IMPLICATVRA -- in 16 volumes, vol. 13

pico della mirandola -- philosopher who wrote a series of 900 theses which he hoped to dispute publicly in Rome. Thirteen of these theses are criticized by a papal commission. When Pico defends himself in his “Apologia,” the pope condemns all 900 theses. Pico flees to France, but is imprisoned. On his escape, he returns to Florence and devotes himself to private study at the swimming-pool at his villa. He hoped to write a Concord of Plato and Aristotle, but the only part he was able to complete was “On Being and the One,” – “Blame it on the Toscana!” -- in which he uses Aquinas and Christianity to reconcile Plato’s and Aristotle’s views about God’s being and unity. Mirandola is often described as a syncretist, but in fact he made it clear that the truth of Christianity has priority over the prisca theologia or ancient wisdom found in the hermetic corpus and the cabala. Though he was interested in magic and astrology, Mirandola adopts a guarded attitude toward them in his “Heptaplus,” which contains a mystical interpretation of Genesis; and in his Disputations Against Astrology, he rejects them both. The treatise is largely technical, and the question of human freedom is set aside as not directly relevant. This fact casts some doubt on the popular thesis that Pico’s philosophy is a celebration of man’s freedom and dignity. Great weight has been placed on Pico’s “On the Dignity of Man.” This is a short oration intended as an introduction to the disputation of his 900 theses – all condemned by the evil pope --, and the title was suggested by his wife (“She actually suggested, “On the dignity of woman,” but I found that otiose.””). Mirandola has been interpreted as saying that man (or woman) is set apart from the rest of creation, and is completely free to form his (or her) own nature. In fact, as The Heptaplus shows, Pico sees man as a microcosm containing elements of the angelic, celestial, and elemental worlds. Man (if not woman) is thus firmly within the hierarchy of nature, and is a bond and link between the worlds. In the oration, the emphasis on freedom is a moral one: man is free to choose between good and evil. Grice: “This irritated Nietzsche so much that he wrote ‘beyond good and evil.’ Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Goodwill and illwill – must we have both?” Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Da Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera. Jump to navigationJump to search Heraldic Crown of Spanish Count.svg Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Pico1.jpg Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Galleria degli Uffizi Conte di Mirandola e di Concordia Stemma NascitaMirandola, 1463 MorteFirenze, 1494 SepolturaConvento di San Marco, Firenze DinastiaPico PadreGianFrancesco I, Signore di Mirandola e Conte della Concordia MadreGiulia Boiardo, Contessa di Scandiano Religionecattolicesimo Giovanni Pico dei conti della Mirandola e della Concordia, noto come Pico della Mirandola[1] (Mirandola, 24 febbraio 1463 – Firenze, 17 novembre 1494), è stato un umanista e filosofo italiano.  È l'esponente più conosciuto della dinastia dei Pico, signori di Mirandola.   Indice 1Biografia 1.1Gli studi e l'attività 1.2La morte 1.3Fama postuma 2Ascendenza 3Dottrina 3.1L'ideale di una filosofia universale 3.2La dignità dell'uomo 3.3La sapienza della Cabala 3.3.1Critica dell'astrologia 4Opere 5Note 6Bibliografia 6.1Le fonti cabalistiche di Pico 7Voci correlate 8Altri progetti 9Collegamenti esterni Biografia  L'infanzia di Pico della Mirandola, di Paul Delaroche, 1842, Museo delle belle arti di Nantes (Francia) Giovanni nacque a Mirandola, presso Modena, il figlio più giovane di Gianfrancesco I, signore di Mirandola e conte della Concordia (1415-1467), e sua moglie Giulia, figlia di Feltrino Boiardo, conte di Scandiano.[2] La famiglia aveva a lungo abitato il castello di Mirandola, città che si era resa indipendente nel XIV secolo e aveva ricevuto nel 1414 dall'imperatore Sigismondo il feudo di Concordia. Pur essendo Mirandola uno stato molto piccolo, i Pico governarono come sovrani indipendenti piuttosto che come nobili vassalli. I Pico della Mirandola erano strettamente imparentati agli Sforza, ai Gonzaga e agli Este, e i fratelli di Giovanni sposarono gli eredi al trono di Corsica, Ferrara, Bologna e Forlì.[2] Durante la sua vita Giovanni soggiornò in molte dimore. Tra queste, quando visse a Ferrara, quella che si trovava in via del Turco gli permetteva di essere vicino agli Strozzi ed ai Boiardo.   Epigrafe che ricorda Pico della Mirandola in via del Turco a Ferrara Gli studi e l'attività Pico compì i suoi studi fra Bologna, Pavia, Ferrara, Padova e Firenze; mostrò grandi doti nel campo della matematica e imparò molte lingue, tra cui perfettamente il latino, il greco, l'ebraico, l'aramaico, l'arabo e il francese. Ebbe anche modo di stringere rapporti di amicizia con numerose personalità dell'epoca come Girolamo Savonarola, Marsilio Ficino, Lorenzo il Magnifico, Angelo Poliziano, Egidio da Viterbo, Girolamo Benivieni, Girolamo Balbi, Yohanan Alemanno, Elia del Medigo. A Firenze in particolare entrò a far parte della nuova Accademia Platonica. Nel 1484 si recò a Parigi, ospite della Sorbona, allora centro internazionale di studi teologici, dove conobbe alcuni uomini di cultura come Lefèvre d'Étaples, Robert Gaguin e Georges Hermonyme. Ben presto divenne celebre in tutta Europa e si diceva che avesse una memoria talmente fuori dal comune che conosceva l'intera Divina Commedia a memoria.  Nel 1486 fu a Roma dove preparò 900 tesi in vista di un congresso filosofico universale (per la cui apertura compose il De hominis dignitate), che tuttavia non ebbe mai luogo. Subì infatti alcune accuse di eresia,[3] in seguito alle quali fuggì in Francia dove venne anche arrestato da Filippo II presso Grenoble e condotto a Vincennes, per essere tuttavia subito scarcerato. Con l'assoluzione di papa Alessandro VI, il quale vedeva di buon occhio la volontà di Pico di dimostrare la divinità di Cristo attraverso la magia e la cabala, nonché godendo della rete di protezioni dei Medici, dei Gonzaga e degli Sforza, si stabilì quindi definitivamente a Firenze, continuando a frequentare l'Accademia di Ficino. La morte Morì per avvelenamento[4] da arsenico[5] il 17 Novembre 1494, all'età di trentun anni,[6] mentre Firenze veniva occupata dalle truppe francesi di Carlo VIII[7][8] durante la Guerra d'Italia del 1494-1498. Fu sepolto nel cimitero dei domenicani dentro il convento di San Marco. Le sue ossa saranno rinvenute da padre Chiaroni nel 1933 accanto a quelle di Angelo Poliziano e dell'amico Girolamo Benivieni.  «Siamo vissuti celebri, o Ermolao, e tali vivremo in futuro, non nelle scuole dei grammatici, non là dove si insegna ai ragazzi, ma nelle accolte dei filosofi e nei circoli dei sapienti, dove non si tratta né si discute sulla madre di Andromaca, sui figli di Niobe e su fatuità del genere, ma sui principî delle cose umane e divine.»  (Pico della Mirandola) Nel novembre del 2018, più di 500 anni dopo, uno studio coordinato del dipartimento di Biologia dell'Università di Pisa, del Reparto Investigazioni Scientifiche dell'Arma dei Carabinieri di Parma e di studiosi spagnoli, britannici e tedeschi, ha dimostrato che Pico della Mirandola fu avvelenato con l'arsenico.[5][9]  Fama postuma  Il volto di Giovanni Pico ricostruito con le moderne tecniche forensi Di Pico della Mirandola è rimasta letteralmente proverbiale la prodigiosa memoria: si dice conoscesse a mente numerose opere su cui si fondava la sua vasta cultura enciclopedica, e che sapesse recitare la Divina Commedia al contrario, partendo dall'ultimo verso, impresa che pare gli riuscisse con qualunque poema appena terminato di leggere.[10]  Tutt'oggi è ancora in uso attribuire l'appellativo "Pico della Mirandola" a chiunque sia dotato di ottima memoria.[11]  Secondo una popolare diceria, Pico della Mirandola avrebbe avuto una amante o una concubina segreta[12]; tuttavia, si è sostenuto che potrebbe aver avuto un rapporto amoroso con l'umanista Girolamo Benivieni, sulla base di alcuni scritti, tra cui sonetti, che quest'ultimo aveva dedicato a Pico,[13] e di alcune allusioni poco chiare di Savonarola.[12] Pico era comunque un seguace dell'ideale dell'amor socratico,[12] privo cioè di contenuti erotici e passionali; anche la figura femminile ricorrente nei suoi versi viene celebrata su un piano prevalentemente filosofico.[14]  Ascendenza GenitoriNonniBisnonni Giovanni I PicoFrancesco II PicoGianfrancesco I Pico Caterina BevilacquaGuglielmo BevilacquaTaddea Tarlati Giovanni PicoFeltrino Boiardo Matteo BoiardoBernardina Lambertini.Giulia BoiardoGuiduccia da Correggio Gherardo VI da CorreggioDottrina  Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola e Agnolo Poliziano, ritratti da Cosimo Rosselli nella Cappella del Miracolo del Sacramento a Firenze Il pensiero di Pico della Mirandola si riallaccia al pensiero neoplatonico di Marsilio Ficino, senza però occuparsi della polemica anti-aristotelica. Al contrario, egli cerca di riconciliare aristotelismo e platonismo in una sintesi superiore, fondendovi anche altri elementi culturali e religiosi, come per esempio la tradizione misterica di Ermete Trismegisto e della cabala.[15]  All'interno del testo delle Conclusiones Pico si scaglia duramente contro Ficino, considerando inefficace la sua magia naturale perché carente di un legame con le forze superiori nonché di un'adeguata conoscenza cabalistica.[16]  L'ideale di una filosofia universale Il proposito di Pico, esplicitamente dichiarato ad esempio nel De ente et uno, consiste infatti nel ricostruire i lineamenti di una filosofia universale, che nasca dalla concordia fra tutte le diverse correnti di pensiero sorte sin dall'antichità, accomunate dall'aspirazione al divino e alla sapienza, e culminanti nel messaggio della Rivelazione cristiana. In questo suo ecumenismo filosofico, oltre che religioso, vengono accolti non solo i teologi cristiani ed esoterici insieme a Platone, Aristotele, i neoplatonici e tutto il sapere gnostico ed ermetico proprio della filosofia greca, ma anche il pensiero islamico, quello ebraico e appunto cabbalistico, nonché dei mistici di ogni tempo e luogo.[17]  Il congresso da lui organizzato a Roma in vista di una tale "pace filosofica" avrebbe dovuto inserirsi proprio in questo progetto culturale basato su una concezione della verità come princìpio eterno ed universale, al quale ogni epoca della storia ha saputo attingere in misura in più o meno diversa. In seguito tuttavia ai vari contrasti che gli si presentarono, sorti a causa della difficoltà di una tale conciliazione, Pico si accorse che il suo ideale era difficilmente perseguibile; ad esso, a poco a poco, si sostituirà nella sua mente il proposito riformatore di Girolamo Savonarola, rivolto al rinnovamento morale, più che culturale, della città di Firenze. L'armonia universale da lui ricercata in ambito filosofico si trasformerà così nell'aspirazione religiosa ad una santità e una moralità meno generica e più attinente al suo particolare momento storico. A differenza di Ficino, nel Pico emergono dunque nei suoi ultimi anni un maggiore senso di irrequietezza e una visione più cupa ed esistenziale della vita.[17]  La dignità dell'uomo  Ritratto di Pico della Mirandola eseguito da un anonimo del XVII secolo: xilografia dal libro Della celestiale fisionomia, Padova 1616 Al centro del suo ideale di concordia universale risalta fortemente il tema della dignità e della libertà umana. L'uomo infatti, dice Pico, è l'unica creatura che non ha una natura predeterminata, poiché:  «[...] Già il Sommo Padre, Dio Creatore, aveva foggiato, [...] questa dimora del mondo quale ci appare, [...]. Ma, ultimata l'opera, l'Artefice desiderava che ci fosse qualcuno capace di afferrare la ragione di un'opera così grande, di amarne la bellezza, di ammirarne la vastità. [...] Ma degli archetipi non ne restava alcuno su cui foggiare la nuova creatura, né dei tesori [...] né dei posti di tutto il mondo [...]. Tutti erano ormai pieni, tutti erano stati distribuiti nei sommi, nei medi, negli infimi gradi. [...]»  (Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oratio de hominis dignitate,[18] 1486) Dunque, per Pico, l'uomo non ha affatto una natura determinata in un qualche grado (alto o basso), bensì:  «[...] Stabilì finalmente l'Ottimo Artefice che a colui cui nulla poteva dare di proprio fosse comune tutto ciò che aveva singolarmente assegnato agli altri. Perciò accolse l'uomo come opera di natura indefinita e, postolo nel cuore del mondo, così gli parlò: -non ti ho dato, o Adamo, né un posto determinato, né un aspetto proprio, né alcuna prerogativa tua, perché [...] tutto secondo il tuo desiderio e il tuo consiglio ottenga e conservi. La natura limitata degli altri è contenuta entro leggi da me prescritte. Tu te la determinerai senza essere costretto da nessuna barriera, secondo il tuo arbitrio, alla cui potestà ti consegnai. [...]»  (Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oratio de hominis dignitate[18]) Pico della Mirandola afferma, in sostanza, che Dio ha posto nell'uomo non una natura determinata, ma una indeterminatezza che è dunque la sua propria natura, e che si regola in base alla volontà, cioè all'arbitrio dell'uomo, che conduce tale indeterminatezza dove vuole.  Pico aggiunge poi:  «[...] Non ti ho fatto né celeste né terreno, né mortale né immortale, perché di te stesso quasi libero e sovrano artefice ti plasmassi e ti scolpissi nella forma che avresti prescelto. Tu potrai degenerare nelle cose inferiori che sono i bruti; tu potrai, secondo il tuo volere, rigenerarti nelle cose superiori che sono divine.- [...] Nell'uomo nascente il Padre ripose semi d'ogni specie e germi d'ogni vita. E a seconda di come ciascuno li avrà coltivati, quelli cresceranno e daranno in lui i loro frutti. [...] se sensibili, sarà bruto, se razionali, diventerà anima celeste, se intellettuali, sarà angelo, e si raccoglierà nel centro della sua unità, fatto uno spirito solo con Dio, [...].»  (Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oratio de hominis dignitate[18]) Giovanni Pico, quindi, sostiene che è l'uomo a «forgiare il proprio destino», secondo la propria volontà, e la sua libertà è massima, poiché non è né animale né angelo, ma può essere l'uno o l'altro secondo la «coltivazione» di alcuni tra i «semi d'ogni sorta» che vi sono in lui. Questa visione verrà, seppur solo in parte, ripresa nel 1600 dallo scienziato e filosofo Blaise Pascal, che afferma che l'uomo non è né «angelo né bestia», e che la sua propria posizione nel mondo è un punto mediano tra questi due estremi; tale punto mediano, però, per Pico non è una mediocrità (in parte angelo e in parte bruto) ma è la volontà (o l'arbitrio) che ci consente di scegliere la nostra posizione. Dunque l'uomo, per Pico, è la più dignitosa fra tutte le creature, anche più degli angeli, poiché può scegliere che creatura essere.[19] La sapienza della Cabala  Raffigurazione della Cabala con l'albero della vita Il secondo grande interesse di Pico è rivolto alla cabala, che viene da lui spiegata come una fonte di sapienza a cui attingere per decifrare il mistero del mondo, e nella quale Dio appare oscuro, in quanto apparentemente irraggiungibile dalla ragione; ma l'uomo può ricavare la massima luce da tale oscurità.[20]  (LA) «Nulla est scientia quae nos magis certificat de divinitate Christi, quam Magia et Cabala.»  (IT) «Non esiste alcuna scienza che possa attestare meglio la divinità di Cristo che la magia e la cabala.»  (Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Novecento tesi[21]) Connessa alla sapienza cabbalistica è la magia: infatti, il mago, per Pico, opererebbe attraverso simboli e metafore di una realtà assoluta che è oltre il visibile, e dunque, partendo dalla natura, può giungere a conoscere tale sfera invisibile (ossia metafisica) attraverso la conoscenza della struttura matematica che è il fondamento simbolico-metaforico della natura stessa.[22]  Critica dell'astrologia Se la magia è giudicata positivamente da Pico della Mirandola, per quanto riguarda invece l'astrologia egli ebbe un atteggiamento diverso, che lo portò a distinguere nettamente tra «astrologia matematica o speculativa», cioè l'astronomia, e l'«astrologia giudiziale o divinatrice»; mentre la prima ci consente di conoscere la realtà armonica dell'universo, e dunque è giusta, la seconda crede di poter sottomettere l'avvenire degli uomini alle congiunture astrali.[23] Partendo dall'affermazione della piena dignità e libertà dell'uomo, che può scegliere cosa essere, Pico muove una forte critica a questo secondo tipo di credenze e di pratiche astrologiche, che costituirebbero una negazione proprio della dignità e della libertà umane.  Secondo Pico, questa scienza astrologica attribuisce erroneamente ai corpi celesti il potere di influire sulle vicende umane (fisiche e spirituali), sottraendo tale potere alla Provvidenza divina e togliendo agli uomini la libertà di scegliere. Egli non nega che un certo influsso vi possa essere, ma mette in guardia contro il pericolo insito nell'astrologia di subordinare il superiore (cioè l'uomo) all'inferiore (ossia la forza astrale). Le vicende dell'esistenza umana sono tanto intrecciate e complesse che non se ne può spiegare la ragione se non attraverso la piena libertà d'arbitrio dell'uomo.   Opera quae exstant omnia di Pico della Mirandola stampata nel 1601 Il suo Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem (tale è il titolo dell'opera a cui Pico si dedicò nell'ultimo periodo della sua vita) rimase incompiuto e come tale fu pubblicato postumo, nel 1494, con il commento di Giovanni Manardo; tuttavia, alcuni concetti base furono ripresi e rielaborati da Girolamo Savonarola nel suo Trattato contra li astrologi.[24]  Opere Ad Hermolaum de genere dicendi philosophorum, (Lettera a Ermolao Barbaro sul modo di parlare dei filosofi), 1485. Commento sopra una canzone d'amore di Girolamo Benivieni, 1486. Oratio de hominis dignitate, (Discorso sulla dignità dell'uomo), 1486. 900 Tesis de omni re scibili o Conclusiones philosophicae, cabalisticae et theologicae nongentae in omni genere scientiarum, (900 tesi su tutte le cose conoscibili o Novecento conclusioni filosofiche, cabalistiche e teologiche in ogni genere di scienze), 1486. Apologia, 1487. Heptaplus: de septiformi sex dierum Geneseos enarratione, (Heptaplus: della settemplice interpretazione dei sei giorni della Genesi), 1489. Expositiones in Psalmos, 1489. De ente et uno, (L'essere e l'uno), 1491. Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem, (Dispute contro l'astrologia divinatrice), 1493. Altre opere Carmina, (Carmi). Auree Epistole. Sonetti. Duodecim regulae, (Le dodici regole). Duodecim arma spiritualis pugnae, (Le dodici armi della battaglia spirituale. Duodecim conditiones amantis, (Le dodici condizioni di un amante). Deprecatoria ad Deum, (Preghiera a Dio). De omnibus rebus et de quibusdam aliis, (Tutte le cose e alcune altre). Secondo alcuni studi, a Pico della Mirandola sarebbe da attribuire anche la paternità dell’Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Amoroso combattimento onirico di Polifilo).[25] Note ^ Sebbene egli preferisse farsi chiamare Conte della Concordia  Miroslav Marek, Genealogy.eu, su Pico family, 16 settembre 2002. URL consultato il 9 marzo 2008. ^ Fu in particolare il cardinale spagnolo Pedro Grazias, dopo essere intervenuto presso i reali di Spagna Isabella e Ferdinando, ad essere incaricato da papa Innocenzo VIII di confutarne l'Apologia. ^ Pico della Mirandola "fu avvelenato", caso risolto 500 anni dopo, in Gazzetta di Modena, 2017-09.  G. Gallello et al. "Poisoning histories in the Italian renaissance: The case of Pico Della Mirandola and Angelo Poliziano", Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, vol. 56, 2018, pp. 83-89. ^ Già all'epoca della morte si vociferò che Pico fosse stato avvelenato (cfr. Simon Critchley, Il libro dei filosofi morti, Garzanti, 2009, p. 143). ^ Recenti indagini condotte a Ravenna dall'équipe del professor Giorgio Gruppioni dell'Università di Bologna avrebbero riscontrato elevati livelli di arsenico nei campioni di tessuti e di ossa prelevati dalle spoglie del filosofo, che avvalorerebbero la tesi dell'avvelenamento per la sua morte (cfr. Delitti e misteri del passato, a cura di L. Garofano, S. Vinceti, G. Gruppioni, Rizzoli, Milano 2008 ISBN 978-88-17-02191-3; e Malcolm Moore, Medici philosopher's mysterious death is solved, The Daily Telegraph, Londra 2008). ^ Secondo lo storico dell'arte Silvano Vicenti, il presunto avvelenamento di Pico della Mirandola, la cui morte finora si riteneva fosse stata causata dalla sifilide, sarebbe avvenuto ad opera della stessa mano che due mesi prima avrebbe ucciso Angelo Poliziano, legato a Pico da grande amicizia (Rainews: Pico della Mirandola e Poliziano assassinati con l'arsenico) ^ Risolto il giallo della morte di Pico della Mirandola, Università di Pisa, 15 novembre 2018. URL consultato il 15 novembre 2018. ^ La Memoria Straordinaria di Pico della Mirandola, articolo su Notizie.it. ^ Enciclopedia Treccani.it alla voce omonima.  Robert Aldrich, Garry Wotherspoon, Who's who in Gay and Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II, pp. 412-3, Routledge, 2005. ^ Girolamo Benivieni fece porre anche una lapide sulle spoglie di Pico della Mirandola tumulate nella chiesa di San Marco a Firenze. Sul fronte della tomba è tuttora inciso: «Qui giace Giovanni Mirandola, il resto lo sanno anche il Tago e il Gange e forse perfino gli Antipodi. Morì nel 1494 e visse 32 anni. Girolamo Benivieni, affinché dopo la morte la separazione di luoghi non disgiunga le ossa di coloro i cui animi in vita congiunse Amore, dispose d'essere sepolto nella terra qui sotto. Morì nel 1542, visse 89 anni e 6 mesi.»  Sul retro invece, in posizione poco visibile, è riportato l'epitaffio: «Girolamo Benivieni per Giovanni Pico della Mirandola e se stesso pose nell'anno 1532.  Io priego Dio Girolamo che 'n pace così in ciel sia il tuo Pico congiunto come 'n terra eri, et come 'l tuo defunto corpo hor con le sacr'ossa sue qui iace»  ^ Eugenio Garin, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: vita e dottrina, Le Monnier, 1937, p. 18. ^ Kurt Zeller, Pico della Mirandola e l'aristolelismo rinascimentale, edizioni Luria, 1979. ^ Frances Yates Giordano Bruno e la tradizione ermetica Laterza p.101 ISBN 978-88-420-9239-1  U. Perone, C. Ciancio, Storia del pensiero filosofico, II, pagg. 31-32, SEI, Torino 1975.  Edizione a cura di Eugenio Garin, Vallecchi, 1942, pagg. 105-109. ^ Sul richiamo di Pascal a Pico della Mirandola, cfr. B. Pascal, Colloquio con il Signore di Saci su Epitteto e Montagne in B. Pascal, Pensieri, a cura di Paolo Serini, Einaudi, Torino 1967, pagg. 423–439. ^ François Secret, I cabbalisti cristiani del Rinascimento, trad. it., Arkeios, Roma 2002. ^ Conclusiones nongentae. Le novecento tesi dell'anno 1486, a cura di Albano Biondi, Studi pichiani, vol. 1, FIrenze Olschki 1995, "Conclusiones Magicae numero XXVI, secundum opinione propria", numero 9. ^ Fra le tesi redatte in vista del congresso filosofico di Roma, Pico ad esempio scriveva: «Non vi è scienza che ci dia maggiori certezze sulla divinità del Cristo della magia e della cabala» (cit. da F. Secret, ibidem, e in Zenit studi. Pico della Mirandola e la cabala cristiana). ^ «Per Pico, la natura è una correlazione misteriosa di forze occulte che l'uomo può conoscere tramite l'astrologia e controllare tramite la magia. [...] Pico distingue due tipi di astrologia - matematica e divinatrice - e naga il valore della seconda» (G. Granata, Filosofia, vol. II, pag. 13, Alpha Test, Milano 2001). ^ Lo stesso Savonarola sostenne di aver scritto il suo trattato «in corroborazione delle refutazione astrologice del Signor conte Joan Pico della Mirandola» (cit. in Romeo De Maio, Riforme e miti nella Chiesa del Cinquecento, pag. 40, Guida editori, Napoli 1992). ^ Indizi e prove: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola e Alberto Pio da Carpi nella genesi dell’Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Bibliografia Questo testo proviene in parte dalla relativa voce del progetto Mille anni di scienza in Italia, opera del Museo Galileo. Istituto Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze (home page), pubblicata sotto licenza Creative Commons CC-BY-3.0 Opere (LA) Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Opere, Lodovico Mazzali, 1506. URL consultato il 9 aprile 2015. (LA) Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Opere. 1, Basileae, per Sebastianum Henricpetri, 1601. (LA) Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Opere. 2, Basileae, per Sebastianum Henricpetri, 1601. Doctissimi Viri Ioannis Pici Mirandulae, Concordiae comitis, Exactissima expositio in orationem dominicam, Officina S. Bernardini, 1537 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Apologia. L'autodifesa di Pico di fronte al Tribunale dell'Inquisizione, a cura di Paolo Edoardo Fornaciari, SISMEL (Società internazionale per lo studio del Medioevo latino) Edizioni del Galluzzo, Firenze 2010 Giuseppe Barone (a cura di), Antologia Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Virgilio Editore, Milano 1973 Studi Dario Bellini, La profezia di Pico della Mirandola. Oltre la cinquantesima porta, Sometti editore, 2009 ISBN 978-88-7495-319-6 Giulio Busi, Vera relazione sulla vita e i fatti di Giovanni Pico, conte della Mirandola, Aragno, 2010 Ernst Cassirer, Individuo e cosmo nella filosofia del Rinascimento [1927], trad. it., La Nuova Italia, Firenze 1974 (FR) Henri-Marie de Lubac, Pic de la Mirandole. Études et discussions, Aubier Montaigne, Parigi 1974, trad. it. di Giuseppe Colombo, Pico della Mirandola. L'alba incompiuta del Rinascimento, Jaca Book, Milano 1994 Vincenzo Di Giovanni, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola nella storia del Rinascimento e della filosofia in Italia, Palermo, Boccone del Povero, 1894, pp. 232. Fabrizio Frigerio, "Il commento di Pico della Mirandola alla Canzona d'Amore di Gerolamo Benivieni" (PDF), Conoscenza Religiosa, Firenze, 1974, n. 4, pp. 402–422. Mariateresa Fumagalli Beonio Brocchieri, Pico della Mirandola, Casale Monferrato, Edizioni Piemme, 1999, pp. 208, ISBN 88-384-4160-X. Eugenio Garin, L'Umanesimo italiano [1947], Laterza, Bari 1990 (FR) Thomas Gilbhard, Paralipomena pichiana: a propos einer Pico–Bibliographie, in «Accademia. Revue de la Société Marsile Ficin», VII, 2005, pp. 81–94 Salvatore Puledda, Interpretazioni dell'Umanesimo, Associazione Multimage, 1997 Leonardo Quaquarelli, Zita Zanardi, Pichiana. Bibliografia delle edizioni e degli studi, in "Studi pichiani 10", Olschki, Firenze 2005 Alberto Sartori, Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, Filosofia, teologia, concordia, Edizioni Messaggero Padova, 2017 (FR) Stéphane Toussaint, L'esprit du Quattrocento. Pic de la Mirandole, le "De Ente et Uno" & réponses à Antonio Cittadini, testo latino e trad. fr., Honoré Champion Editeur, Parigi 1995 Paola Zambelli, L'apprendista stregone. Astrologia, cabala e arte lulliana in Pico della Mirandola e seguaci, Saggi Marsilio, Venezia 1995 Le fonti cabalistiche di Pico (EN) The Great Parchment. Flavius Mithridates' Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text, and an English Version, a cura di Giulio Busi, Maria Simonetta Bondoni Pastorio, Saverio Campanini, appartenente alla collana "The Kabbalistic Library of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola", 1, Nino Aragno Editore, Torino 2004 (EN) Saverio Campanini, Talmud, Philosophy, Kabbalah: A Passage from Pico della Mirandola's Apologia and its Source, in M. Perani (ed.), The Words of a Wise Man's Mouth are Gracious. Festschrift for Günter Stemberger on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, W. De Gruyter Verlag, Berlino–New York 2005, pp. 429–447 (EN) The Book of Bahir. Flavius Mithridates' Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text, and an English Version, a cura di Saverio Campanini, in "The Kabbalistic Library of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola", 2, Nino Aragno Editore, Torino 2005 Giulio Busi, "Chi non ammirerà il nostro camaleonte?" La biblioteca cabbalistica di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, in G. Busi, L'enigma dell'ebraico nel Rinascimento, Nino Aragno Editore, Torino 2007, pp. 25–45 Saverio Campanini, Guglielmo Raimondo Moncada (alias Flavio Mitridate) traduttore di opere cabbalistiche, in Mauro Perani (a cura di), Guglielmo Raimondo Moncada alias Flavio Mitridate. Un ebreo converso siciliano, Officina di Studi Medievali, Palermo 2008, pp. 49–88 (EN) The Gate of Heaven. Flavius Mithridates' Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text, and an English Version, a cura di Susanne Jurgan e Saverio Campanini, con un testo di Giulio Busi, in "The Kabbalistic Library of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola", 5, Nino Aragno Editore, Torino 2012 ISBN 9788884195449 Saverio Campanini (ed.), Four Short Kabbalistic Treatises, "The Kabbalistic Library of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola" 6, Fondazione Palazzo Bondoni Pastorio, Castiglione delle Stiviere 2019. Voci correlate Cabala cristiana Marsilio Ficino Filosofia rinascimentale Mirandola Umanesimo Prisca theologia Altri progetti Collabora a Wikisource Wikisource contiene una pagina dedicata a Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Collabora a Wikisource Wikisource contiene una pagina in lingua latina dedicata a Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Collabora a Wikiquote Wikiquote contiene citazioni di o su Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Collabora a Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons contiene immagini o altri file su Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Collegamenti esterni Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, su Treccani.it – Enciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, in Enciclopedia Italiana, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, su Enciclopedia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Modifica su Wikidata Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata (DE) Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, su ALCUIN, Università di Ratisbona. Modifica su Wikidata Opere di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola / Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (altra versione) / Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (altra versione), su openMLOL, Horizons Unlimited srl. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Opere di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, su Open Library, Internet Archive. Modifica su Wikidata (FR) Bibliografia su Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, su Les Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, in Catholic Encyclopedia, Robert Appleton Company. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Spartiti o libretti di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, su International Music Score Library Project, Project Petrucci LLC. Modifica su Wikidata Il Centro Internazionale di Cultura Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, su picodellamirandola.it. Pico della Mirandola e l'Umanesimo, su web.tiscalinet.it. Pico della Mirandola e la cabala cristiana, su vrijmetselaarsgilde.eu. Pico della Mirandola nel progetto biblioteche dei filosofi, su picus.unica.it. The Pico Project, su brown.edu. progetto dell'Università di Bologna e della Brown University per rendere completo, accessibile e leggibile il Discorso sulla dignità dell'uomo Pico della Mirandola, Orazione sulla dignità dell'essere umano (1486), prima parte, su panarchy.org. (LA) I "Carmina" e l'"Oratio de hominis dignitate", su thelatinlibrary.com. (EN) The Kabbalistic Library of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, su pico-kabbalah.eu. V · D · M Platonici Controllo di autoritàVIAF (EN) 34491108 · ISNI (EN) 0000 0001 1024 5931 · SBN IT\ICCU\CFIV\022983 · Europeana agent/base/206 · LCCN (EN) n50019730 · GND (DE) 118742418 · BNF (FR) cb12128375p (data) · BNE (ES) XX898932 (data) · ULAN (EN) 500341594 · NLA (EN) 35747158 · BAV (EN) 495/36709 · CERL cnp01238589 · NDL (EN, JA) 00452781 · WorldCat Identities (EN) lccn-n50019730 Biografie Portale Biografie Filosofia Portale Filosofia Categorie: Umanisti italianiFilosofi italiani del XV secoloNati nel 1463Morti nel 1494Nati il 24 febbraioMorti il 17 novembreNati a MirandolaMorti a FirenzeGiovanni Pico della MirandolaNobili italiani del XV secoloPicoStudenti dell'Università di BolognaStudenti dell'Università degli Studi di FerraraStudenti dell'Università degli Studi di PadovaStudenti dell'Università degli Studi di PaviaAlchimisti italianiCabalisti italianiEbraisti italianiFilosofi cristianiPersonaggi legati a un'antonomasiaNeoplatoniciScrittori in lingua latinaMembri dell'Accademia neoplatonicaMnemonistiUomini universaliMorti per avvelenamento[altre] Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Pico: the dignity of man," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

