffect relation holds, we cannot perceive any necessary connection between cause and effect, or any power in the cause that brings about the effect. We observe only that an event of one type e.g., drinking water occurs prior to and contiguously with an event of another type quenching thirst. Moreover, we notice that events of the two types have exhibited a constant conjunction; i.e., whenever an event of the first type has occurred in the past it has been followed by one of the second type. We cannot discover any necessary connection or causal power a posteriori; we can only establish priority, contiguity, and constant conjunction up to the present. If we infer that this constant conjunction will persist in future cases, we are making another inference from observed to unobserved cases. To use causality as a basis for justifying inference from the observed to the unobserved would again invovle a circular argument. Hume concludes skeptically that there can be no rational or logical justification of inferences from the observed to the unobserved  i.e., inductive or non-demonstrative inference. Such inferences are based on custom and habit. Nature has endowed us with a proclivity to extrapolate from past cases to future cases of a similar kind. Having observed that events of one type have been regularly followed by events of another type, we experience, upon encountering a case of the first type, a psychological expectation that one of the second type will follow. Such an expectation does not constitute a rational justification. Although Hume posed his problem in terms of homely examples, the issues he raises go to the heart of even the most sophisticated empirical sciences, for all of them involve inference from observed phenomena to unobserved facts. Although complex theories are often employed, Hume’s problem still applies. Its force is by no means confined to induction by simple enumeration. Philosophers have responded to the problem of induction in many different ways. Kant invoked synthetic a priori principles. Many twentieth-century philosophers have treated it as a pseudo-problem, based on linguistic confusion, that requires dissolution rather than solution. Carnap maintained that inductive intuition is indispensable. Reichenbach offered a pragmatic vindication. Goodman has recommended replacing Hume’s “old riddle” with a new riddle of induction that he has posed. Popper, taking Hume’s skeptical arguments as conclusive, advocates deductivism. He argues that induction is unjustifiable and dispensable. None of the many suggestions is widely accepted as correct. 

problem of the criterion, a problem of epistemology, arising in the attempt both to formulate the criteria and to determine the extent of knowledge. Skeptical and non-skeptical philosophers disagree as to what, or how much, we know. Do we have knowledge of the external world, other minds, the past, and the future? Any answer depends on what the correct criteria of knowledge are. The problem is generated by the seeming plausibility of the following two propositions: 1 In order to recognize instances, and thus to determine the extent, of knowledge, we must know the criteria for it. 2 In order to know the criteria for knowledge i.e., to distinguish between correct and incorrect criteria, we must already be able to recognize its instances. According to an argument of ancient Grecian Skepticism, we can know neither the extent nor the criteria of knowledge because 1 and 2 are both true. There are, however, three further possibilities. First, it might be that 2 is true but 1 false: we can recognize instances of knowledge even if we do not know the criteria of knowledge. Second, it might be that 1 is true but 2 false: we can identify the criteria of knowledge without prior recognition of its instances. Finally, it might be that both 1 and 2 are false. We can know the extent of knowledge without knowing criteria, and vice versa. Chisholm, who has devoted particular attention to this problem, calls the first of these options particularism, and the second methodism. Hume, a skeptic about the extent of empirical knowledge, was a methodist. Reid and Moore were particularists; they rejected Hume’s skepticism on the ground that it turns obvious cases of knowledge into cases of ignorance. Chisholm advocates particularism because he believes that, unless one knows to begin with what ought to count as an instance of knowledge, any choice of a criterion is ungrounded and thus arbitrary. Methodists turn this argument around: they reject as dogmatic any identification of instances of knowledge not based on a criterion. 

problem of the speckled hen: a problem propounded by Ryle as an objection to Ayer’s analysis of perception in terms of sense-data. It is implied by this analysis that, if I see a speckled hen in a good light and so on, I do so by means of apprehending a speckled sense-datum. The analysis implies further that the sense-datum actually has just the number of speckles that I seem to see as I look at the hen, and that it is immediately evident to me just how many speckles this is. Thus, if I seem to see many speckles as I look at the hen, the sense-datum I apprehend must actually contain many speckles, and it must be immediately evident to me how many it does contain. Now suppose it seems to me that I see more than 100 speckles. Then the datum I am apprehending must contain more than 100 speckles. Perhaps it contains 132 of them. The analysis would then imply, absurdly, that it must be immediately evident to me that the number of speckles is exactly 132. One way to avoid this implication would be to deny that a sense-datum of mine could contain exactly 132 speckles  or any other large, determinate number of them  precisely on the ground that it could never seem to me that I was seeing exactly that many speckles. A possible drawback of this approach is that it involves committing oneself to the claim, which some philosophers have found problem of the criterion problem of the speckled hen 747    747 self-contradictory, that a sense-datum may contain many speckles even if there is no large number n such that it contains n speckles. 

prolatum – participle for ‘proferre,’ to utter. A much better choice than Austin’s pig-latin “utteratum”! Grice prefferd Latinate when going serious. While the verb is ‘profero – the participle corresponds to the ‘implicaturum’: what the emissor profers. profer (v.)c. 1300, "to utter, express," from Old French proferer (13c.) "utter, present verbally, pronounce," from Latin proferre "to bring forth, produce," figuratively "make known, publish, quote, utter." Sense confused with proffer. Related: Profered; profering.

process-product ambiguity, an ambiguity that occurs when a noun can refer either to a process or activity or to the product of that process or activity. E.g., ‘The definition was difficult’ could mean either that the activity of defining was a difficult one to perform, or that the definiens the form of words proposed as equivalent to the term being defined that the definer produced was difficult to understand. Again, ‘The writing absorbed her attention’ leaves it unclear whether it was the activity of writing or a product of that activity that she found engrossing. Philosophically significant terms that might be held to exhibit processproduct ambiguity include: ‘analysis’, ‘explanation’, ‘inference’, ‘thought’. P.Mac. process theology, any theology strongly influenced by the theistic metaphysics of Whitehead or Hartshorne; more generally, any theology that takes process or change as basic characteristics of all actual beings, including God. Those versions most influenced by Whitehead and Hartshorne share a core of convictions that constitute the most distinctive theses of process theology: God is constantly growing, though certain abstract features of God e.g., being loving remain constant; God is related to every other actual being and is affected by what happens to it; every actual being has some self-determination, and God’s power is reconceived as the power to lure attempt to persuade each actual being to be what God wishes it to be. These theses represent significant differences from ideas of God common in the tradition of Western theism, according to which God is unchanging, is not really related to creatures because God is not affected by what happens to them, and has the power to do whatever it is logically possible for God to do omnipotence. Process theologians also disagree with the idea that God knows the future in all its details, holding that God knows only those details of the future that are causally necessitated by past events. They claim these are only certain abstract features of a small class of events in the near future and of an even smaller class in the more distant future. Because of their understanding of divine power and their affirmation of creaturely self-determination, they claim that they provide a more adequate theodicy. Their critics claim that their idea of God’s power, if correct, would render God unworthy of worship; some also make this claim about their idea of God’s knowledge, preferring a more traditional idea of omniscience. Although Whitehead and Hartshorne were both philosophers rather than theologians, process theology has been more influential among theologians. It is a major current in contemporary  Protestant theology and has attracted the attention of some Roman Catholic theologians as well. It also has influenced some biblical scholars who are attempting to develop a distinctive process hermeneutics.

production theory, the economic theory dealing with the conversion of factors of production into consumer goods. In capitalistic theories that assume ideal markets, firms produce goods from three kinds of factors: capital, labor, and raw materials. Production is subject to the constraint that profit the difference between revenues and costs be maximized. The firm is thereby faced with the following decisions: how much to produce, what price to charge for the product, what proportions to combine the three kinds of factors in, and what price to pay for the factors. In markets close to perfect competition, the firm will have little control over prices so the decision problem tends to reduce to the amounts of factors to use. The range of feasible factor combinations depends on the technologies available to firms. Interesting complications arise if not all firms have access to the same technologies, or if not all firms make accurate responses concerning technological changes. Also, if the scale of production affects the feasible technologies, the firms’ decision process must be subtle. In each of these cases, imperfect competition will result. Marxian economists think that the concepts used in this kind of production theory have a normative component. In reality, a large firm’s capital tends to be owned by a rather small, privileged class of non-laborers and labor is treated as a commodity like any other factor. This might lead to the perception that profit results primarily from capital and, therefore, belongs to its owners. Marxians contend that labor is primarily responsible for profit and, consequently, that labor is entitled to more than the market wage. 

professional ethics, a term designating one or more of 1 the justified moral values that should govern the work of professionals; 2 the moral values that actually do guide groups of professionals, whether those values are identified as a principles in codes of ethics promulgated by professional societies or b actual beliefs and conduct of professionals; and 3 the study of professional ethics in the preceding senses, either i normative philosophical inquiries into the values desirable for professionals to embrace, or ii descriptive scientific studies of the actual beliefs and conduct of groups of professionals. Professional values include principles of obligation and rights, as well as virtues and personal moral ideals such as those manifested in the lives of Jane Addams, Albert Schweitzer, and Thurgood Marshall. Professions are defined by advanced expertise, social organizations, society-granted monopolies over services, and especially by shared commitments to promote a distinctive public good such as health medicine, justice law, or learning education. These shared commitments imply special duties to make services available, maintain confidentiality, secure informed consent for services, and be loyal to clients, employers, and others with whom one has fiduciary relationships. Both theoretical and practical issues surround these duties. The central theoretical issue is to understand how the justified moral values governing professionals are linked to wider values, such as human rights. Most practical dilemmas concern how to balance conflicting duties. For example, what should attorneys do when confidentiality requires keeping information secret that might save the life of an innocent third party? Other practical issues are problems of vagueness and uncertainty surrounding how to apply duties in particular contexts. For example, does respect for patients’ autonomy forbid, permit, or require a physician to assist a terminally ill patient desiring suicide? Equally important is how to resolve conflicts of interest in which self-seeking places moral values at risk. 

proof by recursion, also called proof by mathematical induction, a method for conclusively demonstrating the truth of universal propositions about the natural numbers. The system of natural numbers is construed as an infinite sequence of elements beginning with the number 1 and such that each subsequent element is the immediate successor of the preceding element. The immediate successor of a number is the sum of that number with 1. In order to apply this method to show that every number has a certain chosen property it is necessary to demonstrate two subsidiary propositions often called respectively the basis step and the inductive step. The basis step is that the number 1 has the chosen property; the inductive step is that the successor of any number having the chosen property is also a number having the chosen property in other words, for every number n, if n has the chosen property then the successor of n also has the chosen property. The inductive step is itself a universal proposition that may have been proved by recursion. The most commonly used example of a theorem proved by recursion is the remarkable fact, known before the time of Plato, that the sum of the first n odd numbers is the square of n. This proposition, mentioned prominently by Leibniz as requiring and having demonstrative proof, is expressed in universal form as follows: for every number n, the sum of the first n odd numbers is n2. 1 % 12, 1 ! 3 % 22, 1 ! 3 ! 5 % 32, and so on. Rigorous formulation of a proof by recursion often uses as a premise the proposition called, since the time of De Morgan, the principle of mathematical induction: every property belonging to 1 and belonging to the successor of every number to which it belongs is a property that belongs without exception to every number. Peano took the principle of mathematical induction as an axiom in his 9 axiomatization of arithmetic or the theory of natural numbers. The first acceptable formulation of this principle is attributed to Pascal. 

proof theory, a branch of mathematical logic founded by David Hilbert in the 0s to pursue Hilbert’s Program. The foundational problems underlying that program had been formulated around the turn of the century, e.g., in Hilbert’s famous address to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris 0. They were closely connected with investigations on the foundations of analysis carried out by Cantor and Dedekind; but they were also related to their conflict with Kronecker on the nature of mathematics and to the difficulties of a completely unrestricted notion of set or multiplicity. At that time, the central issue for Hilbert was the consistency of sets in Cantor’s sense. He suggested that the existence of consistent sets multiplicities, e.g., that of real numbers, could be secured by proving the consistency of a suitable, characterizing axiomatic system; but there were only the vaguest indications on how to do that. In a radical departure from standard practice and his earlier hints, Hilbert proposed four years later a novel way of attacking the consistency problem for theories in Über die Grundlagen der Logik und der Arithmetik 4. This approach would require, first, a strict formalization of logic together with mathematics, then consideration of the finite syntactic configurations constituting the joint formalism as mathematical objects, and showing by mathematical arguments that contradictory formulas cannot be derived. Though Hilbert lectured on issues concerning the foundations of mathematics during the subsequent years, the technical development and philosophical clarification of proof theory and its aims began only around 0. That involved, first of all, a detailed description of logical calculi and the careful development of parts of mathematics in suitable systems. A record of the former is found in Hilbert and Ackermann, Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik 8; and of the latter in Supplement IV of Hilbert and Bernays, Grundlagen der Mathematik II 9. This presupposes the clear distinction between metamathematics and mathematics introduced by Hilbert. For the purposes of the consistency program metamathematics was now taken to be a very weak part of arithmetic, so-called finitist mathematics, believed to correspond to the part of mathematics that was accepted by constructivists like Kronecker and Brouwer. Additional metamathematical issues concerned the completeness and decidability of theories. The crucial technical tool for the pursuit of the consistency problem was Hilbert’s e-calculus. The metamathematical problems attracted the collaboration of young and quite brilliant mathematicians with philosophical interests; among them were Paul Bernays, Wilhelm Ackermann, John von Neumann, Jacques Herbrand, Gerhard Gentzen, and Kurt Schütte. The results obtained in the 0s were disappointing when measured against the hopes and ambitions: Ackermann, von Neumann, and Herbrand established essentially the consistency of arithmetic with a very restricted principle of induction. That limits of finitist considerations for consistency proofs had been reached became clear in 1 through Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. Also, special cases of the decision problem for predicate logic Hilbert’s Entscheidungsproblem had been solved; its general solvability was made rather implausible by some of Gödel’s results in his 1 paper. The actual proof of unsolvability had to wait until 6 for a conceptual clarification of ‘mechanical procedure’ or ‘algorithm’; that was achieved through the work of Church and Turing. The further development of proof theory is roughly characterized by two complementary tendencies: 1 the extension of the metamathematical frame relative to which “constructive” consistency proofs can be obtained, and 2 the refined formalization of parts of mathematics in theories much weaker than set theory or even full second-order arithmetic. The former tendency started with the work of Gödel and Gentzen in 3 establishing the consistency of full classical arithmetic relative to intuitionistic arithmetic; it led in the 0s and 0s to consistency proofs of strong subsystems of secondorder arithmetic relative to intuitionistic theories of constructive ordinals. The latter tendency reaches back to Weyl’s book Das Kontinuum 8 and culminated in the 0s by showing that the classical results of mathematical analysis can be formally obtained in conservative extensions of first-order arithmetic. For the metamathematical work Gentzen’s introduction of sequent calculi and the use of transfinite induction along constructive ordinals turned out to be very important, as well as Gödel’s primitive recursive functionals of finite type. The methods and results of proof theory are playing, not surprisingly, a significant role in computer science. Work in proof theory has been motivated by issues in the foundations of mathematics, with the explicit goal of achieving epistemological reductions of strong theories for mathematical practice like set theory or second-order arithmetic to weak, philosophically distinguished theories like primitive recursive arithmetic. As the formalization of mathematics in strong theories is crucial for the metamathematical approach, and as the programmatic goal can be seen as a way of circumventing the philosophical issues surrounding strong theories, e.g., the nature of infinite sets in the case of set theory, Hilbert’s philosophical position is often equated with formalism  in the sense of Frege in his Über die Grundlagen der Geometrie 306 and also of Brouwer’s inaugural address Intuitionism and Formalism 2. Though such a view is not completely unsupported by some of Hilbert’s polemical remarks during the 0s, on balance, his philosophical views developed into a sophisticated instrumentalism, if that label is taken in Ernest Nagel’s judicious sense The Structure of Science, 1. Hilbert’s is an instrumentalism emphasizing the contentual motivation of mathematical theories; that is clearly expressed in the first chapter of Hilbert and Bernays’s Grundlagen der Mathematik I 4. A sustained philosophical analysis of proof-theoretic research in the context of broader issues in the philosophy of mathematics was provided by Bernays; his penetrating essays stretch over five decades and have been collected in Abhandlungen zur Philosophie der Mathematik 6. 

propensity, an irregular or non-necessitating causal disposition of an object or system to produce some result or effect. Propensities are usually conceived as essentially probabilistic in nature. A die may be said to have a propensity of “strength” or magnitude 1 /6 to turn up a 3 if thrown from a dice box, of strength 1 /3 to turn up, say, a 3 or 4, etc. But propensity talk is arguably appropriate only when determinism fails. Strength is often taken to vary from 0 to 1. Popper regarded the propensity notion as a new physical or metaphysical hypothesis, akin to that of forces. Like Peirce, he deployed it to interpret probability claims about single cases: e.g., the probability of this radium atom’s decaying in 1,600 years is 1 /2. On relative frequency interpretations, probability claims are about properties of large classes such as relative frequencies of outcomes in them, rather than about single cases. But single-case claims appear to be common in quantum theory. Popper advocated a propensity interpretation of quantum theory. Propensities also feature in theories of indeterministic or probabilistic causation. Competing theories about propensities attribute them variously to complex systems such as chance or experimental set-ups or arrangements a coin and tossing device, to entities within such set-ups the coin itself, and to particular trials of such set-ups. Long-run theories construe propensities as dispositions to give rise to certain relative frequencies of, or probability distributions over, outcomes in long runs of trials, which are sometimes said to “manifest” or “display” the propensities. Here a propensity’s strength is identical to some such frequency. By contrast, single-case theories construe propensities as dispositions of singular trials to bring about particular outcomes. Their existence, not their strength, is displayed by such an outcome. Here frequencies provide evidence about propensity strength. But the two can always differ; they converge with a limiting probability of 1 in an appropriate long run. 

property, roughly, an attribute, characteristic, feature, trait, or aspect. propensity property 751    751 Intensionality. There are two salient ways of talking about properties. First, as predicables or instantiables. For example, the property red is predicable of red objects; they are instances of it. Properties are said to be intensional entities in the sense that distinct properties can be truly predicated of i.e., have as instances exactly the same things: the property of being a creature with a kidney & the property of being a creature with a heart, though these two sets have the same members. Properties thus differ from sets collections, classes; for the latter satisfy a principle of extensionality: they are identical if they have the same elements. The second salient way of talking about properties is by means of property abstracts such as ‘the property of being F’. Such linguistic expressions are said to be intensional in the following semantical vs. ontological sense: ‘the property of being F’ and ‘the property of being G’ can denote different properties even though the predicates ‘F’ and ‘G’ are true of exactly the same things. The standard explanation Frege, Russell, Carnap, et al. is that ‘the property of being F’ denotes the property that the predicate ‘F’ expresses. Since predicates ‘F’ and ‘G’ can be true of the same things without being synonyms, the property abstracts ‘being F’ and ‘being G’ can denote different properties. Identity criteria. Some philosophers believe that properties are identical if they necessarily have the same instances. Other philosophers hold that this criterion of identity holds only for a special subclass of properties  those that are purely qualitative  and that the properties for which this criterion does not hold are all “complex” e.g., relational, disjunctive, conditional, or negative properties. On this theory, complex properties are identical if they have the same form and their purely qualitative constituents are identical. Ontological status. Because properties are a kind of universal, each of the standard views on the ontological status of universals has been applied to properties as a special case. Nominalism: only particulars and perhaps collections of particulars exist; therefore, either properties do not exist or they are reducible following Carnap et al. to collections of particulars including perhaps particulars that are not actual but only possible. Conceptualism: properties exist but are dependent on the mind. Realism: properties exist independently of the mind. Realism has two main versions. In rebus realism: a property exists only if it has instances. Ante rem realism: a property can exist even if it has no instances. For example, the property of being a man weighing over ton has no instances; however, it is plausible to hold that this property does exist. After all, this property seems to be what is expressed by the predicate ‘is a man weighing over a ton’. Essence and accident. The properties that a given entity has divide into two disjoint classes: those that are essential to the entity and those that are accidental to it. A property is essential to an entity if, necessarily, the entity cannot exist without being an instance of the property. A property is accidental to an individual if it is possible for the individual to exist without being an instance of the property. Being a number is an essential property of nine; being the number of the planets is an accidental property of nine. Some philosophers believe that all properties are either essential by nature or accidental by nature. A property is essential by nature if it can be an essential property of some entity and, necessarily, it is an essential property of each entity that is an instance of it. The property of being self-identical is thus essential by nature. However, it is controversial whether every property that is essential to something must be essential by nature. The following is a candidate counterexample. If this automobile backfires loudly on a given occasion, loudness would seem to be an essential property of the associated bang. That particular bang could not exist without being loud. If the automobile had backfired softly, that particular bang would not have existed; an altogether distinct bang  a soft bang  would have existed. By contrast, if a man is loud, loudness is only an accidental property of him; he could exist without being loud. Loudness thus appears to be a counterexample: although it is an essential property of certain particulars, it is not essential by nature. It might be replied echoing Aristotle that a loud bang and a loud man instantiate loudness in different ways and, more generally, that properties can be predicated instantiated in different ways. If so, then one should be specific about which kind of predication instantiation is intended in the definition of ‘essential by nature’ and ‘accidental by nature’. When this is done, the counterexamples might well disappear. If there are indeed different ways of being predicated instantiated, most of the foregoing remarks about intensionality, identity criteria, and the ontological status of properties should be refined accordingly. 

propositio universalis: cf. substitutional account of universal quantification, referred to by Grice for his treatment of what he calls a Ryleian agitation caused by his feeling Byzantine. Vide inverted A. A proposition (protasis), then, is a sentence affirming or denying something of something; and this is either universal or particular or indefinite. By universal I mean a statement that something belongs to all or none of something; by particular that it belongs to some or not to some or not to all; by indefinite that it does or does not belong, without any mark of being universal or particular, e.g. ‘contraries are subjects of the same science’, or ‘pleasure is not good’. (Prior Analytics I, 1, 24a16–21.)

propositional complexum: In logic, the first proposition of a syllogism (class.): “propositio est, per quem locus is breviter exponitur, ex quo vis omnis oportet emanet ratiocinationis,” Cic. Inv. 1, 37, 67; 1, 34, 35; Auct. Her. 2, 18, 28.— B. Transf. 1. A principal subject, theme (class.), Cic. de Or. 3, 53; Sen. Ben. 6, 7, 1; Quint. 5, 14, 1.— 2. Still more generally, a proposition of any kind (post-Aug.), Quint. 7, 1, 47, § 9; Gell. 2, 7, 21.—Do not expect Grice to use the phrase ‘propositional content,’ as Hare does so freely. Grices proposes a propositional complexum, rather, which frees him from a commitment to a higher-order calculus and the abstract entity of a feature or a proposition. Grice regards a proposition as an extensional family of propositional complexa (Paul saw Peter; Peter was seen by Paul). The topic of a propositional complex Grice regards as Oxonian in nature. Peacocke struggles with the same type of problems, in his essays on content. Only a perception-based account of content in terms of qualia gets the philosopher out of the vicious circle of appealing to a linguistic entity to clarify a psychological entity. One way to discharge the burden of giving an account of a proposition involves focusing on a range of utterances, the formulation of which features no connective or quantifier. Each expresses a propositional complexum which consists of a sequence simplex-1 and simplex-2, whose elements would be a set and an ordered sequence of this or that individuum which may be a member of the set. The propositional complexum ‘Fido is shaggy’ consists of a sequence of the set of shaggy individua and the singleton consisting of the individuum Fido. ‘Smith loves Fido’ is a propositional complexum, i. e., a sequence whose first element is the class “love” correlated to a two-place predicate) and a the ordered pair of the singletons Smith and Fido. We define alethic satisfactoriness. A propositional complexum is alethically satisfactory just in case the sequence is a member of the set. A “proposition” (prosthesis) simpliciter is defined as a family of propositional complexa. Family unity may vary in accordance with context. 

proposition, an abstract object said to be that to which a person is related by a belief, desire, or other psychological attitude, typically expressed in language containing a psychological verb ‘think’, ‘deny’, ‘doubt’, etc. followed by a thatclause. The psychological states in question are called propositional attitudes. When I believe that snow is white I stand in the relation of believing to the proposition that snow is white. When I hope that the protons will not decay, hope relates me to the proposition that the protons will not decay. A proposition can be a common object for various attitudes of various agents: that the protons will not decay can be the object of my belief, my hope, and your fear. A sentence expressing an attitude is also taken to express the associated proposition. Because ‘The protons will not decay’ identifies my hope, it identifies the proposition to which my hope relates me. Thus the proposition can be the shared meaning of this sentence and all its synonyms, in English or elsewhere e.g., ‘die Protonen werden nicht zerfallen’. This, in sum, is the traditional doctrine of propositions. Although it seems indispensable in some form  for theorizing about thought and language, difficulties abound. Some critics regard propositions as excess baggage in any account of meaning. But unless this is an expression of nominalism, it is confused. Any systematic theory of meaning, plus an apparatus of sets or properties will let us construct proposition-like objects. The proposition a sentence S expresses might, e.g., be identified with a certain set of features that determines S’s meaning. Other sentences with these same features would then express the same proposition. A natural way to associate propositions with sentences is to let the features in question be semantically significant features of the words from which sentences are built. Propositions then acquire the logical structures of sentences: they are atomic, conditional, existential, etc. But combining the view of propositions as meanings with the traditional idea of propositions as bearers of truthvalues brings trouble. It is assumed that two sentences that express the same proposition have the same truth-value indeed, that sentences have their truth-values in virtue of the propositions they express. Yet if propositions are also meanings, this principle fails for sentences with indexical elements: although ‘I am pale’ has a single meaning, two utterances of it can differ in truth-value. In response, one may suggest that the proposition a sentence S expresses depends both on the linguistic meaning of S and on the referents of S’s indexical elements. But this reveals that proposition is a quite technical concept  and one that is not motivated simply by a need to talk about meanings. Related questions arise for propositions as the objects of propositional attitudes. My belief that I am pale may be true, yours that you are pale false. So our beliefs should take distinct propositional objects. Yet we would each use the same sentence, ‘I am pale’, to express our belief. Intuitively, your belief and mine also play similar cognitive roles. We may each choose the sun exposure, clothing, etc., that we take to be appropriate to a fair complexion. So our attitudes seem in an important sense to be the same  an identity that the assignment of distinct propositional objects hides. Apparently, the characterization of beliefs e.g. as being propositional attitudes is at best one component of a more refined, largely unknown account. Quite apart from complications about indexicality, propositions inherit standard difficulties about meaning. Consider the beliefs that Hesperus is a planet and that Phosphorus is a planet. It seems that someone might have one but not the other, thus that they are attitudes toward distinct propositions. This difference apparently reflects the difference in meaning between the sentences ‘Hesperus is a planet’ and ‘Phosphorus is a planet’. The principle would be that non-synonymous sentences express distinct propositions. But it is unclear what makes for a difference in meaning. Since the sentences agree in logico-grammatical structure and in the referents of their terms, their specific meanings must depend on some more subtle feature that has resisted definition. Hence our concept of proposition is also only partly defined. Even the idea that the sentences here express the same proposition is not easily refuted. What such difficulties show is not that the concept of proposition is invalid but that it belongs to a still rudimentary descriptive scheme. It is too thoroughly enmeshed with the concepts of meaning and belief to be of use in solving their attendant problems. This observation is what tends, through a confusion, to give rise to skepticism about propositions. One may, e.g., reasonably posit structured abstract entities  propositions  that represent the features on which the truth-values of sentences depend. Then there is a good sense in which a sentence is true in virtue of the proposition it expresses. But how does the use of words in a certain context associate them with a particular proposition? Lacking an answer, we still cannot explain why a given sentence is true. Similarly, one cannot explain belief as the acceptance of a proposition, since only a substantive theory of thought would reveal how the mind “accepts” a proposition and what it does to accept one proposition rather than another. So a satisfactory doctrine of propositions remains elusive. 