pico della mirandola, Gianfranco: Important if unjustly neglected, murdered, Italian philosopher. Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola (1470-1533) è stato un italiano nobile e il filosofo , il nipote di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola . Il suo nome è in genere troncato come Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola .   Contenuto  1                           Biografia 2Opere scelte 3Fonti 4Collegamenti esterni Biografia Gianfrancesco era figlio di Galeotto I Pico , signore di Mirandola , e Bianca Maria d'Este , figlia di Niccolò III d'Este .  Come lo zio si dedica principalmente alla filosofia, ma ha reso soggetto alla Bibbia, anche se nei suoi trattati, De monolocale divinae et Humanæ Sapientiæ e in particolare nei sei libri intitolati Examen doctrinæ Vanitatis gentium , si deprezza l'autorità dei filosofi, al di sopra tutti Aristotele . Ha scritto una biografia dettagliata di suo zio, pubblicato nel 1496, e un altro di Girolamo Savonarola , di cui era un seguace.  Avendo osservato i pericoli a cui la società italiana è stata esposta, al momento, ha lanciato un avvertimento in occasione del Concilio Lateranense : Joannis Francisci Pici Oratio ad Leonem X et concilium Lateranense de reformandis Ecclesiæ Moribus (Hagenau, 1512, dedicato a Willibald Pirckheimer ) .  Morì a Mirandola nel 1533, assassinato dal nipote Galeotto , insieme a suo figlio più giovane, Alessandro. L'altro figlio Giantommaso è stato ambasciatore a Papa Clemente VII . Charles B. Schmitt ha scritto:  Mentre Giovanni Pico aveva spesso sostenuto che tutte le filosofie e le religioni hanno raggiunto una parte della verità, Gianfrancesco detto, in effetti, che tutte le religioni e tutte le filosofie - salva la religione cristiana da soli - sono semplici raccolte di falsità confusi e internamente incoerenti. In possesso di un tale punto di vista, si schiera non solo con Savonarola, ma con alcuni dei padri e con i riformatori pure. Su questo punto, era insistente. Il cristianesimo è una realtà auto-sussistente e che ha poco o nulla da guadagnare dalla filosofia, le scienze e le arti. Questa tesi centrale si diffonde attraverso quasi l'intera produzione letteraria di Gianfrancesco. Egli scrive di non lodare o estendere il regno della filosofia, ma di demolirlo.  Steepto  Le opere selezionate De studio di Divinae et humanae philosophiae (1496) Ioannis Pici Mirandulae Vita (1496) De imaginatione (1501) De Providentia Dei (1508) De rerum praenotione (1506-1507) Quaestio de falsitate Astrologiae (ca. 1510) Examen Vanitatis gentium doctrinae, et veritatis Christianae disciplinae (1520) Libro Detto strega o delle illusioni del demonio (1524) Opera Omnia (1573) fonti Wikisource-logo.svg Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). " Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola ". Enciclopedia Cattolica . New York: Robert Appleton Company. Burke, Peter. (1977). "Stregoneria e Magia in Italia del Rinascimento: Gianfrancesco Pico e la sua Strix, " di Sydney Anglod, ed. The Damned Art: Saggi in letteratura di Magia, pp 32-48.. Londra. Herzig, T. (2003). "La reazione dei demoni alla sodomia: Magia e omosessualità in Strix di Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola." Il Cinquecento Journal , 34, 1, 53. Kors, Alan Charles e Edward Peters. (2001) La stregoneria in Europa, 400-1700: Una storia Documentario. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (Estratti dal Pico Strix ., Pp 239-44) Schmitt, CB (1967). Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469-1533) e la sua critica di Aristotele. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Pappalardo, L. (2015). "Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola: Fede, Immaginazione e scetticismo" (Nutrix, 8), Turnhout: Brepols Publishers. link esterno Opere di Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola a Progetto Gutenberg Opere di o su Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola a Internet Archive Giovan Francesco Pico: panoramica biografica presso il Centro Internazionale di Cultura "Giovanni Pico della Mirandola" Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469-1533) e la sua critica di Aristotele | Charles B. Schmitt | Springer . This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article "Giovanni_Francesco_Pico_della_Mirandola"Refs: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Pico," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia -- Gianfranco Pico della Mirandola.

pigliucci: important Italian philosopher. Massimo Pigliucci Da Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera. Jump to navigationJump to search  Massimo Pigliucci Massimo Pigliucci (Monrovia, 16 gennaio 1964[1]) è un accademico, filosofo, blogger nonché divulgatore scientifico italiano naturalizzato statunitense.  Pigliucci è professore di filosofia al CUNY-City College di New York[2], è stato co-conduttore del podcast Rationally Speaking (Parlando razionalmente)[3] e redattore capo della rivista online Scientia Salon.[4] Pigliucci è un deciso critico della pseudoscienza[5][6] e del creazionismo[7] ed un sostenitore del secolarismo[8] e della educazione scientifica.[9]   Indice 1Biografia 2Pensiero critico e scetticismo scientifico 2.1Rationally Speaking 3Libri 3.1Articoli 4Note 5Voci correlate 6Altri progetti 7Collegamenti esterni Biografia Pigliucci è nato a Monrovia, Liberia, ma è cresciuto a Roma.[1] Ha conseguito il dottorato in genetica all'Università degli Studi di Ferrara, Italia, un Ph. D. in biologia dell'Università del Connecticut e un Ph. D. in filosofia della scienza dall'Università del Tennessee.[10]; è socio di American Association for the Advancement of Science (Associazione americana per l'avanzamento della scienza) e di Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.[1] Pigliucci è stato professore di ecologia e evoluzione all'Università di Stony Brook compiendo ricerche sulla plasticità fenotipica, le interazioni genotipo-ambiente, la selezione naturale e i vincoli imposti sulla selezione naturale da parte del corredo genetico e dello sviluppo degli organismi.[11] Nel 1997, ha ricevuto il premio Theodosius Dobzhansky,[12] conferito annualmente dalla Society for the Study of Evolution (Associazione per lo studio dell'evoluzione)[1]. Come filosofo, si è interessato alla struttura e ai fondamenti della teoria dell'evoluzione, alla relazione tra scienza e filosofia e alla relazione tra la scienza e la religione[10] ed è un sostenitore della sintesi evolutiva estesa.[13]  Pigliucci scrive regolarmente sullo Skeptical Inquirer sui temi di negazionismo o scetticismo del cambiamento climatico, disegno intelligente, pseudoscienza e filosofia.[14] Ha scritto per Philosophy Now e ha un blog intitolato "Rationally Speaking (Parlando razionalmente)". Ha contrastato "i negazionisti dell'evoluzione" (creazionismo della Terra Giovane e sostenitori del disegno intelligente), tra cui i creazionisti della terra giovane Duane Gish e Kent Hovind, i sostenitori del disegno intelligente William Dembski e Jonathan Wells, in molte occasioni.[15][16][17][18]  Pensiero critico e scetticismo scientifico  Michael Shermer, Julia Galef e Massimo Pigliucci durante una registrazione dal vivo a Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism (Conferenza del nord-est sulla scienza e sullo scetticismo), 2013 Pur essendo ateo,[19] Pigliucci non crede che la scienza richieda di essere atei, se si ammettono due distinzioni: la distinzione tra naturalismo metodologico e naturalismo filosofico e la distinzione tra giudizi di valore e le questioni di fatto. Crede che molti scienziati ed insegnanti di scienze non apprezzino tali differenze.[9] Pigliucci ha criticato gli scrittori Nuovi Atei per aver sostenuto quello che lui considera scientismo (sebbene escluda il filosofo Daniel Dennett da questa accusa).[20] In una discussione del suo libro Answers for Aristotle: How science and philosophy can lead us to a more meaningful life (Risposte per Aristotele: come la scienza e la filosofia possono condurci ad una vita più ricca di significato), Pigliucci ha detto al conduttore del podcast Skepticality, Derek Colanduno, “Aristotele era il primo pensatore antico a prendere sul serio l'idea che hai bisogno di fatti empirici, e che hai bisogno di un approccio basato sull'evidenza nel mondo, e che devi essere in grado di riflettere sul significato di quei fatti....Se vuoi delle risposte a delle domande morali, non chiedi al neurobiologo, non chiedi al biologo dell'evoluzione, chiedi al filosofo.”[21]  Pigliucci descrive la missione degli scettici, facendo riferimento al libro di Carl Sagan Il mondo infestato dai demoni: La scienza e il nuovo oscurantismo dicendo “Ciò che fanno gli scettici è tenere accesa quella candela e cercare di diffonderla il più possibile.”[22] Pigliucci fa parte del consiglio di NYC Skpetics e fa parte del comitato consultivo di Secular Coalition for America (Coalizione secolare per l'America).[8]  Nel 2001, ha preso parte a un dibattito sull'esistenza di Dio con William Lane Craig.[23]  Massimo Pigliucci ha criticato l'articolo di giornale di Papa Francesco intitolato Un dialogo aperto con i non-credenti (An open dialogue with non-believers). Secondo Pigliucci l'articolo assomigliava più ad un monologo che ad un dialogo, e ha indirizzato una risposta personale a Papa Francesco nella quale ha scritto che il papa ha solo offerto ai non-credenti "una riaffermazione di fantasie senza fondamento riguardo a Dio e a suo Figlio...seguite da affermazioni confuse tra il concetto d'amore e di verità, il tutto condito da una significativa dose di revisionismo storico e negazione degli aspetti più brutti della tua Chiesa (noterai che non ho nemmeno menzionato la pedofilia!).”[24]  Rationally Speaking Nell'agosto 2000 Pigliucci ha iniziato una rubrica su internet intitolata Rationally Speaking (Parlando razionalmente). Nell'agosto 2005, la rubrica è diventata un blog,[25] dove ha scritto fino a marzo 2014.[26] Dal 1º febbraio 2010 Pigliucci co-conduce il podcast bi-settimanale Rationally Speaking con Juilia Galef, che ha conosciuto al Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism (Conferenza del nord-est sulla scienza e sullo scetticismo), tenuta nel settembre 2009.[27] Il podcast è prodotto da New York City skeptics (Scettici della città di New York). Il programma vede la partecipazione di ricercatori, divulgatori scientifici ed insegnanti per presentare libri o discutere di temi di attualità su temi di filosofia e scienza. In una puntata del 2010, Neil deGrasse Tyson descrisse la necessità di finanziare con denaro pubblico i programmi spaziali. La trascrizione della puntata venne poi pubblicata nel libro Space Chronicles (Cronache Spaziali).[28] In un altro episodio Tyson spiegò la propria opinione sul significato di essere ateo, poi commentata in una trasmissione di NPR.[29] Pigliucci ha poi lasciato il podcast per dedicarsi ad altri interessi.[30]  Libri  Copertina di Philosophy of Pseudoscience (EN) Schlichting, Carl e Pigliucci, Massimo, Phenotypic evolution : a reaction norm perspective, Sunderland, Mass., Sinauer, 1998. (EN) Pigliucci, Massimo, Tales of the Rational : Skeptical Essays About Nature and Science, Freethought Press, 2000, ISBN 978-1-887392-11-2. (EN) Pigliucci, Massimo, Phenotypic Plasticity: Beyond Nature and Nurture , Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, ISBN 978-0-8018-6788-0. (EN) Pigliucci, Massimo, Denying Evolution: Creationism, Scientism, and the Nature of Science, Sinauer, 2002, ISBN 0-87893-659-9. (EN) Pigliucci, Massimo e Preston, Katherine, Phenotypic Integration: Studying the Ecology and Evolution of Complex Phenotypes, Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-19-516043-7. (EN) Pigliucci, Massimo e Kaplan, Jonathan, Making Sense of Evolution: The Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Biology , University of Chicago Press, 2006, ISBN=978-0-226-66837-6). (EN) Pigliucci, Massimo e Muller, Gerd B., Evolution: The Extended Synthesis, MIT Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-262-51367-8. (EN) Pigliucci, Massimo, Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk, University of Chicago Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-226-66786-7. (EN) Pigliucci, Massimo, Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to a More Meaningful Life, Basic Books, 2012, ISBN 978-0-465-02138-3. (EN) Pigliucci, Massimo e Boudry, Maarten, Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem, University of Chicago Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-226-05196-3. Articoli Di seguito sono pochi articoli di Pigliucci.  (EN) M. Pigliucci, Is evolutionary psychology a pseudoscience?, in Skeptical Inquirer, vol. 30, n. 2, 2006, pp. 23–24. (EN) M. Pigliucci, Science and fundamentalism, in EMBO reports, vol. 6, n. 12, 2005, pp. 1106–1109, DOI:10.1038/sj.embor.7400589. (EN) M. Pigliucci, The power and perils of metaphors in science, in Skeptical Inquirer, vol. 29, n. 5, 2005, pp. 20–21. (EN) M. Pigliucci, What is philosophy of science good for?, in Philosophy Now, vol. 44, gennaio-febbraio 2004, p. 45. (EN) Pigliucci M, Bossu C, Crouse P, Dexter T, Hansknecht K e Muth N, The alleged fallacies of evolutionary theory, in Philosophy Now, vol. 46, maggio-giugno 2004, pp. 36–39. Altri articoli si possono trovare sui siti web personali (vedere "Collegamenti esterni" sotto).  Note  Massimo Pigliucci — Curriculum Vitae (PDF), su lehman.edu. URL consultato il 24 novembre 2015 (archiviato dall'url originale il 17 aprile 2015). ^ (EN) www.ccny.cuny.edu, https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/profiles/massimo-pigliucci. URL consultato il 24 novembre 2015. ^ (EN) Rationally Speaking Podcast, su rationallyspeakingpodcast.org. ^ (EN) Scientia Salon, su scientiasalon.wordpress.com. ^ (EN) Pigliucci, Massimo e Boudry, Maarten, Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem, University of Chicago Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-226-05196-3. ^ (EN) Pigliucci, Massimo, The Dangers of Pseudoscience, in The New York Times, 10 ottobre 2013. ^ (EN) Pigliucci, Massimo, Denying evolution: Creationism, scientism, and the nature of science, Sunderland, MA, Sinauer Associates, 2002.  (EN) Secular Coalition for America Advisory Board Biography, su secular.org. URL consultato il 28 novembre 2015 (archiviato dall'url originale il 22 novembre 2015).  (EN) M. Pigliucci, Science and fundamentalism, in EMBO reports, vol. 6, n. 12, 2005, pp. 1106–1109, DOI:10.1038/sj.embor.7400589.  Massimo Pigliucci — Short Bio (PDF), su lehman.edu. URL consultato il 28 novembre 2015 (archiviato dall'url originale il 17 aprile 2012). ^ (EN) Massimo Pigliucci — Selected Papers, su lehman.edu. URL consultato il 28 novembre 2015 (archiviato dall'url originale il 5 agosto 2012). ^ (EN) Society for the Study of Evolution — Description of Awards, su evolutionsociety.org. URL consultato il 28 novembre 2015 (archiviato dall'url originale il 25 ottobre 2015). ^ (EN) Wade, Michael J., The Neo-Modern Synthesis: The Confluence of New Data and Explanatory Concepts, in BioScience, n. 61, 2011, pp. 407-408. ^ (EN) Massimo Pigliucci, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. URL consultato il 28 novembre 2015 (archiviato dall'url originale il 21 novembre 2015). ^ (EN) Massimo Pigliucci, Denying evolution: creationism, scientism, and the nature of science, Sunderland, Mass., Sinauer Associates, 2002, ISBN 0-87893-659-9. ^ (EN) Evolution Debate — Pigliucci vs Hovind, Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, 31 gennaio 2007. URL consultato il 16 dicembre 2012 (archiviato dall'url originale l'11 giugno 2013). ^ (EN) CV of William Dembski, su designinference.com. URL consultato il 1° gennaio 2014 (archiviato dall'url originale il 26 gennaio 2015). ^ (EN) Evolution and Intelligent Design: Pigliucci vs Wells, Uncommon Knowledge, 14 gennaio 2005. URL consultato il 17 luglio 2008 (archiviato dall'url originale l'8 marzo 2008). ^ (EN) Massimo Pigliucci, Excommunicated by the Atheists!, su rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com, 18 agosto 2008. ^ (EN) Pigliucci, M., New Atheism and the Scientistic Turn in the Atheism Movement (PDF), in Midwest Studies In Philosophy, vol. 37, n. 1, pp. 142–153. ^ (EN) Derek Colanduno, Should You Answer Aristotle?, Skeptic Magazine, 13 febbraio 2013. URL consultato il 14 maggio 2014. ^ (EN) Richard Saunders, The Skeptic Zone #101, su http://skepticzone.tv/, 24 settembre 2010. URL consultato il 20 luglio 2014. ^ Moreland, J.P. (2013). Debating Christian Theism. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199755431. ^ (EN) Massimo Pigliucci, Dear Pope, su Rationally Speaking, 20 settembre 2013. ^ (EN) Massimo Pigliucci, Welcome, everyone!, su rationallyspeaking.blogspot.nl, 1º agosto 2005. ^ (EN) Massimo Pigliucci, So long, and thanks for all the fish, su rationallyspeaking.blogspot.nl, 20 marzo 2014. ^ Todd Stiefel e Amanda K. Metskas, Julia Galef, The Humanist, 22 maggio 2013. URL consultato il 3 marzo 2015. ^ (EN) Jennifer Culp, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Great Science Writers Series, The Rosen Publishing Group, 2014, p. 74, ISBN 978-1-4777-7692-6. ^ (EN) Tania Lombrozo, What If Atheists Were Defined By Their Actions?, NPR, 8 dicembre 2014. URL consultato il 4 marzo 2015. ^ (EN) RS128 - 5th Anniversary Live Show, su Rationally Speaking, New York City Skeptics, 27 febbraio 2015. URL consultato il 20 ottobre 2015. Voci correlate Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Altri progetti Collabora a Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons contiene immagini o altri file su Massimo Pigliucci Collegamenti esterni Plato's Footnote – Pagina web di Pigliucci Rationally Speaking – blog di Pigliucci sullo scetticismo scientifico skepticism e sull'umanismo. Dr. Pigliucci's Rationally Speaking Podcast Massimo Pigliucci su Secular Web Philosophy & Theory in Biology(Filosofia e Teoria in Biologia), su philosophyandtheoryinbiology.org. Controllo di autoritàVIAF (EN) 77472624 · ISNI (EN) 0000 0001 2282 1422 · Europeana agent/base/145843 · LCCN (EN) n98036590 · GND (DE) 13235053X · BNF (FR) cb135963268 (data) · BNE (ES) XX1100957 (data) · WorldCat Identities (EN) lccn-n98036590 Areligiosità Portale Areligiosità Biografie Portale Biografie Filosofia Portale Filosofia Scienza e tecnica Portale Scienza e tecnica Categorie: Accademici italiani del XX secoloAccademici italiani del XXI secoloAccademici statunitensiFilosofi italiani del XX secoloFilosofi italiani del XXI secoloFilosofi statunitensi del XX secoloFilosofi statunitensi del XXI secoloBlogger italianiBlogger statunitensiNati nel 1964Nati il 16 gennaioNati a MonroviaGenetisti italianiStudenti dell'Università degli Studi di FerraraBiologi italianiUmanisti italianiFilosofi ateiProfessori dell'Università di New York[altre]. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Pigliucci," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia

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

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

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

plotino: Greco-Roman Neoplatonist philosopher. Born in Egypt, though doubtless of Grecian ancestry, and thus “more of a Roman than a ‘gypsy’”– Grice – Plotinus studied Platonic philosophy in Alexandria with Ammonius Saccas 23243; then, after a brief adventure on the staff of the Emperor Gordian III on an unsuccessful expedition against the Persians, he came to Rome in 244 and continued teaching philosophy there until his death. He enjoyed the support of many prominent people, including even the Emperor Gallienus and his wife. His chief pupils were Amelius and Porphyry, the latter of whom collected and edited his philosophical essays, the Enneads so called because arranged by Porphyry in six groups of nine. The first three groups concern the physical world and our relation to it, the fourth concerns Soul, the fifth Intelligence, and the sixth the One. Porphyry’s arrangement is generally followed today, though a chronological sequence of tractates, which he also provides in his introductory Life of Plotinus, is perhaps preferable. The most important treatises are I.1; I.2; I.6; II.4; II.8; III.23; III.6; III.7; IV.34; V.1; V.3; VI.45; VI.7; VI.8; VI.9; and the group III.8, V.8, V.5, and II.9 a single treatise, split up by Porphyry, that is a wide-ranging account of Plotinus’s philosophical position, culminating in an attack on gnosticism. Plotinus saw himself as a faithful exponent of Plato see especially Enneads V.1, but he is far more than that. Platonism had developed considerably in the five centuries that separate Plato from Plotinus, taking on much from both Aristotelianism and Stoicism, and Plotinus is the heir to this process. He also adds much himself.  Grice was fascinated by Plotinus’s use of ‘hyper,’ or supra. If God is hyper-good, that does mean that he is not good? For Grice, Plotinus means ‘hyper’ implicaturally. So, if God is hypergood, this does  not yield the negation that God is good. Only that if Plotinus KNOWS that God is hyper-good he is right in thus saying, but he would never reprimand his co-conversationalists were he to say that God is good.