propositional function, an operation that, when applied to something as argument or to more than one thing in a given order as arguments, yields a truth-value as the value of that function for that argument or those arguments. This usage presupposes that truth-values are objects. A function may be singulary, binary, ternary, etc. A singulary propositional function is applicable to one thing and yields, when so applied, a truth-value. For example, being a prime number, when applied to the number 2, yields truth; negation, when applied to truth, yields falsehood. A binary propositional function is applicable to two things in a certain order and yields, when so applied, a truth-value. For example, being north of when applied to New York and Boston in that order yields falsehood. Material implication when applied to falsehood and truth in that order yields truth. The term ‘propositional function’ has a second use, to refer to an operation that, when applied to something as argument or to more than one thing in a given order as arguments, yields a proposition as the value of the function for that argument or those arguments. For example, being a prime number when applied to 2 yields the proposition that 2 is a prime number. Being north of, when applied to New York and Boston in that order, yields the proposition that New York is north of Boston. This usage presupposes that propositions are objects. In a third use, ‘propositional function’ designates a sentence with free occurrences of variables. Thus, ‘x is a prime number’, ‘It is not the case that p’, ‘x is north of y’ and ‘if p then q’ are propositional functions in this sense. C.S. propositional justification.

propositional opacity, failure of a clause to express any particular proposition especially due to the occurrence of pronouns or demonstratives. If having a belief about an individual involves a relation to a proposition, and if a part of the proposition is a way of representing the individual, then belief characterizations that do not indicate the believer’s way of representing the individual could be called propositionally opaque. They do not show all of the propositional elements. For example, ‘My son’s clarinet teacher believes that he should try the bass drum’ would be propositionally opaque because ‘he’ does not indicate how my son John’s teacher represents John, e.g. as his student, as my son, as the boy now playing, etc. This characterization of the example is not appropriate if propositions are as Russell conceived them, sometimes containing the individuals themselves as constituents, because then the propositional constituent John has been referred to. Generally, a characterization of a propositional    754 attitude is propositionally opaque if the expressions in the embedded clause do not refer to the propositional constituents. It is propositionally transparent if the expressions in the embedded clause do so refer. As a rule, referentially opaque contexts are used in propositionally transparent attributions if the referent of a term is distinct from the corresponding propositional constituent.

proprietates terminorum Latin, ‘properties of terms’, in medieval logic from the twelfth century on, a cluster of semantic properties possessed by categorematic terms. For most authors, these properties apply only when the terms occur in the context of a proposition. The list of such properties and the theory governing them vary from author to author, but always include 1 suppositio. Some authors add 2 appellatio ‘appellating’, ‘naming’, ‘calling’, often not sharply distinguishing from suppositio, the property whereby a term in a certain proposition names or is truly predicable of things, or in some authors of presently existing things. Thus ‘philosophers’ in ‘Some philosophers are wise’ appellates philosophers alive today. 3 Ampliatio ‘ampliation’, ‘broadening’, whereby a term refers to past or future or merely possible things. The reference of ‘philosophers’ is ampliated in ‘Some philosophers were wise’. 4 Restrictio ‘restriction’, ‘narrowing’, whereby the reference of a term is restricted to presently existing things ‘philosophers’ is so restricted in ‘Some philosophers are wise’, or otherwise narrowed from its normal range ‘philosophers’ in ‘Some Grecian philosophers were wise’. 5 Copulatio ‘copulation’, ‘coupling’, which is the type of reference adjectives have ‘wise’ in ‘Some philosophers are wise’, or alternatively the semantic function of the copula. Other meanings too are sometimes given to these terms, depending on the author. Appellatio especially was given a wide variety of interpretations. In particular, for Buridan and other fourteenth-century Continental authors, appellatio means ‘connotation’. Restrictio and copulatio tended to drop out of the literature, or be treated only perfunctorily, after the thirteenth century. 

proprium: idion. See Nicholas White's "The Origin of Aristotle's Essentialism," Review of Metaphysics ~6. (September 1972): ... vice versa. The proprium is a necessary, but non-essential, property. ... Alan Code pointed this out to me. ' Does Aristotle ... The proprium is defined by the fact that it only holds of a particular subject or ... Of the appropriate answers some are more specific or distinctive (idion) and are in ... and property possession comes close to what Alan Code in a seminal paper ...  but "substance of" is what is "co-extensive (idion) with each thing" (1038b9); so ... by an alternative name or definition, and by a proprium) and the third which is ... Woods's idea (recently nicknamed "Izzing before Having" by Code and Grice) . As my chairmanship was winding down, I suggested to Paul Grice on one of his ... in Aristotle's technical sense of an idion (Latin proprium), i.e., a characteristic or feature ... Code, which, arguably, is part of the theory of Izzing and Having: D. Keyt. a proprium, since proprium belongs to the genus of accident. ... Similarly, Code claims (10): 'In its other uses the predicate “being'' signifies either “what ... Grice adds a few steps to show that the plurality of universals signified correspond ... Aristotle elsewhere calls an idion.353 If one predicates the genus in the absence of. has described it by a paronymous form, nor as a property (idion), nor ... terminology of Code and Grice.152 Thus there is no indication that they are ... (14,20-31) 'Genus' and 'proprium' (ἰδίου) are said homonymously in ten ways, as are. Ackrill replies to this line of argument (75) as follows: [I]t is perfectly clear that Aristotle’s fourfold classification is a classification of things and not names, and that what is ‘said of’ something as subject is itself a thing (a species or genus) and not a name. Sometimes, indeed, Aristotle will speak of ‘saying’ or ‘predicating’ a name of a subject; but it is not linguistic items but the things they signify which are ‘said of a subject’… Thus at 2a19 ff. Aristotle sharply distinguishes things said of subjects from the names of those things. This last argument seems persuasive on textual grounds. After all, τὰ καθ᾽ ὑποκειμένου λεγόμενα ‘have’ definitions and names (τῶν καθ᾽ υποκειμένου λεγομένων… τοὔνομα καὶ τὸν λὸγον, 2a19-21): it is not the case that they ‘are’ definitions and names, to adapt the terminology of Code and Grice.152 See A. Code, ‘Aristotle: Essence and Accident’, in Grandy and Warner (eds.), Philosophical Grounds of Rationality (Oxford, 1986), 411-39: particulars have their predicables, but Forms are their predicables. Thus there is no indication that they are linguistic terms in their own right.proprium, one of Porphyry’s five predicables, often tr. as ‘property’ or ‘attribute’; but this should not be confused with the broad modern sense in which any feature of a thing may be said to be a property of it. A proprium is a nonessential peculiarity of a species. There are no propria of individuals or genera generalissima, although they may have other uniquely identifying features. A proprium necessarily holds of all members of its species and of nothing else. It is not mentioned in a real definition of the species, and so is not essential to it. Yet it somehow follows from the essence or nature expressed in the real definition. The standard example is risibility the ability to laugh as a proprium of the species man. The real definition of ‘man’ is ‘rational animal’. There is no mention of any ability to laugh. Nevertheless anything that can laugh has both the biological apparatus to produce the sounds and so is an animal and also a certain wit and insight into humor and so is rational. Conversely, any rational animal will have both the vocal chords and diaphragm required for laughing since it is an animal, although the inference may seem too quick and also the mental wherewithal to see the point of a joke since it is rational. Thus any rational animal has what it takes to laugh. In short, every man is risible, and conversely, but risibility is not an essential feature of man. 

Prosona – Grice’s favoured spelling for ‘person’ – “seeing that it means a mask to improve sonorisation’ personalism, a Christian socialism stressing social activism and personal responsibility, the theoretical basis for the Christian workers’ Esprit movement begun in the 0s by Emmanuel Mounier 550, a Christian philosopher and activist. Influenced by both the religious existentialism of Kierkegaard and the radical social action called for by Marx and in part taking direction from the earlier work of Charles Péguy, the movement strongly opposed fascism and called for worker solidarity during the 0s and 0s. It also urged a more humane treatment of France’s colonies. Personalism allowed for a Christian socialism independent of both more conservative Christian groups and the Communist labor unions and party. Its most important single book is Mounier’s Personalism. The quarterly journal Esprit has regularly published contributions of leading  and international thinkers. Such well-known Christian philosophers as Henry Duméry, Marcel, Maritain, and Ricoeur were attracted to the movement. 

protocol statement, one of the statements that constitute the foundations of empirical knowledge. The term was introduced by proponents of foundationalism, who were convinced that in order to avoid the most radical skepticism, one must countenance beliefs that are justified but not as a result of an inference. If all justified beliefs are inferentially justified, then to be justified in believing one proposition P on the basis of another, E, one would have to be justified in believing both E and that E confirms P. But if all justification were inferential, then to be justified in believing E one would need to infer it from some other proposition one justifiably believes, and so on ad infinitum. The only way to avoid this regress is to find some statement knowable without inferring it from some other truth. Philosophers who agree that empirical knowledge has foundations do not necessarily agree on what those foundations are. The British empiricists restrict the class of contingent protocol statements to propositions describing the contents of mind sensations, beliefs, fears, desires, and the like. And even here a statement describing a mental state would be a protocol statement only for the person in that state. Other philosophers, however, would take protocol statements to include at least some assertions about the immediate physical environment. The plausibility of a given candidate for a protocol statement depends on how one analyzes non-inferential justification. Some philosophers rely on the idea of acquaintance. One is non-inferentially justified in believing something when one is directly acquainted with what makes it true. Other philosophers rely on the idea of a state that is in some sense self-presenting. Still others want to understand the notion in terms of the inconceivability of error. The main difficulty in trying to defend a coherent conception of non-inferential justification is to find an account of protocol statements that gives them enough conceptual content to serve as the premises of arguments, while avoiding the charge that the application of concepts always brings with it the possibility of error and the necessity of inference. 

prototype theory, a theory according to which human cognition involves the deployment of “categories” organized around stereotypical exemplars. Prototype theory differs from traditional theories that take the concepts with which we think to be individuated by means of boundary-specifying necessary and sufficient conditions. Advocates of prototypes hold that our concept of bird, for instance, consists in an indefinitely bounded conceptual “space” in which robins and sparrows are central, and chickens and penguins are peripheral  though the category may be differently organized in different cultures or groups. Rather than being all-ornothing, category membership is a matter of degree. This conception of categories was originally inspired by the notion, developed in a different context by Vitters, of family resemblance. Prototypes were first discussed in detail and given empirical credibility in the work of Eleanor Rosch see, e.g., “On the Internal Structure of Perceptual and Semantic Categories,” 3. 

Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 180965,  socialist theorist and father of anarchism. He became well known following the publication of What Is Property? 1840, the work containing his main ideas. He argued that the owner of the means of production deprives the workers of a part of their labor: “property is theft.” In order to enable each worker to dispose of his labor, capital and largescale property must be limited. The need to abolish large-scale private property surpassed the immediate need for a state as a controlling agent over chaotic social relationships. To this end he stressed the need for serious reforms in the exchange system. Since the economy and society largely depended on the credit system, Proudhon advocated establishing popular banks that would approve interest-free loans to the poor. Such a mutualism would start the transformation of the actual into a just and nonexploited society of free individuals. Without class antagonism and political authorities, such a society would tend toward an association of communal and industrial collectivities. It would move toward a flexible world federation based on self-management. The main task of social science, then, is to make manifest this immanent logic of social processes. Proudhon’s ideas influenced anarchists, populists Bakunin, Herzen, and syndicalists Jaurès. His conception of self-management was an important inspiration for the later concept of soviets councils. He criticized the inequalities of the contemporary society from the viewpoint of small producers and peasants. Although eclectic and theoretically rather naive, his work attracted the serious attention of his contemporaries and led to a strong attack by Marx in The Holy Family and The Poverty of Philosophy.

prudens: practical reason: In “Epilogue” Grice states that the principle of conversational rationality is a sub-principle of the principle of rationality, simpliciter, which is not involved with ‘communication’ per se. This is an application of Occam’s razor: Rationalities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.” This motto underlies his aequi-vocality thesis: one reason: desiderative side, judicative side. Literally, ‘practical reason’ is the buletic part of the soul (psyche) that deals with praxis, where the weighing is central. We dont need means-end rationality, we need value-oriented rationality. We dont need the rationality of the means – this is obvious --. We want the rationality of the ends. The end may justify the means. But Grice is looking for what justifies the end. The topic of freedom fascinated Grice, because it merged the practical with the theoretical. Grice sees the conception of freedom as crucial in his elucidation of a rational being. Conditions of freedom are necessary for the very idea, as Kant was well aware. A thief who is forced to steal is just a thief. Grice would engage in a bit of language botany, when exploring the ways the adjective free is used, freely, in ordinary language: free fall, alcohol-free, sugar-free, and his favourite: implicaturum-free. Grices more systematic reflections deal with Pology, or creature construction. A vegetals, for example is less free than an animal, but more free than a stone! And Humans are more free than non-human. Grice wants to deal with some of the paradoxes identified by Kant about freedom, and he succeeds in solving some of them. There is a section on freedom in Action and events for PPQ  where he expands on eleutheria and notes the idiocy of a phrase like free fall. Grice was irritated by the fact that his friend Hart wrote an essay on liberty and not on freedom, cf. praxis. Refs.: essays on ‘practical reason,’ and “Aspects,” in BANC.

ψ-transmissum. Or ‘soul-to-soul transfer’ “Before we study ‘psi’-transmission we should study ‘transmission’ simpliciter. It is cognate with ‘emission.’ So the emissor is a transmissor. And the emissee is a transemissee.  Grice would never have thougth that he had to lecture on what conversation is all about! He would never have lectured on this to his tutees at St. John’s – but at Brighton is all different. So, to communicate, for an emissor is to intend his recipient to be in a state with content “p.” The modality of the ‘state’ – desiderative or creditative – is not important. In a one-off predicament, the emissor draws a skull to indicate that there is danger. So his belief and desire were successfully transmitted. A good way to formulate the point of communication. Note that Grice is never sure about analsans and analysandum: Emissor communicates THAT P iff Emissor M-INTENDS THAT addressee is to psi- that P. Which seems otiose. “It is raining” can be INFORMATIVE, but it is surely INDICATIVE first. So it’s moke like the emissor intends his addressee to believe that he, the utterer believes that p (the belief itself NOT being part of what is meant, of course). So, there is psi-transmission not necessarily when the utterer convinces his addressee, but just when he gets his addressee to BELIEF that he, the utterer, psi-s that p. So the psi HAS BEEN TRANSMITTED. Surely when the Beatles say “HELP” they don’t expect that their addressee will need help. They intend their addressee to HELP them! Used by Grice in WoW: 287, and emphasised by J. Baker. The gist of communication. trans-mitto or trāmitto , mīsi, missum, 3, v. a. I. To send, carry, or convey across, over, or through; to send off, despatch, transmit from one place or person to another (syn.: transfero, traicio, traduco). A. Lit.: “mihi illam ut tramittas: argentum accipias,” Plaut. Ep. 3, 4, 27: “illam sibi,” id. ib. 1, 2, 52: “exercitus equitatusque celeriter transmittitur (i. e. trans flumen),” are conveyed across, Caes. B. G. 7, 61: “legiones,” Vell. 2, 51, 1: “cohortem Usipiorum in Britanniam,” Tac. Agr. 28: “classem in Euboeam ad urbem Oreum,” Liv. 28, 5, 18: “magnam classem in Siciliam,” id. 28, 41, 17: “unde auxilia in Italiam transmissurus erat,” id. 23, 32, 5; 27, 15, 7: transmissum per viam tigillum, thrown over or across, id. 1, 26, 10: “ponte transmisso,” Suet. Calig. 22 fin.: in partem campi pecora et armenta, Tac. A. 13, 55: “materiam in formas,” Col. 7, 8, 6.— 2. To cause to pass through: “per corium, per viscera Perque os elephanto bracchium transmitteres,” you would have thrust through, penetrated, Plaut. Mil. 1, 30; so, “ensem per latus,” Sen. Herc. Oet. 1165: “facem telo per pectus,” id. Thyest. 1089: “per medium amnem transmittit equum,” rides, Liv. 8, 24, 13: “(Gallorum reguli) exercitum per fines suos transmiserunt,” suffered to pass through, id. 21, 24, 5: “abies folio pinnato densa, ut imbres non transmittat,” Plin. 16, 10, 19, § 48: “Favonios,” Plin. Ep. 2, 17, 19; Tac. A. 13, 15: “ut vehem faeni large onustam transmitteret,” Plin. 36, 15, 24, § 108.— B. Trop. 1. To carry over, transfer, etc.: “bellum in Italiam,” Liv. 21, 20, 4; so, “bellum,” Tac. A. 2, 6: “vitia cum opibus suis Romam (Asia),” Just. 36, 4, 12: vim in aliquem, to send against, i. e. employ against, Tac. A. 2, 38.— 2. To hand over, transmit, commit: “et quisquam dubitabit, quin huic hoc tantum bellum transmittendum sit, qui, etc.,” should be intrusted, Cic. Imp. Pomp. 14, 42: “alicui signa et summam belli,” Sil. 7, 383: “hereditas transmittenda alicui,” to be made over, Plin. Ep. 8, 18, 7; and with inf.: “et longo transmisit habere nepoti,” Stat. S. 3, 3, 78 (analog. to dat habere, Verg. A. 9, 362; “and, donat habere,” id. ib. 5, 262); “for which: me famulo famulamque Heleno transmisit habendam,” id. ib. 3, 329: “omne meum tempus amicorum temporibus transmittendum putavi,” should be devoted, Cic. Imp. Pomp. 1, 1: “poma intacta ore servis,” Tac. A. 4, 54.— 3. To let go: animo transmittente quicquid acceperat, letting pass through, i. e. forgetting, Sen. Ep. 99, 6: “mox Caesarem vergente jam senectā munia imperii facilius tramissurum,” would let go, resign, Tac. A. 4, 41: “Junium mensem transmissum,” passed over, omitted, id. ib. 16, 12 fin.: “Gangen amnem et quae ultra essent,” to leave unconquered, Curt. 9, 4, 17: “leo imbelles vitulos Transmittit,” Stat. Th. 8, 596.— II. To go or pass over or across, to cross over; to cross, pass, go through, traverse, etc. A. Lit. 1. In gen. (α). Act.: “grues cum maria transmittant,” Cic. N. D. 2, 49, 125: “cur ipse tot maria transmisit,” id. Fin. 5, 29, 87; so, “maria,” id. Rep. 1, 3, 6: “satis constante famā jam Iberum Poenos transmisisse,” Liv. 21, 20, 9 (al. transisse): “quem (Euphratem) ponte,” Tac. A. 15, 7: “fluvium nando,” Stat. Th. 9, 239: “lacum nando,” Sil. 4, 347: “murales fossas saltu,” id. 8, 554: “equites medios tramittunt campos,” ride through, Lucr. 2, 330; cf.: “cursu campos (cervi),” run through, Verg. A. 4, 154: quantum Balearica torto Funda potest plumbo medii transmittere caeli, can send with its hurled bullet, i. e. can send its bullet, Ov. M. 4, 710: “tectum lapide vel missile,” to fling over, Plin. 28, 4, 6, § 33; cf.: “flumina disco,” Stat. Th. 6, 677.—In pass.: “duo sinus fuerunt, quos tramitti oporteret: utrumque pedibus aequis tramisimus,” Cic. Att. 16, 6, 1: “transmissus amnis,” Tac. A. 12, 13: “flumen ponte transmittitur,” Plin. Ep. 8, 8, 5.— (β). Neutr.: “ab eo loco conscendi ut transmitterem,” Cic. Phil. 1, 3, 7: “cum exercitus vestri numquam a Brundisio nisi summā hieme transmiserint,” id. Imp. Pomp. 12, 32: “cum a Leucopetrā profectus (inde enim tramittebam) stadia circiter CCC. processissem, etc.,” id. Att. 16, 7, 1; 8, 13, 1; 8, 11, 5: “ex Corsicā subactā Cicereius in Sardiniam transmisit,” Liv. 42, 7, 2; 32, 9, 6: “ab Lilybaeo Uticam,” id. 25, 31, 12: “ad vastandam Italiae oram,” id. 21, 51, 4; 23, 38, 11; 24, 36, 7: “centum onerariae naves in Africam transmiserunt,” id. 30, 24, 5; Suet. Caes. 58: “Cyprum transmisit,” Curt. 4, 1, 27. — Pass. impers.: “in Ebusum insulam transmissum est,” Liv. 22, 20, 7.—* 2. In partic., to go over, desert to a party: “Domitius transmisit ad Caesa rem,” Vell. 2, 84 fin. (syn. transfugio).— B. Trop. (post-Aug.). 1. In gen., to pass over, leave untouched or disregarded (syn praetermitto): “haud fas, Bacche, tuos taci tum tramittere honores,” Sil. 7, 162; cf.: “sententiam silentio, deinde oblivio,” Tac. H. 4, 9 fin.: “nihil silentio,” id. ib. 1, 13; “4, 31: aliquid dissimulatione,” id. A. 13, 39: “quae ipse pateretur,” Suet. Calig. 10; id. Vesp. 15. — 2. In partic., of time, to pass, spend (syn. ago): “tempus quiete,” Plin. Ep. 9, 6, 1: so, “vitam per obscurum,” Sen. Ep. 19, 2: steriles annos, Stat. S. 4, 2, 12: “aevum,” id. ib. 1, 4, 124: “quattuor menses hiemis inedia,” Plin. 8, 25, 38, § 94: “vigiles noctes,” Stat. Th. 3, 278 et saep. — Transf.: “febrium ardorem,” i. e. to undergo, endure, Plin. Ep. 1, 22, 7; cf. “discrimen,” id. ib. 8, 11, 2: “secessus, voluptates, etc.,” id. ib. 6, 4, 2

pseudo-hallucination, a non-deceptive hallucination. An ordinary hallucination might be thought to comprise two components: i a sensory component, whereby one experiences an image or sensory episode similar in many respects to a veridical perceiving except in being non-veridical; and ii a cognitive component, whereby one takes or is disposed to take the image or sensory episode to be veridical. A pseudohallucination resembles a hallucination, but lacks this second component. In experiencing a pseudohallucination, one appreciates that one is not perceiving veridically. The source of the term seems to be the painter Wassily Kandinsky, who employed it in 5 to characterize a series of apparently drug-induced images experienced and pondered by a friend who recognized them, at the very time they were occurring, not to be veridical. Kandinsky’s account is discussed by Jaspers in his General Psychopathology, 6, and thereby entered the clinical lore. Pseudohallucinations may be brought on by the sorts of pathological condition that give rise to hallucinations, or by simple fatigue, emotional adversity, or loneliness. Thus, a driver, late at night, may react to non-existent objects or figures on the road, and immediately recognize his error. 

psycholinguistics, an interdisciplinary research area that uses theoretical descriptions of language taken from linguistics to investigate psychological processes underlying language production, perception, and learning. There is considerable disagreement as to the appropriate characterization of the field and the major problems. Philosophers discussed many of the problems now studied in psycholinguistics before either psychology or linguistics were spawned, but the self-consciously interdisciplinary field combining psychology and linguistics emerged not long after the birth of the two disciplines. Meringer used the adjective ‘psycholingisch-linguistische’ in an 5 book. Various national traditions of psycholinguistics continued at a steady but fairly low level of activity through the 0s and declined somewhat during the 0s and 0s because of the antimentalist attitudes in both linguistics and psychology. Psycholinguistic researchers in the USSR, mostly inspired by L. S. Vygotsky Thought and Language, 4, were more active during this period in spite of official suppression. Numerous quasi-independent sources contributed to the rebirth of psycholinguistics in the 0s; the most significant was a seminar held at a  during the summer of 3 that led to the publication of Psycholinguistics: A Survey of Theory and Research Problems 4, edited by C. E. Osgood and T. A. Sebeok  a truly interdisciplinary book jointly written by more than a dozen authors. The contributors attempted to analyze and reconcile three disparate approaches: learning theory from psychology, descriptive linguistics, and information theory which came mainly from engineering. The book had a wide impact and led to many further investigations, but the nature of the field changed rapidly soon after its publication with the Chomskyan revolution in linguistics and the cognitive turn in psychology. The two were not unrelated: Chomsky’s positive contribution, Syntactic Structures, was less broadly influential than his negative review Language, 9 of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. Against the empiricist-behaviorist view of language understanding and production, in which language is merely the exhibition of a more complex form of behavior, Chomsky argued the avowedly rationalist position that the ability to learn and use language is innate and unique to humans. He emphasized the creative aspect of language, that almost all sentences one hears or produces are novel. One of his premises was the alleged infinity of sentences in natural languages, but a less controversial argument can be given: there are tens of millions of five-word sentences in English, all of which are readily understood by speakers who have never heard them. Chomsky’s work promised the possibility of uncovering a very special characteristic of the human mind. But the promise was qualified by the disclaimer that linguistic theory describes only the competence of the ideal speaker. Many psycholinguists spent countless hours during the 0s and 0s seeking the traces of underlying competence beneath the untidy performances of actual speakers. During the 0s, as Chomsky frequently revised his theories of syntax and semantics in significant ways, and numerous alternative linguistic models were under consideration, psychologists generated a range of productive research problems that are increasingly remote from the Chomskyan beginnings. Contemporary psycholinguistics addresses phonetic, phonological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic influences on language processing. Few clear conclusions of philosophical import have been established. For example, several decades of animal research have shown that other species can use significant portions of human language, but controversy abounds over how central those portions are to language. Studies now clearly indicate the importance of word frequency and coarticulation, the dependency of a hearer’s identification of a sound as a particular phoneme, or of a visual pattern as a particular letter, not only on the physical features of the pattern but on the properties of other patterns not necessarily adjacent. Physically identical patterns may be heard as a d in one context and a t in another. It is also accepted that at least some of the human lignuistic abilities, particularly those involved in reading and speech perception, are relatively isolated from other cognitive processes. Infant studies show that children as young as eight months learn statistically important patterns characteristic of their natural language  suggesting a complex set of mechanisms that are automatic and invisible to us.