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

singular-dual-bidual-plural quartet, the: pluralitive logic, also called pleonetetic logic, the logic of ‘many’, ‘most’, ‘few’, and similar terms including ‘four out of five’, ‘over 45 percent’ and so on. Consider 1 ‘Almost all F are G’ 2 ‘Almost all F are not G’ 3 ‘Most F are G’ 4 ‘Most F are not G’ 5 ‘Many F are G’ 6 ‘Many F are not G’ 1 i.e., ‘Few F are not G’ and 6 are contradictory, as are 2 and 5 and 3 and 4. 1 and 2 cannot be true together i.e., they are contraries, nor can 3 and 4, while 5 and 6 cannot be false together i.e., they are subcontraries. Moreover, 1 entails 3 which entails 5, and 2 entails 4 which entails 6. Thus 16 form a generalized “square of opposition” fitting inside the standard one. Sometimes 3 is said to be true if more than half the F’s are G, but this makes ‘most’ unnecessarily precise, for ‘most’ does not literally mean ‘more than half’. Although many pluralitive terms are vague, their interrelations are logically precise. Again, one might define ‘many’ as ‘There are at least n’, for some fixed n, at least relative to context. But this not only erodes the vagueness, it also fails to work for arbitrarily large and infinite domains. ‘Few’, ‘most’, and ‘many’ are binary quantifiers, a type of generalized quantifier. A unary quantifier, such as the standard quantifiers ‘some’ and ‘all’, connotes a second-level property, e.g., ‘Something is F’ means ‘F has an instance’, and ‘All F’s are G’ means ‘F and not G has no instance’. A generalized quantifier connotes a second-level relation. ‘Most F’s are G’ connotes a binary relation between F and G, one that cannot be reduced to any property of a truth-functional compound of F and G. In fact, none of the standard pluralitive terms can be defined in first-order logic. Grice lists (x) and (Ex) as “all” and “the,” and of course (Ex), “some (at least one).” So his approach welcomes the pluralitive logic – o pleonetetic. There may be a scale, as Urmson calls it, involving ‘few’ and ‘most.’ ‘Many’ may bring many a trick. Quine deals with numerical quantifiers, in “The logical form of ‘The apostles were twelve.” – In Grice, this is a clear case of what he calls the principle of conversational fortitude: in a scale (alla Urmson) involving a and b, the conversationalist’s preference for one item in the ordered pair yields that the utterer implicates the negation of the other item. These implicatura are defeasible. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice and Altham on Geach’s pleoretetics, with and without implicatura.”

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

poiesis Grecian, ‘production’, behavior aimed at an external end. In Aristotle, poiesis is opposed to praxis action. It is characteristic of crafts  e.g. building, the end of which is houses. It is thus a kinesis process. For Aristotle, exercising the virtues, since it must be undertaken for its own sake, cannot be poiesis. The knowledge involved in virtue is therefore not the same as that involved in crafts. R.C. Grice, who liked opera, was fascinated by the history of the Bardi camerata, and their idea of the ‘melopea,’ or music making.

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

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

res publica: -- political theory, reflection concerning the empirical, normative, and conceptual dimensions of political life. There are no topics that all political theorists do or ought to address, no required procedures, no doctrines acknowledged to be authoritative. The meaning of ‘political theory’ resides in its fluctuating uses, not in any essential property. It is nevertheless possible to identify concerted tendencies among those who have practiced this activity over twenty-five centuries. Since approximately the seventeenth century, a primary question has been how best to justify the political rule of some people over others. This question subordinated the issue that had directed and organized most previous political theory, namely, what constitutes the best form of political regime. Assuming political association to be a divinely ordained or naturally necessary feature of the human estate, earlier thinkers had asked what mode of political association contributes most to realizing the good for humankind. Signaling the variable but intimate relationship between political theory and political practice, the change in question reflected and helped to consolidate acceptance of the postulate of natural human equality, the denial of divinely or naturally given authority of some human beings over others. Only a small minority of postseventeenth-century thinkers have entertained the possibility, perhaps suggested by this postulate, that no form of rule can be justified, but the shift in question altered the political theory agenda. Issues concerning consent, individual liberties and rights, various forms of equality as integral to justice, democratic and other controls on the authority and power of government  none of which were among the first concerns of ancient or medieval political thinkers  moved to the center of political theory. Recurrent tendencies and tensions in political theory may also be discerned along dimensions that cross-cut historical divisions. In its most celebrated representations, political theory is integral to philosophy. Systematic thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, Hobbes and Hegel, present their political thoughts as supporting and supported by their ethics and theology, metaphysics and epistemology. Political argumentation must satisfy the same criteria of logic, truth, and justification as any other; a political doctrine must be grounded in the nature of reality. Other political theorists align themselves with empirical science rather than philosophy. Often focusing on questions of power, they aim to give accurate accounts and factually grounded assessments of government and politics in particular times and places. Books IVVI of Aristotle’s Politics inaugurate this conception of political theory; it is represented by Montesquieu, Marx, and much of utilitarianism, and it is the numerically predominant form of academic political theorizing in the twentieth century. Yet others, e.g., Socrates, Machiavelli, Rousseau, and twentieth-century thinkers such as Rawls, mix the previously mentioned modes but understand themselves as primarily pursuing the practical objective of improving their owpolitical societies. Grice: “I always wonder how Cicero felt happy about his translation into Roman of Grecian ‘politeia.’  Indeed, the Romans preferred to use Lat. civitas as a literal transliteration of ‘politeia,” in geographical sense, SIG888.118 (Scaptopara, iii A. D.), Mitteis Chr.78.6 (iv A. D.), etc. Indeed, The Romans used ‘res publica,’  also as one word, respublica, the common weal, a commonwealth, state, republic (cf. civitas); also, civil affairs, administration, or power, etc.: qui pro republicā, non pro suā obsonat, Cato ap. Ruf. 18, p. 210; cf.: “erat tuae virtutis, in minimis tuas res ponere, de re publicā vehementius laborare,” Cic. Fam. 4, 9, 3: “dummodo ista privata sit calamitas et a rei publicae periculis sejungatur,” id. Cat. 1, 9; cf.: “si re publicā non possis frui, stultum est nolle privatā,” id. Fam. 4, 9, 4: “egestates tot egentissimorum hominum nec privatas posse res nec rem publicam sustinere,” id. Att. 9, 7, 5 (v. publicus); Cato ap. Gell. 10, 14, 3: auguratum est, rem Romanam publicam summam fore, Att. ap. Cic. Div. 1, 22, 45: “quo utiliores rebus suis publicis essent,” Cic. Off. 1, 44, 155: “commutata ratio est rei totius publicae,” id. Att. 1, 8, 4: pro republicā niti, Cato ap. Charis. p. 196 fin.: “merere de republicā,” Plaut. Am. prol. 40: “de re publicā disputatio . . . dubitationem ad rem publicam adeundi tollere, etc.,” Cic. Rep. 1, 7, 12: “oppugnare rem publicam,” id. Cael. 1, 1; id. Har. Resp. 8, 15; id. Sest. 23, 52: “paene victā re publicā,” id. Fam. 12, 13, 1: “delere rem publicam,” id. Sest. 15, 33; Lact. 6, 18, 28.—Esp. in the phrase e re publicā, for the good of the State, for the public benefit: “senatūs consultis bene et e re publicā factis,” Cic. Phil. 3, 12, 30: “ea si dicam non esse e re publicā dividi,” id. Fam. 13, 8, 2; id. Mil. 5, 14; Liv. 8, 4, 12; 25, 7, 4; 34, 34, 9; Suet. Rhet. 1 init.—Post-class. and rare, also ex republicā, Gell. 6, 3, 47; 11, 9, 1; “but exque is used for euphony (class.): id eum recte atque ordine exque re publicā fecisse,” Cic. Phil. 3, 15, 38; 5, 13, 36; 10, 11, 26.— In plur.: “eae nationes respublicas suas amiserunt, C. Gracch. ap. Fest. s. h. v. p. 286 Müll.: hoc loquor de tribus his generibus rerum publicarum,” Cic. Rep. 1, 28, 44: “circuitus in rebus publicis commutationum,” id. ib. 1, 29, 45 et saep.— At times, Grice preferred to stick with the more literal, ‘civitas.’ cīvĭtas , ātis ( I.gen. plur. civitatium, Cic. Rep. 1, 34, 51; id. Leg. 2, 4, 9; Caes. B. G. 4, 3; 5, 22; Sall. C. 40, 2; Liv. 1, 17, 4; 2, 6, 5; 33, 20, 11 Drak.; 42, 30, 6; 42, 44, 1; 45, 34, 1; Vell. 2, 42, 2; Quint. 2, 16, 4 N. cr.; Suet. Tit. 8 Oud.; Cornut. ap. Charis. p. 100 P.; cf. Varr. L. L. 8, § 66; Prisc. p. 771 P.; Neue, Formenl. 1, 268), f. civis. I. Abstr., the condition or privileges of a (Roman) citizen, citizenship, freedom of the city (upon its conditions, v. Zimmern, Rechtsgesch. 2, § 123 sq.; “Dict. of Antiq. p. 260 sqq.): Cato, cum esset Tusculi natus, in populi romani civitatem susceptus est: ita, cum ortu Tusculanus esset, civitate Romanus, etc.,” Cic. Leg. 2, 2, 5: “donare aliquem civitate,” id. Balb. 13, 20; Suet. Caes. 24; 42; 76; id. Aug. 47; id. Tib. 51; id. Ner. 24: “dare civitatem alicui,” Cic. Arch. 4, 7; 5, 10; Liv. 1, 28, 7; 8, 14, 8; Suet. Aug. 40; id. Galb. 14: accipere aliquem in civitatem, Cic. Off. 1, 11, 35: “adsciscere in civitatem,” Liv. 6, 40, 4: “ascribere aliquem in civitatem,” Cic. Arch. 4, 6: “aliquem foederatis civitatibus ascribere,” id. ib. 4, 7: “in aliis civitatibus ascriptus,” id. ib. 5, 10: “assequi,” Tac. A. 11, 23: “consequi,” Cic. Balb. 13, 31: “deponere,” id. Caecin. 34, 100: “decedere de civitate,” id. Balb. 5, 11: “dicare se civitati,” id. ib. 11, 28: “in civitatem,” id. ib. 12, 30: “eripere,” id. Caecin. 34, 99: “habere,” id. Balb. 13, 31: “impertiri civitatem,” id. Arch. 5, 10: “furari civitatem,” id. Balb. 2, 5: “petere,” Suet. Caes. 8: “Romanam assequi,” Tac. A. 11, 23: “adipisci,” Suet. Aug. 40: “Romanam usurpare,” id. Calig. 38; id. Claud. 25: “amittere civitatem,” Cic. Caecin. 34, 98: “adimere,” id. ib.; Suet. Caes. 28: “petere,” id. ib. 8: “negare,” id. Aug. 40: “jus civitatis,” Cic. Caecin. 34, 98; id. Arch. 5, 11: “recipere aliquem in civitatem,” id. Caecin. 34, 100; id. Arch. 10,22; id. Balb. 13, 31: “relinquere,” id. Caecin. 34, 100: “retinere civitatem,” id. Balb. 12, 30: “retinere aliquem in civitate,” id. Lig. 11, 33: “ademptio civitatis,” id. Dom. 30, 78: “commemoratio,” Cic. Verr. 2, 5, 62, § 162: “nomen,” id. ib.: “ereptor,” id. Dom. 30, 81.— B. Trop.: “ut oratio Romana plane videatur, non civitate donata,” Quint. 8, 1, 3; cf.: “civitate Romanā donare agricolationem,” Col. 1, 1, 12: “verbum hoc a te civitate donatum,” naturalized, Gell. 19, 3, 3; Sen. Ep. 120, 4; id. Q. N. 5, 16, 4.—More freq., II. Concr., the citizens united in a community, the body - politic, the state, and as this consists of one city and its territory, or of several cities, it differs from urbs, i.e. the compass of the dwellings of the collected citizens; “but sometimes meton., = urbs, v. B.: concilia coetusque hominum jure sociati, quae civitates appellantur,” Cic. Rep. 6, 13, 13: “tum conventicula hominum, quae postea civitates nominatae sunt, tum domicilia conjuncta, quas urbes dicimus, etc.,” id. Sest. 42, 91; cf.: omnis populus, qui est talis coetus multitudinis, qualem exposui; omnis civitas, quae est constitutio populi; “omnis res publica, quae populi res est, etc.,” id. Rep. 1, 26, 41: “quia sapiens non sum, nec haec urbs nec in eā civitas ... non dubitavisset, quin et Roma urbs (esset), et eam civitas incoleret,” id. Ac. 2, 45, 137: “aucta civitate magnitudine urbis,” Liv. 1, 45, 1: “Orgetorix civitati persuasit, ut de finibus suis cum omnibus copiis exirent,” Caes. B. G. 1, 2 Oud.; so id. ib. 1, 4; 1, 19; 1, 31; cf. Sisenn. ap. Non. p. 429, 15: “civitates aut nationes devictae,” Cic. Off. 1, 11, 35; Sall. C. 31, 1; Liv. 21, 1, 2: “io triumphe non semel dicemus civitas omnis,” Hor. C. 4, 2, 51; cf. id. Epod. 16, 36 and 18: “cum civitas in foro exspectatione erecta staret,” Liv. 3, 47, 1; so id. 2, 37, 5; 26, 18, 6; 34, 41, 1; Tac. A. 3, 11; Suet. Calig. 6; id. Tib. 17; 42: “civitates aut condere novas aut conservare jam conditas,” Cic. Rep. 1, 7, 12; id. Sull. 9, 28; id. Rep. 1, 8, 13; 1, 3, 5: “omnis civitas Helvetia in quattuor pagos divisa est,” Caes. B. G. 1, 12: “quae pars civitatis Helvetiae, etc.,” id. ib.: “non longe a Tolosatium finibus, quae civitas est in provinciā,” id. ib. 1, 10: “Ubii, quorum fuit civitas ampla atque florens,” id. ib. 4, 3: “Rhodiorum civitas, magna atque magnifica,” Sall. C. 51, 5; cf. id. J. 69, 3: “Heraclea quae est civitas aequissimo jure ac foedere,” Cic. Arch. 4, 6 et saep.: “administrare civitatem,” id. Off. 1, 25, 88: “mutari civitatum status,” id. Leg. 3, 14, 32; so, “civitatis status,” Quint. 6, 1, 16; 11, 1, 85: “(legibus) solutis stare ipsa (civitas) non possit,” id. 11, 1, 85: “lege civitatis,” id. 12, 10, 26; cf. id. 5, 10, 25: “mos civitatis,” id. 10, 1, 107; 12, 3, 7; 1, 2, 2.—Of Plato's ideal republic: “si in illā commenticiā Platonis civitate res ageretur,” Cic. de Or. 1, 53, 230.— 2. Trop.: “civitas caelitum,” Plaut. Rud. prol. 2: “ut jam universus hic mundus una civitas sit communis deorum atque hominum existimanda,” Cic. Leg. 1, 7, 23.— B. Meton., = urbs, a city (rare and mostly post-Aug.; not in Cic. or Cæs.): civitatem incendere, Enn. ap. Non. p. 429, 5 (Trag. 382 Vahl.): “cum errarem per totam civitatem,” Petr. 8, 2; cf. id. 8, 141 fin.: “Lingonum,” Tac. H. 1, 54; 1, 64: “ab excidio civitatis,” id. ib. 1, 63; “1, 69: circumjectae civitates,” id. ib. 3, 43: “muri civitatis,” id. ib. 4, 65; id. A. 6, 42: “pererrata nocturnis conversationibus,” Sen. Ben. 6, 32, 1: “expugnare civitatem,” Quint. 8, 3, 67; cf.: “expugnandae civitates,” id. 12, 9, 2: “plurimas per totum orbem civitates, terrae motu aut incendio afflictas restituit in melius,” Suet. Vesp. 17; cf. id. Tit. 8; id. Tib. 84 fin.; Lact. 2, 7, 19.— 2. Esp., the city, i. e. Rome and its inhabitants, Tac. H. 1, 19; 2, 92; 4, 2.

pro-epi distinction, the: polysyllogism: a series of syllogisms connected by the fact that the conclusion of one syllogism becomes a premise of another. The syllogism whose conclusion is used as a premise in another syllogism within the chain is called the pro-syllogism; the syllogism is which the conclusion of another syllogism within the chain is used as a premise is called the epi-syllogism. To illustrate, take the standard form of the simplest polysyllogism: “All  B is A,”All C is B, “All C is A,” “All C is A,” “ All D is C,” “All D is A. The first member of this polysyllogism is the pro-syllogism, since its conclusion occurs as a premise in the epi-syllogism. Grice: “Part of the charm of my conversations with Strawson was that they were polysyllogistical, my episyllogism invariably following his prosyllogism.””Part of the charm of my conversations with Strawson was that they were polysyllogistical, my episyllogism explicating at what his prosyllogism merely hinted.” Refs.: Grice, “Robbing peter to pay paul.”

pomponazzi: important Italian philosopher. an Aristotelian who taught at the universities of Padua and Bologna. In De incantationibus “On Incantations,” 1556, he regards the world as a system of natural causes that can explain apparently miraculous phenomena. Human beings are subject to the natural order of the world, yet divine predestination and human freedom are compatible De fato, “On Fate,” 1567. Furthermore, he distinguishes between what is proved by natural reason and what is accepted by faith, and claims that, since there are arguments for and against the immortality of the human individual soul, this belief is to be accepted solely on the basis of faith De immortalitate animae, “On the Immortality of the Soul,” He defended his view of immortality in the Apologia 1518 and in the Defensorium 1519. These three works were reprinted as Tractatus acutissimi 1525. Pomponazzi’s work was influential until the seventeenth century, when Aristotelianism ceased to be the main philosophy taught at the universities. The eighteenth-century freethinkers showed new interest in his distinction between natural reason and faith. P.Gar. pons asinorum Latin, ‘asses’ bridge’, a methodological device based upon Aristotle’s description of the ways in which one finds a suitable middle term to demonstrate categorical propositions. Thus, to prove the universal affirmative, one should consider the characters that entail the predicate P and the characters entailed by the subject S. If we find in the two groups of characters a common member, we can use it as a middle term in the syllogistic proof of say ‘All S are P’. Take ‘All men are mortal’ as the contemplated conclusion. We find that ‘organism’ is among the characters entailing the predicate ‘mortal’ and is also found in the group of characters entailed by the subject ‘men’, and thus it may be used in a syllogistic proof of ‘All men are mortal’. To prove negative propositions we must, in addition, consider characters incompatible with the predicate, or incompatible with the subject. Finally, proofs of particular propositions require considering characters that entail the subject. Pietro Pomponazzi Da Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera. Jump to navigationJump to search  Pietro Pomponazzi Pietro Pomponazzi, noto anche col soprannome di Peretto Mantovano (Mantova, 16 settembre 1462 – Bologna, 18 maggio 1525), è stato un filosofo e umanista italiano.   Indice 1La vita e l'opera 2Il De immortalitate animae 3La critica dei miracoli 4Il destino dell'uomo 5Conclusioni 6Note 7Bibliografia 8Altri progetti 9Collegamenti esterni La vita e l'opera Di famiglia agiata, nasce a Mantova nel 1462. A ventidue anni si iscrive (1484) all'Università di Padova, dove frequenta le lezioni di metafisica del domenicano Francesco Securo da Nardò, le lezioni di medicina di Pietro Riccobonella e quelle di filosofia naturale di Pietro Trapolino, laureandosi come Magister artium nel 1487. Dal 1488 al 1496 è professore di filosofia nello stesso ateneo e ottiene la cattedra di filosofia naturale dopo la morte del suo maestro Nicoletto Vernia (1420-1499), massimo esponente dell'averroismo locale, di spirito laico e spregiudicato sino alla miscredenza.  A Padova pubblica il trattato De maximo et minimo, in polemica con le teorie di Guglielmo Heytesbury. Passa poi a Carpi (nel 1496) per insegnare logica alla corte di Alberto III Pio, principe di Carpi, seguendolo nel 1498 nel suo esilio a Ferrara e restandovi fino al 1499. Nel frattempo, nel 1497, sposa a Mantova Cornelia Dondi, dalla quale ha due figlie.  Morto Vernia, e succeduto a lui nel 1499, il Pomponazzi rimane poi vedovo nel 1507 e si risposa con Ludovica di Montagnana. Chiude lo studio di Padova nel 1509 e si trasferisce a Ferrara dove redige un commento al De anima aristotelico. Questo avviene in seguito all'occupazione di Padova nel giugno 1509 da parte della Lega di Cambrai nella guerra con la Repubblica veneziana. Quando Venezia rioccupa la città il mese dopo, le lezioni universitarie vengono sospese ed egli, con altri insegnanti, lascia la città trasferendosi, come si è visto, a Ferrara su invito di Alfonso I d'Este per insegnare nella locale università. Chiusa anche questa nel 1510, si trasferisce fino al 1511 a Mantova e dal 1512 all'università di Bologna. Nuovamente vedovo, si risposa con Adriana della Scrofa.  A Bologna scrive le opere maggiori, il Tractatus de immortalitate animae, il De fato e il De incantationibus, oltre a commenti delle opere di Aristotele, conservati grazie agli appunti dei suoi studenti.  Il Tractatus de immortalitate animae, del 1516, in cui sostiene che l'immortalità dell'anima non può essere dimostrata razionalmente, fece scandalo: attaccato da più parti, il libro è pubblicamente bruciato a Venezia. Denunciato dall'agostiniano Ambrogio Fiandino per eresia, la difesa del cardinale Pietro Bembo gli permette di evitare terribili conseguenze ma nel 1518 è condannato da papa Leone X a ritrattare le sue tesi. Pomponazzi non ritratta ma si difende con la sua Apologia del 1518 e con il Defensorium adversus Augustinum Niphum del 1519, una risposta al De immortalitate animae libellus di Agostino Nifo, in cui sostiene la distinzione tra verità di fede e verità di ragione, idea ripresa dal filosofo Roberto Ardigò.  Queste controversie gli impediscono di pubblicare due opere che aveva completato nel 1520: il De naturalium effectuum causis sive de incantationibus e i Libri quinque de fato, de libero arbitrio et de praedestinatione, pubblicati postumi rispettivamente nel 1556 e 1557, con alcune modifiche, a Basilea, da Guglielmo Grataroli. Evita ogni problema teologico pubblicando nel 1521 il De nutritione et augmentatione, il De partibus animalium nel 1521 e il De sensu nel 1524.  Malato di calcoli renali, stende il proprio testamento nel 1524 e muore l'anno dopo. Secondo i suoi allievi Antonio Brocardo ed Ercole Strozzi (1473-1508) egli si sarebbe suicidato.  Il De immortalitate animae  Aristotele nella Scuola di Atene di Raffaello Per Aristotele l'anima è l'atto (entelechia) primo di un corpo che ha la vita in potenza, è la sostanza che realizza le funzioni vitali del corpo. Tre sono le funzioni dell'anima: la funzione vegetativa per la quale gli esseri vegetali, animali e umani si nutrono e si riproducono; la funzione sensitiva per la quale gli esseri animali e umani hanno sensazioni e immagini; la funzione intellettiva, per la quale gli esseri umani comprendono.  L'intelletto è la capacità di giudicare le immagini fornite dai sensi. L'atto dell'intendere si identifica con l'oggetto intelligibile, cioè con la sostanza dell'oggetto, ossia con la verità.  Aristotele distingue l'intelletto potenziale o possibile o passivo, che è la capacità umana di intendere, dall'intelletto attuale o attivo o agente, che è la luce intellettuale. Quest'ultimo contiene in atto tutti gli intelligibili, e agisce sull'intelletto potenziale come - l'esempio è di Aristotele - la luce mostra, mette in atto i colori che al buio non sono visibili ma pure esistono e dunque sono in potenza: l'intelletto agente mette in atto le verità che nell'intelletto potenziale sono soltanto in potenza. L'intelletto agente è separato, non composto, impassibile, per sua essenza atto…separato, esso è solo quel che è realmente, e questo solo è immortale ed eterno.  Che ne è dunque dell'anima? Nella Metafisica Aristotele dice solo che "Bisogna esaminare se la forma esista anche dopo la dissoluzione del composto; per alcune cose nulla lo impedisce, come, ad esempio nel caso dell'anima, ma non dell'anima nella sua interezza, bensì dell'intelletto, poiché è forse impossibile l'esistenza separata dell'anima intera".[1]  L'aristotelismo a Padova si era diviso in due correnti fondamentali, gli averroisti e gli alessandrini, seguaci questi delle interpretazioni aristoteliche di Alessandro di Afrodisia.  Averroè, secondo una concezione influenzata dal platonismo, sosteneva l'unicità e la trascendenza non solo dell'intelletto agente, ma anche dell'intelletto potenziale, che per lui non appartiene ai singoli uomini ma è unico e comune all'intera specie umana. .  La dottrina di Alessandro mantiene l'unicità dell'intelletto agente, che egli fa coincidere con Dio, ma attribuisce a ciascun uomo un intelletto potenziale individuale, mortale insieme con il corpo.   Tommaso d'Aquino ritratto dal Beato Angelico Infine, va ricordato che per Tommaso d'Aquino nell'uomo è presente un'unica anima per sua natura (simpliciter) immortale, ma per un certo aspetto (secundum quid) mortale, in quanto anche legata alle funzioni più materiali dell'essere umano.  Il Trattato dell'immortalità dell'anima, terminato il 24 settembre 1516 ed edito a Bologna il 6 novembre 1516, trae spunto da una discussione con il domenicano Girolamo Raguseo il quale, avendo il Pomponazzi sostenuto che la teoria di Tommaso sull'anima non si accorda con quella aristotelica, lo aveva pregato di provare le sue affermazioni mediante prove puramente razionali.  "Fecero bene gli antichi a porre l'uomo tra le cose eterne e quelle temporali, cosicché egli, né puramente eterno né semplicemente temporale, partecipa delle due nature e stando a metà fra loro, può vivere quella che vuole. Così, alcuni uomini sembrano dei perché, dominando il proprio essere vegetativo e sensitivo, sono quasi completamente razionali. Altri, sommersi nei sensi, sembrano bestie. Altri ancora, uomini nel vero senso della parola, vivono mediamente secondo la virtù, senza concedersi completamente né all'intelletto e né ai piaceri del corpo."[2]  L'uomo dunque, "è di natura non semplice ma molteplice, non determinata ma bifronte (ancipitis), media fra il mortale e l'immortale"ref>Pietro Pomponazzi, Trattato sull'immortalità dell'anima, Capitolo I, 5. e questa medietà non è il provvisorio incontro di due nature, una corporea e l'altra spirituale, che si divideranno con la morte, ma è la dimostrazione della reale unità dell'uomo: "La natura procede per gradi: i vegetali hanno un poco di anima, gli animali hanno i sensi e una certa immaginazione…alcuni animali arrivano a costruirsi case e a organizzarsi civilmente tanto che molti uomini sembrano avere un'intelligenza molto inferiore alla loro…vi sono animali intermedi fra la pianta e la bestia, come la spugna…della scimmia non sai se sia uomo o bruto, analogamente l'anima intellettiva è media fra il temporale e l'eterno."[3]  Polemizza con Averroè che ha scisso dalla naturale unità umana il principio razionale da quello sensitivo e con Tommaso d'Aquino, rilevando che l'anima, essendo unica, non può avere due modi di intendere, uno dipendente e un altro indipendente dalle funzioni del corpo; la dipendenza dell'intelligenza dalla fantasia, che dipende a sua volta dai sensi, lega l'anima indissolubilmente al corpo e ne fa seguire lo stesso destino di morte. È capovolta la tesi fondamentale di Tommaso: per Pomponazzi l'anima è per sé mortale e secundum quid, in un certo senso, immortale, e non il contrario, perché "nobilissima fra le cose materiali e al confine con le immateriali, profuma di immortalità ma non in senso assoluto" (aliquid immortalitatis odorat, sed non simpliciter).[4]E ricorda che per Aristotele l'anima non è creata da Dio, "Un uomo infatti è generato da un uomo e anche dal sole".[5]  Riguardo al problema del rapporto fra ragione e fede, per Pomponazzi solo la fede, non le ragioni naturali, può affermare l'immortalità dell'anima e "coloro che camminano per le vie dei credenti sono fermi e saldi",[6] mentre per quanto attiene i problemi etici che la mortalità dell'anima potrebbe suscitare, afferma che per comportarsi virtuosamente non è affatto necessario credere all'immortalità dell'anima e alle ricompense ultraterrene, perché la virtù è premio a sé stessa e chi afferma che l'anima è mortale salva il principio della virtù meglio di chi la considera immortale, perché la speranza di un premio e il terrore della pena provoca comportamenti servili contrari alla virtù.  Il Tractatus provocò clamore e polemiche alle quale rispose nel 1518, ribadendo le sue tesi con l'Apologia, dove nel primo libro risponde alle critiche amichevoli del suo allievo e futuro cardinale Gaspare Contarini e negli altri due al domenicano Vincenzo Colzade e all'agostiniano Ambrogio Fiandino. Nel 1519 replica con il Defensorium adversus Agostinum Niphum alle critiche di Agostino Nifo, professore di filosofia nell'università di Padova. La critica dei miracoli Nel 1520 il medico mantovano Ludovico Panizza avrebbe chiesto a Pomponazzi se possono esserci cause soprannaturali di eventi naturali, in contrasto con le affermazioni di Aristotele, e se si debba ammettere l'esistenza di demoni, come sostiene la Chiesa, anche per spiegare molti fenomeni che si sono verificati.  Per Pomponazzi "dobbiamo spiegare questi fenomeni con cause naturali, senza ricorrere ai demoni…è ridicolo lasciare l'evidenza per cercare quello che non è né evidente né credibile". D'altra parte, poiché l'intelletto percepisce dati sensibili, un puro spirito non potrebbe esercitare un'azione qualunque su qualcosa di materiale: gli spiriti non possono entrare in contatto con il nostro mondo; "in realtà vi sono uomini che, pur agendo per mezzo della scienza, hanno prodotto effetti che, mal compresi, li hanno fatti ritenere opera di santi o di maghi, com'è successo con Pietro d'Abano o con Cecco d'Ascoli…altri, ritenuti santi dal volgo che pensava avessero rapporti con gli angeli…erano magari dei mascalzoni…io credo che facessero tutto questo per ingannare il prossimo".  Ma, a parte casi di incomprensione o di malafede, è possibile che fenomeni mirabolanti abbiano la loro causa nell'influsso degli astri: "È assurdo che i corpi celesti, che reggono tutto l'universo…non possano produrre effetti che di per sé sono nulla considerando l'insieme dell'universo". Cause naturali, comunque, secondo la scienza del tempo: il determinismo astrologico governa anche le religioni: "al tempo degli idoli non c'era maggior vergogna della croce, nell'età successiva non c'è nulla di più venerato...ora si curano i languori con un segno di croce nel nome di Gesù, mentre un tempo ciò non accadeva perché non era giunta la Sua ora".  Ogni religione ha i suoi miracoli "quali quelli che si leggono e si ricordano nella legge di Cristo ed è logico, perché non ci possono essere profonde trasformazioni senza grandi miracoli. Ma non sono miracoli perché contrari all'ordine dei corpi celesti ma perché sono inconsueti e rarissimi".  Nessun fenomeno ha dunque cause non naturali: l'astrologo che abbia colto la natura delle forze celesti, può spiegare tanto le cause di fenomeni che sembrano soprannaturali che realizzare opere straordinarie che il popolino considererà miracolose solo perché incapace di individuarne la causa. L'ignoranza del volgo è del resto sfruttata da politici e da sacerdoti per tenerlo in soggezione, presentandosi ad esso come personaggi straordinari o addirittura inviati da Dio stesso.  Inoltre Pomponazzi sostiene la sua tesi conducendo un discorso di questo tipo:"se Dio ha creato l'universo ponendo su di esso leggi fisiche precise, sarebbe paradossale che egli stesso agisse contro queste leggi utilizzando eventi sovrannaturali come i miracoli". Per Pomponazzi appunto l'universo è controllato e determinato dall'agire degli astri e Dio agisce indirettamente muovendo questi ultimi; Pomponazzi sviluppa quindi una concezione dell'universo deterministica.  Il destino dell'uomo Se tali sono le forze che governano il mondo, se anche i fenomeni soprannaturali hanno una spiegazione nell'esistenza di forze naturali così potenti, esiste ancora una libertà nelle scelte individuali dell'uomo? In Dio, conoscenza e causa delle cose coincidono e dunque egli è veramente libero; l'uomo si esprime invece in un mondo dove tutto è già determinato. Rifiutato il contingentismo di Alessandro di Afrodisia, che salva la libertà umana criticando gli stoici per i quali non esiste né contingenza né libertà umana, Pomponazzi è costretto dalla sua concezione strettamente deterministica, ove tutto è regolato da forze naturali superiori all'uomo, a propendere per l'impossibilità del libero arbitrio:"...l'argomento è per me difficilissimo. Gli stoici sfuggono facilmente alle difficoltà facendo dipendere da Dio l'atto di volontà. Per questo l'opinione stoica appare molto probabile".  Nel cristianesimo c'è maggiore difficoltà a risolvere il problema del libero arbitrio e della predestinazione: "Se Dio odia ab aeterno i peccatori e li condanna, è impossibile che non li odi e non li condanni; e questi, così odiati e reietti, è impossibile che non pecchino e non si perdano. Che rimane, allora, se non una somma crudeltà e ingiustizia divina, e odio e bestemmia contro Dio? E questa è una posizione molto peggiore di quella stoica. Gli stoici dicono infatti che Dio si comporta così perché la necessità e la natura lo impongono. Secondo il cristianesimo il fato dipende invece dalla cattiveria di Dio, che potrebbe fare diversamente ma non vuole, mentre secondo gli stoici Dio fa così perché non può fare altrimenti".  Conclusioni  Lo scrittore Matteo Bandello Chiamato anche Peretto per la piccola statura, secondo Matteo Bandello (Novelle, III, 38) Pietro Pomponazzi "era un omicciolo molto piccolo, con un viso che nel vero aveva più del giudeo che del cristiano e vestiva anco ad una certa foggia che teneva più del rabbi che del filosofo, e andava sempre raso e toso; parlava anche in certo modo che parea un giudeo tedesco che volesse imparar a parlar italiano". Ma lo storico Paolo Giovio dirà che egli "esponeva Aristotele e Averroè con voce dolce e limpidissima; il suo discorso era preciso e pacato nella trattazione, mobile e concitato nella polemica; quando poi giungeva a definire e a trarre le conclusioni, era così grave e posato che gli studenti dai loro posti potevano annotarsi le spiegazioni".  Per nulla tenero con gli uomini di chiesa, "isti fratres truffaldini, domenichini, franceschini, vel diabolini" riassumeva il suo spirito ironico e motteggiante consigliando "alla filosofia credete fin dove vi detta la ragione, alla teologia credete quel che vogliono i teologi e i prelati con tutta la chiesa romana, perché altrimenti farete la fine delle castagne" ma fu serio e senza compromessi nelle sue convinzioni scrivendo nel De fato che "Prometeo è il filosofo che, nello sforzo di scoprire i segreti divini, è continuamente tormentato da pensieri affannosi, non ha sete, non ha fame, non dorme, non mangia, non spurga, deriso, dileggiato, insultato, perseguitato dagli inquisitori, ludibrio del volgo. Questo è il guadagno dei filosofi, questa la loro ricompensa". Epperò i filosofi sono per lui "come Dei terreni, tanto lontani dagli altri come gli uomini veri lo sono dalle figure dipinte" e lui sarebbe pronto, per amore della verità, anche a "ritrattare quel che ho detto. Chi dice che polemizzo per il gusto di contrastare, mente. In filosofia, chi vuol trovare la verità, dev'essere eretico".  Note ^ Aristotele, Metafisica, XII, 1070a, 2-27. ^ Pietro Pomponazzi, Trattato sull'immortalità dell'anima, Capitolo I, 3-4. ^ Pietro Pomponazzi, Trattato sull'immortalità dell'anima, Capitolo IX. ^ Pietro Pomponazzi, Trattato sull'immortalità dell'anima, Capitolo IX, 20. ^ Aristotele, Fisica, II, 194b 11-15; Pietro Pomponazzi, Trattato sull'immortalità dell'anima, Capitolo VII. ^ Pietro Pomponazzi, Trattato sull'immortalità dell'anima, Capitolo XV. Bibliografia Testi De naturalium effectuum causis sive de incantationibus, trad. Innocenti, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1996. Trattato sull'immortalità dell'anima, a cura di Vittoria Perrone Compagni, Firenze, Olschki, 1999. Il fato, il libero arbitrio e la predestinazione in cinque libri, a cura di Vittoria Perrone Compagni, Torino, Aragno, 2004. Tutti i trattati peripatetici, a cura di F.P. Raimondi e J.M.G. Valverde, Milano, Bompiani, 2013. Studi Giovanni Di Napoli, L'immortalità dell'anima nel Rinascimento, Torino, S. E. I., 1963. Bruno Nardi, Studi su Pietro Pomponazzi, Firenze, Le Monnier, 1965. Nicola Badaloni, Cultura e vita civile tra Riforma e Controriforma, Bari, Laterza, 1973. Giancarlo Zannier, Ricerche sulla diffusione e fortuna del «De Incantationibus» di Pomponazzi, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1975. Eugenio Garin, Aristotelismo veneto e scienza moderna, Padova, Antenore, 1981. Paola Zambelli, L'ambigua natura della magia, Milano, Il Saggiatore, 1991. Cuttini Elisa, Unità e pluralità nella tradizione europea della filosofia pratica di Aristotele. Girolamo Savonarola, Pietro Pomponazzi e Filippo Melantone, Soveria Mannelli (CZ), Rubbettino, 2005. Ramberti Rita, Il problema del libero arbitrio nel pensiero di Pietro Pomponazzi, Firenze, Olschki, 2007. Marco Sgarbi, Pietro Pomponazzi. Tra tradizione e dissenso, Firenze, Olschki, 2010. Pasquale Vitale,Un aristotelismo problematico: il «De fato» di Pietro Pomponazzi, in Aristotele si dice in tanti modi, Rivista di filosofia «Lo sguardo»,ISSN 2036-6558, n°5, 2011, pp. 120–135. Altri progetti Collabora a Wikisource Wikisource contiene una pagina dedicata a Pietro Pomponazzi Collabora a Wikiquote Wikiquote contiene citazioni di o su Pietro Pomponazzi Collabora a Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons contiene immagini o altri file su Pietro Pomponazzi Collegamenti esterni Pietro Pomponazzi, su Treccani.it – Enciclopedie on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata Pietro Pomponazzi, in Enciclopedia Italiana, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Pietro Pomponazzi, su Enciclopedia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Modifica su Wikidata Pietro Pomponazzi, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Pietro Pomponazzi, su Mathematics Genealogy Project, North Dakota State University. Modifica su Wikidata Opere di Pietro Pomponazzi, su openMLOL, Horizons Unlimited srl. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Opere di Pietro Pomponazzi, su Open Library, Internet Archive. Modifica su Wikidata (EN) Pietro Pomponazzi, in Catholic Encyclopedia, Robert Appleton Company. Modifica su Wikidata Pomponazzi, Pietro (latinizz. Petrus Pomponatius), in Dizionario di filosofia, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 2009. Vittoria Perrone Compagni, Pomponazzi, Pietro, in Il contributo italiano alla storia del Pensiero: Filosofia, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 2012. (EN) Craig Martin, Pietro Pomponazzi, in Edward N. Zalta (a cura di), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Università di Stanford. Controllo di autorità VIAF (EN) 27113040 · ISNI (EN) 0000 0001 0881 7208 · SBN IT\ICCU\TO0V\091536 · LCCN (EN) n50055009 · GND (DE) 118595628 · BNF (FR) cb121975325 (data) · BNE (ES) XX1402840 (data) · BAV (EN) 495/76124 · CERL cnp00396165 · WorldCat Identities (EN) lccn-n50055009 Biografie Portale Biografie Filosofia Portale Filosofia Categorie: Filosofi italiani del XV secoloUmanisti italianiNati nel 1462Morti nel 1525Nati il 16 settembreMorti il 18 maggioNati a MantovaMorti a BolognaPersone legate all'Università degli Studi di PadovaProfessori dell'Università di Bologna[altre]. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice, Shropshire and Pomponazzi on the immortality of the soul," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

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

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

Positivism: one of the twelve labours by Grice. Each has an entry in this alphabetum, even if conceptually, what they deal with is treated in other entries too.

posse --- potentia -- dunamis, also dynamis Grecian, ‘power’, ‘capacity’, as used by pre-Socratics such as Anaximander and Anaxagoras, one of the elementary character-powers, such as the hot or the cold, from which they believed the world was constructed. Plato’s early theory of Forms borrowed from the concept of character-powers as causes present in things; courage, e.g., is treated in the Laches as a power in the soul. Aristotle also used the word in this sense to explain the origins of the elements. In the Metaphysics especially Book IX, Aristotle used dunamis in a different sense to mean ‘potentiality’ in contrast to ‘actuality’ energeia or entelecheia. In the earlier sense of dunamis, matter is treated as potentiality, in that it has the potential to receive form and so be actualized as a concrete substance. In the later Aristotelian sense of dunamis, dormant abilities are treated as potentialities, and dunamis is to energeia as sleeping is to waking, or having sight to seeing.  Potentia -- dynamic logic, a branch of logic in which, in addition to the usual category of formulas interpretable as propositions, there is a category of expressions interpretable as actions. Dynamic logic originally called the modal logic of programs emerged in the late 0s as one step in a long tradition within theoretical computer science aimed at providing a way to formalize the analysis of programs and their action. A particular concern here was program verification: what can be said of the effect of a program if started at a certain point? To this end operators [a] and ‹a were introduced with the following intuitive readings: [a]A to mean ‘after every terminating computation according to a it is the case that A’ and ‹aA to mean ‘after some terminating computation according to a it is the case that A’. The logic of these operators may be seen as a generalization of ordinary modal logic: where modal logic has one box operator A and one diamond operator B, dynamic logic has one box operator [a] and one diamond operator ‹a for every program expression a in the language. In possible worlds semantics for modal logic a model is a triple U, R, V where U is a universe of points, R a binary relation, and V a valuation assigning to each atomic formula a subset of U. In dynamic logic, a model is a triple U, R, V where U and V are as before but R is a family of binary relations Ra, one for every program expression a in the language. Writing ‘Xx A’, where x is a point in U, for ‘A is true at x’ in the model in question, we have the following characteristic truth conditions truth-functional compounds are evaluated by truth tables, as in modal logic: Xx P if and only if x is a point in VP, where P is an atomic formula, Xx[a]A if and only if, for all y, if x is Ra- related to y then Xy A, Xx ‹a if and only if, for some y, x is Ra-related to y and Xy A. Traditionally, dynamic logic will contain machinery for rendering the three regular operators on programs: ‘!’ sum, ‘;’ composition, and ‘*’ Kleene’s star operation, as well as the test operator ‘?’, which, operating on a proposition, will yield a program. The action a ! b consists in carrying out a or carrying out b; the action a;b in first carrying out a, then carrying out b; the action a* in carrying out a some finite number of times not excluding 0; the action ?A in verifying that A. Only standard models reflect these intuitions: Ra ! b % Ra 4 Rb, Ra;b % Ra _ Rb, Ra* % Ra*, R?A % {x,x : Xx A} where ‘*’ is the ancestral star The smallest propositional dynamic logic PDL is the set of formulas true at every point in every standard model. Note that dynamic logic analyzes non-deterministic action  this is evident at the level of atomic programs p where Rp is a relation, not necessarily a function, and also in the definitions of Ra + b and Ra*. Dynamic logic has been extended in various ways, e.g., to first- and second-order predicate logic. Furthermore, just as deontic logic, tense logic, etc., are referred to as modal logic in the wide sense, so extensions of dynamic logic in the narrow sense such as process logic are often loosely referred to as dynamic logic in the wide sense. Dyad dynamic logic 250   250 The philosophical interest in dynamic logic rests with the expectation that it will prove a fruitful instrument for analyzing the concept of action in general: a successful analysis would be valuable in itself and would also be relevant to other disciplines such as deontic logic and the logic of imperatives.  potency, for Aristotle, a kind of capacity that is a correlative of action. We require no instruction to grasp the difference between ‘X can do Y’ and ‘X is doing Y’, the latter meaning that the deed is actually being done. That an agent has a potency to do something is not a pure prediction so much as a generalization from past performance of individual or kind. Aristotle uses the example of a builder, meaning someone able to build, and then confronts the Megaric objection that the builder can be called a builder only when he actually builds. Clearly one who is doing something can do it, but Aristotle insists that the napping carpenter has the potency to hammer and saw. A potency based on an acquired skill like carpentry derives from the potency shared by those who acquire and those who do not acquire the skill. An unskilled worker can be said to be a builder “in potency,” not in the sense that he has the skill and can employ it, but in the sense that he can acquire the skill. In both acquisition and employment, ‘potency’ refers to the actual  either the actual acquisition of the skill or its actual use. These post-structuralism potency 726    726 potentiality, first practical attitude 727 correlatives emerged from Aristotle’s analysis of change and becoming. That which, from not having the skill, comes to have it is said to be “in potency” to that skill. From not having a certain shape, wood comes to have a certain shape. In the shaped wood, a potency is actualized. Potency must not be identified with the unshaped, with what Aristotle calls privation. Privation is the negation of P in a subject capable of P. Parmenides’ identification of privation and potency, according to Aristotle, led him to deny change. How can not-P become P? It is the subject of not-P to which the change is attributed and which survives the change that is in potency to X.  Potestas – Energeia – actus – entelechia -- power, a disposition; an ability or capacity to yield some outcome. One tradition which includes Locke distinguishes active and passive powers. A knife has the active power to slice an apple, which has the passive power to be sliced by the knife. The distinction seems largely grammatical, however. Powers act in concert: the power of a grain of salt to dissolve in water and the water’s power to dissolve the salt are reciprocal and their manifestations mutual. Powers or dispositions are sometimes thought to be relational properties of objects, properties possessed only in virtue of objects standing in appropriate relations to other objects. However, if we distinguish, as we must, between a power and its manifestation, and if we allow that an object could possess a power that it never manifested a grain of salt remains soluble even if it never dissolves, it would seem that an object could possess a power even if appropriate reciprocal partners for its manifestation were altogether non-existent. This appears to have been Locke’s view An Essay concerning Human Understanding, 1690 of “secondary qualities” colors, sounds, and the like, which he regarded as powers of objects to produce certain sorts of sensory experience in observers. Philosophers who take powers seriously disagree over whether powers are intrinsic, “built into” properties this view, defended by C. B. Martin, seems to have been Locke’s, or whether the connection between properties and the powers they bestow is contingent, dependent perhaps upon contingent laws of nature a position endorsed by Armstrong. Is the solubility of salt a characteristic built into the salt, or is it a “second-order” property possessed by the salt in virtue of i the salt’s possession of some “firstorder” property and ii the laws of nature? Reductive analyses of powers, though influential, have not fared well. Suppose a grain of salt is soluble in water. Does this mean that if the salt were placed in water, it would dissolve? No. Imagine that were the salt placed in water, a technician would intervene, imposing an electromagnetic field, thereby preventing the salt from dissolving. Attempts to exclude “blocking” conditions  by appending “other things equal” clauses perhaps  face charges of circularity: in nailing down what other things must be equal we find ourselves appealing to powers. Powers evidently are fundamental features of our world. In the romance languages, “it may run” means “It has power to rain.” “Il peut …”  This has a cognate in the Germanic languages, “it might rain.” “Might is right.” possibile – “what is actual is not also possible – grave mistake!” – H. P. Grice. compossible, capable of existing or occurring together. E.g., two individuals are compossible provided the existence of one of them is compatible with the existence of the other. In terms of possible worlds, things are compossible provided there is some possible world to which all of them belong; otherwise they are incompossible. Not all possibilities are compossible. E.g., the extinction of life on earth by the year 3000 is possible; so is its continuation until the year 10,000; but since it is impossible that both of these things should happen, they are not compossible. Leibniz held that any non-actualized possibility must be incompossible with what is actual.  possible worlds, alternative worlds in terms of which one may think of possibility. The idea of thinking about possibility in terms of such worlds has played an important part, both in Leibnizian philosophical theology and in the development of modal logic and philosophical reflection about it in recent decades. But there are important differences in the forms the idea has taken, and the uses to which it has been put, in the two contexts. Leibniz used it in his account of creation. In his view God’s mind necessarily and eternally contains the ideas of infinitely many worlds that God could have created, and God has chosen the best of these and made it actual, thus creating it. Similar views are found in the thought of Leibniz’s contemporary, Malebranche. The possible worlds are thus the complete alternatives among which God chose. They are possible at least in the sense that they are logically consistent; whether something more is required in order for them to be coherent as worlds is a difficult question in Leibniz interpretation. They are complete in that they are possible totalities of creatures; each includes a whole possible universe, in its whole spatial extent and its whole temporal history if it is spatially and temporally ordered. The temporal completeness deserves emphasis. If “the world of tomorrow” is “a better world” than “the world of today,” it will still be part of the same “possible world” the actual one; for the actual “world,” in the relevant sense, includes whatever actually has happened or will happen throughout all time. The completeness extends to every detail, so that a milligram’s difference in the weight of the smallest bird would make a different possible world. The completeness of possible worlds may be limited in one way, however. Leibniz speaks of worlds as aggregates of finite things. As alternatives for God’s creation, they may well not be thought of as including God, or at any rate, not every fact about God. For this and other reasons it is not clear that in Leibniz’s thought the possible can be identified with what is true in some possible world, or the necessary with what is true in all possible worlds. That identification is regularly assumed, however, in the recent development of what has become known as possible worlds semantics for modal logic the logic of possibility and necessity, and of other conceptions, e.g. those pertaining to time and to morality, that have turned out to be formally analogous. The basic idea here is that such notions as those of validity, soundness, and completeness can be defined for modal logic in terms of models constructed from sets of alternative “worlds.” Since the late 0s many important results have been obtained by this method, whose best-known exponent is Saul Kripke. Some of the most interesting proofs depend on the idea of a relation of accessibility between worlds in the set. Intuitively, one world is accessible from another if and only if the former is possible in or from the point of view of the latter. Different systems of modal logic are appropriate depending on the properties of this relation e.g., on whether it is or is not reflexive and/or transitive and/or symmetrical. The purely formal results of these methods are well established. The application of possible worlds semantics to conceptions occurring in metaphysically richer discourse is more controversial, however. Some of the controversy is related to debates over the metaphysical reality of various sorts of possibility and necessity. Particularly controversial, and also a focus of much interest, have been attempts to understand modal claims de re, about particular individuals as such e.g., that I could not have been a musical performance, in terms of the identity and nonidentity of individuals in different possible worlds. Similarly, there is debate over the applicability of a related treatment of subjunctive conditionals, developed by Robert Stalnaker and David Lewis, though it is clear that it yields interesting formal results. What is required, on this approach, for the truth of ‘If it were the case that A, then it would be the case that B’, is that, among those possible worlds in which A is true, some world in which B is true be more similar, in the relevant respects, to the actual world than any world in which B is false. One of the most controversial topics is the nature of possible worlds themselves. Mathematical logicians need not be concerned with this; a wide variety of sets of objects, real or fictitious, can be viewed as having the properties required of sets of “worlds” for their purposes. But if metaphysically robust issues of modality e.g., whether there are more possible colors than we ever see are to be understood in terms of possible worlds, the question of the nature of the worlds must be taken seriously. Some philosophers would deny any serious metaphysical role to the notion of possible worlds. At the other extreme, David Lewis has defended a view of possible worlds as concrete totalities, things of the same sort as the whole actual universe, made up of entities like planets, persons, and so forth. On his view, the actuality of the actual world consists only in its being this one, the one that we are in; apart from its relation to us or our linguistic acts, the actual is not metaphysically distinguished from the merely possible. Many philosophers find this result counterintuitive, and the infinity of concrete possible worlds an extravagant ontology; but Lewis argues that his view makes possible attractive reductions of modality both logical and causal, and of such notions as that of a proposition, to more concrete notions. Other philosophers are prepared to say there are non-actual possible worlds, but that they are entities of a quite different sort from the actual concrete universe  sets of propositions, perhaps, or some other type of “abstract” object. Leibniz himself held a view of this kind, thinking of possible worlds as having their being only in God’s mind, as intentional objects of God’s thought. 