Pufendorf, S., G. historian and theorist of natural law. Pufendorf was influenced by both Grotius and Hobbes. He portrayed people as contentious and quarrelsome, yet as needing one another’s company and assistance. Natural law shows how people can live with one another while pursuing their own conflicting projects. To minimize religious disputes about morals, Pufendorf sought a way of deriving laws of nature from observable facts alone. Yet he thought divine activity essential to morality. He opened his massive Latin treatise On the Law of Nature and of Nations 1672 with a voluntarist account of God’s creation of the essence of mankind: given that we have the nature God gave us, certain laws must be valid for us, but only God’s will determined our nature. As a result, our nature indicates God’s will for us. Hence observable facts about ourselves show us what laws God commands us to obey. Because we so obviously need one another’s assistance, the first law is to increase our sociability, i.e. our willingness to live together. All other laws indicate acts that would bring about this end. In the course of expounding the laws he thought important for the development of social life to the high cultural level our complex nature points us toward, Pufendorf analyzed all the main points that a full legal system must cover. He presented the rudiments of laws of marriage, property, inheritance, contract, and international relations in both war and peace. He also developed the Grotian theory of personal rights, asserting for the first time that rights are pointless unless for each right there are correlative duties binding on others. Taking obligation as his fundamental concept, he developed an important distinction between perfect and imperfect duties and rights. And in working out a theory of property he suggested the first outlines of a historical sociology of wealth later developed by Adam Smith. Pufendorf’s works on natural law were textbooks for all of Europe for over a century and were far more widely read than any other treatments of the subject. 

pulchrum -- beauty, an aesthetic property commonly thought of as a species of aesthetic value. As such, it has been variously thought to be 1 a simple, indefinable property that cannot be defined in terms of any other properties; 2 a property or set of properties of an object that makes the object capable of producing a certain sort of pleasurable experience in any suitable perceiver; or 3 whatever produces a particular sort of pleasurable experience, even though what produces the experience may vary from individual to individual. It is in this last sense that beauty is thought to be “in the eye of the beholder.” If beauty is a simple, indefinable property, as in 1, then it cannot be defined conceptually and has to be apprehended by intuition or taste. Beauty, on this account, would be a particular sort of aesthetic property. If beauty is an object’s Bayle, Pierre beauty 75   75 capacity to produce a special sort of pleasurable experience, as in 2, then it is necessary to say what properties provide it with this capacity. The most favored candidates for these have been formal or structural properties, such as order, symmetry, and proportion. In the Philebus Plato argues that the form or essence of beauty is knowable, exact, rational, and measurable. He also holds that simple geometrical shapes, simple colors, and musical notes all have “intrinsic beauty,” which arouses a pure, “unmixed” pleasure in the perceiver and is unaffected by context. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries many treatises were written on individual art forms, each allegedly governed by its own rules. In the eighteenth century, Hutcheson held that ‘beauty’ refers to an “idea raised in us,” and that any object that excites this idea is beautiful. He thought that the property of the object that excites this idea is “uniformity in variety.” Kant explained the nature of beauty by analyzing judgments that something is beautiful. Such judgments refer to an experience of the perceiver. But they are not merely expressions of personal experience; we claim that others should also have the same experience, and that they should make the same judgment i.e., judgments that something is beautiful have “universal validity”. Such judgments are disinterested  determined not by any needs or wants on the part of the perceiver, but just by contemplating the mere appearance of the object. These are judgments about an object’s free beauty, and making them requires using only those mental capacities that all humans have by virtue of their ability to communicate with one another. Hence the pleasures experienced in response to such beauty can in principle be shared by anyone. Some have held, as in 3, that we apply the term ‘beautiful’ to things because of the pleasure they give us, and not on the basis of any specific qualities an object has. Archibald Alison held that it is impossible to find any properties common to all those things we call beautiful. Santayana believed beauty is “pleasure regarded as a quality of a thing,” and made no pretense that certain qualities ought to produce that pleasure. The Grecian term to kalon, which is often tr. as ‘beauty’, did not refer to a thing’s autonomous aesthetic value, but rather to its “excellence,” which is connected with its moral worth and/or usefulness. This concept is closer to Kant’s notion of dependent beauty, possessed by an object judged as a particular kind of thing such as a beautiful cat or a beautiful horse, than it is to free beauty, possessed by an object judged simply on the basis of its appearance and not in terms of any concept of use

punishment, a distinctive form of legal sanction, distinguished first by its painful or unpleasant nature to the offender, and second by the ground on which the sanction is imposed, which must be because the offender offended against the norms of a society. None of these three attributes is a strictly necessary condition for proper use of the word ‘punishment’. There may be unpleasant consequences visited by nature upon an offender such that he might be said to have been “punished enough”; the consequences in a given case may not be unpleasant to a particular offender, as in the punishment of a masochist with his favorite form of self-abuse; and punishment may be imposed for reasons other than offense against society’s norms, as is the case with punishment inflicted in order to deter others from like acts. The “definitional stop” argument in discussions of punishment seeks to tie punishment analytically to retributivism. Retributivism is the theory that punishment is justified by the moral desert of the offender; on this view, a person who culpably does a wrongful action deserves punishment, and this desert is a sufficient as well as a necessary condition of just punishment. Punishment of the deserving, on this view, is an intrinsic good that does not need to be justified by any other good consequences such punishment may achieve, such as the prevention of crime. Retributivism is not to be confused with the view that punishment satisfies the feelings of vengeful citizens nor with the view that punishment preempts such citizens from taking the law into their own hands by vigilante action  these latter views being utilitarian. Retributivism is also not the view sometimes called “weak” or “negative” retributivism that only the deserving are to be punished, for desert on such a view typically operates only as a limiting and not as a justifying condition of punishment. The thesis known as the “definitional stop” says that punishment must be retributive in its justification if it is to be punishment at all. Bad treatment inflicted in order to prevent future crime is not punishment but deserves another name, usually ‘telishment’. The dominant justification of non-retributive punishment or telishment is deterrence. The good in whose name the bad of punishing is justified, on this view, is prevention of future criminal acts. If punishment is inflicted to prevent the offender from committing future criminal acts, it is styled “specific” or “special” deterrence; if punishment is inflicted to prevent others from committing future criminal acts, it is styled “general” deterrence. In either case, punishment of an action is justified by the future effect of that punishment in deterring future actors from committing crimes. There is some vagueness in the notion of deterrence because of the different mechanisms by which potential criminals are influenced not to be criminals by the example of punishment: such punishment may achieve its effects through fear or by more benignly educating those would-be criminals out of their criminal desires.

Putnam, Hilary b.6,  philosopher who has made significant contributions to the philosophies of language, science, and mind, and to mathematical logic and metaphysics. He completed his Ph.D. in 1 at the  of California Los Angeles and has taught at Northwestern, Princeton, MIT, and Harvard. In the late 0s he contributed with Martin Davis and Julia Robinson to a proof of the unsolvability of Hilbert’s tenth problem completed in 0 by Yuri Matiyasevich. Rejecting both Platonism and conventionalism in mathematics, he explored the concepts of mathematical truth and logical necessity on the assumption that logic is not entirely immune from empirical revision  e.g., quantum mechanics may require a rejection of classical logic. In the 0s and 0s he advanced functionalism, an original theory of mind in which human beings are conceived as Turing machines computers and mental states are functional or    759 computational states. While this theory is presupposed by much contemporary research in cognitive science, Putnam himself in Representation and Reality, 8 abandoned the view, arguing that genuine intentionality cannot be reduced to computational states because the content of beliefs is a determined by facts external to the individual and b individuatable only by interpreting our belief system as a whole meaning holism. Putnam’s criticism of functionalism relies on the “new theory of reference”  sometimes called the “causal” or “direct” theory  that he and Kripke working independently developed during the late 0s and early 0s and that is today embraced by many philosophers and scientists. In “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’ ” 5 Putnam claims that the reference of natural kind terms like ‘water’ is determined by facts about the world  the microphysical structure of water H2O and the linguistic practices of speakers  and not by the internal mental states of speakers. Early in his career, Putnam championed scientific realism, rejecting conventionalism and arguing that without a realist commitment to theoretical entities e.g., electrons the success of science would be a “miracle.” In 6 he famously abandoned metaphysical realism in favor of “internal realism,” which gives up commitment to mind-independent objects and relativizes ontology to conceptual schemes. In a series of model-theoretic arguments, Putnam challenged the metaphysical realist assumption that an epistemically ideal theory might be false, claiming that it requires an implausibly “magical” theory of reference. To the same end, he sought to demonstrate that we are not “brains in a vat” and that radical skepticism is incoherent Reason, Truth and History, 1. More recently, he has emphasized conceptual relativity in his attack on metaphysical realism’s commitment to “one true theory” and, in his Dewey Lectures 4, has defended direct perceptual realism, showing his allegiance to everyday “realism.” There is growing appreciation of the underlying unity in Putnam’s work that helps correct his reputation for “changing his mind.” He has consistently sought to do justice both to the “real world” of common sense and science and to distinctly human ways of representing that world. In the 0s his energies were increasingly directed to our “moral image of the world.” Leading a revival of  pragmatism, he has attacked the factvalue dichotomy, articulating a moral view that resists both relativism and authoritarianism. Putnam’s influence now extends beyond philosophers and scientists, to literary theorists, cognitive linguists, and theologians. 

Pyrrho of Elis, Grecian philosopher, regarded as the founder of Skepticism. Like Socrates, he wrote nothing, but impressed many with provocative ideas and calm demeanor. His equanimity was admired by Epicurus; his attitude of indifference influenced early Stoicism; his attack on knowledge was taken over by the skeptical Academy; and two centuries later, a revival of Skepticism adopted his name. Many of his ideas were anticipated by earlier thinkers, notably Democritus. But in denying the veracity of all sensations and beliefs, Pyrrho carried doubt to new and radical extremes. According to ancient anecdote, which presents him as highly eccentric, he paid so little heed to normal sensibilities that friends often had to rescue him from grave danger; some nonetheless insisted he lived into his nineties. He is also said to have emulated the “naked teachers” as the Hindu Brahmans were called by Grecians whom he met while traveling in the entourage of Alexander the Great. Pyrrho’s chief exponent and publicist was Timon of Phlius c.325c.235 B.C.. His bestpreserved work, the Silloi “Lampoons”, is a parody in Homeric epic verse that mocks the pretensions of numerous philosophers on an imaginary visit to the underworld. According to Timon, Pyrrho was a “negative dogmatist” who affirmed that knowledge is impossible, not because our cognitive apparatus is flawed, but because the world is fundamentally indeterminate: things themselves are “no more” cold than hot, or good than bad. But Timon makes clear that the key to Pyrrho’s Skepticism, and a major source of his impact, was the ethical goal he sought to achieve: by training himself to disregard all perception and values, he hoped to attain mental tranquility. 

Pythagoras, the most famous of the pre-Socratic Grecian philosophers. He emigrated from the island of Samos off Asia Minor to Croton southern Italy in 530. There he founded societies based on a strict way of life. They had great political impact in southern Italy and aroused opposition that resulted in the burning of their meeting houses and, ultimately, in the societies’ disappearance in the fourth century B.C. Pythagoras’s fame grew exponentially with the pasage of time. Plato’s immediate successors in the Academy saw true philosophy as an unfolding of the original insight of Pythagoras. By the time of Iamblichus late third century A.D., Pythagoreanism and Platonism had become virtually identified. Spurious writings ascribed both to Pythagoras and to other Pythagoreans arose beginning in the third century B.C. Eventually any thinker who saw the natural world as ordered according to pleasing mathematical relations e.g., Kepler came to be called a Pythagorean. Modern scholarship has shown that Pythagoras was not a scientist, mathematician, or systematic philosopher. He apparently wrote nothing. The early evidence shows that he was famous for introducing the doctrine of metempsychosis, according to which the soul is immortal and is reborn in both human and animal incarnations. Rules were established to purify the soul including the prohibition against eating beans and the emphasis on training of the memory. General reflections on the natural world such as “number is the wisest thing” and “the most beautiful, harmony” were preserved orally. A belief in the mystical power of number is also visible in the veneration for the tetractys tetrad: the numbers 14, which add up to the sacred number 10. The doctrine of the harmony of the spheres  that the heavens move in accord with number and produce music  may go back to Pythagoras. It is often assumed that there must be more to Pythagoras’s thought than this, given his fame in the later tradition. However, Plato refers to him only as the founder of a way of life Republic 600a9. In his account of pre-Socratic philosophy, Aristotle refers not to Pythagoras himself, but to the “so-called Pythagoreans” whom he dates in the fifth century. 

quale: a property of a mental state or event, in particular of a sensation and a perceptual state, which determine “what it is like” to have them. Sometimes ‘phenomenal properties’ and ‘qualitative features’ are used with the same meaning. The felt difference between pains and itches is said to reside in differences in their “qualitative character,” i.e., their qualia. For those who accept an “actobject” conception of perceptual experience, qualia may include such properties as “phenomenal redness” and “phenomenal roundness,” thought of as properties of sense-data, “phenomenal objects,” or portions of the visual field. But those who reject this conception do not thereby reject qualia; a proponent of the adverbial analysis of perceptual experience can hold that an experience of “sensing redly” is so in virtue of, in part, what qualia it has, while denying that there is any sense in which the experience itself is red. Qualia are thought of as non-intentional, i.e., non-representational, features of the states that have them. So in a case of “spectrum inversion,” where one person’s experiences of green are “qualitatively” just like another person’s experiences of red, and vice versa, the visual experiences the two have when viewing a ripe tomato would be alike in their intentional features both would be of a red, round, bulgy surface, but would have different qualia. Critics of physicalist and functionalist accounts of mind have argued from the possibility of spectrum inversion and other kinds of “qualia inversion,” and from such facts as that no physical or functional description will tell one “what it is like” to smell coffee, that such accounts cannot accommodate qualia. Defenders of such accounts are divided between those who claim that their accounts can accommodate qualia and those who claim that qualia are a philosophical myth and thus that there are none to accommodate. 

qualitative predicate, a kind of predicate postulated in some attempts to solve the grue paradox. 1 On the syntactic view, a qualitative predicate is a syntactically more or less simple predicate. Such simplicity, however, is relative to the choice of primitives in a language. In English, ‘green’ and ‘blue’ are primitive, while ‘grue’ and ‘bleen’ must be introduced by definitions ‘green and first examined before T, or blue otherwise’, ‘blue and first examined before T, or green otherwise’, respectively. In other languages, ‘grue’ and ‘bleen’ may be primitive and hence “simple,” while ‘green’ and ‘blue’ must be introduced by definitions ‘grue and first examined before T, or bleen otherwise’, ‘bleen and first examined before T, or grue otherwise’, respectively. 2 On the semantic view, a qualitative predicate is a predicate to which there corresponds a property that is “natural” to us or of easy semantic access. The quality of greenness is easy and natural; the quality of grueness is strained. 3 On the ontological view, a qualitative predicate is a predicate to which there corresponds a property that is woven into the causal or modal structure of reality in a way that gruesome properties are not. 

qualities, properties or characteristics. There are three specific philosophical senses. 1 Qualities are physical properties, logical constructions of physical properties, or dispositions. Physical properties, such as mass, shape, and electrical charge, are properties in virtue of which objects can enter into causal relations. Logical constructions of physical properties include conjunctions and disjunctions of them; being 10 # .02 cm long is a disjunctive property. A disposition of an object is a potential for the object to enter into a causal interaction of some specific kind under some specific condition; e.g., an object is soluble in water if and only if it would dissolve were it in enough pure water. Locke held a very complex theory of powers. On Locke’s theory, the dispositions of objects are a kind of power and the human will is a kind of power. However, the human will is not part of the modern notion of disposition. So, predicating a disposition of an object implies a subjunctive conditional of the form: if such-and-such were to happen to the object, then so-and-so would happen to it; that my vase is fragile implies that if my vase were to be hit sufficiently hard then it would break. Whether physical properties are distinct from dispositions is disputed. Three sorts of qualities are often distinguished. Primary qualities are physical properties or logical constructions from physical properties. Secondary qualities are dispositions to produce sensory experiences of certain phenomenal sorts under appropriate conditions. The predication of a secondary quality, Q, to an object implies that if the object were to be perceived under normal conditions then the object would appear to be Q to the perceivers: if redness is a secondary quality, then that your coat is red implies that if your coat were to be seen under normal conditions, it would look red. Locke held that the following are secondary qualities: colors, tastes, smells, sounds, and warmth or cold. Tertiary qualities are dispositions that are not secondary qualities, e.g. fragility. Contrary to Locke, the color realist holds that colors are either primary or tertiary qualities; so that x is yellow is logically independent of the fact that x looks yellow under normal conditions. Since different spectral reflectances appear to be the same shade of yellow, some color realists hold that any shade of yellow is a disjunctive property whose components are spectral reflectances. 2 Assuming a representative theory of perception, as Locke did, qualities have two characteristics: qualities are powers or dispositions of objects to produce sensory experiences sensedata on some theories in humans; and, in sensory experience, qualities are represented as intrinsic properties of objects. Instrinsic properties of objects are properties that objects have independently of their environment. Hence an exact duplicate of an object has all the intrinsic properties of the original, and an intrinsic property of x never has the form, x-stands-in-suchand-such-a-relation-to-y. Locke held that the primary qualities are extension size, figure shape, motion or rest, solidity impenetrability, and number; the primary qualities are correctly represented in perception as intrinsic features of objects, and the secondary qualities listed in 1 are incorrectly represented in perception as intrinsic features of objects. Locke seems to have been mistaken in holding that number is a quality of objects. Positional qualities are qualities defined in terms of the relative positions of points in objects and their surrounding: shape, size, and motion and rest. Since most of Locke’s primary qualities are positional, some non-positional quality is needed to occupy positions. On Locke’s account, solidity fulfills this role, although some have argued Hume that solidity is not a primary quality. 3 Primary qualities are properties common to and inseparable from all matter; secondary qualities are not really qualities in objects, but only powers of objects to produce sensory effects in us by means of their primary qualities. This is another use of ‘quality’ by Locke, where ‘primary’ functions much like ‘real’ and real properties are given by the metaphysical assumptions of the science of Locke’s time. Qualities are distinct from representations of them in predications. Sometimes the same quality is represented in different ways by different predications: ‘That is water’ and ‘That is H2O’. The distinction between qualities and the way they are represented in predications opens up the Lockean possibility that some qualities are incorrectly represented in some predications. Features of predications are sometimes used to define a quality; dispositions are sometimes defined in terms of subjunctive conditionals see definition of ‘secondary qualities’ in 1, and disjunctive properties are defined in terms of disjunctive predications. Features of predications are also used in the following definition of ‘independent qualities’: two qualities, P and Q, are independent if and only if, for any object x, the predication of P and of Q to x are logically independent i.e., that x is P and that x is Q are logically independent; circularity and redness are independent, circularity and triangularity are dependent. If two determinate qualities, e.g., circularity and triangularity, belong to the same determinable, say shape, then they are dependent, but if two determinate qualities, e.g., squareness and redness, belong to different determinables, say shape and color, they are independent.

Quantification: H. P. Grice, “Every nice girl loves a sailor.” -- the application of one or more quantifiers e.g., ‘for all x’, ‘for some y’ to an open formula. A quantification or quantified sentence results from first forming an open formula from a sentence by replacing expressions belonging to a certain class of expressions in the sentences by variables whose substituends are the expressions of that class and then prefixing the formula with quantifiers using those variables. For example, from ‘Bill hates Mary’ we form ‘x hates y’, to which we prefix the quantifiers ‘for all x’ and ‘for some y’, getting the quantification sentence ‘for all x, for some y, x hates y’ ‘Everyone hates someone’. In referential quantification only terms of reference may be replaced by variables. The replaceable terms of reference are the substituends of the variables. The values of the variables are all those objects to which reference could be made by a term of reference of the type that the variables may replace. Thus the previous example ‘for all x, for some y, x hates y’ is a referential quantification. Terms standing for people ‘Bill’, ‘Mary’, e.g. are the substituends of the variables ‘x’ and ‘y’. And people are the values of the variables. In substitutional quantification any type of term may be replaced by variables. A variable replacing a term has as its substituends all terms of the type of the replaced term. For example, from ‘Bill married Mary’ we may form ‘Bill R Mary’, to which we prefix the quantifier ‘for some R’, getting the substitutional quantification ‘for some R, Bill R Mary’. This is not a referential quantification, since the substituends of ‘R’ are binary predicates such as ‘marries’, which are not terms of reference. Referential quantification is a species of objectual quantification. The truth conditions of quantification sentences objectually construed are understood in terms of the values of the variable bound by the quantifier. Thus, ‘for all v, fv’ is true provided ‘fv’ is true for all values of the variable ‘v’; ‘for some v, fv’ is true provided ‘fv’ is true for some value of the variable ‘v’. The truth or falsity of a substitutional quantification turns instead on the truth or falsity of the sentences that result from the quantified formula by replacing variables by their substituends. For example, ‘for some R, Bill R Mary’ is true provided some sentence of the form ‘Bill R Mary’ is true. In classical logic the universal quantifier ‘for all’ is definable in terms of negation and the existential quantifier ‘for some’: ‘for all x’ is short for ‘not for some x not’. The existential quantifier is similarly definable in terms of negation and the universal quantifier. In intuitionistic logic, this does not hold. Both quantifiers are regarded as primitive.

quantifying in, use of a quantifier outside of an opaque construction to attempt to bind a variable within it, a procedure whose legitimacy was first questioned by Quine. An opaque construction is one that resists substitutivity of identity. Among others, the constructions of quotation, the verbs of propositional attitude, and the logical modalities can give rise to opacity. For example, the position of ‘six’ in: 1 ‘six’ contains exactly three letters is opaque, since the substitution for ‘six’ by its codesignate ‘immediate successor of five’ renders a truth into a falsehood: 1H ‘the immediate successor of five’ contains exactly three letters. Similarly, the position of ‘the earth’ in: 2 Tom believes that the earth is habitable is opaque, if the substitution of ‘the earth’ by its codesignate ‘the third planet from the sun’ renders a sentence that Tom would affirm into one that he would deny: 2H Tom believes that the third planet from the sun is habitable. Finally, the position of ‘9’ and of ‘7’ in: 3 Necessarily 9  7 is opaque, since the substitution of ‘the number of major planets’ for its codesignate ‘9’ renders a truth into a falsehood: 3H Necessarily the number of major planets  7. Quine argues that since the positions within opaque constructions resist substitutivity of identity, they cannot meaningfully be quantified. Accordingly, the following three quantified sentences are meaningless: 1I Ex ‘x’  7, 2I Ex Tom believes that x is habitable, 3I Ex necessarily x  7. 1I, 2I, and 3I are meaningless, since the second occurrence of ‘x’ in each of them does not function as a variable in the ordinary nonessentialist quantificational way. The second occurrence of ‘x’ in 1I functions as a name that names the twenty-fourth letter of the alphabet. The second occurrences of ‘x’ in 2I and in 3I do not function as variables, since they do not allow all codesignative terms as substituends without change of truth-value. Thus, they may take objects as values but only objects designated in certain ways, e.g., in terms of their intensional or essential properties. So, short of acquiescing in an intensionalist or essentialist metaphysics, Quine argues, we cannot in general quantify into opaque contexts. 

quantum logic, the logic of which the models are certain non-Boolean algebras derived from the mathematical representation of quantum mechanical systems. The models of classical logic are, formally, Boolean algebras. This is the central notion of quantum logic in the literature, although the term covers a variety of modal logics, dialogics, and operational logics proposed to elucidate the structure of quantum mechanics and its relation to classical mechanics. The dynamical quantities of a classical mechanical system position, momentum, energy, etc. form a commutative algebra, and the dynamical properties of the system e.g., the property that the position lies in a specified range, or the property that the momentum is greater than zero, etc. form a Boolean algebra. The transition from classical to quantum mechanics involves the transition from a commutative algebra of dynamical quantities to a noncommutative algebra of so-called observables. One way of understanding the conceptual revolution from classical to quantum mechanics is in terms of a shift from the class of Boolean algebras to a class of non-Boolean algebras as the appropriate relational structures for the dynamical properties of mechanical systems, hence from a Boolean classical logic to a non-Boolean quantum logic as the logic applicable to the fundamental physical processes of our universe. This conception of quantum logic was developed formally in a classic 6 paper by G. Birkhoff and J. von Neumann although von Neumann first proposed the idea in 7. The features that distinguish quantum logic from classical logic vary with the formulation. In the Birkhoffvon Neumann logic, the distributive law of classical logic fails, but this is by no means a feature of all versions of quantum logic. It follows from Gleason’s theorem 7 that the non-Boolean models do not admit two-valued homomorphisms in the general case, i.e., there is no partition of the dynamical properties of a quantum mechanical system into those possessed by the system and those not possessed by the system that preserves algebraic structure, and equivalently no assignment of values to the observables of the system that preserves algebraic structure. This result was proved independently for finite sets of observables by S. Kochen and E. P. Specker 7. It follows that the probabilities specified by the Born interpretation of the state function of a quantum mechanical system for the results of measurements of observables cannot be derived from a probability distribution over the different possible sets of dynamical properties of the system, or the different possible sets of values assignable to the observables of which one set is presumed to be actual, determined by hidden variables in addition to the state function, if these sets of properties or values are required to preserve algebraic structure. While Bell’s theorem 4 excludes hidden variables satisfying a certain locality condition, the Kochen-Specker theorem relates the non-Booleanity of quantum logic to the impossibility of hidden variable extensions of quantum mechanics, in which value assignments to the observables satisfy constraints imposed by the algebraic structure of the observables.

quantum mechanics, also called quantum theory, the science governing objects of atomic and subatomic dimensions. Developed independently by Werner Heisenberg as matrix mechanics, 5 and Erwin Schrödinger as wave mechanics, 6, quantum mechanics breaks with classical treatments of the motions and interactions of bodies by introducing probability and acts of measurement in seemingly irreducible ways. In the widely used Schrödinger version, quantum mechanics associates with each physical system a time-dependent function, called the state function alternatively, the state vector or Y function. The evolution of the system is represented by the temporal transformation of the state function in accord with a master equation, known as the Schrödinger equation. Also associated with a system are “observables”: in principle measurable quantities, such as position, momentum, and energy, including some with no good classical analogue, such as spin. According to the Born interpretation 6, the state function is understood instrumentally: it enables one to calculate, for any possible value of an observable, the probability that a measurement of that observable would find that particular value. The formal properties of observables and state functions imply that certain pairs of observables such as linear momentum in a given direction, and position in the same direction are incompatible in the sense that no state function assigns probability 1 to the simultaneous determination of exact values for both observables. This is a qualitative statement of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle alternatively, the indeterminacy principle, or just the uncertainty principle. Quantitatively, that principle places a precise limit on the accuracy with which one may simultaneously measure a pair of incompatible observables. There is no corresponding limit, however, on the accuracy with which a single observable say, position alone, or momentum alone may be measured. The uncertainty principle is sometimes understood in terms of complementarity, a general perspective proposed by Niels Bohr according to which the connection between quantum phenomena and observation forces our classical concepts to split into mutually exclusive packages, both of which are required for a complete understanding but only one of which is applicable under any particular experimental conditions. Some take this to imply an ontology in which quantum objects do not actually possess simultaneous values for incompatible observables; e.g., do not have simultaneous position and momentum. Others would hold, e.g., that measuring the position of an object causes an uncontrollable change in its momentum, in accord with the limits on simultaneous accuracy built into the uncertainty principle. These ways of treating the principle are not uncontroversial. Philosophical interest arises in part from where the quantum theory breaks with classical physics: namely, from the apparent breakdown of determinism or causality that seems to result from the irreducibly statistical nature of the theory, and from the apparent breakdown of observer-independence or realism that seems to result from the fundamental role of measurement in the theory. Both features relate to the interpretation of the state function as providing only a summary of the probabilities for various measurement outcomes. Einstein, in particular, criticized the theory on these grounds, and in 5 suggested a striking thought experiment to show that, assuming no action-at-a-distance, one would have to consider the state function as an incomplete description of the real physical state for an individual system, and therefore quantum mechanics as merely a provisional theory. Einstein’s example involved a pair of systems that interact briefly and then separate, but in such a way that the outcomes of various measurements performed on each system, separately, show an uncanny correlation. In 1 the physicist David Bohm simplified Einstein’s example, and later 7 indicated that it may be realizable experimentally. The physicist John S. Bell then formulated a locality assumption 4, similar to Einstein’s, that constrains factors which might be used in describing the state of an individual system, so-called hidden variables. Locality requires that in the EinsteinBohm experiment hidden variables not allow the measurement performed on one system in a correlated pair immediately to influence the outcome obtained in measuring the other, spatially separated system. Bell demonstrated that locality in conjunction with other assumptions about hidden variables restricts the probabilities for measurement outcomes according to a system of inequalities known as the Bell inequalities, and that the probabilities of certain quantum systems violate these inequalities. This is Bell’s theorem. Subsequently several experiments of the Einstein-Bohm type have been performed to test the Bell inequalities. Although the results have not been univocal, the consensus is that the experimental data support the quantum theory and violate the inequalities. Current research is trying to evaluate the implications of these results, including the extent to which they rule out local hidden variables. See J. Cushing and E. McMullin, eds., Philosophical Consequences of Quantum Theory, 9. The descriptive incompleteness with which Einstein charged the theory suggests other problems. A particularly dramatic one arose in correspondence between Schrödinger and Einstein; namely, the “gruesome” Schrödinger cat paradox. Here a cat is confined in a closed chamber containing a radioactive atom with a fifty-fifty chance of decaying in the next hour. If the atom decays it triggers a relay that causes a hammer to fall and smash a glass vial holding a quantity of    766 prussic acid sufficient to kill the cat. According to the Schrödinger equation, after an hour the state function for the entire atom ! relay ! hammer ! glass vial ! cat system is such that if we observe the cat the probability for finding it alive dead is 50 percent. However, this evolved state function is one for which there is no definite result; according to it, the cat is neither alive nor dead. How then does any definite fact of the matter arise, and when? Is the act of observation itself instrumental in bringing about the observed result, does that result come about by virtue of some special random process, or is there some other account compatible with definite results of measurements? This is the so-called quantum measurement problem and it too is an active area of research. 

quasi-demonstratum: The use of ‘quasi-‘ is implicatural. Grice is implicating this is NOT a demonstratum. By a demonstratum he is having in mind a Kaplanian ‘dthis’ or ‘dthat.’ Grice was obsessed with this or that. An abstractum (such as “philosopher”) needs to be attached in a communicatum by what Grice calls a ‘quasi-demonstrative,’ and for which he uses “φ.” Consider, Grice says, an utterance, out of the blue, such as ‘The philosopher in the garden seems bored,’ involving two iota-operators. As there may be more that a philosopher in a garden in the great big world, the utterer intends his addressee to treat the utterance as expandable into ‘The A which is φ is B,’ where “φ” is a quasi-demonstrative epithet to be identified in a particular context of utterance. The utterer intends that, to identify  the denotatum of “φ” for a particular utterance of ‘The philosopher in the garden seems bored,’ the addressee wil proceed via the identification of a particular philosopher, say Grice, as being a good candidate for being the philosopher meant. The addressee is also intended to identify the candidate for a denotatum of φ by finding in the candidate a feature, e. g., that of being the garden at St. John’s, which is intended to be used to yield a composite epithet (‘philosopher in St. John’s garden’), which in turn fills the bill of being the epithet which the utterer believes is being uniquely satisfied by the philosopher selected as the candidate. Determining the denotatum of “φ” standardly involve determining what feature the utterer believes is uniquely instantiated by the predicate “philosopher.” This in turn involves satisfying oneself that some particular feature is in fact uniquely satisfied by a particular actual item, viz. a particular philosopher such as Grice seeming bored in the garden of St. John’s.

quasi-indicator, Castañeda’s term for an expression used to ascribe indexical reference to a speaker or thinker. If John says “I am hungry” it is incorrect to report what he said with ‘John claims that I am hungry’, since ‘I’, being an indexical, expresses speaker’s reference, not John’s. However, ‘John claims that John is hungry’ fails to represent the indexical element of his assertion. Instead, we use ‘John claims that he himself is hungry’, where ‘he himself’ is a quasiindicator depicting John’s reference to himself qua self. Because of its subjective and perspectival character, we cannot grasp the exact content of another’s indexical reference, yet quasi-indexical representations are possible since we confront the world through generically the same indexical modes of presentation. If these modes are irreducible, then quasi-indicators are indispensable for describing the thoughts and experiences of others. As such, they are not equivalent to or replaceable by any antecedents occurring outside the scope of psychological verbs to which they are subordinated. 