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

potching and cotching: Grice coined ‘cotching’ because he was irritated to hear that Chomsky couldn’t stand ‘know’ and how to coin ‘cognise’ to do duty for it! cognition -- cognitive dissonance, mental discomfort arising from conflicting beliefs or attitudes held simultaneously. Leon Festinger, who originated the theory of cognitive dissonance in a book of that title 7, suggested that cognitive dissonance has motivational characteristics. Suppose a person is contemplating moving to a new city. She is considering both Birmingham and Boston. She cannot move to both, so she must choose. Dissonance is experienced by the person if in choosing, say, Birmingham, she acquires knowledge of bad or unwelcome features of Birmingham and of good or welcome aspects of Boston. The amount of dissonance depends on the relative intensities of dissonant elements. Hence, if the only dissonant factor is her learning that Boston is cooler than Birmingham, and she does not regard climate as important, she will experience little dissonance. Dissonance may occur in several sorts of psychological states or processes, although the bulk of research in cognitive dissonance theory has been on dissonance in choice and on the justification and psychological aftereffects of choice. Cognitive dissonance may be involved in two phenomena of interest to philosophers, namely, self-deception and weakness of will. Why do self-deceivers try to get themselves to believe something that, in some sense, they know to be false? One may resort to self-deception when knowledge causes dissonance. Why do the weak-willed perform actions they know to be wrong? One may become weak-willed when dissonance arises from the expected consequences of doing the right thing. -- cognitive psychotherapy, an expression introduced by Brandt in A Theory of the Good and the Right to refer to a process of assessing and adjusting one’s desires, aversions, or pleasures henceforth, “attitudes”. This process is central to Brandt’s analysis of rationality, and ultimately, to his view on the justification of morality. Cognitive psychotherapy consists of the agent’s criticizing his attitudes by repeatedly representing to himself, in an ideally vivid way and at appropriate times, all relevant available information. Brandt characterizes the key definiens as follows: 1 available information is “propositions accepted by the science of the agent’s day, plus factual propositions justified by publicly accessible evidence including testimony of others about themselves and the principles of logic”; 2 information is relevant provided, if the agent were to reflect repeatedly on it, “it would make a difference,” i.e., would affect the attitude in question, and the effect would be a function of its content, not an accidental byproduct; 3 relevant information is represented in an ideally vivid way when the agent focuses on it with maximal clarity and detail and with no hesitation or doubt about its truth; and 4 repeatedly and at appropriate times refer, respectively, to the frequency and occasions that would result in the information’s having the maximal attitudinal impact. Suppose Mary’s desire to smoke were extinguished by her bringing to the focus of her attention, whenever she was about to inhale smoke, some justified beliefs, say that smoking is hazardous to one’s health and may cause lung cancer; Mary’s desire would have been removed by cognitive psychotherapy. According to Brandt, an attitude is rational for a person provided it is one that would survive, or be produced by, cognitive psychotherapy; otherwise it is irrational. Rational attitudes, in this sense, provide a basis for moral norms. Roughly, the correct moral norms are those of a moral code that persons would opt for if i they were motivated by attitudes that survive the process of cognitive psychotherapy; and ii at the time of opting for a moral code, they were fully aware of, and vividly attentive to, all available information relevant to choosing a moral code for a society in which they are to live for the rest of their lives. In this way, Brandt seeks a value-free justification for moral norms  one that avoids the problems of other theories such as those that make an appeal to intuitions.  -- cognitive science, an interdisciplinary research cluster that seeks to account for intelligent activity, whether exhibited by living organisms especially adult humans or machines. Hence, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence constitute its core. A number of other disciplines, including neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology, and philosophy, as well as other fields of psychology e.g., developmental psychology, are more peripheral contributors. The quintessential cognitive scientist is someone who employs computer modeling techniques developing computer programs for the purpose of simulating particular human cognitive activities, but the broad range of disciplines that are at least peripherally constitutive of cognitive science have lent a variety of research strategies to the enterprise. While there are a few common institutions that seek to unify cognitive science e.g., departments, journals, and societies, the problems investigated and the methods of investigation often are limited to a single contributing discipline. Thus, it is more appropriate to view cognitive science as a cross-disciplinary enterprise than as itself a new discipline. While interest in cognitive phenomena has historically played a central role in the various disciplines contributing to cognitive science, the term properly applies to cross-disciplinary activities that emerged in the 0s. During the preceding two decades each of the disciplines that became part of cogntive science gradually broke free of positivistic and behavioristic proscriptions that barred systematic inquiry into the operation of the mind. One of the primary factors that catalyzed new investigations of cognitive activities was Chomsky’s generative grammar, which he advanced not only as an abstract theory of the structure of language, but also as an account of language users’ mental knowledge of language their linguistic competence. A more fundamental factor was the development of approaches for theorizing about information in an abstract manner, and the introduction of machines computers that could manipulate information. This gave rise to the idea that one might program a computer to process information so as to exhibit behavior that would, if performed by a human, require intelligence. If one tried to formulate a unifying question guiding cognitive science research, it would probably be: How does the cognitive system work? But even this common question is interpreted quite differently in different disciplines. We can appreciate these differences by looking just at language. While psycholinguists generally psychologists seek to identify the processing activities in the mind that underlie language use, most linguists focus on the products of this internal processing, seeking to articulate the abstract structure of language. A frequent goal of computer scientists, in contrast, has been to develop computer programs to parse natural language input and produce appropriate syntactic and semantic representations. These differences in objectives among the cognitive science disciplines correlate with different methodologies. The following represent some of the major methodological approaches of the contributing disciplines and some of the problems each encounters. Artificial intelligence. If the human cognition system is viewed as computational, a natural goal is to simulate its performance. This typically requires formats for representing information as well as procedures for searching and manipulating it. Some of the earliest AIprograms drew heavily on the resources of first-order predicate calculus, representing information in propositional formats and manipulating it according to logical principles. For many modeling endeavors, however, it proved important to represent information in larger-scale structures, such as frames Marvin Minsky, schemata David Rumelhart, or scripts Roger Schank, in which different pieces of information associated with an object or activity would be stored together. Such structures generally employed default values for specific slots specifying, e.g., that deer live in forests that would be part of the representation unless overridden by new information e.g., that a particular deer lives in the San Diego Zoo. A very influential alternative approach, developed by Allen Newell, replaces declarative representations of information with procedural representations, known as productions. These productions take the form of conditionals that specify actions to be performed e.g., copying an expression into working memory if certain conditions are satisfied e.g., the expression matches another expression. Psychology. While some psychologists develop computer simulations, a more characteristic activity is to acquire detailed data from human subjects that can reveal the cognitive system’s actual operation. This is a challenging endeavor. While cognitive activities transpire within us, they frequently do so in such a smooth and rapid fashion that we are unaware of them. For example, we have little awareness of what occurs when we recognize an object as a chair or remember the name of a client. Some cognitive functions, though, seem to be transparent to consciousness. For example, we might approach a logic problem systematically, enumerating possible solutions and evaluating them serially. Allen Newell and Herbert Simon have refined methods for exploiting verbal protocols obtained from subjects as they solve such problems. These methods have been quite fruitful, but their limitations must be respected. In many cases in which we think we know how we performed a cognitive task, Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson have argued that we are misled, relying on folk theories to describe how our minds work rather than reporting directly on their operation. In most cases cognitive psychologists cannot rely on conscious awareness of cognitive processes, but must proceed as do physiologists trying to understand metabolism: they must devise experiments that reveal the underlying processes operative in cognition. One approach is to seek clues in the errors to which the cognitive system cognitive science cognitive science is prone. Such errors might be more easily accounted for by one kind of underlying process than by another. Speech errors, such as substituting ‘bat cad’ for ‘bad cat’, may be diagnostic of the mechanisms used to construct speech. This approach is often combined with strategies that seek to overload or disrupt the system’s normal operation. A common technique is to have a subject perform two tasks at once  e.g., read a passage while watching for a colored spot. Cognitive psychologists may also rely on the ability to dissociate two phenomena e.g., obliterate one while maintaining the other to establish their independence. Other types of data widely used to make inferences about the cognitive system include patterns of reaction times, error rates, and priming effects in which activation of one item facilitates access to related items. Finally, developmental psychologists have brought a variety of kinds of data to bear on cognitive science issues. For example, patterns of acquisition times have been used in a manner similar to reaction time patterns, and accounts of the origin and development of systems constrain and elucidate mature systems. Linguistics. Since linguists focus on a product of cognition rather than the processes that produce the product, they tend to test their analyses directly against our shared knowledge of that product. Generative linguists in the tradition of Chomsky, for instance, develop grammars that they test by probing whether they generate the sentences of the language and no others. While grammars are certainly G.e to developing processing models, they do not directly determine the structure of processing models. Hence, the central task of linguistics is not central to cognitive science. However, Chomsky has augmented his work on grammatical description with a number of controversial claims that are psycholinguistic in nature e.g., his nativism and his notion of linguistic competence. Further, an alternative approach to incorporating psycholinguistic concerns, the cognitive linguistics of Lakoff and Langacker, has achieved prominence as a contributor to cognitive science. Neuroscience. Cognitive scientists have generally assumed that the processes they study are carried out, in humans, by the brain. Until recently, however, neuroscience has been relatively peripheral to cognitive science. In part this is because neuroscientists have been chiefly concerned with the implementation of processes, rather than the processes themselves, and in part because the techniques available to neuroscientists such as single-cell recording have been most suitable for studying the neural implementation of lower-order processes such as sensation. A prominent exception was the classical studies of brain lesions initiated by Broca and Wernicke, which seemed to show that the location of lesions correlated with deficits in production versus comprehension of speech. More recent data suggest that lesions in Broca’s area impair certain kinds of syntactic processing. However, other developments in neuroscience promise to make its data more relevant to cognitive modeling in the future. These include studies of simple nervous systems, such as that of the aplysia a genus of marine mollusk by Eric Kandel, and the development of a variety of techniques for determining the brain activities involved in the performance of cognitive tasks e.g., recording of evoked response potentials over larger brain structures, and imaging techniques such as positron emission tomography. While in the future neuroscience is likely to offer much richer information that will guide the development and constrain the character of cognitive models, neuroscience will probably not become central to cognitive science. It is itself a rich, multidisciplinary research cluster whose contributing disciplines employ a host of complicated research tools. Moreover, the focus of cognitive science can be expected to remain on cognition, not on its implementation. So far cognitive science has been characterized in terms of its modes of inquiry. One can also focus on the domains of cognitive phenomena that have been explored. Language represents one such domain. Syntax was one of the first domains to attract wide attention in cognitive science. For example, shortly after Chomsky introduced his transformational grammar, psychologists such as George Miller sought evidence that transformations figured directly in human language processing. From this beginning, a more complex but enduring relationship among linguists, psychologists, and computer scientists has formed a leading edge for much cognitive science research. Psycholinguistics has matured; sophisticated computer models of natural language processing have been developed; and cognitive linguists have offered a particular synthesis that emphasizes semantics, pragmatics, and cognitive foundations of language. Thinking and reasoning. These constitute an important domain of cognitive science that is closely linked to philosophical interests. Problem cognitive science cognitive science solving, such as that which figures in solving puzzles, playing games, or serving as an expert in a domain, has provided a prototype for thinking. Newell and Simon’s influential work construed problem solving as a search through a problem space and introduced the idea of heuristics  generally reliable but fallible simplifying devices to facilitate the search. One arena for problem solving, scientific reasoning and discovery, has particularly interested philosophers. Artificial intelligence researchers such as Simon and Patrick Langley, as well as philosophers such as Paul Thagard and Lindley Darden, have developed computer programs that can utilize the same data as that available to historical scientists to develop and evaluate theories and plan future experiments. Cognitive scientists have also sought to study the cognitive processes underlying the sorts of logical reasoning both deductive and inductive whose normative dimensions have been a concern of philosophers. Philip JohnsonLaird, for example, has sought to account for human performance in dealing with syllogistic reasoning by describing a processing of constructing and manipulating mental models. Finally, the process of constructing and using analogies is another aspect of reasoning that has been extensively studied by traditional philosophers as well as cognitive scientists. Memory, attention, and learning. Cognitive scientists have differentiated a variety of types of memory. The distinction between long- and short-term memory was very influential in the information-processing models of the 0s. Short-term memory was characterized by limited capacity, such as that exhibited by the ability to retain a seven-digit telephone number for a short period. In much cognitive science work, the notion of working memory has superseded short-term memory, but many theorists are reluctant to construe this as a separate memory system as opposed to a part of long-term memory that is activated at a given time. Endel Tulving introduced a distinction between semantic memory general knowledge that is not specific to a time or place and episodic memory memory for particular episodes or occurrences. More recently, Daniel Schacter proposed a related distinction that emphasizes consciousness: implicit memory access without awareness versus explicit memory which does involve awareness and is similar to episodic memory. One of the interesting results of cognitive research is the dissociation between different kinds of memory: a person might have severely impaired memory of recent events while having largely unimpaired implicit memory. More generally, memory research has shown that human memory does not simply store away information as in a file cabinet. Rather, information is organized according to preexisting structures such as scripts, and can be influenced by events subsequent to the initial storage. Exactly what gets stored and retrieved is partly determined by attention, and psychologists in the information-processing tradition have sought to construct general cognitive models that emphasize memory and attention. Finally, the topic of learning has once again become prominent. Extensively studied by the behaviorists of the precognitive era, learning was superseded by memory and attention as a research focus in the 0s. In the 0s, artificial intelligence researchers developed a growing interest in designing systems that can learn; machine learning is now a major problem area in AI. During the same period, connectionism arose to offer an alternative kind of learning model. Perception and motor control. Perceptual and motor systems provide the inputs and outputs to cognitive systems. An important aspect of perception is the recognition of something as a particular kind of object or event; this requires accessing knowledge of objects and events. One of the central issues concerning perception questions the extent to which perceptual processes are influenced by higher-level cognitive information top-down processing versus how much they are driven purely by incoming sensory information bottom-up processing. A related issue concerns the claim that visual imagery is a distinct cognitive process and is closely related to visual perception, perhaps relying on the same brain processes. A number of cognitive science inquiries e.g., by Roger Shepard and Stephen Kosslyn have focused on how people use images in problem solving and have sought evidence that people solve problems by rotating images or scanning them. This research has been extremely controversial, as other investigators have argued against the use of images and have tried to account for the performance data that have been generated in terms of the use of propositionally represented information. Finally, a distinction recently has been proposed between the What and Where systems. All of the foregoing issues concern the What system which recognizes and represents objects as exemplars of categories. The Where system, in contrast, concerns objects in their environment, and is particularly adapted to the dynamics of movement. Gibson’s ecological psychology is a long-standing inquiry into this aspect of perception, and work on the neural substrates is now attracting the interest of cognitive scientists as well. Recent developments. The breadth of cognitive science has been expanding in recent years. In the 0s, cognitive science inquiries tended to focus on processing activities of adult humans or on computer models of intelligent performance; the best work often combined these approaches. Subsequently, investigators examined in much greater detail how cognitive systems develop, and developmental psychologists have increasingly contributed to cognitive science. One of the surprising findings has been that, contrary to the claims of William James, infants do not seem to confront the world as a “blooming, buzzing confusion,” but rather recognize objects and events quite early in life. Cognitive science has also expanded along a different dimension. Until recently many cognitive studies focused on what humans could accomplish in laboratory settings in which they performed tasks isolated from reallife contexts. The motivation for this was the assumption that cognitive processes were generic and not limited to specific contexts. However, a variety of influences, including Gibsonian ecological psychology especially as interpreted and developed by Ulric Neisser and Soviet activity theory, have advanced the view that cognition is much more dynamic and situated in real-world tasks and environmental contexts; hence, it is necessary to study cognitive activities in an ecologically valid manner. Another form of expansion has resulted from a challenge to what has been the dominant architecture for modeling cognition. An architecture defines the basic processing capacities of the cognitive system. The dominant cognitive architecture has assumed that the mind possesses a capacity for storing and manipulating symbols. These symbols can be composed into larger structures according to syntactic rules that can then be operated upon by formal rules that recognize that structure. Jerry Fodor has referred to this view of the cognitive system as the “language of thought hypothesis” and clearly construes it as a modern heir of rationalism. One of the basic arguments for it, due to Fodor and Zenon Pylyshyn, is that thoughts, like language, exhibit productivity the unlimited capacity to generate new thoughts and systematicity exhibited by the inherent relation between thoughts such as ‘Joan loves the florist’ and ‘The florist loves Joan’. They argue that only if the architecture of cognition has languagelike compositional structure would productivity and systematicity be generic properties and hence not require special case-by-case accounts. The challenge to this architecture has arisen with the development of an alternative architecture, known as connectionism, parallel distributed processing, or neural network modeling, which proposes that the cognitive system consists of vast numbers of neuronlike units that excite or inhibit each other. Knowledge is stored in these systems by the adjustment of connection strengths between processing units; consequently, connectionism is a modern descendant of associationism. Connectionist networks provide a natural account of certain cognitive phenomena that have proven challenging for the symbolic architecture, including pattern recognition, reasoning with soft constraints, and learning. Whether they also can account for productivity and systematicity has been the subject of debate. Philosophical theorizing about the mind has often provided a starting point for the modeling and empirical investigations of modern cognitive science. The ascent of cognitive science has not meant that philosophers have ceased to play a role in examining cognition. Indeed, a number of philosophers have pursued their inquiries as contributors to cognitive science, focusing on such issues as the possible reduction of cognitive theories to those of neuroscience, the status of folk psychology relative to emerging scientific theories of mind, the merits of rationalism versus empiricism, and strategies for accounting for the intentionality of mental states. The interaction between philosophers and other cognitive scientists, however, is bidirectional, and a number of developments in cognitive science promise to challenge or modify traditional philosophical views of cognition. For example, studies by cognitive and social psychologists have challenged the assumption that human thinking tends to accord with the norms of logic and decision theory. On a variety of tasks humans seem to follow procedures heuristics that violate normative canons, raising questions about how philosophers should characterize rationality. Another area of empirical study that has challenged philosophical assumptions has been the study of concepts and categorization. Philosophers since Plato have widely assumed that concepts of ordinary language, such as red, bird, and justice, should be definable by necessary and sufficient conditions. But celebrated studies by Eleanor Rosch and her colleagues indicated that many ordinary-language concepts had a prototype structure instead. On this view, the categories employed in human thinking are characterized by prototypes the clearest exemplars and a metric that grades exemplars according to their degree of typicality. Recent investigations have also pointed to significant instability in conceptual structure and to the role of theoretical beliefs in organizing categories. This alternative conception of concepts has profound implications for philosophical methodologies that portray philosophy’s task to be the analysis of concepts. 

potts: “One of the few non-Oxonian English philosohpers I can stand, but then he was my genial tutee!, so he IS Oxford. Oxford made me and him!” --. English philosopher, tutee of H. P. Grice. Semanticist of the best order! Structures and Categories for the Representation of Meaning T.C. Potts. Potts, alla Grice, addresses the representation problem ... how best to represent the meanings of linguistic expressions... One might call this the 'semantic form' of expressions (p. xi, italics in the original). The book begins with "three chapters in which I survey the contributions made by linguistics, logic and computer science respectively to the representation of meaning" (p. xii). These three chapters are not easy to understand, principally because of Potts's obtuse style, an example of which is that instead of saying "'either P or Q' is false if 'P' and 'Q' are both false; otherwise, it is true," he says, "we lay down that a proposition having the structure represented by 'either P or Q' is to be accounted false if a false proposition is substituted for 'P' and a false proposition for 'Q', but is otherwise to be accounted true" (p. 53). These chapters are also outdated. In particular, the chapter on computer science, discussing the work of researchers whose goals are the closest to Potts's own stated goals, is mainly a review of work as of the seventies. There are citations to several of the papers in Findler (1979), but only three to more recent research publications: Hayes (1980), Sowa (1984), and Hobbs and Shieber (1987). Perhaps the most valuable aspect of these three chapters is Potts's criticisms of some of the work he surveys. Of course, some of the problems noted have been corrected in literature that Potts hasn't yet got around to reading. By the end of the three survey chapters, Potts has introduced two techniques that he 427  Computational Linguistics Volume 21, Number 3 then develops into his own representation-- categorial grammars and graphs as representation formalisms. He takes the categorial analysis to be the prior of the two, with his graphs, which he calls categorialgraphs, being the clearer representation of sentence meaning. Unfortunately, "formalism" and "clearer" must be taken with a grain of salt. Potts never formally defines his categorial graphs, let alone gives a formal semantics for them. Although I have had extensive experience reading, interpreting, and devising graphical representations of meaning, I could not understand the details of Potts's graphs. But then, neither, apparently, can he: "The relationship between semantic and syntactic structures has not been spelled out, so that it is not fully determinate what our semantic representations represent at the syntactic level" (p. 168). The four substantive chapters are useful for the linguistic issues that they address, even if they are not useful for the representation scheme that they develop. These issues, which must eventually be faced by all knowledge representation formalisms that aspire to complete coverage of natural language include: quantifier scope; pronouns; relative clauses; count nouns, substance nouns, and proper names; generic propositions; deictic terms; plurals; identity; and adverbs. Appropriately, the book does not end on a note of claimed accomplishment, but on a note of work yet to do: "The purpose of a philosophical book is to stimulate thought, not to put it to rest with solutions to every problem ... It is still premature to formulate a graph grammar for semantic representation of everyday language... The representation problem is commonly not accorded the respect which it deserves" (p. 288). Many people agree, and have, accordingly, produced a vast literature that Potts is apparently not familiar with. (Some relevant collections are Cercone and McCalla 1987, Sowa 1991, and Lehmann 1992.) Nevertheless, Potts is still correct when he suggests that there is much work left to do.--Stuart C. Shapiro, State University of New York at Buffalo References Cercone, Nick and McCalla, Gordon (editors) (1987). The Knowledge Frontier: Essays in the Representation of Knowledge. Springer-Verlag. Findler, Nicholas V. (editor) (1979). Associative Networks: The Representation and Use of Knowledge in Computers. Academic Press. Hayes, Patrick J. (1980). "The logic of frames." In Frame Conceptions and Text Understanding, edited by Dieter Metzing, 46-61. de Gruyter, 1980. Also in Readings in Knowledge Representation, edited by Ronald J. Brachman and Hector J. Levesque, 287-295. Morgan Kaufmann. 1985. Hobbs, Jerry R., and Shieber, Stuart M. (1987). "An algorithm for generating quantifier scopings." Computational Linguistics, 13(1-2), 47-63. Lehmann, Fritz (editor) (1992). Semantic Networks in Artificial Intelligence. Pergamon Press. Sowa, John E (1984). Conceptual Structures. Addison-Wesley. Sowa, John F. (editor) (1991). Principles of Semantic Networks: Explorations in the Representation of Knowledge. Morgan Kaufmann. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Potts at Villa Grice.”

practical reason, the capacity for argument or demonstrative inference, considered in its application to the task of prescribing or selecting behavior. Some philosophical concerns in this area pertain to the actual thought processes by which plans of action are formulated and carried out in practical situations. A second major issue is what role, if any, practical reason plays in determining norms of conduct. Here there are two fundamental positions. Instrumentalism is typified by Hume’s claim that reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions. According to instrumentalism, reason by itself is incapable of influencing action directly. It may do so indirectly, by disclosing facts that arouse motivational impulses. And it fulfills an indispensable function in discerning meansend relations by which our objectives may be attained. But none of those objectives is set by reason. All are set by the passions  the desiderative and aversive impulses aroused in us by what our cognitive faculties apprehend. It does not follow from this alone that ethical motivation reduces to mere desire and aversion, based on the pleasure and pain different courses of action might afford. There might yet be a specifically ethical passion, or it might be that independently based moral injunctions have in themselves a special capacity to provoke ordinary desire and aversion. Nevertheless, instrumentalism is often associated with the view that pleasure and pain, happiness and unhappiness, are the sole objects of value and disvalue, and hence the only possible motivators of conduct. Hence, it is claimed, moral injunctions must be grounded in these motives, and practical reason is of interest only as subordinated to inclination. The alternative to instrumentalism is the view championed by Kant, that practical reason is an autonomous source of normative principles, capable of motivating behavior independently of ordinary desire and aversion. On this view it is the passions that lack intrinsic moral import, and the function of practical reason is to limit their motivational role by formulating normative principles binding for all rational agents and founded in the operation of practical reason itself. Theories of this kind usually view moral principles as grounded in consistency, and an impartial respect for the autonomy of all rational agents. To be morally acceptable, principles of conduct must be universalizable, so that all rational agents could behave in the same way without their conduct either destroying itself or being inconsistently motivated. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these views. Instrumentalism offers a simpler account of both the function of practical reason and the sources of human motivation. But it introduces a strong subjective element by giving primacy to desire, thereby posing a problem of how moral principles can be universally binding. The Kantian approach offers more promise here, since it makes universalizability essential to any type of behavior being moral. But it is more complex, and the claim that the deliverances of practical reason carry intrinsic motivational force is open to challenge.   practical reasoning, the inferential process by which considerations for or against envisioned courses of action are brought to bear on the formation and execution of intention. The content of a piece of practical reasoning is a practical argument. Practical arguments can be complex, but they are often summarized in syllogistic form. Important issues concerning practical reasoning include how it relates to theoretical reasoning, whether it is a causal process, and how it can be evaluated. Theories of practical reasoning tend to divide into two basic categories. On one sort of view, the intrinsic features of practical reasoning exhibit little or no difference from those of theoretical reasoning. What makes practical reasoning practical is its subject matter and motivation. Hence the following could be a bona fide practical syllogism: Exercise would be good for me. Jogging is exercise. Therefore, jogging would be good for me. This argument has practical subject matter, and if made with a view toward intention formation it would be practical in motivation also. But it consists entirely of propositions, which are appropriate contents for belief-states. In principle, therefore, an agent could accept its conclusion without intending or even desiring to jog. Intention formation requires a further step. But if the content of an intention cannot be a proposition, that step could not count in itself as practical reasoning unless such reasoning can employ the contents of strictly practical mental states. Hence many philosophers call for practical syllogisms such as: Would that I exercise. Jogging is exercise. Therefore, I shall go jogging. Here the first premise is optative and understood to represent the content of a desire, and the conclusion is the content of a decision or act of intention formation. These contents are not true or false, and so are not propositions. Theories that restrict the contents of practical reasoning to propositions have the advantage that they allow such reasoning to be evaluated in terms of familiar logical principles. Those that permit the inclusion of optative content entail a need for more complex modes of evaluation. However, they bring more of the process of intention formation under the aegis of reason; also, they can be extended to cover the execution of intentions, in terms of syllogisms that terminate in volition. Both accounts must deal with cases of self-deception, in which the considerations an agent cites to justify a decision are not those from which it sprang, and cases of akrasia, where the agent views one course of action as superior, yet carries out another. Because mental content is always abstract, it cannot in itself be a nomic cause of behavior. But the states and events to which it belongs  desires, beliefs, etc.  can count as causes, and are so treated in deterministic explanations of action. Opponents of determinism reject this step, and seek to explain action solely through the teleological or justifying force carried by mental content. Practical syllogisms often summarize very complex thought processes, in which multiple options are considered, each with its own positive and negative aspects. Some philosophers hold that when successfully concluded, this process issues in a judgment of what action would be best all things considered  i.e., in light of all relevant considerations. Practical reasoning can be evaluated in numerous ways. Some concern the reasoning process itself: whether it is timely and duly considers the relevant alternatives, as well as whether it is well structured logically. Other concerns have to do with the products of practical reasoning. Decisions may be deemed irrational if they result in incompatible intentions, or conflict with the agent’s beliefs regarding what is possible. They may also be criticized if they conflict with the agent’s best interests. Finally, an agent’s intentions can fail to accord with standards of morality. The relationship among these ways of evaluating intentions is important to the foundations of ethics. 

Praedicatum –praedicabile: As in qualia being the plural of quale and universalia being the plural of universale, predicabilia is Boethius’s plural for the ‘predicabile’ -- something Grice knew by heart from giving seminars at Oxfrod on Aristotle’s categories with Austin and Strawson. He found the topic boring enough to give the seminar ALONE! prædicatum: vide Is there a praedicatum in Blackburn’s one-off predicament. He draws a skull and communicates that there is danger. The drawsing of the skull is not syntactically structured. So it is difficult to isolate the ‘praedicatum.’ That’s why Grice leaves matters of the praedicatum’ to reductive analyses at a second stage of his programme, where one wants to apply, metabolically, ‘communicate’ to what an emissum does. The emissum of the form, The S is P, predicates P of S.  Vide subjectification, and subjectum. Of especial interest to Grice and Strawson. Lewis and Short have “praedīco,” which they render as “to say or mention before or beforehand, to premise.” Grice as a modista is interested in parts of speech: nomen (onoma) versus verbum (rhema) being the classical, since Plato. The mediaeval modistae like Alcuin adapted Aristotle, and Grice follows suit. Of particular relevance are the ‘syncategoremata,’ since Grice was obsessed with particles, and we cannot say that ‘and’ is a predicate! This relates to the ‘categorema.’ Liddell and Scott have “κατηγόρ-ημα,” which they render as “accusation, charge,” Gorg.Pal.22; but in philosophy, as “predicate,” as per Arist.Int.20b32, Metaph.1053b19, etc.; -- “οὐκ εὔοδον τὸ ἁπλοῖν ἐστι κ.” Epicur.Fr.18. – and as “head of predicables,” in Arist.Metaph.1028a33,Ph.201a1,  Zeno Stoic.1.25, etc.; περὶ κατηγορημάτων Sphaer.ib.140. The term syncategorema comes from a passage of Priscian in his Institutiones grammatice II , 15. “coniunctae plenam faciunt orationem, alias autem partes, κατηγορήματα, hoc est consignificantia, appellabant.” A distinction is made between two types of word classes ("partes orationis," singular, "pars orationis") distinguished by philosophers since Plato, viz. nouns (nomen, onoma) and verbs (verbum, rhema) on the one hand, and a  'syncategorema or consignificantium. A consignificantium, just as the unary functor "non," and any of the three dyadic functors, "et," "vel" (or "aut") and "si," does not have a definitive meaning on its own -- cf. praepositio, cited by Grice, -- "the meaning of 'to,' the meaning of 'of,'" -- rather, they acquire meaning in combination or when con-joined to one or more categorema. It is one thing to say that we employ a certain part of speech when certain conditions are fulfilled and quite another to claim that the role in the language of that part of speech is to say, even in an extended sense, that those conditions are fulfilled. In Logic, the verb 'kategoreo' is 'predicate of a person or thing,' “τί τινος” Arist.Cat.3a19,al., Epicur.Fr.250; κυρίως, καταχρηστικῶς κ., Phld.Po.5.15; “ἐναντίως ὑπὲρ τῶν αὐτῶν” Id.Oec.p.60 J.: —more freq. in Pass., to be predicated of . . , τινος Arist.Cat.2a21, APr. 26b9, al.; “κατά τινος” Id.Cat.2a37; “κατὰ παντὸς ἢ μηδενός” Id.APr.24a15: less freq. “ἐπί τινος” Id.Metaph.998b16, 999a15; so later “ἐφ᾽ ἑνὸς οἴονται θεοῦ ἑκάτερον τῶν ὀνομάτων -εῖσθαι” D.H.2.48; “περί τινος” Arist. Top.140b37; “τὸ κοινῇ -ούμενον ἐπὶ πᾶσιν” Id.SE179a8: abs., τὸ κατηγορούμενον the predicate, opp. τὸ ὑποκείμενον (the subject), Id.Cat.1b11, cf.Metaph.1043a6, al.; κατηγορεῖν καὶ -εῖσθαι to be subject and predicate, Id.APr.47b1. BANC.  Praedicatum -- praedicamenta singular: praedicamentum, in medieval philosophy, the ten Aristotelian categories: substance, quantity, quality, relation, where, when, position i.e., orientation  e.g., “upright”, having, action, and passivity. These were the ten most general of all genera. All of them except substance were regarded as accidental. It was disputed whether this tenfold classification was intended as a linguistic division among categorematic terms or as an ontological division among extralinguistic realities. Some authors held that the division was primarily linguistic, and that extralinguistic realities were divided according to some but not all the praedicamenta. Most authors held that everything in any way real belonged to one praedicamentum or another, although some made an exception for God. But authors who believed in complexe significabile usually regarded them as not belonging to any praedicamentum.  Praedicabile, also praedicabilia, sometimes called the quinque voces five words, in medieval philosophy, genus, species, difference, proprium, and accident, the five main ways general predicates can be predicated. The list comes from Porphyry’s Isagoge. It was debated whether it applies to linguistic predicates only or also to extralinguistic universals. Things that have accidents can exist without them; other predicables belong necessarily to whatever has them. The Aristotelian/Porphyrian notion of “inseparable accident” blurs this picture. Genus and species are natural kinds; other predicables are not. A natural kind that is not a narrowest natural kind is a genus; one that is not a broadest natural kind is a species. Some genera are also species. A proprium is not a species, but is coextensive with one. A difference belongs necessarily to whatever has it, but is neither a natural kind nor coextensive with one. 