Quineianism: corners, also called corner quotes, quasi-quotes, a notational device ] ^ introduced by Quine Mathematical Logic, 0 to provide a conveniently brief way of speaking generally about unspecified expressions of such and such kind. For example, a logician might want a conveniently brief way of saying in the metalanguage that the result of writing a wedge ‘7’ the dyadic logical connective for a truth-functional use of ‘or’ between any two well-formed formulas wffs in the object language is itself a wff. Supposing the Grecian letters ‘f’ and ‘y’ available in the metalanguage as variables ranging over wffs in the object language, it is tempting to think that the formation rule stated above can be succinctly expressed simply by saying that if f and y are wffs, then ‘f 7 y’ is a wff. But this will not do, for ‘f 7 y’ is not a wff. Rather, it is a hybrid expression of two variables of the metalanguage and a dyadic logical connective of the object language. The problem is that putting quotation marks around the Grecian letters merely results in designating those letters themselves, not, as desired, in designating the context of the unspecified wffs. Quine’s device of corners allows one to transcend this limitation of straight quotation since quasi-quotation, e.g., ]f 7 y^, amounts to quoting the constant contextual background, ‘# 7 #’, and imagining the unspecified expressions f and y written in the blanks.  Quine, Willard Van Orman – see Quine, “Reply to H. P. Grice,” --  philosopher and logician, renowned for his rejection of the analyticsynthetic distinction and for his advocacy of extensionalism, naturalism, physicalism, empiricism, and holism. Quine took his doctorate in philosophy at Harvard in 2. After four years of postdoctoral fellowships, he was appointed to the philosophy faculty at Harvard in 6. There he remained until he retired from teaching in 8. During six decades Quine published scores of journal articles and more than twenty books. His writings touch a number of areas, including logic, philosophy of logic, set theory, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Among his most influential articles and books are “New Foundations for Mathematical Logic” 6, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” 1, “Epistemology Naturalized” 9, and Word and Object 0. In “New Foundations” he develops a set theory that avoids Russell’s paradox without relying on Russell’s theory of types. Rather, following Ernst Zermelo, Quine drops the presumption that every membership condition determines a set. The system of “New Foundations” continues to be widely discussed by mathematicians. “Two Dogmas” sets out to repudiate what he sees as two dogmas of logical empiricism. The first is the so-called analyticsynthetic distinction; the second is a weak form of reductionism to the effect that each synthetic statement has associated with it a unique set of confirming experiences and a unique set of infirming experiences. Against the first dogma, Quine argues that none of the then-current attempts to characterize analyticity e.g., “a statement is analytic if and only if it is true solely in virtue of its meaning” do so with sufficient clarity, and that any similar characterization is likewise doomed to fail. Against the second dogma, Quine argues that a more accurate account of the relation between the statements of a theory and experience is holistic rather than reductionistic, that is, only as a corporate body do the statements of a theory face the tribunal of experience. Quine concludes that the effects of rejecting these two dogmas of empiricism are 1 a blurring of the supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and natural science and 2 a shift toward pragmatism. In “Epistemology Naturalized” Quine argues in favor of naturalizing epistemology: old-time epistemology first philosophy has failed in its attempt to ground science on something firmer than science and should, therefore, be replaced by a scientific account of how we acquire our overall theory of the world and why it works so well. In Word and Object, Quine’s most famous book, he argues in favor of 1 naturalizing epistemology, 2 physicalism as against phenomenalism and mindbody dualism, and 3 extensionality as against intensionality. He also 4 develops a behavioristic conception of sentence-meaning, 5 theorizes about language learning, 6 speculates on the ontogenesis of reference, 7 explains various forms of ambiguity and vagueness, 8 recommends measures for regimenting language so as to eliminate ambiguity and vagueness as well as to make a theory’s logic and ontic commitments perspicuous “to be is to be the value of a bound variable”, 9 argues against quantified modal logic and the essentialism it presupposes, 10 argues for Platonic realism in mathematics, 11 argues for scientific realism and against instrumentalism, 12 develops a view of philosophical analysis as explication, 13 argues against analyticity and for holism, 14 argues against countenancing propositions, and 15 argues that the meanings of theoretical sentences are indeterminate and that the reference of terms is inscrutable. Quine’s subsequent writings have largely been devoted to summing up, clarifying, and expanding on themes found in Word and Object. 

A.M. Quinton’s Gedanke Experiment: from “Spaces and Times,” Philosophy.“hardly Thought Out” – Is this apriori or a posteriori? H. P. Grice. Space is ordinarily seen to be a unique individual. All real things are contained in one and the same space, and all spaces are part of the one space. In principle, every place can be reached from every other place by traveling through intermediate places. The spatial relation is symmetrical. Grice’s friend, A. M. Quinton devised a thought experiment to challenge this picture. Suppose that we have richly coherent and connected experience in our dreams just as we have in waking life, so that it becomes arbitrary to claim that our dream experience is not of an objectively existing world like the world of our waking experience. If the space of my waking world and my dream world are not mutually accessible, it is unlikely that we are justified in claiming to be living in a single spatially isolated world. Hence, space is not essentially singular. In assessing this account, we might distinguish between systematic and public physical space and fragmentary and private experiential space. The two-space myth raises questions about how we can justify moving from experiential space to objective space in the world as it is. “We can at least conceive circumstances in which we should have good reason to say that we know of real things located in two distinct spaces.” Quinton, “Spaces and Times,” Philosophy 37.

Radix -- Radix -- Grice often talked about logical atomism and molecular propositions – and radix – which is an atomic metaphor -- Democritus, Grecian preSocratic philosopher. He was born at Abdera, in Thrace. Building on Leucippus and his atomism, he developed the atomic theory in The Little World-system and numerous other writings. In response to the Eleatics’ argument that the impossibility of not-being entailed that there is no change, the atomists posited the existence of a plurality of tiny indivisible beings  the atoms  and not-being  the void, or empty space. Atoms do not come into being or perish, but they do move in the void, making possible the existence of a world, and indeed of many worlds. For the void is infinite in extent, and filled with an infinite number of atoms that move and collide with one another. Under the right conditions a concentration of atoms can begin a vortex motion that draws in other atoms and forms a spherical heaven enclosing a world. In our world there is a flat earth surrounded by heavenly bodies carried by a vortex motion. Other worlds like ours are born, flourish, and die, but their astronomical configurations may be different from ours and they need not have living creatures in them. The atoms are solid bodies with countless shapes and sizes, apparently having weight or mass, and capable of motion. All other properties are in some way derivative of these basic properties. The cosmic vortex motion causes a sifting that tends to separate similar atoms as the sea arranges pebbles on the shore. For instance heavier atoms sink to the center of the vortex, and lighter atoms such as those of fire rise upward. Compound bodies can grow by the aggregations of atoms that become entangled with one another. Living things, including humans, originally emerged out of slime. Life is caused by fine, spherical soul atoms, and living things die when these atoms are lost. Human culture gradually evolved through chance discoveries and imitations of nature. Because the atoms are invisible and the only real properties are properties of atoms, we cannot have direct knowledge of anything. Tastes, temperatures, and colors we know only “by convention.” In general the senses cannot give us anything but “bastard” knowledge; but there is a “legitimate” knowledge based on reason, which takes over where the senses leave off  presumably demonstrating that there are atoms that the senses cannot testify of. Democritus offers a causal theory of perception  sometimes called the theory of effluxes  accounting for tastes in terms of certain shapes of atoms and for sight in terms of “effluences” or moving films of atoms that impinge on the eye. Drawing on both atomic theory and conventional wisdom, Democritus develops an ethics of moderation. The aim of life is equanimity euthumiê, a state of balance achieved by moderation and proportionate pleasures. Envy and ambition are incompatible with the good life. Although Democritus was one of the most prolific writers of antiquity, his works were all lost. Yet we can still identify his atomic theory as the most fully worked out of pre-Socratic philosophies. His theory of matter influenced Plato’s Timaeus, and his naturalist anthropology became the prototype for liberal social theories. Democritus had no immediate successors, but a century later Epicurus transformed his ethics into a philosophy of consolation founded on atomism. Epicureanism thus became the vehicle through which atomic theory was transmitted to the early modern period. 

ramseyified description. Grice enjoyed Ramsey’s Engish humour: if you can say it, you can’t whistle it either. Applied by Grice in “Method.”Agent A is in a D state just in case there is a predicate “D”  introduced via implicit definition by nomological generalisation L within theory θ, such L obtains, A instantiates D. Grice distinguishes the ‘descriptor’ from a more primitive ‘name.’ The reference is to Ramsey. The issue is technical and relates to the introduction of a predicate constant – something he would never have dared to at Oxford with Gilbert Ryle and D. F. Pears next to him! But in the New World, they loved a formalism! And of course Ramsey would not have anything to do with it! Ramsey: p. r. – cited by Grice, “The Ramseyfied description. Frank Plumpton 330, influential 769 R    769 British philosopher of logic and mathematics. His primary interests were in logic and philosophy, but decades after his untimely death two of his publications sparked new branches of economics, and in pure mathematics his combinatorial theorems gave rise to “Ramsey theory” Economic Journal 7, 8; Proc. London Math. Soc., 8. During his lifetime Ramsey’s philosophical reputation outside Cambridge was based largely on his architectural reparation of Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica, strengthening its claim to reduce mathematics to the new logic formulated in Volume 1  a reduction rounded out by Vitters’s assessment of logical truths as tautologous. Ramsey clarified this logicist picture of mathematics by radically simplifying Russell’s ramified theory of types, eliminating the need for the unarguable axiom of reducibility Proc. London Math. Soc., 5. His philosophical work was published mostly after his death. The canon, established by Richard Braithwaite The Foundations of Mathematics . . . , 1, remains generally intact in D. H. Mellor’s edition Philosophical Papers, 0. Further writings of varying importance appear in his Notes on Philosophy, Probability and Mathematics M. C. Galavotti, ed., 1 and On Truth Nicholas Rescher and Ulrich Majer, eds., 1. As an undergraduate Ramsey observed that the redundancy account of truth “enables us to rule out at once some theories of truth such as that ‘to be true’ means ‘to work’ or ‘to cohere’ since clearly ‘p works’ and ‘p coheres’ are not equivalent to ‘p’.” Later, in the canonical “Truth and Probability” 6, he readdressed to knowledge and belief the main questions ordinarily associated with truth, analyzing probability as a mode of judgment in the framework of a theory of choice under uncertainty. Reinvented and acknowledged by L. J. Savage Foundations of Statistics, 4, this forms the theoretical basis of the currently dominant “Bayesian” view of rational decision making. Ramsey cut his philosophical teeth on Vitters’s Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus. His translation appeared in 2; a long critical notice of the work 3 was his first substantial philosophical publication. His later role in Vitters’s rejection of the Tractatus is acknowledged in the foreword to Philosophical Investigations 3. The posthumous canon has been a gold mine. An example: “Propositions” 9, reading the theoretical terms T, U, etc. of an axiomatized scientific theory as variables, sees the theory’s content as conveyed by a “Ramsey sentence” saying that for some T, U, etc., the theory’s axioms are true, a sentence in which all extralogical terms are observational. Another example: “General Propositions and Causality” 9, offering in a footnote the “Ramsey test” for acceptability of conditionals, i.e., add the if-clause to your ambient beliefs minimally modified to make the enlarged set self-consistent, and accept the conditional if the then-clause follows.  Refs: “Philosophical psychology,” in BANC. ‘

Ramus, Petrus, in , Pierre de La Ramée, philosopher who questioned the authority of Aristotle and influenced the methods and teaching of logic through the seventeenth century. In 1543 he published his Dialecticae institutiones libri XV, and in 1555 reworked it as Dialectique  the first philosophical work in . He was appointed by François I as the first Regius Professor of the  of Paris, where he taught until he was killed in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572. Ramus doubted that we can apodictically intuit the major premises required for Aristotle’s rational syllogism. Turning instead to Plato, Ramus proposed that a “Socratizing” of logic would produce a more workable and fruitful result. As had Agricola and Sturm, he reworked the rhetorical and liberal arts traditions’ concepts of “invention, judgment, and practice,” placing “method” in the center of judgment. Proceeding in these stages, we can “read” nature’s “arguments,” because they are modeled on natural reasoning, which in turn can emulate the reasoning by which God creates. Often his results were depicted graphically in tables as in chapter IX of Hobbes’s Leviathan. When carefully done they would show both what is known and where gaps require further investigation; the process from invention to judgment is continuous. Ramus’s works saw some 750 editions in one century, fostering the “Ramist” movement in emerging Protestant universities and the  colonies. He influenced Bacon, Hobbes, Milton, Methodism, Cambridge Platonism, and Alsted in Europe, and Hooker and Congregationalism in Puritan America. Inconsistencies make him less than a major figure in the history of logic, but his many works and their rapid popularity led to philosophical and educational efforts to bring the world of learning to the “plain man” by using the vernacular, and by more closely correlating the rigor of philosophy with the memorable and persuasive powers of rhetoric; he saw this goal as Socratic.

Rashdall, Hastings 18584, English historian, theologian, and personal idealist. While acknowledging that Berkeley needed to be corrected by Kant, Rashdall defended Berkeley’s thesis that objects only exist for minds. From this he concluded that there is a divine mind that guarantees the existence of nature and the objectivity of morality. In his most important philosophical work, The Theory of Good and Evil 7, Rashdall argued that actions are right or wrong according to whether they produce well-being, in which pleasure as well as a virtuous disposition are constituents. Rashdall coined the name ‘ideal utilitarianism’ for this view.

rational choice: as oppose to irrational choice. V. choose. Grice, “Impicatures of ‘choosing’” “Hobson’s choice, or Hobson’s ‘choice’?” Pears on conversational implicaturum and choosing. That includes choosing in its meaning, and then it is easy to ac- cept the suggestion that choosing might be an S-factor, and that the hypothetical might be a Willkür: one of Grice’s favourite words from Kant – “It’s so Kantish!” I told Pears about this, and having found it’s cognate with English ‘choose,’ he immediately set to write an essay on the topic!” f., ‘option, discretion, caprice,’ from MidHG. willekür, f., ‘free choice, free will’; gee kiesen and Kur-.kiesen, verb, ‘to select,’ from Middle High German kiesen, Old High German chiosan, ‘to test, try, taste for the purpose of testing, test by tasting, select after strict examination.’ Gothic kiusan, Anglo-Saxon ceósan, English to choose. Teutonic root kus (with the change of s into r, kur in the participle erkoren, see also Kur, ‘choice’), from pre-Teutonic gus, in Latin gus-tus, gus-tare, Greek γεύω for γεύσω, Indian root juš, ‘to select, be fond of.’ Teutonic kausjun passed as kusiti into Slavonic. Insofar as a philosopher explains and predicts the actum as consequences of a choice, which are themselves explained in terms of alleged reasons, it must depict agents as to some extent rational. Rationality, like reasons, involves evaluation, and just as one can assess the rationality of individual choices, so one can assess the rationality of social choices and examine how they are and ought to be related to the preferences and judgments of the actor. In addition, there are intricate questions concerning rationality in ‘strategic’ situations in which outcomes depend on the choices of multiple individuals. Since rationality is a central concept in branches of philosophy such as Grice’s pragmatics, action theory, epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of mind, studies of rationality frequently cross the boundaries various branches of philosophy. The barebones theory of rationality  takes an agent’s preferences, i. e. his rankings of states of affairs, to be rational if they are complete and transitive, and it takes the agent’s choice to be rational if the agent does not prefer any feasible alternative to the one he chooses. Such a theory of rationality is clearly too weak. It says nothing about belief or what rationality implies when the agent does not know (with certainty) everything relevant to his choice. It may also be too strong, since there is nothing irrational about having incomplete preferences in situations involving uncertainty. Sometimes it is rational to suspend judgment and to refuse to rank alternatives that are not well understood. On the other hand, transitivity is a plausible condition, and the so-called “money pump” argument demonstrates that if one’s preferences are intransitive and one is willing to make exchanges, then one can be exploited. Suppose an agent A prefers X to Y, Y to Z and Z to X, and that A will pay some small amount of money $P to exchange Y for X, Z for Y, and X for Z. That means that, starting with Z, A will pay $P for Y, then $P again for X, then $P again for Z and so on. An agent need not be this stupid. He will instead refuse to trade or adjust his preferences to eliminate the intransitivity. On the other hand, there is evidence that an agent’s preferences are not in fact transitive. Such evidence does not establish that transitivity is not a requirement of rationality. It may show instead that an agent may sometimes not be rational. In, e. g. the case of preference reversals,” it seems plausible that the agent in fact makes the ‘irrational choice.’ Evidence of persistent violations of transitivity is disquieting, since standards of rationality should not be impossibly high. A further difficulty with the barebones theory of rationality concerns the individuation of the objects of preference or choice. Consider e. g. data from a multi-stage ultimatum game. Suppose A can propose any division of $10 between A and B. B can accept or reject A’s proposal. If B rejects the proposal, the amount of money drops to $5, and B gets to offer a division of the $5 which A can accept or reject. If A rejects B’s offer, both players get nothing. Suppose that A proposes to divide the money with $7 for A and $3 for B. B declines and offers to split the $5 evenly, with $2.50 for each. Behaviour such as this is, in fact, common. Assuming that B prefers more money to less, these choices appear to be a violation of transitivity. B prefers $3 to $2.50, yet declines $3 for certain for $2.50 (with some slight chance of A declining and B getting nothing). But the objects of choice are not just quantities of money. B is turning down $3 as part of “a raw deal” in favour of $2.50 as part of a fair arrangement. If the objects of choice are defined in this way, there is no failure of transitivity. This plausible observation gives rise to a serious conceptual problem that Grice thinks he can solve. Unless there are constraints on how the objects of choice are individuated, conditions of rationality such as transitivity are empty. A’s choice of X over Y, Y over Z and Z over X does not violate transitivity if “X when the alternative is Y” is not the same object of choice as “X when the alternative is Z”. A further substantive principle of rationality isrequired to limit how alternatives are individuated or to require that agents be indifferent between alternatives such as “X when the alternative is Y” and “X when the alternative is Z.” To extend the theory of rationality to circumstances involving risk (where the objects of choice are lotteries with known probabilities) and uncertainty (where agents do not know the probabilities or even all the possible outcomes of their choices) requires a further principle of rationality, as well as a controversial technical simplification. Subjective Bayesians suppose that the agent in circumstances of uncertainty has well-defined subjective probabilities (degrees of belief) over all the payoffs and thus that the objects of choice can be modeled as lotteries, just as in circumstances involving risk, though with subjective probabilities in place of objective probabilities. The most important of the axioms needed for the theory of rational choice under conditions of risk and uncertainty is the independence condition. The preferences of a rational agent between two lotteries that differ in only one outcome should match his preferences between the differing outcomes. A considerable part of Grice’s rational choice theory is concerned with formalizations of conditions of rationality and investigation of their implications. When they are complete and transitive and satisfy a further continuity condition, the agent’s preferences can be represented by an ordinal utility function, i. e. it is then possible to define a function that represents an agent’s preferences so that U(X) > U(Y) iff if the agent prefers X to Y, and U(X) = U(Y) iff if the agent is indifferent between X and Y. This function represents the preference ranking, and contains no information beyond the ranking. When in addition they satisfy the independence condition, the agent’s preferences can be represented by an expected utility function (Ramsey 1926). Such a function has two important properties. First, the expected utility of a lottery is equal to the sum of the expected utilities of its prizes weighted by their probabilities. Second, expected utility functions are unique up to a positive affine transformation. If U and V are both expected utility functions representing the preferences of an agent, for all objects of preference, X, V(X) must be equal to aU(X) + b, where a and b are real numbers and a is positive. The axioms of rationality imply that the agent’s degrees of belief will satisfy the axioms of the probability calculus. A great deal of controversy surrounds Grice’s theory of rationality, and there have been many formal investigations into amendeding it. Although a conversational pair is very different from this agent and this other agent, the pair has a mechanism to evaluate alternatives and make a choice. The evaluation and the choice may be rational or irrational. Pace Grice’s fruitful seminars on rational helpfulness in cooperation, t is not, however, obvious, what principles of rationality should govern the choices and evaluations of the conversational dyad. Transitivity is one plausible condition. It seems that a conversational dyad that chooses X when faced with the alternatives X or Y, Y when faced with the alternatives Y or Z and Z when faced with the alternatives X or Z, the conversational dyad has had “a change of hearts” or is choosing ‘irrationally.’ Yet, purported irrationalities such as these can easily arise from a standard mechanism that aims to link a ‘conversational choice’ and individual preferences. Suppose there are two conversationalists in the dyad. Individual One ranks the alternatives X, Y, Z. Individual Two ranks them Y, Z, X. (An Individual Three if he comes by, may ranks them Z, X, Y). If decisions are made by pairwise majority voting, X will be chosen from the pair (X, Y), Y will be chosen from (Y, Z), and Z will be chosen from (X, Z). Clearly this is unsettling. But is a possible cycle in a ‘conversational choice’ “irrational”? Similar problems affect what one might call the logical coherence of a conversational judgment Suppose the dyad consists of two individuals who make the following judgments concerning the truth or falsity of the propositions P and Q and that “conversational” judgment follows the majority. P if P, Q Q Conversationalist A true true true Conversationalist B false true false (Conversationalist C, if he passes by) true false false “Conversation” as an Institution: true true false. The judgment of each conversationalist is consistent with the principles of logic, while the “conversational co-operative” judgment violates the principles of logic. The “cooperative conversational,” “altruistic,” “joint judgment” need not be consistent with the principles of egoist logic. Although conversational choice theory bears on questions of conversational rationality, most work in conversational choice theory explores the consequences of principles of rationality coupled with this or that explicitly practical, or meta-ethical constraint. Grice does not use ‘moral,’ since he distinguishes what he calls a ‘conversational maxim’ from a ‘moral maxim’ of the type Kant universalizes. Arrow’s impossibility theorem assumes that an individual preference and a concerted, joint preference are complete and transitive and that the method of forming a conversational, concerted, joint preference (or making a conversational, concerted, choice) issues in some joint preference ranking or joint choice for any possible profile (or dossier, as Grice prefers) of each individual preference. Arrow’s impossibility theorem imposes a weak UNANIMITY (one-soul) condition. If A and B prefers X to Y, Y must not jointly preferred. Arrow’s impossibility theorem requires that there be no boss (call him Immanuel, the Genitor) whose preference determines a joint preference or choice irrespective of the preferences of anybody else. Arrow’s impossibility theorem imposes the condition that the joint concerted conversational preference between X and Y should depend on how A and B rank X and Y and on nothing else. Arrow’s impossibility theorem proves that no method of co-relating or linking conversational and a monogogic preference can satisfy all these conditions. If an monopreference and a mono-evaluations both satisfy the axioms of expected utility theory (with shared or objective probabilities) and that a duo-preference conform to the unanimous mono-preference, a duo- evaluation is determined by a weighted sum of individual utilities. A form of weighted futilitarianism, which prioritizes the interests of the recipient, rather than the emissor, uniquely satisfies a longer list of rational and practical constraints. When there are instead disagreements in probability assignments, there is an impossibility result. The unanimity (‘one-soul’) condition implies that for some profiles of individual preferences, a joint or duo-evaluation will not satisfy the axioms of expected utility theory. When outcomes depend on what at least two autonomous free agents do, one agent’s best choice may depend on what the other agent chooses. Although the principles of rationality governing mono-choice still apply, there is a further principle of conversational rationality governing the ‘expectation’ (to use Grice’s favourite term) of the action (or conversational move) of one’s co-conversationalist (and obviously, via the mutuality requirement of applicational universalizability) of the co-conversationalist’s ‘expectation’ concerning the conversationalist’s action and expectation, and so forth. Grice’s Conversational Game Theory plays a protagonist role within philosophy, and it is relevant to inquiries concerning conversational rationality and inquiries concerning conversational ethics. Rational choice -- Probability -- Dutch book, a bet or combination of bets whereby the bettor is bound to suffer a net loss regardless of the outcome. A simple example would be a bet on a proposition p at odds of 3 : 2 combined with a bet on not-p at the same odds, the total amount of money at stake in each bet being five dollars. Under this arrangement, if p turned out to be true one would win two dollars by the first bet but lose three dollars by the second, and if p turned out to be false one would win two dollars by the second bet but lose three dollars by the first. Hence, whatever happened, one would lose a dollar.  Dutch book argument, the argument that a rational person’s degrees of belief must conform to the axioms of the probability calculus, since otherwise, by the Dutch book theorem, he would be vulnerable to a Dutch book. R.Ke. Dutch book theorem, the proposition that anyone who a counts a bet on a proposition p as fair if the odds correspond to his degree of belief that p is true and who b is willing to make any combination of bets he would regard individually as fair will be vulnerable to a Dutch book provided his degrees of belief do not conform to the axioms of the probability calculus. Thus, anyone of whom a and b are true and whose degree of belief in a disjunction of two incompatible propositions is not equal to the sum of his degrees of belief in the two propositions taken individually would be vulnerable to a Dutch book.