praxis from Grecian prasso, ‘doing’, ‘acting’, in Aristotle, the sphere of thought and action that comprises the ethical and political life of man, contrasted with the theoretical designs of logic and epistemology theoria. It was thus that ‘praxis’ acquired its general definition of ‘practice’ through a contrastive comparison with ‘theory’. Throughout the history of Western philosophy the concept of praxis found a place in a variety of philosophical vocabularies. Marx and the neoMarxists linked the concept with a production paradigm in the interests of historical explanation. Within such a scheme of things the activities constituting the relations of production and exchange are seen as the dominant features of the socioeconomic history of humankind. Significations of ‘praxis’ are also discernible in the root meaning of pragma deed, affair, which informed the development of  pragmatism. In more recent times the notion of praxis has played a prominent role in the formation of the school of critical theory, in which the performatives of praxis are seen to be more directly associated with the entwined phenomena of discourse, communication, and social practices. The central philosophical issues addressed in the current literature on praxis have to do with the theorypractice relationship and the problems associated with a value-free science. The general thrust is that of undermining or subverting the traditional bifurcation of theory and practice via a recognition of praxis-oriented endeavors that antedate both theory construction and the construal of practice as a mere application of theory. Both the project of “pure theory,” which makes claims for a value-neutral standpoint, and the purely instrumentalist understanding of practice, as itself shorn of discernment and insight, are jettisoned. The consequent philosophical task becomes that of understanding human thought and action against the backdrop of the everyday communicative endeavors, habits, and skills, and social practices that make up our inheritance in the world.  Praxis school, a school of philosophy originating in Zagreb and Belgrade which, from 4 to 4, published the international edition of the leading postwar Marxist journal Praxis. During the same period, it organized the Korcula Summer School, which attracted scholars from around the Western world. In a reduced form the school continues each spring with the Social Philosophy Course in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The founders of praxis philosophy include Gajo Petrovic Zagreb, Milan Kangrga Zagreb, and Mihailo Markovic Belgrade. Another wellknown member of the group is Svetozar Stojanovic Belgrade, and a second-generation leader is Gvozden Flego Zagreb. The Praxis school emphasized the writings of the young Marx while subjecting dogmatic Marxism to one of its strongest criticisms. Distinguishing between Marx’s and Engels’s writings and emphasizing alienation and a dynamic concept of the human being, it contributed to a greater understanding of the interrelationship between the individual and society. Through its insistence on Marx’s call for a “ruthless critique,” the school stressed open inquiry and freedom of speech in both East and West. Quite possibly the most important and original philosopher of the group, and certainly Croatia’s leading twentieth-century philosopher, was Gajo Petrovic 793. He called for 1 understanding philosophy as a radical critique of all existing things, and 2 understanding human beings as beings of praxis and creativity. This later led to a view of human beings as revolutionary by nature. At present he is probably best remembered for his Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century and Philosophie und Revolution. Milan Kangrga b.3 also emphasizes human creativity while insisting that one should understand human beings as producers who humanize nature. An ethical problematic of humanity can pragmatism, ethical Praxis school 731    731 be realized through a variety of disciplines that include aesthetics, philosophical anthropolgy, theory of knowledge, ontology, and social thought. Mihailo Markovic b.3, a member of the Belgrade Eight, is best known for his theory of meaning, which leads him to a theory of socialist humanism. His most widely read work in the West is From Affluence to Praxis: Philosophy and Social Criticism.  pragmatic contradiction, a contradiction that is generated by pragmatic rather than logical implication. A logically implies B if it is impossible for B to be false if A is true, whereas A pragmatically implies B if in most but not necessarily all contexts, saying ‘A’ can reasonably be taken as indicating that B is true. Thus, if I say, “It’s raining,” what I say does not logically imply that I believe that it is raining, since it is possible for it to be raining without my believing it is. Nor does my saying that it is raining logically imply that I believe that it is, since it is possible for me to say this without believing it. But my saying this does pragmatically imply that I believe that it is raining, since normally my saying this can reasonably be taken to indicate that I believe it. Accordingly, if I were to say, “It’s raining but I don’t believe that it’s raining,” the result would be a pragmatic contradiction. The first part “It’s raining” does not logically imply the negation of the second part “I don’t believe that it’s raining” but my saying the first part does pragmatically imply the negation of the second part. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preve: important Italian philosopher. He is the tutor of Diego Fusaro, of Torino.  Costanzo Preve Da Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera. Jump to navigationJump to search «Il comunitarismo è la via maestra che conduce all'universalismo, inteso come campo di confronto fra comunità unite dai caratteri del genere umano, della socialità e della razionalità.»  (da Elogio del Comunitarismo)  Costanzo Preve Costanzo Preve (Valenza, 14 aprile 1943 – Torino, 23 novembre 2013) è stato un filosofo, saggista, insegnante e politologo italiano.  Di ispirazione marxiana[1] ed hegeliana, Preve ha scritto numerosi volumi e saggi di argomento filosofico, pubblicati in Italia e all'estero.   Indice 1Biografia 2Pensiero 2.1Interpretazione della storia della filosofia 2.2Analisi filosofica del capitalismo 2.2.1 Politicamente corretto 2.3 Comunismo comunitario 3Attività politica 4Opere 5Note 6Bibliografia 7Voci correlate 8Altri progetti 9Collegamenti esterni Biografia Il padre, che al momento della nascita di Costanzo è mobilitato, lavora come funzionario delle Ferrovie dello Stato mentre la madre, casalinga, proviene da una famiglia ortodossa di origine armena. Viene cresciuto dalla nonna materna in lingua francese, e attraverso di lei inizia a conoscere la cultura e la lingua greca; come vedremo, entrambe queste circostanze avranno un grande rilievo nella vita di Preve. Personalmente non è credente, pur riconoscendo l'importanza del fenomeno religioso.[2] Studia a Torino, dove conseguirà la maturità classica nel 1962; durante i mesi estivi lavora in campagna nel Regno Unito. Dietro pressioni del padre, nel 1962 si iscrive alla facoltà di giurisprudenza dell'Università di Torino. Verificando il suo totale disinteresse per gli studi giuridici, nel 1963 decide di passare alla facoltà di Scienze politiche, che però non frequenterà mai; nel giugno 1967 ne conseguirà ugualmente la laurea, discutendo con il professor Alessandro Galante Garrone una tesi sui "Temi delle elezioni politiche italiane del 18 aprile 1948".  Sempre nel 1963 vince per concorso una borsa di studio all'Università di Parigi, dove si reca con il proposito di condurre studi filosofici; qui seguirà i corsi su Hegel tenuti da Jean Hyppolite, frequenterà i seminari di Louis Althusser e Jean-Paul Sartre, e sotto la guida di Roger Garaudy e di Gilbert Mury, si avvicinerà a Karl Marx. A Parigi segue soprattutto corsi di filosofia greca classica e di germanistica, e nel 1964 grazie ad una borsa di studio si reca per un semestre invernale alla Freie Universität di Berlino. Nel 1965 passa dal dipartimento di germanistica a quello di neoellenistica, e vince una borsa di studio per recarsi ad Atene; all'Università di Atene studia greco classico con Panagis Lekatsas e storia contemporanea con Nikos Psyroukhis, che esercitano su di lui un grande ascendente. Qui prepara una tesi di laurea in greco moderno sul tema: "L'illuminismo greco e le sue tendenze radicali e rivoluzionarie. Etnogenesi della nazione greca moderna fra Settecento e Ottocento. Il problema della discontinuità con la grecità classica e con la grecità bizantina”. Poliglotta dagli anni dell'università, e fermo sostenitore della lettura dei testi filosofici nella lingua originale, egli apprenderà inglese, portoghese, francese, tedesco, spagnolo, russo, greco antico e moderno, arabo, ebraico, e latino.  Nel 1967 ritorna a Torino e si sposa l'anno seguente; nello stesso 1968 consegue per concorso l'abilitazione all'insegnamento liceale di lingua e letteratura francese e di storia della filosofia mentre nel 1970 vince il concorso nazionale di ordinariato per l'insegnamento della filosofia e della storia nei licei. Insegnante dal 1967 fino alla pensione del 2002, per due anni (1967-69) insegna francese e inglese, mentre per trentatré anni (1969-2002) è docente di storia e filosofia al V Liceo Scientifico di Torino (oggi Liceo Alessandro Volta). Trascorre gli anni che vanno dal 1967 al 1978 in un'intensa attività politica, aderendo dal 1973 al 1975 al PCI per poi militare in vari gruppi della sinistra extraparlamentare; in questi anni, l'attività filosofica di Preve è incentrata nel tentativo di conciliare esistenzialmente il comunismo, il marxismo e la filosofia.  Nel 1978 Gianfranco La Grassa, Maria Turchetto ed Augusto Illuminati lo invitano a varie collaborazioni; con essi fonderà nel 1982 il CSMS (Centro Studi di Materialismo Storico) di Milano, del quale redigerà inoltre il manifesto programmatico. In questo contesto, e per finanziamento di questo centro, esce il suo primo volume indipendente (cfr. La filosofia imperfetta, Franco Angeli, Milano 1984). Questo testo testimonia la sua adesione di massima alla proposta filosofica dell'Ontologia dell'essere sociale dell'ultimo Lukács[3], ed anche, indirettamente, il suo distacco definitivo dalla scuola di Louis Althusser. Insieme con Franco Volpi, Maria Turchetto, Augusto Illuminati, Fabio Cioffi, Amedeo Vigorelli, ed altri fonda nel 1980 a Milano la rivista di dibattito “Metamorfosi”, che pubblicherà sedici numeri di tipo monografico per tutti gli anni ottanta.  In quasi tutti i fascicoli vi sono suoi contributi, che spaziano da un esame dell'operaismo italiano da Panzieri a Tronti e Negri, all'analisi del marxismo dissidente nei paesi socialisti, alla discussione sulla filosofia di Lukács, alla critica delle ideologie del progresso storico, all'indagine sullo statuto filosofico della critica marxiana dell'economia politica. Nel 1983 contribuisce ad organizzare, insieme con Emilio Agazzi, un congresso internazionale dedicato al centenario della morte di Marx (Milano, dicembre 1983), e vi svolge una relazione sulle categorie modali di necessità e di possibilità in Marx. Da quest'esperienza nasce una rivista chiamata “Marx 101”, che uscirà nei due decenni successivi in due serie di numeri monografici e di cui Preve sarà membro del comitato di redazione. Per tutti gli anni ottanta collabora al mensile teorico “Democrazia Proletaria”, organo dell'omonimo partito (1976-1991)[4], che poi diverrà insieme con i fuoriusciti dal PCI la seconda componente politica e militante del PRC (Partito della Rifondazione Comunista).  Sarà iscritto a DP soltanto per un breve periodo (1988-1991), facendo parte della direzione nazionale; nella battaglia politica fra i sostenitori di una scelta ecologista (Mario Capanna) e neocomunista, Preve sostiene la seconda con una serie di articoli. Nel 1991, quando le componenti di Democrazia Proletaria e dell'Associazione Culturale Marxista confluiscono nel Partito della Rifondazione Comunista, Preve abbandona la militanza politica diretta. Fra il 1989 ed il 1994, con la pubblicazione di otto volumi consecutivi usciti presso l'editore Vangelista di Milano, Preve affronta il suo “ultimo tentativo personale di coerentizzazione di un paradigma filosofico marxista globale”. A partire dalla seconda metà degli anni novanta si verifica infatti una discontinuità nella sua produzione; Preve opta per l'abbandono di ogni “ismo” di riferimento, uscendo del tutto “dalla cosiddetta Sinistra” e dalle sue procedure di “accoglimento e cooptazione”.  Ritenendo che la globalizzazione nata dall'implosione dell'Unione Sovietica non si lasci più “interrogare” attraverso le categorie di Destra e di Sinistra, ma richieda altre categorie interpretative, Preve diviene inoltre un convinto sostenitore della necessità di superare la dicotomia sinistra-destra[5]. Questa posizione, condivisa da alcuni intellettuali e movimenti internazionali, è stata criticata da molti, tra cui lo scrittore Valerio Evangelisti, che ne ha sottolineato l'ambiguità ideologica[6].  Autore e saggista molto prolifico, ha dedicato le sue ultime riflessioni a temi come il comunitarismo[7], la geopolitica[8], l'universalismo[9], la questione nazionale[10], oltre ovviamente ad un'ininterrotta attenzione al rapporto marxismo-filosofia.[11] Muore a Torino il 23 novembre 2013[12][13][14][15] per un male incurabile[16]; il Consiglio Comunale di Torino lo ha omaggiato sottolineando il ruolo di Preve e l'importante stimolo al dibattito culturale e politico da lui sviluppato, rilevante per la crescita politica collettiva in Italia[17]. Pensiero La sua riflessione può essere distinta in due periodi successivi. Nel primo periodo (1975-1991 circa), ha cercato di opporsi alla deriva post-moderna seguita dalla stragrande maggioranza della sinistra italiana (in particolare dagli intellettuali legati al PCI) con un recupero dei punti alti della tradizione marxista indipendente, del tutto estranea alle incorporazioni burocratiche del marxismo come ideologia di legittimazione di partiti e di stati (soprattutto l'ultimo Lukács, l'ultimo Althusser, Ernst Bloch, Adorno). In un secondo periodo, dopo la fine del socialismo reale (che Preve chiama comunismo storico novecentesco 1917-1991), ed in dissenso con tutti i tentativi di sua continuazione/rifondazione puramente politico-organizzativa, ha invece lavorato su di una generale rifondazione antropologica del comunismo, marcando sempre più la discontinuità teorica e politica con i conglomerati identitari della sinistra italiana[18] (Rifondazione Comunista in primis, ma anche la scuola operaista e Toni Negri in particolar modo).  Durante gli anni novanta i suoi interventi sono apparsi sia su riviste legate alla sinistra alternativa (L'Ernesto, Bandiera Rossa) che su riviste come Indipendenza e Koiné, dove Preve ha sostenuto l'esplicito superamento del dualismo Destra/Sinistra[19], approdando a posizioni antitetiche a quelle del filosofo Norberto Bobbio (con cui ebbe uno stretto rapporto per più di vent'anni). Nei primi anni del nuovo millennio ha collaborato con la rivista Comunitarismo, prima, e Comunità e Resistenza, poi. È stato fino alla morte redattore del quadrimestrale Comunismo e Comunità[20]. Al di là delle prese di posizione sulla congiuntura politica, tre cardini del pensiero di Costanzo Preve sono l'interpretazione della storia della filosofia, l'analisi filosofica del capitalismo e la proposta politica per un comunismo comunitario universalistico.  Interpretazione della storia della filosofia Rileggendo l'intera storia della filosofia soprattutto occidentale, Preve utilizza una deduzione sociale delle categorie del pensiero non riduzionistica, che gli permette di discernere la genesi particolare delle idee dalla loro validità universale. Infatti quello di Preve è un orizzonte aperto universalisticamente alla verità, intesa hegelianamente come processo di autocoscienza storica e sintesi di ontologia e assiologia, dell'esperienza umana nella storia. Nella sua proposta di ontologia dell'essere sociale riconosce razionalmente la natura solidale e comunitaria dell'anima umana e l'autonomia conoscitiva della filosofia, contrastando ogni forma di riduzionismo nichilistico, relativistico o partigianamente ideologico. Preve viene definito «strenuo difensore dello statuto veritativo della filosofia da una parte, e [...] deciso oppositore di ogni fraintendimento relativistico dall’altra»[21].  Analisi filosofica del capitalismo Preve intende il capitalismo come totalità economica, politica e culturale da indagare in tutte le sue dimensioni. Propone di suddividerlo filosoficamente e idealisticamente in tre fasi: astratta (XVII-XVIII secolo); dialettica (dal 1789 al 1991) con una protoborghesia illuministica o romantica, una medioborghesia dal 1848 positivistica e poi dal 1914 esistenzialistica, e una tardoborghesia dal 1968 al 1990 sempre più individualistica e libertaria; speculativa (post-borghese e post-proletaria, dal 1991 in poi) in cui il capitale si concretizza come assoluto, espandendosi al di là delle dicotomie precedenti a destra economicamente, al centro politicamente e a sinistra culturalmente.  Politicamente corretto Nell'analisi filosofica del capitalismo, più volte insiste sulla critica al politicamente corretto, dove riprende alcuni dei suoi temi già trattati; il concetto consterebbe dei seguenti punti nella concezione previana (dove è considerato un'arma del capitalismo per attrarre fasce deboli a sé, nonché un'ideologia di fondo dell'occidente imperialista)[22]:  americanismo come collocazione presupposta, anche sotto forma di benevola critica al governo statunitense; "religione olocaustica": Preve non aderisce al negazionismo dell'Olocausto e condanna i genocidi, ma considera la shoah un fatto non "unico", utilizzato dal sionismo per legittimare le azioni di Israele tramite il senso di colpa dell'Europa: «Auschwitz non può e non deve essere dimenticato, perché la memoria dei morti innocenti deve essere riscattata, e questo mondo nella sua interezza appartiene a tre tipi di esseri umani: coloro che sono già vissuti, coloro che sono tuttora in vita, e coloro che devono ancora nascere. Ma Auschwitz non deve diventare un simbolo di legittimazione del sionismo, che agita l'accusa di antisemitismo in tutti coloro che non lo accettano radicalmente, e che non sono disposti a derubricare a semplici errori i suoi veri e propri crimini[23]»  "teologia dei diritti umani", che Preve considera (come altri filosofi marxisti come Slavoj Žižek o Domenico Losurdo, o comunitaristi come Alain de Benoist) solo un grimaldello e un paravento del capitalismo per imporsi ed eliminare, in realtà, i diritti dei popoli e dei lavoratori, attuando il liberismo e l'imperialismo globali; antifascismo in assenza completa di fascismo: l'antifascismo, positivo un tempo, è considerato un fenomeno dannoso e a favore del sistema capitalistico, visto che il fascismo (da lui deprecato soprattutto per la colonizzazione imperialistica dell'Africa e la "mascalzonaggine imperdonabile" dell'invasione della Grecia) è stato ormai sconfitto, volto a creare tensioni tra le diverse forze anti-sistema, e a fungere da nuova ideologia della sinistra postcomunista e post-stalinista (dopo il graduale abbandono del marxismo-leninismo avvenuto secondo Preve a partire dal 1956 per gli effetti della destalinizzazione), che diviene così inutile; falsa dicotomia Sinistra/Destra come "protesi di manipolazione politologica": derivata dal precedente, questa teoria punterebbe a indebolire le critiche anticapitalistiche, impedendo l'unione tra comunisti, comunitaristi e socialisti nazionalitari contro il capitale. Al contempo, anche per le nette e costanti affermazioni contro i tribalismi, i razzismi e i nazionalismi soprattutto coloniali, è da ritenersi estranea al cosiddetto "rossobrunismo" (un termine coniato all'inizio per descrivere i cosiddetti nazionalboscevichi) di cui fu tacciato dal citato Valerio Evangelisti[6], che a suo dire si configurerebbe come una folle somma dei difetti degli estremismi opposti: «L'unione di sostenitori rasati del razzismo biologico con sostenitori barbuti della dittatura del proletariato sarebbe certamente un buon copione di pornografia hard, ma non potrebbe uscire dal piccolo circuito a luci rosse del sottobosco politico.[24]» nismo comunitario La proposta politica di Costanzo Preve va nella direzione di un comunismo comunitario universalistico, da intendersi come correzione democratica e umanistica del comunismo, dal momento che quello storico novecentesco sarebbe stato reo di non aver messo in comune innanzitutto la verità. Quello tratteggiato da Preve è un sistema sociale che costituisce una sintesi di individui liberati e comunità solidali. Non è inteso come inevitabile sbocco storicistico o positivistico di una storia che si svilupperebbe linearmente, né tuttavia in modo aleatorio in senso althusseriano, bensì aristotelicamente in potenza, a partire dalla resistenza alla dissoluzione comunitaria innescata dall'accumulazione individuale di merci. Qui il problema dell'auspicabile democrazia viene impostato su basi antropologiche, scommettendo sulle potenzialità ontologiche della bontà dell'anima umana, potenzialmente politico-comunitaria (zόon politikόn); razionale e valutativa della giusta misura sociale (zόon lόgon échon) e generica, in senso marxiano (Gattungswesen), cioè in grado di costruire diversi modelli di convivenza sociale, compreso quello in cui l'uomo, affermando la priorità etica e comunitaria per contenere i processi economici altrimenti dispiegantisi in modo illimitato e disumano, può realizzare le sue potenzialità ontologiche immanenti, attualmente alienate. La liberazione dell'individuo avverrebbe quindi a partire dal suo radicamento comunitario in cui agisce collettivamente, pur rimanendo l'individuo stesso l'unità minima di resistenza al potere.  Attività politica In gioventù aderì al PCI dal 1973 al 1975, ma presto si allontanò (essendo ostile al compromesso storico tra PCI e DC, promosso da Berlinguer e Moro), entrando poi a far parte della Commissione culturale di Lotta Continua. In seguito si iscrisse a Democrazia Proletaria durante la sua ultima fase (1988-1991)[25] Dopo lo scioglimento di DP, e in seguito alla confluenza di quest'ultima in Rifondazione Comunista, si è sempre più allontanato dall'attività politica in senso stretto[26]. In seguito manifestò critiche verso l'operaismo e il trotskismo che animavano talvolta queste esperienze della post-sinistra extraparlamentare.  Se dal punto di vista teorico si era già distanziato dalla sinistra italiana a seguito della dissoluzione dell'Unione Sovietica e della svolta della Bolognina (1989), il distacco emotivo definitivo dalla "sinistra" avvenne con il bombardamento NATO in Jugoslavia del marzo 1999 durante la guerra del Kosovo, che ricevette il beneplacito del governo italiano guidato da Massimo D'Alema; Preve ha considerato questo fatto come la fine della legalità costituzionale italiana riferendosi alla violazione dell'articolo 11 e un atto di tradimento verso i valori fondanti della Repubblica Italiana.[27] Sul tema scrisse Il bombardamento etico. Saggio sull'interventismo umanitario, l'embargo terapeutico e la menzogna evidente (2000).  Molto clamore ha suscitato (anche tra le file della sinistra alternativa) la sua adesione ad alcune tesi del Campo Antimperialista, nel 2003, per l'esplicito sostegno da questi fornito alla resistenza irachena[28]. È stato uno dei filosofi di riferimento del comunismo comunitario, nonché animatore della rivista Comunismo e Comunità.  Opere La classe operaia non va in paradiso: dal marxismo occidentale all'operaismo italiano, in Alla ricerca della produzione perduta, Bari, Dedalo, 1982. ISBN 978-88-220-0179-5. Cosa possiamo chiedere al marxismo. Sull'identità filosofica del materialismo storico, in Marxismo in mare aperto. Rilevazioni, ipotesi, prospettive, Milano, Angeli, 1983. ISBN 978-88-204-3981-1 La filosofia imperfetta. Una proposta di ricostruzione del marxismo contemporaneo, Milano, Angeli, 1984. La teoria in pezzi. La dissoluzione del paradigma teorico operaista in Italia (1976-1983), Bari, Dedalo, 1984. ISBN 88-220-3805-3. La ricostruzione del marxismo fra filosofia e scienza, in La cognizione della crisi. Saggi sul marxismo di Louis Althusser, Milano, Angeli, 1986. Vers une nouvelle alliance. Actualité et possibilités de développement de l'effort ontologique de Bloch et de Lukàcs, in Ernst Bloch et György Lukács. Un siècle après). 1986, Actes Sud [tradotto in tedesco con il titolo Verdinglichung und Utopie. 1987, Sendler]. La rivoluzione teorica di Louis Althusser, in Il marxismo di Louis Althusser, Pisa, Vallerini, 1987. Viewing Lukàcs from the 1980s. The University of Chicago Press, 1987. La passione durevole, Milano, Vangelista, 1989. La musa di Clio vestita di rosso, in Trasformazione e persistenza. Saggi sulla storicità del capitalismo, Milano, Angeli, 1990. ISBN 978-88-204-3658-2. Il filo di Arianna. Quindici lezioni di filosofia marxista, Milano, Vangelista, 1990. Il marxismo ed il problema teorico dell'eguaglianza oggi, in Egalitè-inegalitè. Atti del Convegno organizzato dall'Istituto italiano per gli studi filosofici e dalla Biblioteca comunale di Cattolica. Cattolica, 13-15 settembre 1989, Urbino, Quattro venti, 1990. Il convitato di pietra. Saggio su marxismo e nichilismo, Milano, Vangelista, 1991. L'assalto al cielo. Saggio su marxismo e individualismo, Milano, Vangelista, 1992. Il pianeta rosso. Saggio su marxismo e universalismo, Milano, Vangelista, 1992. Ideologia Italiana. Saggio sulla storia delle idee marxiste in Italia, Milano, Vangelista, 1993. The dream and the reality. The spiritual crisis of western Marxism, in Marxism and spirituality. An international anthology. Bengin and Gavey, 1993. Il tempo della ricerca. Saggio sul moderno, il postmoderno e la fine della storia, Milano, Vangelista, 1993. Louis Althusser. La lutte contre le sens commun dans le mouvement communiste "historique" au XX siècle, in Politique et philosophie dans l'œuvre de Louis Althusser). 1993, Presses Universitaires de France. L'eguale libertà. Saggio sulla natura umana, Milano, Vangelista, 1994. Oltre la gabbia d'acciaio. Saggio su capitalismo e filosofia, con Gianfranco La Grassa, Milano, Vangelista, 1994. Il teatro dell'assurdo (cronaca e storia dei recenti avvenimenti italiani). Una critica alla cultura dominante della sinistra nell'attuale scontro tra berlusconismo e progressismo, con Gianfranco La Grassa, Milano, Punto Rosso, 1995. Una teoria nuova per una diversa strategia politica. Premesse teoriche alla critica della cultura dominante della sinistra esposta nel Teatro dell'assurdo, con Gianfranco La Grassa, Milano, Punto Rosso, 1995. Il marxismo vissuto del Che, in Adys Cupull e Froìlan Gonzales, Càlida presencia. Lettere di Che Guevara a Tita Infante, 1952-1956, Milano, Punto Rosso, 1996. Un elogio della filosofia, Milano, Punto Rosso, 1996. Quale comunismo?, in Uomini usciti di pianto in ragione. Saggi su Franco Fortini, Roma, Manifestolibri, 1996. ISBN 88-7285-074-6. La fine di una teoria. Il collasso del marxismo storico del Novecento, con Gianfranco La Grassa, Milano, UNICOPLI, 1996. ISBN 88-400-0409-2. Il comunismo storico novecentesco (1917-1991). Un bilancio storico e teorico, Milano, Punto Rosso, 1997. Nichilismo Verità Storia. Un manifesto filosofico della fine del XX secolo, con Massimo Bontempelli, Pistoia, CRT, 1997. Gesù. Uomo nella storia, Dio nel pensiero, con Massimo Bontempelli, Pistoia, CRT, 1997. Il crepuscolo della profezia comunista. A 150 anni dal “Manifesto”, il futuro oltre la scienza e l'utopia, Pistoia, CRT, 1998. ISBN 88-87296-08-1. L'alba del Sessantotto. Una interpretazione filosofica, Pistoia, CRT, 1998. ISBN 88-87296-13-8. Marxismo, Filosofia, Verità, Pistoia, CRT, 1998. ISBN 88-87296-14-6. Destra e sinistra. La natura inservibile di due categorie tradizionali, Pistoia, CRT, 1998. ISBN 88-87296-24-3. La questione nazionale alle soglie del XXI secolo. Note introduttive ad un problema delicato e pieno di pregiudizi, Pistoia, CRT, 1998. ISBN 88-87296-23-5. Le stagioni del nichilismo. Un'analisi filosofica ed una prognosi storica, Pistoia, CRT, 1998. ISBN 88-87296-15-4. Individui liberati, comunità solidali. Sulla questione della società degli individui, Pistoia, CRT, 1998. ISBN 88-87296-16-2. Contro il capitalismo, oltre il comunismo. Riflessioni su di una eredità storica e su un futuro possibile, Pistoia, CRT, 1998. La fine dell'Urss. Dalla transizione mancata alla dissoluzione reale, Pistoia, CRT, 1999. ISBN 88-87296-35-9. Il ritorno del clero. La questione degli intellettuali oggi, Pistoia, CRT, 1999. ISBN 88-87296-34-0. Le avventure dell'ateismo. Religione e materialismo oggi, Pistoia, CRT, 1999. ISBN 88-87296-66-9. Un nuovo manifesto filosofico. Prospettive inedite e orizzonti convincenti per il pensiero, con Andrea Cavazzini, Pistoia, CRT, 1999. ISBN 88-87296-33-2. Hegel Marx Heidegger. Un percorso nella filosofia contemporanea, Pistoia, CRT, 1999. ISBN 88-87296-68-5. Scienza, politica, filosofia. Un'interpretazione filosofica del Novecento, Pistoia, CRT, 1999. ISBN 88-87296-67-7. I secoli difficili. Introduzione al pensiero filosofico dell'Ottocento e del Novecento, Pistoia, CRT, 1999. ISBN 88-87296-32-4. L'educazione filosofica. Memoria del passato, compito del presente, sfida del futuro, Pistoia, CRT, 2000. ISBN 88-87296-73-1. Il bombardamento etico. Saggio sull'interventismo umanitario, l'embargo terapeutico e la menzogna evidente, Pistoia, CRT, 2000. ISBN 88-87296-77-4. Marxismo e filosofia. Note, riflessioni e alcune novità, Pistoia, CRT, 2002. ISBN 88-88172-14-9. Un secolo di marxismo. Idee e ideologie, Pistoia, CRT, 2003. ISBN 88-88172-29-7. Un filosofo controvoglia. Introduzione a Günther Anders, L'uomo è antiquato, 2003, Bollati Boringhieri. Le contraddizioni di Norberto Bobbio. Per una critica del bobbianesimo cerimoniale, Pistoia, CRT, 2004. ISBN 88-88172-20-3. Marx inattuale. Eredità e prospettiva, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2004. ISBN 88-339-1511-5. Verità filosofica e critica sociale. Religione, filosofia, marxismo, Pistoia, CRT, 2004. ISBN 88-88172-22-X. Dove va la sinistra?, a cura di Stefano Boninsegni, Roma, Settimo Sigillo, 2004. Comunitarismo filosofia politica, Molfetta, Noctua, 2004. La filosofia classica tedesca, prefazione a Renato Pallavidini, Dialettica e prassi critica. Dall'idealismo al marxismo, Molfetta, Noctua, 2004. L'ideocrazia imperiale americana, Roma, Settimo Sigillo, 2004. ISBN 88-6148-135-3 Filosofia del presente. Un mondo alla rovescia da interpretare, Roma, Settimo Sigillo, 2004. ISBN 978-88-6148-141-1 Filosofia e geopolitica, Parma, All'insegna del Veltro, 2005. Del buon uso dell'universalismo. Elementi di filosofia politica per il XXI secolo, Roma, Settimo Sigillo, 2005. ISBN 88-6148-142-6 Dialoghi sul presente. Alienazione, globalizzazione destra/sinistra, atei devoti. Per un pensiero ribelle, con Alain de Benoist e Giuseppe Giaccio, Napoli, Controcorrente, 2005. ISBN 88-89015-58-6. Prefazione a Renato Pallavidini, La comunità ritrovata. Rousseau critico della modernità illuminista, Torino, Libreria Stampatori, 2005. ISBN 88-88057-61-7. Marx e gli antichi greci, con Luca Grecchi, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, 2005. ISBN 88-7588-088-3. Il popolo al potere. Il problema della democrazia nei suoi aspetti storici e filosofici, Casalecchio, Arianna Editrice, 2006. ISBN 88-87307-57-1. Verità e relativismo. Religione, scienza, filosofia e politica nell'epoca della globalizzazione, Torino, Alpina, 2006. ISBN 978-88-902470-3-3. Elogio del comunitarismo Napoli, Controcorrente, 2006. ISBN 88-89015-50-0. Il paradosso De Benoist. Un confronto politico e filosofico, Roma, Settimo Sigillo, 2006. ISBN 978-88-6148-008-7. Storia della dialettica, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, 2006. ISBN 88-7588-083-2. La democrazia in Grecia. Storia di un'idea, forza di un valore, in Presidiare la democrazia realizzare la Costituzione. Atti del seminario itinerante sulla difesa della Costituzione, 12-13-14 dicembre 2005, Bardonecchia, Susa, Bussoleno, Condove, Borgone Susa, Edizioni Melli-Quaderni Sarà Dura!, 2006. Storia critica del marxismo. Dalla nascita di Karl Marx alla dissoluzione del comunismo storico novecentesco, 1818-1991, Napoli, La città del sole, 2007. ISBN 978-88-8292-344-0. Postfazione a Luca Grecchi, Il presente della filosofia italiana, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, 2007. ISBN 88-7588-009-3. Storia dell'etica, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, 2007. ISBN 88-7588-011-5. Hegel antiutilitarista, Roma, Settimo Sigillo, 2007. ISBN 978-88-6148-017-9. Storia del materialismo, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, 2007. ISBN 88-7588-015-8. Una approssimazione al pensiero di Karl Marx. Tra materialismo e idealismo, Saonara, Il Prato, 2007. ISBN 978-88-89566-76-3. Ripensare Marx. Filosofia, Idealismo, Materialismo, Potenza, Ermes, 2007. ISBN 88-87687-61-7. Un trotzkismo capitalistico? Ipotesi sociologico-religiosa dei Neocons americani e dei loro seguaci europei, in Neocons. L'ideologia neoconservatrice e le sfide della storia, Rimini, Il Cerchio, 2007. ISBN 88-8474-150-5. Alla ricerca della speranza perduta. Un intellettuale di sinistra e un intellettuale di destra "non omologati" dialogano su ideologie e globalizzazione, con Luigi Tedeschi, Roma, Settimo Sigillo, 2008. ISBN 978-88-6148-033-9. La quarta guerra mondiale, Parma, All'insegna del Veltro, 2008. L'enigma dialettico del Sessantotto quarant'anni dopo, in La rivoluzione dietro di noi. Filosofia e politica prima e dopo il '68, Roma, Manifestolibri, 2008. ISBN 978-88-7285-549-2. Il marxismo e la tradizione culturale europea, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, 2009. ISBN 88-7588-024-7. Nuovi signori e nuovi sudditi. Ipotesi sulla struttura di classe del capitalismo contemporaneo, con Eugenio Orso, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, 2010. ISBN 88-7588-036-0. Logica della storia e comunismo novecentesco. L'effetto di sdoppiamento, con Roberto Sidoli, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, 2010. ISBN 88-7588-038-7. Elementi di Politicamente Corretto. Studio preliminare su di un fenomeno ideologico destinato a diventare in futuro sempre più invasivo e importante, Petite Plaisance, 2010 Filosofia della verità e della giustizia. Il pensiero di Karel Kosík, con Linda Cesana, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, 2012. ISBN 978-88-7588-062-0. Lettera sull'Umanesimo, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, 2012. ISBN 978-88-7588-066-8. Una nuova storia alternativa della filosofia. Il cammino ontologico-sociale della filosofia, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, 2013. ISBN 978-88-7588-108-5. Lineamenti per una nuova filosofia della storia. La passione dell'anticapitalismo, con Luigi Tedeschi, Saonara, Il Prato, 2013. ISBN 978-88-6336-184-1. Dialoghi sull'Europa e sul nuovo ordine mondiale, con Luigi Tedeschi, Saonara, Il Prato, 2015. ISBN 978-88-6336-238-1. Collisioni. Dialogo su scienza, religione e filosofia, con Andrea Bulgarelli, Pistoia, Petite plaisance, 2015, ISBN 978-88-7588-153-5. Karl Marx: un'interpretazione, NovaEuropa Edizioni, 2018, ISBN 978-88-8524-212-8. Note ^ Preve preferiva non definirsi marxista ma appartenente alla "scuola di Marx", e «allievo indipendente di Marx» (C. Preve, Elogio del comunitarismo, Controcorrente, Napoli, 2006, p. 10). ^ «Personalmente, non sono credente né praticante. Non credo in nessun Dio personale, considero ogni personalizzazione del divino una indebita e superstiziosa antropomorfizzazione, e sono pertanto in linea di massima d’accordo con Spinoza. Ma ritengo anche la religione, così come la scienza, l’arte e la filosofia, dati permanenti dell’antropologia umana in quanto tali destinati a durare tutto il tempo in cui durerà il genere umano.» (C. Preve, Elementi di politicamente corretto, 2010) ^ C.Preve: Convegno György Lukács e la cultura europea (II intervento) ^ Relazione VIII Congresso Nazionale di DP (terzultimo intervento) ^ Destra e Sinistra: confronto tra C.Preve e D.Losurdo  Carmilla: I rosso-bruni: vesti nuove per una vecchia storia ^ Democrazia comunitaria o democrazia proprietaria? (L.Tedeschi-C.Preve)Archiviato il 12 settembre 2007 in Internet Archive. ^ Considerazioni sulla geopolitica (di C.Preve) Archiviato il 25 settembre 2008 in Internet Archive.. ^ Intervista di Luigi Tedeschi a Costanzo Preve Archiviato il 2 marzo 2008 in Internet Archive. ^ Il bombardamento etico dieci anni dopo (recensione di G. Di Martino), 17 agosto 2009. ^ Fonte: A. Monchietto, Lucio Colletti - Costanzo Preve. Marxismo, Filosofia, Scienza. ^ Morto Costanzo Preve, l'“ultimo” filosofo marxista su la Repubblica - Torino ^ Addio al filosofo Costanzo Preve ^ In memoria di Costanzo Preve di Diego Fusaro ^ Un lutto veramente grande per noi di Gianfranco La Grassa ^ In morte di Costanzo Preve ^ La Sala Rossa ricorda la figura di Costanzo Preve e raccogliendosi in un minuto di silenzio Archiviato il 19 dicembre 2013 in Internet Archive. ^ C.Preve, Con Marx e oltre il marxismo (overleft.it) Archiviato il 9 febbraio 2010 in Internet Archive. ^ Copia archiviata (PDF), su files.splinder.com. URL consultato il 2 dicembre 2007 (archiviato dall'url originale il 20 agosto 2008). ^ Comunismo e Comunità » Laboratorio per una teoria anticapitalistica ^ Alessandro Volpe e Piotr Zygulski, Verità e filosofia, in Alessandro Monchietto e Giacomo Pezzano (a cura di), Invito allo Straniamento. I. Costanzo Preve filosofo, Pistoia, Petite Plaisance, 2014, ISBN 978-88-7588-111-5. ^ C. Preve, Elementi di politicamente corretto; ad es. «22. E qui concludiamo con una serie di previsioni artigianali. Ricordo al lettore che questo non è ancora un Trattato di Politicamente Corretto, che ho peraltro intenzione di scrivere, in cui i cinque punti principali indicati (americanismo come collocazione presupposta, religione olocaustica, teologia dei diritti umani, antifascismo in assenza completa di fascismo, dicotomia Sinistra/Destra come protesi di manipolazione politologica) verranno discussi in modo più analitico e preciso». ^ Da Intellettuali e cultura politica nell'Italia di fine secolo, Rivista Indipendenza n.° 3 (Nuova Serie), novembre 1997/Febbraio 1998. ^ Da Gli Usa, l’Occidente, la Destra, la Sinistra, il fascismo ed il comunismo. Problemi del profilo culturale di un movimento di resistenza all’Impero americano, Noctua Edizioni, 2003. ^ C.Preve: audio congressi DP (RadioRadicale.it) ^ Intervista politico-filosofica (G. Repaci - C. Preve) ^ «La costituzione italiana è stata distrutta per sempre nel 1999 con i bombardamenti sulla Jugoslavia, e da allora l’Italia è senza costituzione, e lo resterà finché i responsabili politici di allora non saranno condannati a morte per alto tradimento (parlo letteralmente pesando le parole), con eventuale benevola commutazione della condanna a morte a lavori forzati a vita. Eppure, questi crimini passano sotto silenzio, perché si continuano ad interpretare gli eventi di oggi in base ad una distinzione completamente finita nel 1945». (C. Preve, Elementi di politicamente corretto) ^ http://www.aginform.org/preve.html. Bibliografia Étienne Balibar, La filosofia di Marx, Manifestolibri, 1994 (p. 15) Norberto Bobbio, Né con Marx né contro Marx, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1997 (pp. 223–240) André Tosel, Devenir du marxisme: de la fin du marxisme-léninisme aux mille marxismes, France-Italie 1975-1995, in Dictionnaire Marx contemporain, Jacques Bidet-Eustache Kouvélakis (a cura di), PUF, Parigi 2001, (p. 72 sgg.) Cristina Corradi, Storia dei marxismi in Italia, Manifestolibri, Roma, 2005 (pp. 278–294) Alessandro Monchietto, Marxismo e filosofia in Costanzo Preve, Editrice Petite Plaisance, Pistoia, 2007[1]. Piotr Zygulski, Costanzo Preve: la passione durevole della filosofia, presentazione di Giacomo Pezzano, Pistoia, Editrice Petite Plaisance, 2012, ISBN 978-88-7588-068-2. Alessandro Monchietto e Giacomo Pezzano (a cura di), Invito allo Straniamento. I. Costanzo Preve filosofo, Pistoia, Petite Plaisance, 2014, ISBN 978-88-7588-111-5. Piotr Zygulski, Costanzo Preve e l'educazione filosofica (PDF), in Educazione Democratica, n. 7/2014, Foggia, Edizioni del Rosone, gennaio 2014, pp. 242-251, ISSN 2038-579X (WC · ACNP). URL consultato il 13 marzo 2018. Alessandro Monchietto (a cura di), Invito allo Straniamento. II. Costanzo Preve marxiano, Pistoia, Petite Plaisance, 2016, ISBN 978-88-7588-152-8. Massimo Bontempelli - Fabio Bentivoglio, Il senso dell'essere nelle culture occidentali, Milano, Trevisini, 1992. Vol III, pp. 516–522 Carlo Formenti, Il socialismo è morto. Viva il socialismo!, Meltemi, Milano 2019, pp. 86-90. Voci correlate Comunitarismo Domenico Losurdo Massimo Bontempelli (storico) Nazionalismo di sinistra Altri progetti Collabora a Wikiquote Wikiquote contiene citazioni di o su Costanzo Preve Collegamenti esterni Registrazioni di Costanzo Preve, su RadioRadicale.it, Radio Radicale. Modifica su Wikidata Breve sintesi del pensiero di C.Preve (filosofico.net), su filosofico.net. Raccolta di e-book scaricabili gratuitamente (tra cui alcuni di Costanzo Preve) offerti dalla casa editrice Petite Plaisance, su petiteplaisance.it. URL consultato l'8 novembre 2009 (archiviato dall'url originale il 25 febbraio 2010). Antologia di testi di C.Preve ('97-'03) Raccolta di articoli (AriannaEditrice.it), su ariannaeditrice.it. URL consultato il 26 marzo 2008 (archiviato dall'url originale il 24 maggio 2015). Controllo di autorità             VIAF (EN) 55019519 · ISNI (EN) 0000 0000 8384 0929 · SBN IT\ICCU\RAVV\007046 · Europeana agent/base/146045 · LCCN (EN) n84185734 · GND (DE) 132930765 · BNF (FR) cb12219894j (data) · WorldCat Identities (EN) lccn-n84185734 Biografie Portale Biografie Comunismo Portale Comunismo Filosofia Portale Filosofia ^ Il testo è disponibile solo in e-book, e lo si può scaricare gratuitamente al seguente link: http://www.petiteplaisance.it/ebooks/1031-1060/1032/sin_ebl_1032.html Categorie: Filosofi italiani del XX secoloFilosofi italiani del XXI secoloSaggisti italiani del XX secoloSaggisti italiani del XXI secoloInsegnanti italiani del XX secoloInsegnanti italiani del XXI secoloNati nel 1943Morti nel 2013Nati il 14 aprileMorti il 23 novembreNati a Valenza (Italia)Morti a TorinoMarxistiComunisti in ItaliaFilosofi della politicaStudenti dell'Università degli Studi di TorinoPolitologi italianiPersonalità dell'agnosticismoAntiglobalizzazionePolitici di Democrazia ProletariaMilitanti di Lotta Continua[altre]. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Preve," per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