rational decision theory -- decidability, as a property of sets, the existence of an effective procedure a “decision procedure” which, when applied to any object, determines whether or not the object belongs to the set. A theory or logic is decidable if and only if the set of its theorems is. Decidability is proved by describing a decision procedure and showing that it works. The truth table method, for example, establishes that classical propositional logic is decidable. To prove that something is not decidable requires a more precise characterization of the notion of effective procedure. Using one such characterization for which there is ample evidence, Church proved that classical predicate logic is not decidable. decision theory, the theory of rational decision, often called “rational choice theory” in political science and other social sciences. The basic idea probably Pascal’s was published at the end of Arnaud’s Port-Royal Logic 1662: “To judge what one must do to obtain a good or avoid an evil one must consider not only the good and the evil in itself but also the probability of its happening or not happening, and view geometrically the proportion that all these things have together.” Where goods and evils are monetary, Daniel Bernoulli 1738 spelled the idea out in terms of expected utilities as figures of merit for actions, holding that “in the absence of the unusual, the utility resulting from a fixed small increase in wealth will be inversely proportional to the quantity of goods previously possessed.” This was meant to solve the St. Petersburg paradox: Peter tosses a coin . . . until it should land “heads” [on toss n]. . . . He agrees to give Paul one ducat if he gets “heads” on the very first throw [and] with each additional throw the number of ducats he must pay is doubled. . . . Although the standard calculation shows that the value of Paul’s expectation [of gain] is infinitely great [i.e., the sum of all possible gains $ probabilities, 2n/2 $ ½n], it has . . . to be admitted that any fairly reasonable man would sell his chance, with great pleasure, for twenty ducats. In this case Paul’s expectation of utility is indeed finite on Bernoulli’s assumption of inverse proportionality; but as Karl Menger observed 4, Bernoulli’s solution fails if payoffs are so large that utilities are inversely proportional to probabilities; then only boundedness of utility scales resolves the paradox. Bernoulli’s idea of diminishing marginal utility of wealth survived in the neoclassical texts of W. S. Jevons 1871, Alfred Marshall 0, and A. C. Pigou 0, where personal utility judgment was understood to cause preference. But in the 0s, operationalistic arguments of John Hicks and R. G. D. Allen persuaded economists that on the contrary, 1 utility is no cause but a description, in which 2 the numbers indicate preference order but not intensity. In their Theory of Games and Economic Behavior 6, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern undid 2 by pushing 1 further: ordinal preferences among risky prospects were now seen to be describable on “interval” scales of subjective utility like the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales for temperature, so that once utilities, e.g., 0 and 1, are assigned to any prospect and any preferred one, utilities of all prospects are determined by overall preferences among gambles, i.e., probability distributions over prospects. Thus, the utility midpoint between two prospects is marked by the distribution assigning probability ½ to each. In fact, Ramsey had done that and more in a little-noticed essay “Truth and Probability,” 1 teasing subjective probabilities as well as utilities out of ordinal preferences among gambles. In a form independently invented by L. J. Savage Foundations of Statistics, 4, this approach is now widely accepted as a basis for rational decision analysis. The 8 book of that title by Howard Raiffa became a theoretical centerpiece of M.B.A. curricula, whose graduates diffused it through industry, government, and the military in a simplified format for defensible decision making, namely, “costbenefit analyses,” substituting expected numbers of dollars, deaths, etc., for preference-based expected utilities. Social choice and group decision form the native ground of interpersonal comparison of personal utilities. Thus, John C. Harsanyi 5 proved that if 1 individual and social preferences all satisfy the von Neumann-Morgenstern axioms, and 2 society is indifferent between two prospects whenever all individuals are, and 3 society prefers one prospect to another whenever someone does and nobody has the opposite preference, then social utilities are expressible as sums of individual utilities on interval scales obtained by stretching or compressing the individual scales by amounts determined by the social preferences. Arguably, the theorem shows how to derive interpersonal comparisons of individual preference intensities from social preference orderings that are thought to treat individual preferences on a par. Somewhat earlier, Kenneth Arrow had written that “interpersonal comparison of utilities has no meaning and, in fact, there is no meaning relevant to welfare economics in the measurability of individual utility” Social Choice and Individual Values, 1  a position later abandoned P. Laslett and W. G. Runciman, eds., Philosophy, Politics and Society, 7. Arrow’s “impossibility theorem” is illustrated by cyclic preferences observed by Condorcet in 1785 among candidates A, B, C of voters 1, 2, 3, who rank them ABC, BCA, CAB, respectively, in decreasing order of preference, so that majority rule yields intransitive preferences for the group of three, of whom two 1, 3 prefer A to B and two 1, 2 prefer B to C but two 2, 3 prefer C to A. In general, the theorem denies existence of technically democratic schemes for forming social preferences from citizens’ preferences. A clause tendentiously called “independence of irrelevant alternatives” in the definition of ‘democratic’ rules out appeal to preferences among non-candidates as a way to form social preferences among candidates, thus ruling out the preferences among gambles used in Harsanyi’s theorem. See John Broome, Weighing Goods, 1, for further information and references. Savage derived the agent’s probabilities for states as well as utilities for consequences from preferences among abstract acts, represented by deterministic assignments of consequences to states. An act’s place in the preference ordering is then reflected by its expected utility, a probability-weighted average of the utilities of its consequences in the various states. Savage’s states and consequences formed distinct sets, with every assignment of consequences to states constituting an act. While Ramsey had also taken acts to be functions from states to consequences, he took consequences to be propositions sets of states, and assigned utilities to states, not consequences. A further step in that direction represents acts, too, by propositions see Ethan Bolker, Functions Resembling Quotients of Measures,  Microfilms, 5; and Richard Jeffrey, The Logic of Decision, 5, 0. Bolker’s representation theorem states conditions under which preferences between truth of propositions determine probabilities and utilities nearly enough to make the position of a proposition in one’s preference ranking reflect its “desirability,” i.e., one’s expectation of utility conditionally on it. decision theory decision theory 208   208 Alongside such basic properties as transitivity and connexity, a workhorse among Savage’s assumptions was the “sure-thing principle”: Preferences among acts having the same consequences in certain states are unaffected by arbitrary changes in those consequences. This implies that agents see states as probabilistically independent of acts, and therefore implies that an act cannot be preferred to one that dominates it in the sense that the dominant act’s consequences in each state have utilities at least as great as the other’s. Unlike the sure thing principle, the principle ‘Choose so as to maximize CEU conditional expectation of utility’ rationalizes action aiming to enhance probabilities of preferred states of nature, as in quitting cigarettes to increase life expectancy. But as Nozick pointed out in 9, there are problems in which choiceworthiness goes by dominance rather than CEU, as when the smoker like R. A. Fisher in 9 believes that the statistical association between smoking and lung cancer is due to a genetic allele, possessors of which are more likely than others to smoke and to contract lung cancer, although among them smokers are not especially likely to contract lung cancer. In such “Newcomb” problems choices are ineffectual signs of conditions that agents would promote or prevent if they could. Causal decision theories modify the CEU formula to obtain figures of merit distinguishing causal efficacy from evidentiary significance  e.g., replacing conditional probabilities by probabilities of counterfactual conditionals; or forming a weighted average of CEU’s under all hypotheses about causes, with agents’ unconditional probabilities of hypotheses as weights; etc. Mathematical statisticians leery of subjective probability have cultivated Abraham Wald’s Theory of Statistical Decision Functions 0, treating statistical estimation, experimental design, and hypothesis testing as zero-sum “games against nature.” For an account of the opposite assimilation, of game theory to probabilistic decision theory, see Skyrms, Dynamics of Rational Deliberation 0. The “preference logics” of Sören Halldén, The Logic of ‘Better’ 7, and G. H. von Wright, The Logic of Preference 3, sidestep probability. Thus, Halldén holds that when truth of p is preferred to truth of q, falsity of q must be preferred to falsity of p, and von Wright with Aristotle holds that “this is more choiceworthy than that if this is choiceworthy without that, but that is not choiceworthy without this” Topics III, 118a. Both principles fail in the absence of special probabilistic assumptions, e.g., equiprobability of p with q. Received wisdom counts decision theory clearly false as a description of human behavior, seeing its proper status as normative. But some, notably Davidson, see the theory as constitutive of the very concept of preference, so that, e.g., preferences can no more be intransitive than propositions can be at once true and false.  Rational decision: envelope paradox, an apparent paradox in decision theory that runs as follows. You are shown two envelopes, M and N, and are reliably informed that each contains some finite positive amount of money, that the amount in one unspecified envelope is twice the amount in the unspecified other, and that you may choose only one. Call the amount in M ‘m’ and that in N ‘n’. It might seem that: there is a half chance that m % 2n and a half chance that m = n/2, so that the “expected value” of m is ½2n ! ½n/2 % 1.25n, so that you should prefer envelope M. But by similar reasoning it might seem that the expected value of n is 1.25m, so that you should prefer envelope N. 

rationality – while Grice never used to employ ‘rationality’ he learned to! In “Retrospective epilogue” in fact he refers to the principle of conversational helpfulness as ‘promoting conversational rationality.’ Rationality as a faculty psychology, the view that the mind is a collection of departments responsible for distinct psychological functions. Related to faculty psychology is the doctrine of localization of function, wherein each faculty has a specific brain location. Faculty psychologies oppose theories of mind as a unity with one function e.g., those of Descartes and associationism or as a unity with various capabilities e.g., that of Ockham, and oppose the related holistic distributionist or mass-action theory of the brain. Faculty psychology began with Aristotle, who divided the human soul into five special senses, three inner senses common sense, imagination, memory and active and passive mind. In the Middle Ages e.g., Aquinas Aristotle’s three inner senses were subdivied, creating more elaborate lists of five to seven inward wits. Islamic physicianphilosophers such as Avicenna integrated Aristotelian faculty psychology with Galenic medicine by proposing brain locations for the faculties. Two important developments in faculty psychology occurred during the eighteenth century. First, Scottish philosophers led by Reid developed a version of faculty psychology opposed to the empiricist and associationist psychologies of Locke and Hume. The Scots proposed that humans were endowed by God with a set of faculties permitting knowledge of the world and morality. The Scottish system exerted considerable influence in the United States, where it was widely taught as a moral, character-building discipline, and in the nineteenth century this “Old Psychology” opposed the experimental “New Psychology.” Second, despite then being called a charlatan, Franz Joseph Gall 17581828 laid the foundation for modern neuropsychology in his work on localization of function. Gall rejected existing faculty psychologies as philosophical, unbiological, and incapable of accounting for everyday behavior. Gall proposed an innovative behavioral and biological list of faculties and brain localizations based on comparative anatomy, behavior study, and measurements of the human skull. Today, faculty psychology survives in trait and instinct theories of personality, Fodor’s theory that mental functions are implemented by neurologically “encapsulated” organs, and localizationist theories of the brain.

rationalism, the position that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge, or, more strongly, that it is the unique path to knowledge. It is most often encountered as a view in epistemology, where it is traditionally contrasted with empiricism, the view that the senses are primary with respect to knowledge. It is important here to distinguish empiricism with respect to knowledge from empiricism with respect to ideas or concepts; whereas the former is opposed to rationalism, the latter is opposed to the doctrine of innate ideas. The term is also encountered in the philosophy of religion, where it may designate those who oppose the view that revelation is central to religious knowledge; and in ethics, where it may designate those who oppose the view that ethical principles are grounded in or derive from emotion, empathy, or some other non-rational foundation. The term ‘rationalism’ does not generally designate a single precise philosophical position; there are several ways in which reason can have precedence, and several accounts of knowledge to which it may be opposed. Furthermore, the very term ‘reason’ is not altogether clear. Often it designates a faculty of the soul, distinct from sensation, imagination, and memory, which is the ground of a priori knowledge. But there are other conceptions of reason, such as the narrower conception in which Pascal opposes reason to “knowledge of the heart” Pensées, section 110, or the computational conception of reason Hobbes advances in Leviathan I.5. The term might thus be applied to a number of philosophical positions from the ancients down to the present. Among the ancients, ‘rationalism’ and ‘empiricism’ especially denote two schools of medicine, the former relying primarily on a theoretical knowledge of the hidden workings of the human body, the latter relying on direct clinical experience. The term might also be used to characterize the views of Plato and later Neoplatonists, who argued that we have pure intellectual access to the Forms and general principles that govern reality, and rejected sensory knowledge of the imperfect realization of those Forms in the material world. In recent philosophical writing, the term ‘rationalism’ is most closely associated with the positions of a group of seventeenth-century philosophers, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and sometimes Malebranche. These thinkers are often referred to collectively as the Continental rationalists, and are generally opposed to the socalled British empiricists, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. All of the former share the view that we have a non-empirical and rational access to the truth about the way the world is, and all privilege reason over knowledge derived from the senses. These philosophers are also attracted to mathematics as a model for knowledge in general. But these common views are developed in quite different ways. Descartes claims to take his inspiration from mathematics  not mathematics as commonly understood, but the analysis of the ancients. According to Descartes, we start from first principles known directly by reason the cogito ergo sum of the Meditations, what he calls intuition in his Rules for the Direction of the Mind; all other knowledge is deduced from there. A central aim of his Meditations is to show that this faculty of reason is trustworthy. The senses, on the other hand, are generally deceptive, leading us to mistake sensory qualities for real qualities of extended bodies, and leading us to the false philosophy of Aristotle and to Scholasticism. Descartes does not reject the senses altogether; in Meditation VI he argues that the senses are most often correct in circumstances concerning the preservation of life. Perhaps paradoxically, experiment is important to Descartes’s scientific work. However, his primary interest is in the theoretical account of the phenomena experiment reveals, and while his position is unclear, he may have considered experiment as an auxiliary to intuition and deduction, or as a second-best method that can be used with problems too complex for pure reason. Malebranche, following Descartes, takes similar views in his Search after Truth, though unlike Descartes, he emphasizes original sin as the cause of our tendency to trust the senses. Spinoza’s model for knowledge is Euclidean geometry, as realized in the geometrical form of the Ethics. Spinoza explicitly argues that we cannot have adequate ideas of the world through sensation Ethics II, propositions 1631. In the Ethics he does see a role for the senses in what he calls knowledge of the first and knowledge of the second kinds, and in the earlier Emendation of the Intellect, he suggests that the senses may be auxiliary aids to genuine knowledge. But the senses are imperfect and far less valuable, according to Spinoza, than intuition, i.e., knowledge of the third kind, from which sensory experience is excluded. Spinoza’s rationalism is implicit in a central proposition of the Ethics, in accordance with which “the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things” Ethics II, proposition 7, allowing one to infer causal connections between bodies and states of the material world directly from the logical connections between ideas. Leibniz, too, emphasizes reason over the senses in a number of ways. In his youth he believed that it would be possible to calculate the truth-value of every sentence by constructing a logical language whose structure mirrors the structure of relations between concepts in the world. This view is reflected in his mature thought in the doctrine that in every truth, the concept of the predicate is contained in the concept of the subject, so that if one could take the God’s-eye view which, he concedes, we cannot, one could determine the truth or falsity of any proposition without appeal to experience Discourse on Metaphysics, section 8. Leibniz also argues that all truths are based on two basic principles, the law of non-contradiction for necessary truths, and the principle of sufficient reason for contingent truths Monadology, section 31, both of which can be known a priori. And so, at least in principle, the truth-values of all propositions can be determined a priori. This reflects his practice in physics, where he derives a number of laws of motion from the principle of the equality of cause and effect, which can be known a priori on the basis of the principle of sufficient reason. But, at the same time, referring to the empirical school of ancient medicine, Leibniz concedes that “we are all mere Empirics in three fourths of our actions” Monadology, section 28. Each of the so-called Continental rationalists does, in his own way, privilege reason over the senses. But the common designation ‘Continental rationalism’ arose only much later, probably in the nineteenth century. For their contemporaries, more impressed with their differences than their common doctrines, the Continental rationalists did not form a single homogeneous school of thought. 

rationality. In its primary sense, rationality is a normative concept that philosophers have generally tried to characterize in such a way that, for any action, belief, or desire, if it is rational we ought to choose it. No such positive characterization has achieved anything close to universal assent because, often, several competing actions, beliefs, or desires count as rational. Equating what is rational with what is rationally required eliminates the category of what is rationally allowed. Irrationality seems to be the more fundamental normative category; for although there are conflicting substantive accounts of irrationality, all agree that to say of an action, belief, or desire that it is irrational is to claim that it should always be avoided. Rationality is also a descriptive concept that refers to those intellectual capacities, usually involving the ability to use language, that distinguish persons from plants and most other animals. There is some dispute about whether some non-human animals, e.g., dolphins and chimpanzees, are rational in this sense. Theoretical rationality applies to beliefs. An irrational belief is one that obviously conflicts with what one should know. This characterization of an irrational belief is identical with the psychiatric characterization of a delusion. It is a personrelative concept, because what obviously conflicts with what should be known by one person need not obviously conflict with what should be known by another. On this account, any belief that is not irrational counts as rational. Many positive characterizations of rational beliefs have been proposed, e.g., 1 beliefs that are either self-evident or derived from self-evident beliefs by a reliable procedure and 2 beliefs that are consistent with the overwhelming majority of one’s beliefs; but all of these positive characterizations have encountered serious objections. Practical rationality applies to actions. For some philosophers it is identical to instrumental rationality. On this view, commonly called instrumentalism, acting rationally simply means acting in a way that is maximally efficient in achieving one’s goals. However, most philosophers realize that achieving one goal may conflict with achieving another, and therefore require that a rational action be one that best achieves one’s goals only when these goals are considered as forming a system. Others have added that all of these goals must be ones that would be chosen given complete knowledge and understanding of what it would be like to achieve these goals. On the latter account of rational action, the system of goals is chosen by all persons for themselves, and apart from consistency there is no external standpoint from which to evaluate rationally any such system. Thus, for a person with a certain system of goals it will be irrational to act morally. Another account of rational action is not at all person-relative. On this account, to act rationally is to act on universalizable principles, so that what is a reason for one person must be a reason for everyone. One point of such an account is to make it rationally required to act morally, thus making all immoral action irrational. However, if to call an action irrational is to claim that everyone would hold that it is always to be avoided, then it is neither irrational to act immorally in order to benefit oneself or one’s friends, nor irrational to act morally even when that goes against one’s system of goals. Only a negative characterization of what is rational as what is not irrational, which makes it rationally permissible to act either morally or in accordance with one’s own system of goals, as long as these goals meet some minimal objective standard, seems likely to be adequate. 

rationalization, 1 an apparent explanation of a person’s action or attitude by appeal to reasons that would justify or exculpate the person for it  if, contrary to fact, those reasons were to explain it; 2 an explanation or interpretation made from a rational perspective. In sense 1, rationalizations are pseudo-explanations, often motivated by a desire to exhibit an item in a favorable light. Such rationalizations sometimes involve self-deception. Depending on one’s view of justification, a rationalization might justify an action  by adducing excellent reasons for its performance  even if the agent, not having acted for those reasons, deserves no credit for so acting. In sense 2 a sense popularized in philosophy by Donald Davidson, rationalizations of intentional actions are genuine explanations in terms of agents’ reasons. In this sense, we provide a rationalization for  or “rationalize”  Robert’s shopping at Zed’s by identifying the reasons for which he does so: e.g., he wants to buy an excellent kitchen knife and believes that Zed’s sells the best cutlery in town. Also, the reasons for which an agent acts may themselves be said to rationalize the action. Beliefs, desires, and intentions may be similarly rationalized. In each case, a rationalization exhibits the rationalized item as, to some degree, rational from the standpoint of the person to whom it is attributed.

rational psychology, the a priori study of the mind. This was a large component of eighteenthand nineteenth-century psychology, and was contrasted by its exponents with empirical psychology, which is rooted in contingent experience. The term ‘rational psychology’ may also designate a mind, or form of mind, having the property of rationality. Current philosophy of mind includes much discussion of rational psychologies, but the notion is apparently ambiguous. On one hand, there is rationality as intelligibility. This is a minimal coherence, say of desires or inferences, that a mind must possess to be a mind. For instance, Donald Davidson, many functionalists, and some decision theorists believe there are principles of rationality of this sort that constrain the appropriate attribution of beliefs and desires to a person, so that a mind must meet such constraints if it is to have beliefs and desires. On another pole, there is rationality as justification. For someone’s psychology to have this property is for that psychology to be as reason requires it to be, say for that person’s inferences and desires to be supported by proper reasons given their proper weight, and hence to be justified. Rationality as justification is a normative property, which it would seem some minds lack. But despite the apparent differences between these two sorts of rationality, some important work in philosophy of mind implies either that these two senses in fact collapse, or at least that there are intervening and significant senses, so that things at least a lot like normative principles constrain what our psychologies are. 

rational reconstruction, also called logical reconstruction, translation of a discourse of a certain conceptual type into a discourse of another conceptual type with the aim of making it possible to say everything or everything important that is expressible in the former more clearly or perspicuously in the latter. The best-known example is one in Carnap’s Der Logische Aufbau der Welt. Carnap attempted to translate discourse concerning physical objects e.g., ‘There is a round brown table’ into discourse concerning immediate objects of sense experience ‘Color patches of such-and-such chromatic characteristics and shape appear in such-and-such a way’. He was motivated by the empiricist doctrine that immediate sense experience is conceptually prior to everything else, including our notion of a physical object. In addition to talk of immediate sense experience, Carnap relied on logic and set theory. Since their use is difficult to reconcile with strict empiricism, his translation would not have fully vindicated empiricism even if it had succeeded. 

Rationality -- reasons for action, considerations that call for or justify action. They may be subjective or objective. A subjective reason is a consideration an agent understands to support a course of action, whether or not it actually does. An objective reason is one that does support a course of action, regardless of whether the agent realizes it. What are cited as reasons may be matters either of fact or of value, but when facts are cited values are also relevant. Thus the fact that cigarette smoke contains nicotine is a reason for not smoking only because nicotine has undesirable effects. The most important evaluative reasons are normative reasons  i.e., considerations having e.g. ethical force. Facts become obligating reasons when, in conjunction with normative considerations, they give rise to an obligation. Thus in view of the obligation to help the needy, the fact that others are hungry is an obligating reason to see they are fed. Reasons for action enter practical thinking as the contents of beliefs, desires, and other mental states. But not all the reasons one has need motivate the corresponding behavior. Thus I may recognize an obligation to pay taxes, yet do so only for fear of punishment. If so, then only my fear is an explaining reason for my action. An overriding reason is one that takes precedence over all others. It is often claimed that moral reasons override all others objectively, and should do so subjectively as well. Finally, one may speak of an all-things-considered reason  one that after due consideration is taken as finally determinative of what shall be done.    reasons for belief, roughly, bases of belief. The word ‘belief’ is commonly used to designate both a particular sort of psychological state, a state of believing, and a particular intentional content or proposition believed. Reasons for belief exhibit an analogous duality. A proposition, p, might be said to provide a normative reason to believe a proposition, q, for instance, when p bears some appropriate warranting relation to q. And p might afford a perfectly good reason to believe q, even though no one, as a matter of fact, believes either p or q. In contrast, p is a reason that I have for believing q, if I believe p and p counts as a reason in the sense above to believe q. Undoubtedly, I have reason to believe countless propositions that I shall never, as it happens, come to believe. Suppose, however, that p is a reason for which I believe q. In that case, I must believe both p and q, and p must be a reason to believe q  or, at any rate, I must regard it as such. It may be that I must, in addition, believe q at least in part because I believe p. Reasons in these senses are inevitably epistemic; they turn on considerations of evidence, truth-conduciveness, and the like. But not all reasons for belief are of this sort. An explanatory reason, a reason why I believe p, may simply be an explanation for my having or coming to have this belief. Perhaps I believe p because I was brainwashed, or struck on the head, or because I have strong non-epistemic motives for this belief. I might, of course, hold the belief on the basis of unexceptionable epistemic grounds. When this is so, my believing p may both warrant and explain my believing q. Reflections of this sort can lead to questions concerning the overall or “all-things-considered” reasonableness of a given belief. Some philosophers e.g., Clifford argue that a belief’s reasonableness depends exclusively on its epistemic standing: my believing p is reasonable for me provided it is epistemically reasonable for me; where belief is concerned, epistemic reasons are overriding. Others, siding with James, have focused on the role of belief in our psychological economy, arguing that the reasonableness of my holding a given belief can be affected by a variety of non-epistemic considerations. Suppose I have some evidence that p is false, but that I stand to benefit in a significant way from coming to believe p. If that is so, and if the practical advantages of my holding p considerably outweigh the practical disadvantages, it might seem obvious that my holding p is reasonable for me in some all-embracing sense. 

Rawls, John b.1,  philosopher widely recognized as one of the leading political philosophers of the twentieth century. His A Theory of Justice 1 is one of the primary texts in political philosophy. Political Liberalism 3 revises Rawls’s theory to make his conception of justice compatible with liberal pluralism, but leaves the core of his conception intact. Drawing on the liberal and democratic social contract traditions of Locke, Rousseau, and Kant, Rawls argues that the most reasonable principles of justice are those everyone would accept and agree to from a fair position. Since these principles determine the justice of society’s political constitution, economy, and property rules its “basic structure”, Rawls takes a fair agreement situation to be one where everyone is impartially situated as equals. In this so-called original position everyone is equally situated by a hypothetical “veil of ignorance.” This veil requires individuals to set aside their knowledge of their particular differences, including knowledge of their talents, wealth, social position, religious and philosophical views, and particular conceptions of value. Rawls argues that in the hypothetical original position everyone would reject utilitarianism, perfectionism, and intuitionist views. Instead they would unanimously accept justice as fairness. This conception of justice consists mainly of two principles. The first principle says that certain liberties are basic and are to be equally provided to all: liberty of conscience, freedom of thought, freedom of association, equal political liberties, freedom and integrity of the person, and the liberties that maintain the rule of law. These are basic liberties, because they are necessary to exercise one’s “moral powers.” The two moral powers are, first, the capacity to be rational, to have a rational conception of one’s good; and second, the capacity for a sense of justice, to understand, apply, and act from requirements of justice. These powers constitute essential interests of free and equal moral persons since they enable each person to be a free and responsible agent taking part in social cooperation. Rawls’s second principle of justice, the difference principle, regulates permissible differences in rights, powers, and privileges. It defines the limits of inequalities in wealth, income, powers, and positions that may exist in a just society. It says, first, that social positions are to be open to all to compete for on terms of fair equality of opportunity. Second, inequalities in wealth, income, and social powers and positions are permissible only if they maximally benefit the least advantaged class in society. The difference principle implies that a just economic system distributes income and wealth so as to make the class of least advantaged persons better off than they would be under any alternative economic system. This principle is to be consistent with the “priority” of the first principle, which requires that equal basic liberties cannot be traded for other benefits. The least advantaged’s right to vote, for example, cannot be limited for the sake of improving their relative economic position. Instead, a basic liberty can be limited only for the sake of maintaining other basic liberties. Rawls contends that, taking the two principles of justice together, a just society maximizes the worth to the least advantaged of the basic liberties shared by all Theory, p. 205. The priority of basic liberty implies a liberal egalitarian society in which each person is ensured adequate resources to effectively exercise her basic liberties and become independent and self-governing. A just society is then governed by a liberal-democratic constitution that protects the basic liberties and provides citizens with equally effective rights to participate in electoral processes and influence legislation. Economically a just society incorporates a modified market system that extensively distributes income and wealth  either a “property-owning democracy” with widespread ownership of means of production, or liberal socialism. 

Ray, J. English naturalist whose work on the structure and habits of plants and animals led to important conclusions on the methodology of classification and gave a strong impetus to the design argument in natural theology. In an early paper he argued that the determining characteristics of a species are those transmitted by seed, since color, scent, size, etc., vary with climate and nutriment. Parallels from the animal kingdom suggested the correct basis for classification would be structural. But we have no knowledge of real essences. Our experience of nature is of a continuum, and for practical purposes kinships are best identified by a plurality of criteria. His mature theory is set out in Dissertatio Brevis 1696 and Methodus Emendata 1703. The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation 1691 and three revisions was a best-selling compendium of Ray’s own scientific learning and was imitated and quarried by many later exponents of the design argument. Philosophically, he relied on others, from Cicero to Cudworth, and was superseded by Paley.

Realism – causal realism -- direct realism, the theory that perceiving is epistemically direct, unmediated by conscious or unconscious inference. Direct realism is distinguished, on the one hand, from indirect, or representative, realism, the view that perceptual awareness of material objects is mediated by an awareness of sensory representations, and, on the other hand, from forms of phenomenalism that identify material objects with states of mind. It might be thought that direct realism is incompatible with causal theories of perception. Such theories invoke causal chains leading from objects perceived causes to perceptual states of perceivers effects. Since effects must be distinct from causes, the relation between an instance of perceiving and an object perceived, it would seem, cannot be direct. This, however, confuses epistemic directness with causal directness. A direct realist need only be committed to the former. In perceiving a tomato to be red, the content of my perceptual awareness is the tomato’s being red. I enter this state as a result of a complex causal process, perhaps. But my perception may be direct in the sense that it is unmediated by an awareness of a representational sensory state from which I am led to an awareness of the tomato. Perceptual error, and more particularly, hallucinations and illusions, are usually thought to pose special difficulties for direct realists. My hallucinating a red tomato, for instance, is not my being directly aware of a red tomato, since I may hallucinate the tomato even when none is present. Perhaps, then, my hallucinating a red tomato is partly a matter of my being directly aware of a round, red sensory representation. And if my awareness in this case is indistinguishable from my perception of an actual red tomato, why not suppose that I am aware of a sensory representation in the veridical case as well? A direct realist may respond by denying that hallucinations are in fact indistinguishable from veridical perceivings or by calling into question the claim that, if sensory representations are required to explain hallucinations, they need be postulated in the veridical case.  reality, in standard philosophical usage, how things actually are, in contrast with their mere appearance. Appearance has to do with how things seem to a particular perceiver or group of perceivers. Reality is sometimes said to be twoway-independent of appearance. This means that appearance does not determine reality. First, no matter how much agreement there is, based on appearance, about the nature of reality, it is always conceivable that reality differs from appearance. Secondly, appearances are in no way required for reality: reality can outstrip the range of all investigations that we are in a position to make. It may be that reality always brings with it the possibility of appearances, in the counterfactual sense that if there were observers suitably situated, then if conditions were not conducive to error, they would have experiences of such-and-such a kind. But the truth of such a counterfactual seems to be grounded in the facts of reality. Phenomenalism holds, to the contrary, that the facts of reality can be explained by such counterfactuals, but phenomenalists have failed to produce adequate non-circular analyses. The concept of reality on which it is two-wayindependent of experience is sometimes called objective reality. However, Descartes used this phrase differently, to effect a contrast with formal or actual reality. He held that there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause of an effect as in the effect itself, and applied this principle as follows: “There must be at least as much actual or formal reality in the efficient and total cause of an idea as objective reality in the idea itself.” The objective reality of an idea seems to have to do with its having representational content, while actual or formal reality has to do with existence independent of the mind. Thus the quoted principle relates features of the cause of an idea to the representational content of the idea. Descartes’s main intended applications were to God and material objects. 

recursive function theory, a relatively recent area of mathematics that takes as its point of departure the study of an extremely limited class of arithmetic functions called the recursive functions. Strictly speaking, recursive function theory is a branch of higher arithmetic number theory, or the theory of natural numbers whose universe of discourse is restricted to the nonnegative integers: 0, 1, 2, etc. However, the techniques and results of the newer area do not resemble those traditionally associated with number theory. The class of recursive functions is defined in a way that makes evident that every recursive function can be computed or calculated. The hypothesis that every calculable function is recursive, which is known as Church’s thesis, is often taken as a kind of axiom in recursive function theory. This theory has played an important role in modern philosophy of mathematics, especially when epistemological issues are studied. 

redintegration, a psychological process, similar to or involving classical conditioning, in which one feature of a situation causes a person to recall, visualize, or recompose an entire original situation. On opening a pack of cigarettes, a person may visualize the entire process, including striking the match, lighting the cigarette, and puffing. Redintegration is used as a technique in behavior therapy, e.g. when someone trying to refrain from smoking is exposed to unpleasant odors and vivid pictures of lungs caked with cancer, and then permitted to smoke. If the unpleasantness of the odors and visualization outweighs the reinforcement of smoking, the person may resist smoking. Philosophically, redintegration is of interest for two reasons. First, the process may be critical in prudence. By bringing long-range consequences of behavior into focus in present deliberation, redintegration may help to protect long-range interests. Second, redintegration offers a role for visual images in producing behavior. Images figure in paradigmatic cases of redintegration. In recollecting pictures of cancerous lungs, the person may refrain from smoking. 

reductionism: The issue of reductionism is very much twentieth-century. There was Wisdom’s boring contribtions to Mind on ‘logical construction,’ Grice read the summary from Broad. One of the twelve –isms that Grice finds on his ascent to the City of Eternal Truth. He makes the reductive-reductionist distinction. Against J. M. Rountree. So, for Grice, the bad heathen vicious Reductionism can be defeated by the good Christian virtuous

Reductivism. A reductivist tries to define, say, what an emissor communicates (that p) in terms of the content of that proposition that he intends to transmit to his recipient. Following Aristotle, Grice reduces the effect to a ‘pathemata psucheos,’ i. e. a passio of the anima, as Boethius translates. This can be desiderative (“Thou shalt not kill”) or creditativa (“The grass is green.”)

reductio ad absurdum. 1 The principles A / - A / -A and -A / A / A. 2 The argument forms ‘If A then B and not-B; therefore, not-A’ and ‘If not-A then B and not-B; therefore, A’ and arguments of these forms. Reasoning via such arguments is known as the method of indirect proof. 3 The rules of inference that permit i inferring not-A having derived a contradiction from A and ii inferring A having derived a contradiction from not-A. Both rules hold in classical logic and come to the same thing in any logic with the law of double negation. In intuitionist logic, however, i holds but ii does not.

reduction, the replacement of one expression by a second expression that differs from the first in prima facie reference. So-called reductions have been meant in the sense of uniformly applicable explicit definitions, contextual definitions, or replacements suitable only in a limited range of contexts. Thus, authors have spoken of reductive conceptual analyses, especially in the early days of analytic philosophy. In particular, in the sensedatum theory talk of physical objects was supposed to be reduced to talk of sense-data by explicit definitions or other forms of conceptual analysis. Logical positivists talked of the reduction of theoretical vocabulary to an observational vocabulary, first by explicit definitions, and later by other devices, such as Carnap’s reduction sentences. These appealed to a test condition predicate, T e.g., ‘is placed in water’, and a display predicate, D e.g., ‘dissolves’, to introduce a dispositional or other “non-observational” term, S e.g., ‘is water-soluble’: Ex [Tx / Dx / Sx], with ‘/’ representing the material conditional. Negative reduction sentences for non-occurrence of S took the form Ex [NTx / NDx / - Sx]. For coinciding predicate pairs T and TD and -D and ND Carnap referred to bilateral reduction sentences: Ex [Tx / Dx S Sx]. Like so many other attempted reductions, reduction sentences did not achieve replacement of the “reduced” term, S, since they do not fix application of S when the test condition, T, fails to apply. In the philosophy of mathematics, logicism claimed that all of mathematics could be reduced to logic, i.e., all mathematical terms could be defined with the vocabulary of logic and all theorems of mathematics could be derived from the laws of logic supplemented by these definitions. Russell’s Principia Mathematica carried out much of such a program with a reductive base of something much more like what we now call set theory rather than logic, strictly conceived. Many now accept the reducibility of mathematics to set theory, but only in a sense in which reductions are not unique. For example, the natural numbers can equally well be modeled as classes of equinumerous sets or as von Neumann ordinals. This non-uniqueness creates serious difficulties, with suggestions that set-theoretic reductions can throw light on what numbers and other mathematical objects “really are.” In contrast, we take scientific theories to tell us, unequivocally, that water is H20 and that temperature is mean translational kinetic energy. Accounts of theory reduction in science attempt to analyze the circumstance in which a “reducing theory” appears to tell us the composition of objects or properties described by a “reduced theory.” The simplest accounts follow the general pattern of reduction: one provides “identity statements” or “bridge laws,” with at least the form of explicit definitions, for all terms in the reduced theory not already appearing in the reducing theory; and then one argues that the reduced theory can be deduced from the reducing theory augmented by the definitions. For example, the laws of thermodynamics are said to be deducible from those of statistical mechanics, together with statements such as ‘temperature is mean translational kinetic energy’ and ‘pressure is mean momentum transfer’. How should the identity statements or bridge laws be understood? It takes empirical investigation to confirm statements such as that temperature is mean translational kinetic energy. Consequently, some have argued, such statements at best constitute contingent correlations rather than strict identities. On the other hand, if the relevant terms and their extensions are not mediated by analytic definitions, the identity statements may be analogized to identities involving two names, such as ‘Cicero is Tully’, where it takes empirical investigation to establish that the two names happen to have the same referent. One can generalize the idea of theory reduction in a variety of ways. One may require the bridge laws to suffice for the deduction of the reduced from the reducing theory without requiring that the bridge laws take the form of explicit identity statements or biconditional correlations. Some authors have also focused on the fact that in practice a reducing theory T2 corrects or refines the reduced theory T1, so that it is really only a correction or refinement, T1*, that is deducible from T2 and the bridge laws. Some have consequently applied the term ‘reduction’ to any pair of theories where the second corrects and extends the first in ways that explain both why the first theory was as accurate as it was and why it made the errors that it did. In this extended sense, relativity is said to reduce Newtonian mechanics. Do the social sciences, especially psychology, in principle reduce to physics? This prospect would support the so-called identity theory of mind and body, in particular resolving important problems in the philosophy of mind, such as the mindbody problem and the problem of other minds. Many though by no means all are now skeptical about the prospects for identifying mental properties, and the properties of other special sciences, with complex physical properties. To illustrate with an example from economics adapted from Fodor, in the right circumstances just about any physical object could count as a piece of money. Thus prospects seem dim for finding a closed and finite statement of the form ‘being a piece of money is . . .’, with only predicates from physics appearing on the right though some would want to admit infinite definitions in providing reductions. Similarly, one suspects that attributes, such as pain, are at best functional properties with indefinitely many possible physical realizations. Believing that reductions by finitely stable definitions are thus out of reach, many authors have tried to express the view that mental properties are still somehow physical by saying that they nonetheless supervene on the physical properties of the organisms that have them. In fact, these same difficulties that affect mental properties affect the paradigm case of temperature, and probably all putative examples of theoretical reduction. Temperature is mean translational temperature only in gases, and only idealized ones at that. In other substances, quite different physical mechanisms realize temperature. Temperature is more accurately described as a functional property, having to do with the mechanism of heat transfer between bodies, where, in principle, the required mechanism could be physically realized in indefinitely many ways. In most and quite possibly all cases of putative theory reduction by strict identities, we have instead a relation of physical realization, constitution, or instantiation, nicely illustrated by the property of being a calculator example taken from Cummins. The property of being a calculator can be physically realized by an abacus, by devices with gears and levers, by ones with vacuum tubes or silicon chips, and, in the right circumstances, by indefinitely many other physical arrangements. Perhaps many who have used ‘reduction’, particularly in the sciences, have intended the term in this sense of physical realization rather than one of strict identity. Let us restrict attention to properties that reduce in the sense of having a physical realization, as in the cases of being a calculator, having a certain temperature, and being a piece of money. Whether or not an object counts as having properties such as these will depend, not only on the physical properties of that object, but on various circumstances of the context. Intensions of relevant language users constitute a plausible candidate for relevant circumstances. In at least many cases, dependence on context arises because the property constitutes a functional property, where the relevant functional system calculational practices, heat transfer, monetary systems are much larger than the propertybearing object in question. These examples raise the question of whether many and perhaps all mental properties depend ineliminably on relations to things outside the organisms that have the mental properties. 

reduction sentence, for a given predicate Q3 of space-time points in a first-order language, any universal sentence S1 of the form: x [Q1x / Q2x / Q3 x], provided that the predicates Q1 and Q2 are consistently applicable to the same space-time points. If S1 has the form given above and S2 is of the form x [Q4x / Q5 / - Q6] and either S1 is a reduction sentence for Q3 or S2 is a reduction sentence for -Q3, the pair {S1, S2} is a reduction pair for Q3. If Q1 % Q4 and Q2 % - Q5, the conjunction of S1 and S2 is equivalent to a bilateral reduction sentence for Q3 of the form x [Q1 / Q3 S Q2]. These concepts were introduced by Carnap in “Testability and Meaning,” Philosophy of Science 637, to modify the verifiability criterion of meaning to a confirmability condition where terms can be introduced into meaningful scientific discourse by chains of reduction pairs rather than by definitions. The incentive for this modification seems to have been to accommodate the use of disposition predicates in scientific discourse. Carnap proposed explicating a disposition predicate Q3 by bilateral reduction sentences for Q3. An important but controversial feature of Carnap’s approach is that it avoids appeal to nonextensional conditionals in explicating disposition predicates. 

RELATUM -- referentially transparent. An occurrence of a singular term t in a sentence ‘. . . t . . .’ is referentially transparent or purely referential if and only if the truth-value of ‘. . . t . . .’ depends on whether the referent of t satisfies the open sentence ‘. . . x . . .’; the satisfaction of ‘. . . x . . .’ by the referent of t would guarantee the truth of ‘. . . t . . .’, and failure of this individual to satisfy ‘. . . x . . .’ would guarantee that ‘. . . t . . .’ was not true. ‘Boston is a city’ is true if and only if the referent of ‘Boston’ satisfies the open sentence ‘x is a city’, so the occurrence of ‘Boston’ is referentially transparent. But in ‘The expression “Boston” has six letters’, the length of the word within the quotes, not the features of the city Boston, determines the truth-value of the sentence, so the occurrence is not referentially transparent. According to a Fregean theory of meaning, the reference of any complex expression that is a meaningful unit is a function of the referents of its parts. Within this context, an occurrence of a referential term t in a meaningful expression ‘. . . t . . .’ is referentially transparent or purely referential if and only if t contributes its referent to the reference of ‘. . . t . . .’. The expression ‘the area around Boston’ refers to the particular area it does because of the referent of ‘Boston’ and the reference or extension of the function expressed by ‘the area around x’. An occurrence of a referential term t in a meaningful expression ‘. . . t . . .’ is referentially opaque if and only if it is not referentially transparent. Thus, if t has a referentially opaque occurrence in a sentence ‘. . . t . . .’, then the truth-value of ‘. . . t . . .’ depends on something reduction, phenomenological referentially transparent 780    780 other than whether the referent of t satisfies ‘. . . x . . .’. Although these definitions apply to occurrences of referential terms, the terms ‘referentially opaque’ and ‘referentially transparent’ are used primarily to classify linguistic contexts for terms as referentially opaque contexts. If t occurs purely referentially in S but not in CS, then C   is a referentially opaque context. But we must qualify this: C  is a referentially opaque context for that occurrence of t in S. It would not follow without further argument that C  is a referentially opaque context for other occurrences of terms in sentences that could be placed into C . Contexts of quotation, propositional attitude, and modality have been widely noted for their potential to produce referential opacity. Consider: 1 John believes that the number of planets is less than eight. 2 John believes that nine is less than eight. If 1 is true but 2 is not, then either ‘the number of planets’ or ‘nine’ has an occurrence that is not purely referential, because the sentences would differ in truth-value even though the expressions are co-referential. But within the sentences: 3 The number of planets is less than eight. 4 Nine is less than eight. the expressions appear to have purely referential occurrence. In 3 and 4, the truth-value of the sentence as a whole depends on whether the referent of ‘The number of planets’ and ‘Nine’ satisfies ‘x is less than eight’. Because the occurrences in 3 and 4 are purely referential but those in 1 and 2 are not, the context ‘John believes that  ’ is a referentially opaque context for the relevant occurrence of at least one of the two singular terms. Some argue that the occurrence of ‘nine’ in 2 is purely referential because the truth-value of the sentence as a whole depends on whether the referent, nine, satisfies the open sentence ‘John believes that x is less than eight’. Saying so requires that we make sense of the concept of satisfaction for such sentences belief sentences and others and that we show that the concept of satisfaction applies in this way in the case at hand sentence 2. There is controversy about whether these things can be done. In 1, on the other hand, the truth-value is not determined by whether nine the referent of ‘the number of planets’ satisfies the open sentence, so that occurrence is not purely referential. Modal contexts raise similar questions. 5 Necessarily, nine is odd. 6 Necessarily, the number of planets is odd. If 5 is true but 6 is not, then at least one of the expressions does not have a purely referential occurrence, even though both appear to be purely referential in the non-modal sentence that appears in the context ‘Necessarily, ———’. Thus the context is referentially opaque for the occurrence of at least one of these terms. On an alternative approach, genuinely singular terms always occur referentially, and ‘the number of planets’ is not a genuinely singular term. Russell’s theory of definite descriptions, e.g., provides an alternative semantic analysis for sentences involving definite descriptions. This would enable us to say that even simple sentences like 3 and 4 differ considerably in syntactic and semantic structure, so that the similarity that suggests the problem, the seemingly similar occurrences of co-referential terms, is merely apparent. 

Mise-en-abyme-- reflection principles, two varieties of internal statements related to correctness in formal axiomatic systems. 1 Proof-theoretic reflection principles are formulated for effectively presented systems S that contain a modicum of elementary number theory sufficient to arithmetize their own syntactic notions, as done by Kurt Gödel in his 1 work on incompleteness. Let ProvS x express that x is the Gödel number of a statement provable in S, and let nA be the number of A, for any statement A of S. The weakest reflection principle considered for S is the collection RfnS of all statements of the form ProvS nA P A, which express that if A is provable from S then A is true. The proposition ConS expressing the consistency of S is a consequence of RfnS obtained by taking A to be a disprovable statement. Thus, by Gödel’s second incompleteness theorem, RfnS is stronger than S if S is consistent. Reflection principles are used in the construction of ordinal logics as a systematic means of overcoming incompleteness. 2 Set-theoretic reflection principles are formulated for systems S of axiomatic set theory, such as ZF Zermelo-Fraenkel. In the simplest form they express that any property A in the language of S that holds of the universe of “all” sets, already holds of a portion of that universe coextensive with some set x. This takes the form A P DxAx where in Ax all quantifiers of A are relativized to x. In contrast to proof-theoretic reflection principles, these may be established as theorems of ZF. 

reflective equilibrium, as usually conceived, a coherence method for justifying evaluative principles and theories. The method was first described by Goodman, who proposed it be used to justify deductive and inductive principles. According to Goodman Fact, Fiction and Forecast, 5, a particular deductive inference is justified by its conforming with deductive principles, but these principles are justified in their turn by conforming with accepted deductive practice. The idea, then, is that justified inferences and principles are those that emerge from a process of mutual adjustment, with principles being revised when they sanction inferences we cannot bring ourselves to accept, and particular inferences being rejected when they conflict with rules we are unwilling to revise. Thus, neither principles nor particular inferences are epistemically privileged. At least in principle, everything is liable to revision. Rawls further articulated the method of reflective equilibrium and applied it in ethics. According to Rawls A Theory of Justice, 1, inquiry begins with considered moral judgments, i.e., judgments about which we are confident and which are free from common sources of error, e.g., ignorance of facts, insufficient reflection, or emotional agitation. According to narrow reflective equilibrium, ethical principles are justified by bringing them into coherence with our considered moral judgments through a process of mutual adjustment. Rawls, however, pursues a wide reflective equilibrium. Wide equilibrium is attained by proceeding to consider alternatives to the moral conception accepted in narrow equilibrium, along with philosophical arguments that might decide among these conceptions. The principles and considered judgments accepted in narrow equilibrium are then adjusted as seems appropriate. One way to conceive of wide reflective equilibrium is as an effort to construct a coherent system of belief by a process of mutual adjustment to considered moral judgments and moral principles as in narrow equilibrium along with the background philosophical, social scientific, and any other relevant beliefs that might figure in the arguments for and against alternative moral conceptions, e.g., metaphysical views regarding the nature of persons. As in Goodman’s original proposal, none of the judgments, principles, or theories involved is privileged: all are open to revision. 

Griceian renaissance – after J. L. Austin’s death -- Erasmus, D., philosopher who played an important role in Renaissance humanism. Like his  forerunners Petrarch, Coluccio Salutati, Lorenzo Valla, Leonardo Bruni, and others, Erasmus stressed within philosophy and theology the function of philological precision, grammatical correctness, and rhetorical elegance. But for Erasmus the virtues of bonae literarae which are cultivated by the study of authors of Latin and Grecian antiquity must be decisively linked with Christian spirituality. Erasmus has been called by Huizinga the first modern intellectual because he tried to influence and reform the mentality of society by working within the shadow of ecclesiastical and political leaders. He epistemology, evolutionary Erasmus, Desiderius 278   278 became one of the first humanists to make efficient use of the then new medium of printing. His writings embrace various forms, including diatribe, oration, locution, comment, dialogue, and letter. After studying in Christian schools and living for a time in the monastery of Steyn near Gouda in the Netherlands, Erasmus worked for different patrons. He gained a post as secretary to the bishop of Kamerijk, during which time he wrote his first published book, the Adagia first edition 1500, a collection of annotated Latin adages. Erasmus was an adviser to the Emperor Charles V, to whom he dedicated his Institutio principii christiani 1516. After studies at the  of Paris, where he attended lectures by the humanist Faber Stapulensis, Erasmus was put in touch by his patron Lord Mountjoy with the British humanists John Colet and Thomas More. Erasmus led a restless life, residing in several European cities including London, Louvain, Basel, Freiburg, Bologna, Turin where he was awarded a doctorate of theology in 1506, and Rome. By using the means of modern philology, which led to the ideal of the bonae literarae, Erasmus tried to reform the Christian-influenced mentality of his times. Inspired by Valla’s Annotationes to the New Testament, he completed a new Latin translation of the New Testament, edited the writings of the early church fathers, especially St. Hieronymus, and wrote several commentaries on psalms. He tried to regenerate the spirit of early Christianity by laying bare its original sense against the background of scholastic interpretation. In his view, the rituals of the existing church blocked the development of an authentic Christian spirituality. Though Erasmus shared with Luther a critical approach toward the existing church, he did not side with the Reformation. His Diatribe de libero arbitrio 1524, in which he pleaded for the free will of man, was answered by Luther’s De servo arbitrio. The historically most influential books of Erasmus were Enchirion militis christiani 1503, in which he attacked hirelings and soldiers; the Encomium moriae id est Laus stultitiae 1511, a satire on modern life and the ecclesiastical pillars of society; and the sketches of human life, the Colloquia first published in 1518, often enlarged until 1553. In the small book Querela pacis 1517, he rejected the ideology of justified wars propounded by Augustine and Aquinas. Against the madness of war Erasmus appealed to the virtues of tolerance, friendliness, and gentleness. All these virtues were for him the essence of Christianity. 

regression analysis, a part of statistical theory concerned with the analysis of data with the aim of inferring a linear functional relationship between assumed independent “regressor” variables and a dependent “response” variable. A typical example involves the dependence of crop yield on the application of fertilizer. For the most part, higher amounts of fertilizer are associated with higher yields. But typically, if crop yield is plotted vertically on a graph with the horizontal axis representing amount of fertilizer applied, the resulting points will not fall in a straight line. This can be due either to random “stochastic” fluctuations involving measurement errors, irreproducible conditions, or physical indeterminism or to failure to take into account other relevant independent variables such as amount of rainfall. In any case, from any resulting “scatter diagram,” it is possible mathematically to infer a “best-fitting” line. One method is, roughly, to find the line that minimizes the average absolute distance between a line and the data points collected. More commonly, the average of the squares of these distances is minimized this is the “least squares” method. If more than one independent variable is suspected, the theory of multiple regression, which takes into account multiple regressors, can be applied: this can help to minimize an “error term” involved in regression. Computers must be used for the complex computations typically encountered. Care must be taken in connection with the possibility that a lawlike, causal dependence is not really linear even approximately over all ranges of the regressor variables e.g., in certain ranges of amounts of application, more fertilizer is good for a plant, but too much is bad. 

Reichenbach, Hans 13, G. philosopher of science and a major leader of the movement known as logical empiricism. Born in Hamburg, he studied engineering for a brief time, then turned to mathematics, philosophy, and physics, which he pursued at the universities of Berlin, Munich, and Göttingen. He took his doctorate in philosophy at Erlangen 5 with a dissertation on mathematical and philosophical aspects of probability, and a degree in mathematics and physics by state examination at Göttingen 6. In 3, with Hitler’s rise to power, he fled to Istanbul, then to the  of California at Los Angeles, where he remained until his death. Prior to his departure from G.y he was professor of philosophy of science at the  of Berlin, leader of the Berlin Group of logical empiricists, and a close associate of Einstein. With Carnap he founded Erkenntnis, the major journal of scientific philosophy before World War II. After a short period early in his career as a follower of Kant, Reichenbach rejected the synthetic a priori, chiefly because of considerations arising out of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. He remained thereafter champion of empiricism, adhering to a probabilistic version of the verifiability theory of cognitive meaning. Never, however, did he embrace the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle; indeed, he explicitly described his principal epistemological work, Experience and Prediction 8, as his refutation of logical positivism. In particular, his logical empiricism consisted in rejecting phenomenalism in favor of physicalism; he rejected phenomenalism both in embracing scientific realism and in insisting on a thoroughgoing probabilistic analysis of scientific meaning and scientific knowledge. His main works span a wide range. In Probability and Induction he advocated the frequency interpretation of probability and offered a pragmatic justification of induction. In his philosophy of space and time he defended conventionality of geometry and of simultaneity. In foundations of quantum mechanics he adopted a three-valued logic to deal with causal anomalies. He wrote major works on epistemology, logic, laws of nature, counterfactuals, and modalities. At the time of his death he had almost completed The Direction of Time, which was published posthumously 6. 