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

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

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

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

Principle: a philosopher loves a principle. principium. Grice. Principle of conversational helpfulness. “I call it ‘principle,’ echoing Boethius.”Mention should also he made of Boethius’ conception, that there are certain principles, sentences which have no demonstration — probatio — which he calls principales propositiones or probationis principia. Here is the fragment from his Commentary on Topics treating of principles; El iliac quidem (propositiones) quarum nulla probatio est, maximae ac principales vocantur, quod his illas necesse est approbari, quae ut demonstrari valeant, non recusant/ est auteni maxima proposiiio ut liaec « si de aequalibus aequalia demas, quae derelinquitur aequalia sunt », ita enim hoc per se notion est, ut aliud notius quo approbari valeat esse non possit; quae proposi- tiones cum (idem sui natura propria gerant, non solum alieno ad (idem non egent argumento, oerum ceteris quoque probationis sclent esse principium; igitur per se notae propositiones, quibus nihil est notius, indemonstrabiles ac maxime et principales vocantur (“Indeed those sentences that have no demonstration are called maximum or principal [sentences], because they are not rejected since they are necessary to those that have to be demonstrated and which are valid for making a demonstration ; but a maximum sentence such as « if from equal [quantifies], equal [quantities] are taken, what is left are equal [quantities]*, is self- evident, and there is nothing which can be better known self-evidently valid, and self- demonstrating, therefore they are sentences containing their certitude in their very nature and not only do they need no additional argument to demonstrate their certitude, but are also the principles of demonstration of the other [sentences]; so they are, self-evident sen- tences, nothing being better known than they are, and are called undemonstrable or maxi- mum and principal”). Boethius’ idea coincides with Aristotle’s; deduction must start from somewhere, we must begin with something unproved. The Stagirite, how- ever, gave an explanation of the existence of principles and the possibility of their being grasjied by the active intellect, whereas with Boethius princi- ples appear as severed from the sentences demonstrated in a more formal manner: there are two kinds of sentences: some which are demonstrable and others which need no demonstration There’s the principle of economy of rational effort: (principium oeconomiae effortis rationalis). Cf. his metaphor of the hamburger. Grice knew that ‘economy’ is vague. It relates to the ‘open house.’ But is a crucial concept. It is not the principle of parsimony of rational effort. It is not the principle of ‘minimisaation’ of rational effort. It is the principle of the ‘economy’ of rational effort. ‘Economy’ is already a value-oriented word, since it is a branch of politics and meta-ethics. oecŏnŏmĭcus , a, um, adj., = οἰκονομικός. I. Of or relating to domestic economy; subst.: oecŏnŏmĭcus , i, m., a work of Xenophon on domestic economy. in eo libro, qui Oeconomicus inscribitur, Cic. Off. 2, 24, 87; Gell. 15, 5, 8.— II. Of or belonging to a proper (oratorical) division or arrangement; orderly, methodical: “oeconomica totius causae dispositio,” Quint. 7, 10, 11. οἰκονομ-ικός , ή, όν, A.practised in the management of a household or family, opp. πολιτικός, Pl.Alc.1.133e, Phdr.248d, X.Oec.1.3, Arist.Pol.1252a8, etc. : Sup., [κτημάτων] τὸ βέλτιστον καὶ-ώτατον, of man, Phld.Oec.p.30 J. : hence, thrifty, frugal, economical, X.Mem.4.2.39, Phylarch.65 J. (Comp.) : ὁ οἰ. title of treatise on the duties of domestic life, by Xenophon ; and τὰ οἰ. title of treatise on public finance, ascribed to Aristotle, cf. X.Cyr.8.1.14 : ἡ -κή (sc. τέχνη) domestic economy, husbandry, Pl.Plt.259c, X.Mem. 3.4.11, etc. ; οἰ. ἀρχή defined as ἡ τέκνων ἀρχὴ καὶ γυναικὸς καὶ τῆς οἰκίας πάσης, Arist.Pol.1278b38 ; applied to patriarchal rule, ib.1285b32. Adv.“-κῶς” Ph.2.426, Plu.2.1126a ; also in literary sense, in a well ordered manner, Sch.Th.1.63. Grice’s conversational maximin. Blackburn draws a skull to communicate that there is danger. The skull complete with the rest of the body will not do. So abiding by this principle has nothing to do with an arbitrary convention. Vide principle of least conversational effort. Principle of conversational least effort. No undue effort (candour), no unnecessary trouble (self-love) if doing A involves too much conversational effort, never worry: you will be DEEMED to have made the effort. Invoked by Grice in “Prejudices and predilections; which become, the life and opinions of H. P. Grice.” When Grice qualifies this as ‘rational’ effort, what other efforts are there? Note that the lexeme ‘effort’ does NOT feature in the formulation of the principle itself. Grice confesses to be strongly inclined to assent to the principle of economy of rational conversational effort or the principle of economy of conversational effort, or the principle of economy of conversational expenditure, or the principle of minimisation of rational expenditure, or the principle of minimization of conversational expenditure, or the principle of minimisation of rational cost, or the conversational maximin. The principle of least cost. The principle of economy of rational expenditure states that, where there is a ratiocinative procedure for arriving rationally at certain outcome, a procedure which, because it is ratiocinative, involves an expenditure of time and energy, if there is a NON-ratiocinative, and so more economical procedure which is likely, for the most part, to reach the same outcome as the ratiocinative procedure, provided the stakes are not too high, it is rational to employ the cheaper though somewhat less reliable non-ratiocinative procedure as a substitute for ratiocination. Grice thinks this principle would meet with genitorial approval, in which case the genitor would install it for use should opportunity arise. This applies to the charge of overcomplexity and ‘psychological irreality’ of the reasoning involved in the production and design of the maximally efficient conversational move and the reasoning involved in the recognition of the implicaturum by the addressee. In “Epilogue” he goes by yet another motto, Do not multiply rationalities beyond necessity: The principle of conversational rationality, as he calls it in the Epilogue, is a sub-principle of a principle of rationality simpiciter, not applying to a pursuit related to ‘communication,’ as he puts it. Then there’s the principium individuationis, the cause or basis of individuality in individuals; what makes something individual as opposed to universal, e.g., what makes the cat Minina individual and thus different from the universal, cat. Questions regarding the principle of individuation were first raised explicitly in the early Middle Ages. Classical authors largely ignored individuation; their ontological focus was on the problem of universals. The key texts that originated the discussion of the principle of individuation are found in Boethius. Between Boethius and 1150, individuation was always discussed in the context of more pressing issues, particularly the problem of universals. After 1150, individuation slowly emerged as a focus of attention, so that by the end of the thirteenth century it had become an independent subject of discussion, especially in Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Most early modern philosophers conceived the problem of individuation epistemically rather than metaphysically; they focused on the discernibility of individuals rather than the cause of individuation, as in Descartes. With few exceptions, such as Karl Popper, the twentieth century has followed this epistemic approach e. g. P. F. Strawson.  principle of bivalence, the principle that any significant statement is either true or false. It is often confused with the principle of excluded middle. Letting ‘Tp’ stand for ‘p is true’ and ‘Tp’ for ‘p is false’ and otherwise using standard logical notation, bivalence is ‘Tp 7 T-p’ and excluded middle is ‘T p 7 -p’. That they are different principles is shown by the fact that in probability theory, where ‘Tp’ can be expressed as ‘Prp % 1’, bivalence ‘Pr p % 1 7 Pr ~p % 1’ is not true for all values of p  e.g. it is not true where ‘p’ stands for ‘given a fair toss of a fair die, the result will be a six’ a statement with a probability of 1 /6, where -p has a probability of 5 /6  but excluded middle ‘Prp 7 -p % 1’ is true for all definite values of p, including the probability case just given. If we allow that some significant statements have no truth-value or probability and distinguish external negation ‘Tp’ from internal negation ‘T-p’, we can distinguish bivalence and excluded middle from the principle of non-contradiction, namely, ‘-Tp • T-p’, which is equivalent to ‘-Tp 7 -T-p’. Standard truth-functional logic sees no difference between ‘p’ and ‘Tp’, or ‘-Tp’ and ‘T-p’, and thus is unable to distinguish the three principles. Some philosophers of logic deny there is such a difference. principle of contradiction, also called principle of non-contradiction, the principle that a statement and its negation cannot both be true. It can be distinguished from the principle of bivalence, and given certain controversial assumptions, from the principle of excluded middle; but in truth-functional logic all three are regarded as equivalent. Outside of formal logic the principle of non-contradiction is best expressed as Aristotle expresses it: “Nothing can both be and not be at the same time in the same respect.”  principle of double effect, the view that there is a morally relevant difference between those consequences of our actions we intend and those we do not intend but do still foresee. According to the principle, if increased literacy means a higher suicide rate, those who work for education are not guilty of driving people to kill themselves. A physician may give a patient painkillers foreseeing that they will shorten his life, even though the use of outright poisons is forbidden and the physician does not intend to shorten the patient’s life. An army attacking a legitimate military target may accept as inevitable, without intending to bring about, the deaths of a number of civilians. Traditional moral theologians affirmed the existence of exceptionless prohibitions such as that against taking an innocent human life, while using the principle of double effect to resolve hard cases and avoid moral blind alleys. They held that one may produce a forbidden effect, provided 1 one’s action also had a good effect, 2 one did not seek the bad effect as an end or as a means, 3 one did not produce the good effect through the bad effect, and 4 the good effect was important enough to outweigh the bad one. Some contemporary philosophers and Roman Catholic theologians hold that a modified version of the principle of double effect is the sole justification of deadly deeds, even when the person killed is not innocent. They drop any restriction on the causal sequence, so that e.g. it is legitimate to cut off the head of an unborn child to save the mother’s life. But they oppose capital punishment on the ground that those who inflict it require the death of the convict as part of their plan. They also play down the fourth requirement, on the ground that the weighing of incommensurable goods it requires is impossible. Consequentialists deny the principle of double effect, as do those for whom the crucial distinction is between what we cause by our actions and what just happens. In the most plausible view, the principle does not presuppose exceptionless moral prohibitions, only something stronger than prima facie duties. It is easier to justify an oblique evasion of a moral requirement than a direct violation, even if direct violations are sometimes permissible. So understood, the principle is a guide to prudence rather than a substitute for it.  principle of excluded middle, the principle that the disjunction of any significant statement with its negation is always true; e.g., ‘Either there is a tree over 500 feet tall or it is not the case that there is such a tree’. The principle is often confused with the principle of bivalence. principle of indifference, a rule for assigning a probability to an event based on “parity of reasons.” According to the principle, when the “weight of reasons” favoring one event is equal to the “weight of reasons” favoring another, the two events should be assigned the same probability. When there are n mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive events, and there is no reason to favor one over another, then we should be “indifferent” and the n events should each be assigned probability 1/n the events are equiprobable, according to the principle. This principle is usually associated with the names Bernoulli Ars Conjectandi, 1713 and Laplace Théorie analytique des probabilités, 1812, and was so called by J. M. Keynes A Treatise on Probability, 1. The principle gives probability both a subjective “degree of belief” and a logical “partial logical entailment” interpretation. One rationale for the principle says that in ignorance, when no reasons favor one event over another, we should assign equal probabilities. It has been countered that any assignment of probabilities at all is a claim to some knowledge. Also, several seemingly natural applications of the principle, involving non-linearly related variables, have led to some mathematical contradictions, known as Bertrand’s paradox, and pointed out by Keynes.  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.  principle of economy of rational effort -- cheapest-cost avoider, in the economic analysis of law, the party in a dispute that could have prevented the dispute, or minimized the losses arising from it, with the lowest loss to itself. The term encompasses several types of behavior. As the lowest-cost accident avoider, it is the party that could have prevented the accident at the lowest cost. As the lowest-cost insurer, it is the party that could been have insured against the losses arising from the dispute. This could be the party that could have purchased insurance at the lowest cost or self-insured, or the party best able to appraise the expected losses and the probability of the occurrence. As the lowest-cost briber, it is the party least subject to transaction costs. This party is the one best able to correct any legal errors in the assignment of the entitlement by purchasing the entitlement from the other party. As the lowest-cost information gatherer, it is the party best able to make an informed judgment as to the likely benefits and costs of an action.  Principle of economy of rational effort: Coase theorem, a non-formal insight by R. Coase: 1: assuming that there are no transaction costs involved in exchanging rights for money, then no matter how rights are initially distributed, rational agents will buy and sell them so as to maximize individual returns. In jurisprudence this proposition has been the basis for a claim about how rights should be distributed even when as is usual transaction costs are high: the law should confer rights on those who would purchase them were they for sale on markets without transaction costs; e.g., the right to an indivisible, unsharable resource should be conferred on the agent willing to pay the highest price for it. 

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. 

Probabile: 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 – problem – “Philosophy is about problems” – Grice. 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. 

Propensum -- 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. 

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.

Proprium – From ‘proprium’ you get the abstdract noun, “proprietas” – as in “proprietates terminorum,” each one being a “proprietas”-- 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.  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. 

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: “The etymology is fascinating – if I knew it.” – Grice – Grice’s protocol. from Medieval Latin protocollum "draft," literally "the first sheet of a volume" (on which contents and errata were written), from Greek prōtokollon "first sheet glued onto a manuscript," from prōtos "first" (see proto-) + kolla "glue. -- 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: 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. 

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.

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.

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. 

Pitagora – or as Strawson would prefer, “Pythagoras.”La scuola pitagorica a Crotone -- Pythagoras, the most famous of the pre-Socratic Grecian philosophers. He emigrated from the island of Samos off Asia Minor to Crotone, in 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. 

Q

Q: SUBJECT INDEX: QUIDDITAS

Q: NAME INDEX: ITALIAN

Q: NAME INDEX: ENGLISH: QUINTON (Grice’s collaborator)

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.

quantum:  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. Then there’s 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: one of Aristotle’s categories. Cicero’s translation of Aristotle -- 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. Then there’s 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.

Quinton -- 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.

quod: quid – quiddity. A term used by Grice when talking to his wife. “What quiddity did you buy?”

qv-quæstio -- x-question: Grice borrowed the erotetic from Cook Wilson, who in fact was influenced by Stout and will also influence Collingwood. While Grice starts by considering the pseudo-distinction between x-questions and yes/no questions, he soon finds out that they all reduce to the x-question, since a yes/no question obviously asks for a variable (the truth value of the whole proposition) to be filled. Grice sometimes follows Ryle who had quoted Carnap on the ‘w  frage.’ Grice is aware of the ‘wh’ rune in Anglo-Saxon, but was confused by ‘how.’ “For fun, I will spell ‘how,’ ‘whow.’” Although a Midlander Grice preferred the northern English pronunciation of aspirating the ‘wh-‘ and was irritated that only ‘who’ and ‘whose’ keep the aspiration. Note that “Where is your wife?” is a qu-quaestio, but “(a) in the kitchen, (b) in the bedroom” provides a ‘p v q’ as an answer – “Disjunctive answers to intrusive questions.” Cf. “Iffy answers to intrusive questions.” “The lady doth protest too much: ampliative conjunctive answers to intrusive questions.”

R

R: SUBJECT INDEX: ratio

R: NAME INDEX ITALIAN: RIMINI – ROSMINI – ROSSELLI – ROTA -- ROVERE

R: NAME INDEX: ENGLISH: RYLE

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. ‘

Ramée, philosopher who questioned the authority of Aristotle and influenced the methods of f semantics. He published his “Dialecticae institutiones libri XV,” reworked  as “Dialectique,”  the first philosophical work in what Grice (‘Gris’) calls ‘the vernacular.’ “Not much different, I should say – cf. Redecraft translating Logic!”  Ramée is appointed by François I as the first Regius Professor in Paris, where he teaches until he is  killed in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Ramée doubted that we can apodictically intuit the major premises required for Aristotle’s rational syllogism. Turning instead to Plato, Ramée proposed that a “Socratizing” of logic would produce a more workable and fruitful result. As had Agricola and Sturm, Ramée reworks 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 Ramée’s results are 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.  Ramée’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. 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: 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.

Illatum: 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. Illatum: 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.  illatum. 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. Illatum: 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.   Illatum: 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.  Illatum: 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. 

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.

Res: “Possibly the most important word in philosophy.” Grice -- 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. 

recursum: Grice, ‘anti-sneak.” The third clause (III) in Grice’s final analysis of utterer’s meaning is self-referential and recursive, in a good way, in that (III) itself counts as one of the ‘inference elements’ (that Grice symbolises as “E”) that (III) specifies. Grice loved the heraldy metaphor of the escrutcheon – and the Droste effect. Cf. ‘speculative,’ --.  Refs.: Luigi Speranza, “Grice’s mise-en-abyme,” per il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia. Then there is the recursive function theory, an area of formal semantics that takes as its point of departure the study of an extremely limited class of functions, the recursive functions. 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 non-negative integers: 0, 1, 2, etc. However, the techniques and results of recursive function theory 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 philosophy of mathematics, especially when epistemological issues are studied, since as Grice knows, super-knowing may be hard, but not impossible!

Redintegratum: 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, for Grice, so-called barbarically “redintegratum” 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. Pears: “Oddly, it didn’t work with Grice who remained a  bit of a chain-smoker – but of Navy’s Cut only, except for the very last. He never smelt the odour in a bad way.”

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.  Then there is the 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.  Then there is the reductio ad absurdum, “Tertullian’s favourite proof,” – Grice. 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. 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.”)

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. 

Reflectum -- 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. 

regressus vitiosum -- viscious regress – Grice preferred ‘vicious circle’ versus ‘virtuous circle’ – “Whether virtuous regress sounds oxymoronic” -- regress that is in some way unacceptable, where a regress is an infinite series of items each of which is in some sense dependent on a prior item of a similar sort, e.g. an infinite series of events each of which is caused by the next prior event in the series. Reasons for holding a regress to be vicious might be that it is either impossible or that its existence is inconsistent with things known to be true. The claim that something would lead to a vicious regress is often made as part of a reductio ad absurdum argument strategy. An example of this can be found in Aquinas’s argument for the existence of an uncaused cause on the ground that an infinite regress of causes is vicious. Those responding to the argument have sometimes contended that this regress is not in fact vicious and hence that the argument fails. A more convincing example of a regress is generated by the principle that one’s coming to know the meaning of a word must always be based on a prior understanding of other words. If this principle is correct, then one can know the meaning of a word w1 only on the basis of previously understanding the meanings of other words w2 and w3. But a further application of the principle yields the result that one can understand these words w2 and w3 only on the basis of understanding still other words. This leads to an infinite regress. Since no one understands any words at birth, the regress implies that no one ever comes to understand any words. But this is clearly false. Since the existence of this regress is inconsistent with an obvious truth, we may conclude that the regress is vicious and consequently that the principle that generates it is false. 

Griceian renaissance – (“rinascimento”) 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. 

Regressus: 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, “’philosopher,’ as we might say,” -- Grice of science and a major leader of the movement known as logical empiricism. Born in Hamburg, Reichenbach studies engineering (“if that’s something you study than learn” – Grice) for a brief time, then turned to mathematics, philosophy, and physics, which he pursued at Berlin, Munich, and Göttingen (“He kept moving in the area.”) He takes his doctorate in philosophy at Erlangen with a dissertation on conceptual aspects of probability, and a degree in mathematics and physics by state examination at Göttingen – “just in case,” he said. With Hitler’s rise to power, Reichenbach flees to Istanbul, then to “Los Angeles,” a town on the western coast of America -- where he remained until his death, “if not after” (Grice). Prior to his departure from G.y he is  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 Reichenbach founds “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 rejects, “slightly out of the blue” (Grice),  the synthetic a priori, chiefly because of considerations arising out of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Reichenbach remains  thereafter champion of empiricism, adhering to a probabilistic version of the verifiability theory of cognitive (“if not emotive”) meaning. Never, however, did he embrace the logical positivism of what he pompously called the “Wiener Kraus.” Ideed, 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. Grice cites him profusely in “Actions and events.” Refs.: Section on Reichenbach in Grice, “Actions and events.”

Roman Roamn – “Hellenism is what happened to the Grecians after they became a Roman province.” -- hellenistic philosophy: “Once the Romans defeated Greece, at Oxford we stop talking of ‘Greek’ philosophy, but ‘Hellenistic’ philosophy instead – since most Greeks were brought to Rome as slaves to teach philosophy to their children” – Grice. Vide “Roman philosophy” – “Not everybody knows all these Roman philosophers, so that’s a good thing.” – H. P. Grice. Hellenistic philosophy is the philosophical systems of the Hellenistic age 32330 B.C., although 31187 B.C. better defines it as a philosophical era, notably Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Skepticism. These all emerged in the generation after Aristotle’s death 322 B.C., and dominated philosophical debate until the first century B.C., during which there were revivals of traditional Platonism and of Aristotelianism. The age was one in which much of the eastern Mediterranean world absorbed Grecian culture was “Hellenized,” hence “Hellenistic”, and recruits to philosophy flocked from this region to Athens, which remained the center of philosophical activity until 87 B.C. Then the Roman sack of Athens drove many philosophers into exile, and neither the schools nor the styles of philosophy that had grown up there ever fully recovered. Very few philosophical writings survive intact from the period. Our knowledge of Hellenistic philosophers depends mainly on later doxography, on the Roman writers Lucretius and Cicero both mid-first century B.C., and on what we learn from the schools’ critics in later centuries, e.g. Sextus Empiricus and Plutarch. ’Skeptic’, a term not actually current before the very end of the Hellenistic age, serves as a convenient label to characterize two philosophical movements. The first is the New Academy: the school founded by Plato, the Academy, became in this period a largely dialectical one, conducting searching critiques of other schools’ doctrines without declaring any of its own, beyond perhaps the assertion however guarded that nothing could be known and the accompanying recommendation of “suspension of judgment” epoche. The nature and vivacity of Stoicism owed much to its prolonged debates with the New Academy. The founder of this Academic phase was Arcesilaus school head c.268 c.241; its most revered and influential protagonist was Carneades school head in the mid-second century; and its most prestigious voice was that of Cicero 10643 B.C., whose highly influential philosophical works were written mainly from a New Academic stance. But by the early first century B.C. the Academy was drifting back to a more doctrinal stance, and in the later part of the century it was largely eclipsed by a second “skeptic” movement, Pyrrhonism. This was founded by Aenesidemus, a pioneering skeptic despite his claim to be merely reviving the philosophy of Pyrrho, a philosophical guru of the early Hellenistic period. His neo-Pyrrhonism survives today mainly through the writings of Sextus Empiricus second century A.D., an adherent of the school who, strictly speaking, represents its post-Hellenistic phase. The Peripatos, Aristotle’s school, officially survived throughout the era, but it is not regarded as a distinctively “Hellenistic” movement. Despite the eminence of Aristotle’s first successor, Theophrastus school head 322287, it thereafter fell from prominence, its fortunes only reviving around the mid-first century B.C. It is disputed how far the other Hellenistic philosophers were even aware of Aristotle’s treatises, which should not in any case be regarded as a primary influence on them. Each school had a location in Athens to which it could draw pupils. The Epicurean school was a relatively private institution, its “Garden” outside the city walls housing a close-knit philosophical community. The Stoics took their name from the Stoa Poikile, the “Painted Colonnade” in central Athens where they gathered. The Academics were based in the Academy, a public grove just outside the city. Philosophers were public figures, a familiar sight around town. Each school’s philosophical identity was further clarified by its absolute loyalty to the name of its founder  respectively Epicurus, Zeno of Citium, and Plato  and by the polarities that developed in interschool debates. Epicureanism is diametrically opposed on most issues to Stoicism. Academic Skepticism provides another antithesis to Stoicism, not through any positions of its own it had none, but through its unflagging critical campaign against every Stoic thesis. It is often said that in this age the old Grecian political institution of the city-state had broken down, and that the Hellenistic philosophies were an answer to the resulting crisis of values. Whether or not there is any truth in this, it remains clear that moral concerns were now much less confined to the individual city-state than previously, and that at an extreme the boundaries had been pushed back to include all mankind within the scope of an individual’s moral obligations. Our “affinity” oikeiosis to all mankind is an originally Stoic doctrine that acquired increasing currency with other schools. This attitude partly reflects the weakening of national and cultural boundaries in the Hellenistic period, as also in the Roman imperial period that followed it. The three recognized divisions of philosophy were ethics, logic, and physics. In ethics, the central objective was to state and defend an account of the “end” telos, the moral goal to which all activity was subordinated: the Epicureans named pleasure, the Stoics conformity with nature. Much debate centered on the semimythical figure of the wise man, whose conduct in every conceivable circumstance was debated by all schools. Logic in its modern sense was primarily a Stoic concern, rejected as irrelevant by the Epicureans. But Hellenistic logic included epistemology, where the primary focus of interest was the “criterion of truth,” the ultimate yardstick against which all judgments could be reliably tested. Empiricism was a surprisingly uncontroversial feature of Hellenistic theories: there was little interest in the Platonic-Aristotelian idea that knowledge in the strict sense is non-sensory, and the debate between dogmatists and Skeptics was more concerned with the question whether any proposed sensory criterion was adequate. Both Stoics and Epicureans attached especial importance to prolepsis, the generic notion of a thing, held to be either innate or naturally acquired in a way that gave it a guaranteed veridical status. Physics saw an opposition between Epicurean atomism, with its denial of divine providence, and the Stoic world-continuum, imbued with divine rationality. The issue of determinism was also placed on the philosophical map: Epicurean morality depends on the denial of both physical and logical determinism, whereas Stoic morality is compatible with, indeed actually requires, the deterministic causal nexus through which providence operates. 

reid: Scots philosopher, beloved by Woozley, Grice’s friend at Oxford in the late 1930s. Adefender 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: G. philosopher, born in Hamburg and educated in philosophy at Jena. For most of his life he taught foreignl languages at a high school in Hamburg (“anything but Deutsche!”). The most important writings he published were a treatise on natural religion, Abhandlungen von den vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion,  a textbook on semantics, which he pretentiously called “Vernunftlehre,”  and an interesting work on instincts in animals, “Allgemeine Betrachtungen über die Triebe der Tiere,” “which Strawson thought was about deer!” – Grice.  However, Reimarus is  best known for his Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes.” In it, Reimarus reverses his stance on natural theology and openly advocates 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 is often quite critical of Wolffian rationalism in his discussion of semantics and philosophical psychology.