Reid, Thomas 171096, Scottish philosopher, a defender of common sense and critic of the theory of impressions and ideas articulated by Hume. Reid was born exactly one year before Hume, in Strachan, Scotland. A bright lad, he went to Marischal  in Aberdeen at the age of twelve, studying there with Thomas Blackwell and George Turnbull. The latter apparently had great influence on Reid. Turnbull contended that knowledge of the facts of sense and introspection may not be overturned by reasoning and that volition is the only active power known from experience. Turnbull defended common sense under the cloak of Berkeley. Reid threw off that cloak with considerable panache, but he took over the defense of common sense from Turnbull. Reid moved to a position of regent and lecturer at King’s  in Aberdeen in 1751. There he formed, with John Gregory, the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, which met fortnightly, often to discuss Hume. Reid published his Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense in 1764, and, in the same year, succeeded Adam Smith in the chair of moral philosophy at Old  in Glasgow. After 1780 he no longer lectured but devoted himself to his later works, Essays on the Intellectual Powers 1785 and Essays on the Active Powers 1788. He was highly influential in Scotland and on the Continent in the eighteenth century and, from time to time, in England and the United States thereafter. Reid thought that one of his major contributions was the refutation of Hume’s theory of impressions and ideas. Reid probably was convinced in his teens of the truth of Berkeley’s doctrine that what the mind is immediately aware of is always some idea, but his later study of Hume’s Treatise convinced him that, contrary to Berkeley, it was impossible to reconcile this doctrine, the theory of ideas, with common sense. Hume had rigorously developed the theory, Reid said, and drew forth the conclusions. These, Reid averred, were absurd. They included the denial of our knowledge of body and mind, and, even more strikingly, of our conceptions of these things. The reason Reid thought that Hume’s theory of ideas led to these conclusions was that for Hume, ideas were faded impressions of sense, hence, sensations. No sensation is like a quality of a material thing, let alone like the object that has the quality. Consider movement. Movement is a quality of an object wherein the object changes from one place to another, but the visual sensation that arises in us is not the change of place of an object, it is an activity of mind. No two things could, in fact, be more unalike. If what is before the mind is always some sensation, whether vivacious or faded, we should never obtain the conception of something other than a sensation. Hence, we could never even conceive of material objects and their qualities. Even worse, we could not conceive of our own minds, for they are not sensations either, and only sensations are immediately before the mind, according to the theory of ideas. Finally, and even more absurdly, we could not conceive of past sensations or anything that does not now exist. For all that is immediately before the mind is sensations that exist presently. Thus, we could not even conceive of qualities, bodies, minds, and things that do not now exist. But this is absurd, since it is obvious that we do think of all these things and even of things that have never existed. The solution, Reid suggested, is to abandon the theory of ideas and seek a better one. Many have thought Reid was unfair to Hume and misinterpreted him. Reid’s Inquiry was presented to Hume by Dr. Blair in manuscript form, however, and in reply Hume does not at all suggest that he has been misinterpreted or handled unfairly. Whatever the merits of Reid’s criticism of Hume, it was the study of the consequences of Hume’s philosophy that accounts for Reid’s central doctrine of the human faculties and their first principles. Faculties are innate powers, among them the powers of conception and conviction. Reid’s strategy in reply to Hume is to build a nativist theory of conception on the failure of Hume’s theory of ideas. Where the theory of ideas, the doctrine of impressions and ideas, fails to account for our conception of something, of qualities, bodies, minds, past things, nonexistent things, Reid hypothesizes that our conceptions originate from a faculty of the mind, i.e., from an innate power of conception. This line of argument reflects Reid’s respect for Hume, whom he calls the greatest metaphysician of the age, because Hume drew forth the consequences of a theory of conception, which we might call associationism, according to which all our conceptions result from associating sensations. Where the associationism of Hume failed, Reid hypothesized that conceptions arise from innate powers of conception that manifest themselves in accordance with original first principles of the mind. The resulting hypotheses were not treated as a priori necessities but as empirical hypotheses. Reid notes, therefore, that there are marks by which we can discern the operation of an innate first principle, which include the early appearance of the operation, its universality in mankind, and its irresistibility. The operations of the mind that yield our conceptions of qualities, bodies, and minds all bear these marks, Reid contends, and that warrants the conclusion that they manifest first principles. It should be noted that Reid conjectured that nature would be frugal in the implantation of innate powers, supplying us with no more than necessary to produce the conceptions we manifest. Reid is, consequently, a parsimonious empiricist in the development of his nativist psychology. Reid developed his theory of perception in great detail and his development led, surprisingly, to his articulation of non-Euclidean geometry. Indeed, while Kant was erroneously postulating the a priori necessity of Euclidean space, Reid was developing non-Euclidean geometry to account for the empirical features of visual space. Reid’s theory of perception is an example of his empiricism. In the Inquiry, he says that sensations, which are operations of the mind, and impressions on the organs of sense, which are material, produce our conceptions of primary and secondary qualities. Sensations produce our original conceptions of secondary qualities as the causes of those sensations. They are signs that suggest the existence of the qualities. A sensation of smell suggests the existence of a quality in the object that causes the sensation, though the character of the cause is otherwise unknown. Thus, our original conception of secondary qualities is a relative conception of some unknown cause of a sensation. Our conception of primary qualities differs not, as Locke suggested, because of some resemblance between the sensation and the quality for, as Berkeley noted, there is no resemblance between a sensation and quality, but because our original conceptions of primary qualities are clear and distinct. The sensation is a sign that suggests a definite conception of the primary quality, e.g. a definite conception of the movement of the object, rather than a mere conception of something, we know not what, that gives rise to the sensation. These conceptions of qualities signified by sensations result from the operations of principles of our natural constitution. These signs, which suggest the conception of qualities, also suggest a conception of some object that has them. This conception of the object is also relative, in that it is simply a conception of a subject of the qualities. In the case of physical qualities, the conception of the object is a conception of a material object. Though sensations, which are activities of the mind, suggest the existence of qualities, they are not the only signs of sense perception. Some impressions on the organs of sense, the latter being material, also give rise to conceptions of qualities, especially to our conception of visual figure, the seen shape of the object. But Reid can discern no sensation of shape. There are, of course, sensations of color, but he is convinced from the experience of those who have cataracts and see color but not shape that the sensations of color are insufficient to suggest our conceptions of visual figure. His detailed account of vision and especially of the seeing of visual figure leads him to one of his most brilliant moments. He asks what sort of data do we receive upon the eye and answers that the data must be received at the round surface of the eyeball and processed within. Thus, visual space is a projection in three dimensions of the information received on the round surface of the eye, and the geometry of this space is a non-Euclidean geometry of curved space. Reid goes on to derive the properties of the space quite correctly, e.g., in concluding that the angles of a triangle will sum to a figure greater than 180 degrees and thereby violate the parallels postulate. Thus Reid discovered that a non-Euclidean geometry was satisfiable and, indeed, insisted that it accurately described the space of vision not, however, the space of touch, which he thought was Euclidean. From the standpoint of his theory of perceptual signs, the example of visual figure helps to clarify his doctrine of the signs of perception. We do not perceive signs and infer what they signify. This inference, Reid was convinced by Hume, would lack the support of reasoning, and Reid concluded that reasoning was, in this case, superfluous. The information received on the surface of the eye produces our conceptions of visual figure immediately. Indeed, these signs pass unnoticed as they give rise to the conception of visual figure in the mind. The relation of sensory signs to the external things they signify originally is effected by a first principle of the mind without the use of reason. The first principles that yield our conceptions of qualities and objects yield convictions of the existence of these things at the same time. A question naturally arises as to the evidence of these convictions. First principles yield the convictions along with the conceptions, but do we have evidence of the existence of the qualities and objects we are convinced exist? We have the evidence of our senses, of our natural faculties, and that is all the evidence possible here. Reid’s point is that the convictions in questions resulting from the original principles of our faculties are immediately justified. Our faculties are, however, all fallible, so the justification that our original convictions possess may be refuted. We can now better understand Reid’s reply to Hume. To account for our convictions of the existence of body, we must abandon Hume’s theory of ideas, which cannot supply even the conception of body. We must discover both the original first principles that yield the conception and conviction of objects and their qualities, and first principles to account for our convictions of the past, of other thinking beings, and of morals. Just as there are first principles of perception that yield convictions of the existence of presently existing objects, so there are first principles of memory that yield the convictions of the existence of past things, principles of testimony that yield the convictions of the thoughts of others, and principles of morals that yield convictions of our obligations. Reid’s defense of a moral faculty alongside the faculties of perception and memory is striking. The moral faculty yields conceptions of the justice and injustice of an action in response to our conception of that action. Reid shrewdly notes that different people may conceive of the same action in different ways. I may conceive of giving some money as an action of gratitude, while you may consider it squandering money. How we conceive of an action depends on our moral education, but the response of our moral faculty to an action conceived in a specific way is original and the same in all who have the faculty. Hence differences in moral judgment are due, not to principles of the moral faculty, but to differences in how we conceive of our actions. This doctrine of a moral faculty again provides a counterpoint to the moral philosophy of Hume, for, according Reid, Thomas Reid, Thomas 785    785 to Reid, judgments of justice and injustice pertaining to all matters, including promises, contracts, and property, arise from our natural faculties and do not depend on anything artificial. Reid’s strategy for defending common sense is clear enough. He thinks that Hume showed that we cannot arrive at our convictions of external objects, of past events, of the thoughts of others, of morals, or, for that matter, of our own minds, from reasoning about impressions and ideas. Since those convictions are a fact, philosophy must account for them in the only way that remains, by the hypothesis of innate faculties that yield them. But do we have any evidence for these convictions? Evidence, Reid says, is the ground of belief, and our evidence is that of our faculties. Might our faculties deceive us? Reid answers that it is a first principle of our faculties that they are not fallacious. Why should we assume that our faculties are not fallacious? First, the belief is irresistible. However we wage war with first principles, the principles of common sense, they prevail in daily life. There we trust our faculties whether we choose to or not. Second, all philosophy depends on the assumption that our faculties are not fallacious. Here Reid employs an ad hominem argument against Hume, but one with philosophical force. Reid says that, in response to a total skeptic who decides to trust none of his faculties, he puts his hand over his mouth in silence. But Hume trusted reason and consciousness, and therefore is guilty of pragmatic inconsistency in calling the other faculties into doubt. They come from the same shop, Reid says, and he who calls one into doubt has no right to trust the others. All our faculties are fallible, and, therefore, we must, to avoid arbitrary favoritism, trust them all at the outset or trust none. The first principles of our faculties are trustworthy. They not only account for our convictions, but are the ground and evidence of those convictions. This nativism is the original engine of justification. Reid’s theory of original perceptions is supplemented by a theory of acquired perceptions, those which incorporate the effects of habit and association, such as the perception of a passing coach. He distinguishes acquired perceptions from effects of reasoning. The most important way our original perceptions must be supplemented is by general conceptions. These result from a process whereby our attention is directed to some individual quality, e.g., the whiteness of a piece of paper, which he calls abstraction, and a further process of generalizing from the individual quality to the general conception of the universal whiteness shared by many individuals. Reid is a sophisticated nominalist; he says that the only things that exist are individual, but he includes individual qualities as well as individual objects. The reason is that individual qualities obviously exist and are needed as the basis of generalization. To generalize from an individual we must have some conception of what it is like, and this conception cannot be general, on pain of circularity or regress, but must be a conception of an individual quality, e.g., the whiteness of this paper, which it uniquely possesses. Universals, though predicated of objects to articulate our knowledge, do not exist. We can think of universals, just as we can think of centaurs, but though they are the objects of thought and predicated of individuals that exist, they do not themselves exist. Generalization is not driven by ontology but by utility. It is we and not nature that sort things into kinds in ways that are useful to us. This leads to a division-of-labor theory of meaning because general conceptions are the meanings of general words. Thus, in those domains in which there are experts, in science or the law, we defer to the experts concerning the general conceptions that are the most useful in the area in question. Reid’s theory of the intellectual powers, summarized briefly above, is supplemented by his theory of our active powers, those that lead to actions. His theory of the active powers includes a theory of the principles of actions. These include animal principles that operate without understanding, but the most salient and philosophically important part of Reid’s theory of the active powers is his theory of the rational principles of action, which involve understanding and the will. These rational principles are those in which we have a conception of the action to be performed and will its performance. Action thus involves an act of will or volition, but volitions as Reid conceived of them are not the esoteric inventions of philosophy but, instead, the commonplace activities of deciding and resolving to act. Reid is a libertarian and maintains that our liberty or freedom refutes the principle of necessity or determinism. Freedom requires the power to will the action and also the power not to will it. The principle of necessity tells us that our action was necessitated and, therefore, that it was not in our power not to have willed as we did. It is not sufficient for freedom, as Hume suggested, that we act as we will. We must also have the Reid, Thomas Reid, Thomas 786    786 power to determine what we will. The reason is that willing is the means to the end of action, and he who lacks power over the means lacks power over the end. This doctrine of the active power over the determinations of our will is founded on the central principle of Reid’s theory of the active powers, the principle of agent causation. The doctrine of acts of the will or volitions does not lead to a regress, as critics allege, because my act of will is an exercise of the most basic kind of causality, the efficient causality of an agent. I am the efficient cause of my acts of will. My act of will need not be caused by an antecedent act of will because my act of will is the result of my exercise of my causal power. This fact also refutes an objection to the doctrine of liberty  that if my action is not necessitated, then it is fortuitous. My free actions are caused, not fortuitous, though they are not necessitated, because they are caused by me. How, one might inquire, do we know that we are free? The doubt that we are free is like other skeptical doubts, and receives a similar reply, namely, that the conviction of our freedom is a natural and original conviction arising from our faculties. It occurs prior to instruction and it is irresistible in practical life. Any person with two identical coins usable to pay for some item must be convinced that she can pay with the one or the other; and, unlike the ass of Buridan, she readily exercises her power to will the one or the other. The conviction of freedom is an original one, not the invention of philosophy, and it arises from the first principles of our natural faculties, which are trustworthy and not fallacious. The first principles of our faculties hang together like links in a chain, and one must either raise up the whole or the links prove useless. Together, they are the foundation of true philosophy, science, and practical life, and without them we shall lead ourselves into the coalpit of skepticism and despair. 

Reimarus, Hermann Samuel 16941768, G. philosopher, born in Hamburg and educated in philosophy and theology at Jena. For most of his life he taught Oriental languages at a high school in Hamburg. The most important writings he published were a treatise on natural religion, Abhandlungen von den vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion 1754; a textbook on logic, Vernunftlehre 1756; and an interesting work on instincts in animals, Allgemeine Betrachtungen über die Triebe der Tiere 1760. However, he is today best known for his Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes “Apology for or Defense of the Rational Worshipers of God”, posthumously published in 177477. In it, Reimarus reversed his stance on natural theology and openly advocated a deism in the British tradition. The controversy created by its publication had a profound impact on the further development of G. theology. Though Reimarus always remained basically a follower of Wolff, he was often quite critical of Wolffian rationalism in his discussion of logic and psychology. 

Reinhold, Karl Leonhard 17431819, Austrian philosopher who was both a popularizer and a critic of Kant. He was the first occupant of the chair of critical philosophy established at the  of Jena in 1787. His Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie 1786/87 helped to popularize Kantianism. Reinhold also proclaimed the need for a more “scientific” presentation of the critical philosophy, in the form of a rigorously deductive system in which everything is derivable from a single first principle “the principle of consciousness”. He tried to satisfy this need with Elementarphilosophie “Elementary Philosophy” or “Philosophy of the Elements”, expounded in his Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens “Attempt at a New Theory of the Human Faculty of Representation,” 1789, Beyträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Missverständnisse der Philosophen I “Contributions to the Correction of the Prevailing Misunderstandings of Philosophers,” 1790, and Ueber das Fundament des philosophischen Wissens “On the Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge,” 1791. His criticism of the duality of Kant’s starting point and of the ad hoc character of his deductions contributed to the demand for a more coherent exposition of transcendental idealism, while his strategy for accomplishing this task stimulated others above all,

Fichte to seek an even more “fundamental” first principle for philosophy. Reinhold later became an enthusiastic adherent, first of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre and then of Bardili’s “rational realism,” before finally adopting a novel “linguistic” approach to philosophical problems. 

reism, also called concretism, the theory that the basic entities are concrete objects. Reism differs from nominalism in that the problem of universals is not its only motivation and often not the principal motivation for the theory. Three types of reism can be distinguished. 1 Brentano held that every object is a concrete or individual thing. He said that substances, aggregates of substances, parts of substances, and individual properties of substances are the only things that exist. There is no such thing as the existence or being of an object; and there are no non-existent objects. One consequence of this doctrine is that the object of thought what the thought is about is always an individual object and not a proposition. For example, the thought that this paper is white is about this paper and not about the proposition that this paper is white. Meinong attacked Brentano’s concretism and argued that thoughts are about “objectives,” not objects. 2 Kotarbigski, who coined the term ‘reism’, holds as a basic principle that only concrete objects exist. Although things may be hard or soft, red or blue, there is no such thing as hardness, softness, redness, or blueness. Sentences that contain abstract words are either strictly meaningless or can be paraphrased into sentences that do not contain any abstract words. Kotarbinski is both a nominalist and a materialist. Brentano was a nominalist and a dualist. 3 Thomas Garrigue Masaryk’s concretism is quite different from the first two. For him, concretism is the theory that all of a person’s cognitive faculties participate in every instance of knowing: reason, senses, emotion, and will. 

relation, a two-or-more-place property e.g., loves or between, or the extension of such a property. In set theory, a relation is any set of ordered pairs or triplets, etc., but these are reducible to pairs. For simplicity, the formal exposition here uses the language of set theory, although an intensional property-theoretic view is later assumed. The terms of a relation R are the members of the pairs constituting R, the items that R relates. The collection D of all first terms of pairs in R is the domain of R; any collection with D as a subcollection may also be so called. Similarly, the second terms of these pairs make up or are a subcollection of the range counterdomain or converse domain of R. One usually works within a set U such that R is a subset of the Cartesian product U$U the set of all ordered pairs on U. Relations can be: 1 reflexive or exhibit reflexivity: for all a, aRa. That is, a reflexive relation is one that, like identity, each thing bears to itself. Examples: a weighs as much as b; or the universal relation, i.e., the relation R such that for all a and b, aRb. 2 symmetrical or exhibit symmetry: for all a and b, aRb P bRa. In a symmetrical relation, the order of the terms is reversible. Examples: a is a sibling of b; a and b have a common divisor. Also symmetrical is the null relation, under which no object is related to anything. 3 transitive or exhibit transitivity: for all a, b, and c, aRb & bRc P aRc. Transitive relations carry across a middle term. Examples: a is less than b; a is an ancestor of b. Thus, if a is less than b and b is less than c, a is less than c: less than has carried across the middle term, b. 4 antisymmetrical: for all a and b, aRb & bRa P a % b. 5 trichotomous, connected, or total trichotomy: for all a and b, aRb 7 bRa 7 a % b. 6 asymmetrical: aRb & bRa holds for no a and b. 7 functional: for all a, b, and c, aRb & aRc P b % c. In a functional relation which may also be called a function, each first term uniquely determines a second term. R is non-reflexive if it is not reflexive, i.e., if the condition 1 fails for at least one object a. R is non-symmetric if 2 fails for at least one pair of objects a, b. Analogously for non-transitive. R is irreflexive aliorelative if 1 holds for no object a and intransitive if 3 holds for no objects a, b, and c. Thus understands is non-reflexive since some things do not understand themselves, but not irreflexive, since some things do; loves is nonsymmetric but not asymmetrical; and being a cousin of is non-transitive but not intransitive, as being mother of is. 13 define an equivalence relation e.g., the identity relation among numbers or the relation of being the same age as among people. A class of objects bearing an equivalence relation R to each other is an equivalence class under R. 1, 3, and 4 define a partial order; 3, 5, and 6 a linear order. Similar properties define other important classifications, such as lattice and Boolean algebra. The converse of a relation R is the set of all pairs b, a such that aRb; the comreism relation 788    788 plement of R is the set of all pairs a, b such that aRb i.e. aRb does not hold. A more complex example will show the power of a relational vocabulary. The ancestral of R is the set of all a, b such that either aRb or there are finitely many cI , c2, c3, . . . , cn such that aRcI and c1Rc2 and c2Rc3 and . . . and cnRb. Frege introduced the ancestral in his theory of number: the natural numbers are exactly those objects bearing the ancestral of the successor-of relation to zero. Equivalently, they are the intersection of all sets that contain zero and are closed under the successor relation. This is formalizable in second-order logic. Frege’s idea has many applications. E.g., assume a set U, relation R on U, and property F. An element a of U is hereditarily F with respect to R if a is F and any object b which bears the ancestral of R to a is also F. Hence F is here said to be a hereditary property, and the set a is hereditarily finite with respect to the membership relation if a is finite, its members are, as are the members of its members, etc. The hereditarily finite sets or the sets hereditarily of cardinality ‹ k for any inaccessible k are an important subuniverse of the universe of sets. Philosophical discussions of relations typically involve relations as special cases of properties or sets. Thus nominalists and Platonists disagree over the reality of relations, since they disagree about properties in general. Similarly, one important connection is to formal semantics, where relations are customarily taken as the denotations of relational predicates. Disputes about the notion of essence are also pertinent. One says that a bears an internal relation, R, to b provided a’s standing in R to b is an essential property of a; otherwise a bears an external relation to b. If the essentialaccidental distinction is accepted, then a thing’s essential properties will seem to include certain of its relations to other things, so that we must admit internal relations. Consider a point in space, which has no identity apart from its place in a certain system. Similarly for a number. Or consider my hand, which would perhaps not be the same object if it had not developed as part of my body. If it is true that I could not have had other parents  that possible persons similar to me but with distinct parents would not really be me  then I, too, am internally related to other things, namely my parents. Similar arguments would generate numerous internal relations for organisms, artifacts, and natural objects in general. Internal relations will also seem to exist among properties and relations themselves. Roundness is essentially a kind of shape, and the relation larger than is essentially the converse of the relation smaller than. In like usage, a relation between a and b is intrinsic if it depends just on how a and b are; extrinsic if they have it in virtue of their relation to other things. Thus, higher-than intrinsically relates the Alps to the Appalachians. That I prefer viewing the former to the latter establishes an extrinsic relation between the mountain ranges. Note that this distinction is obscure as is internal-external. One could argue that the Alps are higher than the Appalachians only in virtue of the relation of each to something further, such as space, light rays, or measuring rods. Another issue specific to the theory of relations is whether relations are real, given that properties do exist. That is, someone might reject nominalism only to the extent of admitting one-place properties. Although such doctrines have some historical importance in, e.g., Plato and Bradley, they have disappeared. Since relations are indispensable to modern logic and semantics, their inferiority to one-place properties can no longer be seriously entertained. Hence relations now have little independent significance in philosophy. 

relational logic, the formal study of the properties of and operations on binary relations that was initiated by Peirce between 1870 and 2. Thus, in relational logic, one might examine the formal properties of special kinds of relations, such as transitive relations, or asymmetrical ones, or orderings of certain types. Or the focus might be on various operations, such as that of forming the converse or relative product. Formal deductive systems used in such studies are generally known as calculi of relations. 

relativism, the denial that there are certain kinds of universal truths. There are two main types, cognitive and ethical. Cognitive relativism holds that there are no universal truths about the world: the world has no intrinsic characteristics, there are just different ways of interpreting it. The Grecian Sophist Protagoras, the first person on record to hold such a view, said, “Man is the measure of all things; of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not.” Goodman, Putnam, and Rorty are contemporary philosophers who have held versions of relativism. Rorty says, e.g., that “ ‘objective truth’ is no more and no less than the best idea we currently have about how to explain what is going on.” Critics of cognitive relativism contend that it is self-referentially incoherent, since it presents its statements as universally true, rather than simply relatively so. Ethical relativism is the theory that there are no universally valid moral principles: all moral principles are valid relative to culture or individual choice. There are two subtypes: conventionalism, which holds that moral principles are valid relative to the conventions of a given culture or society; and subjectivism, which maintains that individual choices are what determine the validity of a moral principle. Its motto is, Morality lies in the eyes of the beholder. As Ernest Hemingway wrote, “So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.” Conventionalist ethical relativism consists of two theses: a diversity thesis, which specifies that what is considered morally right and wrong varies from society to society, so that there are no moral principles accepted by all societies; and a dependency thesis, which specifies that all moral principles derive their validity from cultural acceptance. From these two ideas relativists conclude that there are no universally valid moral principles applying everywhere and at all times. The first thesis, the diversity thesis, or what may simply be called cultural relativism, is anthropological; it registers the fact that moral rules differ from society to society. Although both ethical relativists and non-relativists typically accept cultural relativism, it is often confused with the normative thesis of ethical relativism. The opposite of ethical relativism is ethical objectivism, which asserts that although cultures may differ in their moral principles, some moral principles have universal validity. Even if, e.g., a culture does not recognize a duty to refrain from gratuitous harm, that principle is valid and the culture should adhere to it. There are two types of ethical objectivism, strong and weak. Strong objectivism, sometimes called absolutism, holds that there is one true moral system with specific moral rules. The ethics of ancient Israel in the Old Testament with its hundreds of laws exemplifies absolutism. Weak objectivism holds that there is a core morality, a determinate set of principles that are universally valid usually including prohibitions against killing the innocent, stealing, breaking of promises, and lying. But weak objectivism accepts an indeterminate area where relativism is legitimate, e.g., rules regarding sexual mores and regulations of property. Both types of objectivism recognize what might be called application relativism, the endeavor to apply moral rules where there is a conflict between rules or where rules can be applied in different ways. For example, the ancient Callactians ate their deceased parents but eschewed the impersonal practice of burying them as disrespectful, whereas contemporary society has the opposite attitudes about the care of dead relatives; but both practices exemplify the same principle of the respect for the dead. According to objectivism, cultures or forms of life can fail to exemplify an adequate moral community in at least three ways: 1 the people are insufficiently intelligent to put constitutive principles in order; 2 they are under considerable stress so that it becomes too burdensome to live by moral principles; and 3 a combination of 1 and 2. Ethical relativism is sometimes confused with ethical skepticism, the view that we cannot know whether there are any valid moral principles. Ethical nihilism holds that there are no valid moral principles. J. L. Mackie’s error theory is a version of this view. Mackie held that while we all believe some moral principles to be true, there are compelling arguments to the contrary. Ethical objectivism must be distinguished from moral realism, the view that valid moral principles are true, independently of human choice. Objectivism may be a form of ethical constructivism, typified by Rawls, whereby objective principles are simply those that impartial human beings would choose behind the veil of ignorance. That is, the principles are not truly independent of hypothetical human choices, but are constructs from those choices. 

relativity, a term applied to Einstein’s theories of electrodynamics special relativity, 5 and gravitation general relativity, 6 because both hold that certain physical quantities, formerly considered objective, are actually “relative to” the state of motion of the observer. They are called “special” and “general” because, in special relativity, electrodynamical laws determine a restricted class of kinematical reference frames, the “inertial frames”; in general relativity, the very distinction between inertial frames and others becomes a relative distinction. Special relativity. Classical mechanics makes no distinction between uniform motion and rest: not velocity, but acceleration is physically detectable, and so different states of uniform motion are physically equivalent. But classical electrodynamics describes light as wave motion with a constant velocity through a medium, the “ether.” It follows that the measured velocity of light should depend on the motion of the observer relative to the medium. When interferometer experiments suggested that the velocity of light is independent of the motion of the source, H. A. Lorentz proposed that objects in motion contract in the direction of motion through the ether while their local time “dilates”, and that this effect masks the difference in the velocity of light. Einstein, however, associated the interferometry results with many other indications that the theoretical distinction between uniform motion and rest in the ether lacks empirical content. He therefore postulated that, in electrodynamics as in mechanics, all states of uniform motion are equivalent. To explain the apparent paradox that observers with different velocities can agree on the velocity of light, he criticized the idea of an “absolute” or frame-independent measure of simultaneity: simultaneity of distant events can only be established by some kind of signaling, but experiment suggested that light is the only signal with an invariant velocity, and observers in relative motion who determine simultaneity with light signals obtain different results. Furthermore, since objective measurement of time and length presupposes absolute simultaneity, observers in relative motion will also disagree on time and length. So Lorentz’s contraction and dilatation are not physical effects, but consequences of the relativity of simultaneity, length, and time, to the motion of the observer. But this relativity follows from the invariance of the laws of electrodynamics, and the invariant content of the theory is expressed geometrically in Minkowski spacetime. Logical empiricists took the theory as an illustration of how epistemological analysis of a concept time could eliminate empirically superfluous notions absolute simultaneity. General relativity. Special relativity made the velocity of light a limit for all causal processes and required revision of Newton’s theory of gravity as an instantaneous action at a distance. General relativity incorporates gravity into the geometry of space-time: instead of acting directly on one another, masses induce curvature in space-time. Thus the paths of falling bodies represent not forced deviations from the straight paths of a flat space-time, but “straightest” paths in a curved space-time. While space-time is “locally” Minkowskian, its global structure depends on mass-energy distribution. The insight behind this theory is the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass: since a given gravitational field affects all bodies equally, weight is indistinguishable from the inertial force of acceleration; freefall motion is indistinguishable from inertial motion. This suggests that the Newtonian decomposition of free fall into inertial and accelerated components is arbitrary, and that the freefall path itself is the invariant basis for the structure of space-time. A philosophical motive for the general theory was to extend the relativity of motion. Einstein saw special relativity’s restricted class of equivalent reference frames as an “epistemological defect,” and he sought laws that would apply to any frame. His inspiration was Mach’s criticism of the Newtonian distinction between “absolute” rotation and rotation relative to observable bodies like the “fixed stars.” Einstein formulated Mach’s criticism as a fundamental principle: since only relative motions are observable, local inertial effects should be explained by the cosmic distribution of masses and by motion relative to them. Thus not only velocity and rest, but motion in general would be relative. Einstein hoped to effect this generalization by eliminating the distinction between inertial frames and freely falling frames. Because free fall remains a privileged state of motion, however, non-gravitational acceleration remains detectable, and absolute rotation remains distinct from relative rotation. Einstein also thought that relativity of motion would result from the general covariance coordinate-independence of his theory  i.e., that general equivalence of coordinate systems meant general equivalence relativism, scientific relativity 791    791 of states of motion. It is now clear, however, that general covariance is a mathematical property of physical theories without direct implications about motion. So general relativity does not “generalize” the relativity of motion as Einstein intended. Its great accomplishments are the unification of gravity and geometry and the generalization of special relativity to space-times of arbitrary curvature, which has made possible the modern investigation of cosmological structure. 

relevance logic, any of a range of logics and philosophies of logic united by their insistence that the premises of a valid inference must be relevant to the conclusion. Standard, or classical, logic contains inferences that break this requirement, e.g., the spread law, that from a contradiction any proposition whatsoever follows. Relevance logic had its genesis in a system of strenge Implikation published by Wilhelm Ackermann in 6. Ackermann’s idea for rejecting irrelevance was taken up and developed by Alan Anderson and Nuel Belnap in a series of papers between 9 and Anderson’s death in 4. The first main summaries of these researches appeared under their names, and those of many collaborators, in Entailment: The Logic of Relevance and Necessity vol. 1, 5; vol. 2, 2. By the time of Anderson’s death, a substantial research effort into relevance logic was under way, and it has continued. Besides the rather vague unity of the idea of relevance between premises and conclusion, there is a technical criterion often used to mark out relevance logic, introduced by Belnap in 0, and applicable really only to propositional logics the main focus of concern to date: a necessary condition of relevance is that premises and conclusion should share a propositional variable. Early attention was focused on systems E of entailment and T of ticket entailment. Both are subsystems of C. I. Lewis’s system S4 of strict implication and of classical truth-functional logic i.e., consequences in E and T in ‘P’ are consequences in S4 in ‘ ’ and in classical logic in ‘/’. Besides rejection of the spread law, probably the most notorious inference that is rejected is disjunctive syllogism DS for extensional disjunction which is equivalent to detachment for material implication: A 7 B,ÝA , B. The reason is immediate, given acceptance of Simplification and Addition: Simplification takes us from A & ÝA to each conjunct, and Addition turns the first conjunct into A 7 B. Unless DS were rejected, the spread law would follow. Since the late 0s, attention has shifted to the system R of relevant implication, which adds permutation to E, to mingle systems which extend E and R by the mingle law A P A P A, and to contraction-free logics, which additionally reject contraction, in one form reading A P A P B P A P B. R minus contraction RW differs from linear logic, much studied recently in computer science, only by accepting the distribution of ‘&’ over ‘7’, which the latter rejects. Like linear logic, relevance logic contains both truth-functional and non-truth-functional connectives. Unlike linear logic, however, R, E, and T are undecidable unusual among propositional logics. This result was obtained only in 4. In the early 0s, relevance logics were given possible-worlds semantics by several authors working independently. They also have axiomatic, natural deduction, and sequent or consecution formulations. One technical result that has attracted attention has been the demonstration that, although relevance logics reject DS, they all accept Ackermann’s rule Gamma: that if A 7 B and ÝA are theses, so is B. A recent result occasioning much surprise was that relevant arithmetic consisting of Peano’s postulates on the base of quantified R does not admit Gamma. 

reliabilism, a type of theory in epistemology that holds that what qualifies a belief as knowledge or as epistemically justified is its reliable linkage to the truth. David Armstrong motivates reliabilism with an analogy between a thermometer that reliably indicates the temperature and a belief that reliably indicates the truth. A belief qualifies as knowledge, he says, if there is a lawlike connection in nature that guarantees that the belief is true. A cousin of the nomic sufficiency account is the counterfactual approach, proposed by Dretske, Goldman, and Nozick. A typical formulation of this approach says that a belief qualifies relativity, general reliabilism 792    792 as knowledge if the belief is true and the cognizer has reasons for believing it that would not obtain unless it were true. For example, someone knows that the telephone is ringing if he believes this, it is true, and he has a specific auditory experience that would not occur unless the telephone were ringing. In a slightly different formulation, someone knows a proposition if he believes it, it is true, and if it were not true he would not believe it. In the example, if the telephone were not ringing, he would not believe that it is, because he would not have the same auditory experience. These accounts are guided by the idea that to know a proposition it is not sufficient that the belief be “accidentally” true. Rather, the belief, or its mode of acquisition, must “track,” “hook up with,” or “indicate” the truth. Unlike knowledge, justified belief need not guarantee or be “hooked up” with the truth, for a justified belief need not itself be true. Nonetheless, reliabilists insist that the concept of justified belief also has a connection with truth acquisition. According to Goldman’s reliable process account, a belief’s justificational status depends on the psychological processes that produce or sustain it. Justified beliefs are produced by appropriate psychological processes, unjustified beliefs by inappropriate processes. For example, beliefs produced or preserved by perception, memory, introspection, and “good” reasoning are justified, whereas beliefs produced by hunch, wishful thinking, or “bad” reasoning are unjustified. Why are the first group of processes appropriate and the second inappropriate? The difference appears to lie in their reliability. Among the beliefs produced by perception, introspection, or “good” reasoning, a high proportion are true; but only a low proportion of beliefs produced by hunch, wishful thinking, or “bad” reasoning are true. Thus, what qualifies a belief as justified is its being the outcome of a sequence of reliable belief-forming processes. Reliabilism is a species of epistemological externalism, because it makes knowledge or justification depend on factors such as truth connections or truth ratios that are outside the cognizer’s mind and not necessarily accessible to him. Yet reliabilism typically emphasizes internal factors as well, e.g., the cognitive processes responsible for a belief. Process reliabilism is a form of naturalistic epistemology because it centers on cognitive operations and thereby paves the way for cognitive psychology to play a role in epistemology.

Renouvier, Charles 18153,  philosopher influenced by Kant and Comte, the latter being one of his teachers. Renouvier rejected many of the views of both these philosophers, however, charting his own course. He emphasized the irreducible plurality and individuality of all things against the contemporary tendencies toward absolute idealism. Human individuality he associated with indeterminism and freedom. To the extent that agents are undetermined by other things and self-determining, they are unique individuals. Indeterminism also extends to the physical world and to knowledge. He rejected absolute certitude, but defended the universality of the laws of logic and mathematics. In politics and religion, he emphasized individual freedom and freedom of conscience. His emphasis on plurality, indeterminism, freedom, novelty, and process influenced James and, through James,  pragmatism. 

re-praesentatum: Grice plays with this as a philosophical semanticist, rather than a philosophical psychologist. But the re-praesentatum depends on the ‘praesentatum,’ which corresponds to Grice’s sub-perceptum (not the ‘conceptus’). cf. Grice on Peirce’s representamen (“You don’t want to go there,” – Grice to his tutees). It seems that in the one-off predicament, iconicy plays a role: the drawing of a skull to indicate danger, the drawing of an arrow at the fork of a road to indicate which way the emissor’s flowers, who were left behind, are supposed to take (Carruthers). Suppose Grice joins the Oxfordshire cricket club. He will represent Oxfordshire. He will do for Oxfordshire what Oxfordshire cannot do for herself. Similarly, by uttering “Smoke!,” the utterer means that there is fire somewhere. “Smoke!” is a communication-device if it does for smoke what smoke cannot do for itself, influence thoughts and behaviour. Or does it?! It MWheIGHT. But suppose that the fire is some distant from the addresse. And the utterer HAS LEARNED That there is fire in the distance. So he utters ‘Smoke!’ Where? Oh, you won’t see it. But I was told there is smoke on the outskirts. Thanks for warning me! rĕ-praesento , āvi, ātum, 1, v. a.  I. To bring before one, to bring back; to show, exhibit, display, manifest, represent (class.): “per quas (visiones) imagines rerum absentium ita repraesentantur animo, ut eas cernere oculis ac praesentes habere videamur,” Quint. 6, 2, 29: “memoriae vis repraesentat aliquid,” id. 11, 2, 1; cf. Plin. Ep. 9, 28, 3: “quod templum repraesentabat memoriam consulatūs mei,” Cic. Sest. 11, 26: si quis vultu torvo ferus simulet Catonem, Virtutemne repraesentet moresque Catonis? * Hor. Ep. 1, 19, 14: “imbecillitatem ingenii mei,” Val. Max. 2, 7, 6: “movendi ratio aut in repraesentandis est aut imitandis adfectibus,” Quint. 11, 3, 156: “urbis species repraesentabatur animis,” Curt. 3, 10, 7; cf.: “affectum patris amissi,” Plin. Ep. 4, 19, 1: “nam et vera esse et apte ad repraesentandam iram deūm ficta possunt,” Liv. 8, 6, 3 Weissenb. ad loc.: “volumina,” to recite, repeat, Plin. 7, 24, 24, § 89: “viridem saporem olivarum etiam post annum,” Col. 12, 47, 8: “faciem veri maris,” id. 8, 17, 6: “colorem constantius,” to show, exhibit, Plin. 37, 8, 33, § 112: “vicem olei,” i. e. to supply the place of, id. 28, 10, 45, § 160; cf. id. 18, 14, 36, § 134.— B. Of painters, sculptors, etc., to represent, portray, etc. (post-Aug. for adumbro): “Niceratus repraesentavit Alcibiadem,” Plin. 34, 8, 19, § 88.—With se, to present one's self, be present, Col. 1, 8, 11; 11, 1, 26; Dig. 48, 5, 15, § 3.— II. In partic., mercant. t. t., to pay immediately or on the spot; to pay in ready money: reliquae pecuniae vel usuram Silio pendemus, dum a Faberio vel ab aliquo qui Faberio debet, repraesentabimus, shall be enabled to pay immediately, Cic. Att. 12, 25, 1; 12, 29, 2: “summam,” Suet. Aug. 101: “legata,” id. Calig. 16: “mercedem,” id. Claud. 18; id. Oth. 5; Front. Strat. 1, 11, 2 Oud. N. cr.: “dies promissorum adest: quem etiam repraesentabo, si adveneris,” shall even anticipate, Cic. Fam. 16, 14, 2; cf. fideicommissum, to discharge immediately or in advance, Dig. 35, 1, 36.— B. Transf., in gen., to do, perform, or execute any act immediately, without delay, forthwith; hence, not to defer or put off; to hasten (good prose): se, quod in longiorem diem collaturus esset, repraesentaturum et proximā nocte castra moturum, * Caes. B. G. 1, 40: “festinasse se repraesentare consilium,” Curt. 6, 11, 33: “petis a me, ut id quod in diem suum dixeram debere differri, repraesentem,” Sen. Ep. 95, 1; and Front. Aquaed. 119 fin.: “neque exspectare temporis medicinam, quam repraesentare ratione possimus,” to apply it immediately, Cic. Fam. 5, 16, 6; so, “improbitatem suam,” to hurry on, id. Att. 16, 2, 3: “spectaculum,” Suet. Calig. 58: “tormenta poenasque,” id. Claud. 34: “poenam,” Phaedr. 3, 10, 32; Val. Max. 6, 5, ext. 4: “verbera et plagas,” Suet. Vit. 10: “vocem,” to sing immediately, id. Ner. 21 et saep.: “si repraesentari morte meā libertas civitatis potest,” can be immediately recovered, Cic. Phil. 2, 46, 118: “minas irasque caelestes,” to fulfil immediately, Liv. 2, 36, 6 Weissenb. ad loc.; cf. Suet. Claud. 38: “judicia repraesentata,” held on the spot, without preparation, Quint. 10, 7, 2.— C. To represent, stand in the place of (late Lat.): nostra per eum repraesentetur auctoritas, Greg. M. Ep. 1, 1.

republicanism: cf. Cato -- Grice was a British subject and found classical republicanism false -- also known as civic humanism, a political outlook developed by Machiavelli in Renaissance Italy and by James Harrington in England, modified by eighteenth-century British and Continental writers and important for the thought of the  founding fathers. Drawing on Roman historians, Machiavelli argued that a state could hope for security from the blows of fortune only if its male citizens were devoted to its well-being. They should take turns ruling and being ruled, be always prepared to fight for the republic, and limit their private possessions. Such men would possess a wholly secular virtù appropriate to political beings. Corruption, in the form of excessive attachment to private interest, would then be the most serious threat to the republic. Harrington’s utopian Oceana 1656 portrayed England governed under such a system. Opposing the authoritarian views of Hobbes, it described a system in which the well-to-do male citizens would elect some of their number to govern for limited terms. Those governing would propose state policies; the others would vote on the acceptability of the proposals. Agriculture was the basis of economics, civil rights classical republicanism 145   145 but the size of estates was to be strictly controlled. Harringtonianism helped form the views of the political party opposing the dominance of the king and court. Montesquieu in France drew on classical sources in discussing the importance of civic virtue and devotion to the republic. All these views were well known to Jefferson, Adams, and other  colonial and revolutionary thinkers; and some contemporary communitarian critics of  culture return to classical republican ideas. 

Response: Chomsky hated it. Grice changed it to ‘effect.’ Or not. “Stimulus and response,” Skinner's behavioral theory was largely set forth in his first book, Behavior of Organisms (1938).[9] Here, he gives a systematic description of the manner in which environmental variables control behavior. He distinguished two sorts of behavior which are controlled in different ways:  Respondent behaviors are elicited by stimuli, and may be modified through respondent conditioning, often called classical (or pavlovian) conditioning, in which a neutral stimulus is paired with an eliciting stimulus. Such behaviors may be measured by their latency or strength. Operant behaviors are 'emitted,' meaning that initially they are not induced by any particular stimulus. They are strengthened through operant conditioning (aka instrumental conditioning), in which the occurrence of a response yields a reinforcer. Such behaviors may be measured by their rate. Both of these sorts of behavior had already been studied experimentally, most notably: respondents, by Ivan Pavlov;[25] and operants, by Edward Thorndike.[26] Skinner's account differed in some ways from earlier ones,[27] and was one of the first accounts to bring them under one roof.

rerum natura Latin, ‘the nature of things’, metaphysics. The phrase can also be used more narrowly to mean the nature of physical reality, and often it presupposes a naturalistic view of all reality. Lucretius’s epic poem De rerum natura is an Epicurean physics, designed to underpin the Epicurean morality.

Responsibility – cited by H. P. Grice in “The causal theory of perception” -- a condition that relates an agent to actions of, and consequences connected to, that agent, and is always necessary and sometimes sufficient for the appropriateness of certain kinds of appraisals of that agent. Responsibility has no single definition, but is several closely connected specific concepts. Role responsibility. Agents are identified by social roles that they occupy, say parent or professor. Typically duties are associated with such roles  to care for the needs of their children, to attend classes and publish research papers. A person in a social role is “responsible for” the execution of those duties. One who carries out such duties is “a responsible person” or “is behaving responsibly.” Causal responsibility. Events, including but not limited to human actions, cause other events. The cause is “responsible” for the effect. Causal responsibility does not imply consciousness; objects and natural phenomena may have causal responsibility. Liability responsibility. Practices of praise and blame include constraints on the mental stance that an agent must have toward an action or a consequence of action, in order for praise or blame to be appropriate. To meet such constraints is to meet a fundamental necessary condition for liability for praise or blame  hence the expression ‘liability responsibility’. These constraints include such factors as intention, knowledge, recklessness toward consequences, absence of mistake, accident, inevitability of choice. An agent with the capability for liability responsibility may lack it on some occasion  when mistaken, for example. Capacity responsibility. Practices of praise and blame assume a level of intellectual and emotional capability. The severely mentally disadvantaged or the very young, for example, do not have the capacity to meet the conditions for liability responsibility. They are not “responsible” in that they lack capacity responsibility. Both morality and law embody and respect these distinctions, though law institutionalizes and formalizes them. Final or “bottom-line” assignment of responsibility equivalent to indeed deserving praise or blame standardly requires each of the latter three specific kinds of responsibility. The first kind supplies some normative standards for praise or blame. 

resultance, a relation according to which one property the resultant property, sometimes called the consequential property is possessed by some object or event in virtue of and hence as a result of that object or event possessing some other property or set of properties. The idea is that properties of things can be ordered into connected levels, some being more basic than and giving rise to others, the latter resulting from the former. For instance, a figure possesses the property of being a triangle in virtue of its possessing a collection of properties, including being a plane figure, having three sides, and so on; the former resulting from the latter. An object is brittle has the property of being brittle in virtue of having a certain molecular structure. It is often claimed that moral properties like rightness and goodness are resultant properties: an action is right in virtue of its possessing other properties. These examples make it clear that the nature of the necessary connection holding between a resultant property and those base properties that ground it may differ from case to case. In the geometrical example, the very concept of being a triangle grounds the resultance relation in question, and while brittleness is nomologically related to the base properties from which it results, in the moral case, the resultance relation is arguably neither conceptual nor causal. 

Richard Rufus, also called Richard of Cornwall d. c.1260, English philosopher-theologian who wrote some of the earliest commentaries on Aristotle in the Latin West. His commentaries were not cursory summaries; they included sustained philosophical discussions. Richard was a master of arts at Paris, where he studied with Alexander of Hales; he was also deeply influenced by Robert Grosseteste. He left Paris and joined the Franciscan order in 1238; he was ordained in England. In 1256, he became regent master of the Franciscan studium at Oxford; according to Roger Bacon, he was the most influential philosophical theologian at Oxford in the second half of the thirteenth century. In addition to his Aristotle commentaries, Richard wrote two commentaries on Peter Lombard’s Sentences c.1250, c.1254. In the first of these he borrowed freely from Robert Grosseteste, Alexander of Hales, and Richard Fishacre; the second commentary was a critical condensation of the lectures of his younger contemporary, St. Bonaventure, presented in Paris. Richard Rufus was the first medieval proponent of the theory of impetus; his views on projectile motion were cited by Franciscus Meyronnes. He also advocated other arguments first presented by Johannes Philoponus. Against the eternity of the world, he argued: 1 past time is necessarily finite, since it has been traversed, and 2 the world is not eternal, since if the world had no beginning, no more time would transpire before tomorrow than before today. He also argued that if the world had not been created ex nihilo, the first cause would be mutable. Robert Grosseteste cited one of Richard’s arguments against the eternity of the world in his notes on Aristotle’s Physics. In theology, Richard denied the validity of Anselm’s ontological argument, but, anticipating Duns Scotus, he argued that the existence of an independent being could be inferred from its possibility. Like Duns Scotus, he employs the formal distinction as an explanatory tool; in presenting his own views, Duns Scotus cited Richard’s definition of the formal distinction. Richard stated his philosophical views briefly, even cryptically; his Latin prose style is sometimes eccentric, characterized by interjections in which he addresses questions to God, himself, and his readers. He was hesitant about the value of systematic theology for the theologian, deferring to biblical exposition as the primary forum for theological discussion. In systematic theology, he emphasized Aristotelian philosophy and logic. He was a well-known logician; some scholars believe he is the famous logician known as the Magister Abstractionum. Though he borrowed freely from his contemporaries, he was a profoundly original philosopher. 

Ricoeur, P.  hermeneuticist and phenomenologist who has been a professor at several  universities as well as the  of Naples, Yale , and the  of Chicago. He has received major prizes from France, G.y, and Italy. He is the author of twenty-some volumes tr. in a variety of languages. Among his best-known books are Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary; Freud and Philosophy: An Essay of Interpretation; The Conflict of Interpretations: Essay in Hermeneutics; The Role of the Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, Time and Narrative; and Oneself as Another. His early studies with the  existentialist Marcel resulted in a book-length study of Marcel’s work and later a series of published dialogues with him. Ricoeur’s philosophical enterprise is colored by a continuing tension between faith and reason. His long-standing commitments to both the significance of the individual and the Christian faith are reflected in his hermeneutical voyage, his commitment to the Esprit movement, and his interest in the writings of Emmanuel Mounier. This latter point is also seen in his claim of the inseparability of action and discourse in our quest for meaning. In our comprehension of both history and fiction one must turn to the text to understand its plot as guideline if we are to comprehend experience of any reflective sort. In the end there are no metaphysical or epistemological grounds by which meaning can be verified, and yet our nature is such that possibility must be present before us. Ricoeur attempts his explanation through a hermeneutic phenomenology. The very hermeneutics of existence that follows is itself limited by reason’s questioning of experience and its attempts to transcend the limit through the language of symbols and metaphors. Freedom and meaning come to be realized in the actualization of an ethics that arises out of the very act of existing and thus transcends the mere natural voluntary distinction of a formal ethic. It is clear from his later work that he rejects any form of foundationalism including phenomenology as well as nihilism and easy skepticism. Through a sort of interdependent dialectic that goes beyond the more mechanical models of Hegelianism or Marxism, the self understands itself and is understood by the other in terms of its suffering and its moral actions. 

rights, advantageous positions conferred on some possessor by law, morals, rules, or other norms. There is no agreement on the sense in which rights are advantages. Will theories hold that rights favor the will of the possessor over the conflicting will of some other party; interest theories maintain that rights serve to protect or promote the interests of the right-holder. Hohfeld identified four legal advantages: liberties, claims, powers, and immunitiesThe concept of a right arose in Roman jurisprudence and was extended to ethics via natural law theory. Just as positive law, the law posited by human lawmakers, confers legal rights, so the natural law confers natural rights. Rights are classified by their specific sources in different sorts of rules. Legal rights are advantageous positions under the law of a society. Other species of institutional rights are conferred by the rules of private organizations, of the moral code of a society, or even of some game. Those who identify natural law with the moral law often identify natural rights with moral rights, but some limit natural rights to our most fundamental rights and contrast them with ordinary moral rights. Others deny that moral rights are natural because they believe that they are conferred by the mores or positive morality of one’s society. One always possesses any specific right by virtue of possessing some status. Thus, rights are also classified by status. Civil rights are those one possesses as a citizen; human rights are possessed by virtue of being human. Presumably women’s rights, children’s rights, patients’ rights, and the rights of blacks as such are analogous. Human rights play very much the same role in ethics once played by natural rights. This is partly because ontological doubts about the existence of God undermine the acceptance of any natural law taken to consist in divine commands, and epistemological doubts about self-evident moral truths lead many to reject any natural law conceived of as the dictates of reason. Although the Thomistic view that natural rights are grounded on the nature of man is often advocated, most moral philosophers reject its teleological conception of human nature defined by essential human purposes. It seems simpler to appeal instead to fundamental rights that must be universal among human beings because they are possessed merely by virtue of one’s status as a human being. Human rights are still thought of as natural in the very broad sense of existing independently of any human action or institution. This explains how they can be used as an independent standard in terms of which to criticize the laws and policies of governments and other organizations. Since human rights are classified by status rather than source, there is another species of human rights that are institutional rather than natural. These are the human rights that have been incorporated into legal systems by international agreements such as the European Convention on Human Rights. It is sometimes said that while natural rights were conceived as purely negative rights, such as the right not to be arbitrarily imprisoned, human rights are conceived more broadly to include positive social and economic rights, such as the right to social security or to an adequate standard of living. But this is surely not true by definition. Traditional natural law theorists such as Grotius and Locke spoke of natural rights as powers and associated them with liberties, rather than with claims against interference. And while modern declarations of human rights typically include social and economic rights, they assume that these are rights in the same sense that traditional political rights are. Rights are often classified by their formal properties. For example, the right not to be battered is a negative right because it imposes a negative duty not to batter, while the creditor’s right to be repaid is a positive right because it imposes a positive duty to repay. The right to be repaid is also a passive right because its content is properly formulated in the passive voice, while the right to defend oneself is an active right because its content is best stated in the active voice. Again, a right in rem is a right that holds against all second parties; a right in personam is a right that holds against one or a few others. This is not quite Hart’s distinction between general and special rights, rights of everyone against everyone, such as the right to free speech, and rights arising from special relations, such as that between creditor and debtor or husband and wife. Rights are conceptually contrasted with duties because rights are advantages while duties are disadvantages. Still, many jurists and philosophers have held that rights and duties are logical correlatives. This does seem to be true of claim rights; thus, the creditor’s right to be repaid implies the debtor’s duty to repay and vice versa. But the logical correlative of a liberty right, such as one’s right to park in front of one’s house, is the absence of any duty for one not to do so. This contrast is indicated by D. D. Raphael’s distinction between rights of recipience and rights of action. Sometimes to say that one has a right to do something is to say merely that it is not wrong for one to act in this way. This has been called the weak sense of ‘a right’. More often to assert that one has a right to do something does not imply that exercising this right is right. Thus, I might have a right to refuse to do a favor for a friend even though it would be wrong for me to do so. Finally, many philosophers distinguish between absolute and prima facie rights. An absolute right always holds, i.e., disadvantages some second party, within its scope; a prima facie right is one that holds unless the ground of the right is outweighed by some stronger contrary reason. 

rigorism, the view that morality consists in that single set of simple or unqualified moral rules, discoverable by reason, which applies to all human beings at all times. It is often said that Kant’s doctrine of the categorical imperative is rigoristic. Two main objections to rigorism are 1 some moral rules do not apply universally  e.g., ‘Promises should be kept’ applies only where there is an institution of promising; and 2 some rules that could be universally kept are absurd  e.g., that everyone should stand on one leg while the sun rises. Recent interpreters of Kant defend him against these objections by arguing, e.g., that the “rules” he had in mind are general guidelines for living well, which are in fact universal and practically relevant, or that he was not a rigorist at all, seeing moral worth as issuing primarily from the agent’s character rather than adherence to rules.